What makes the OoT animation a bit cooler is that Link is older after the animation, like the beams hide him from your view and after the flash of light, he grew old (and everything else changed as well, but you only see that after leaving the cathedral)
The sages used their advanced technology to send Link into a divergent timeline but had to massively simplify their explanation for refugee child living in the woods.
I like to think that his memory is linear and if he goes from (a) young to (b) adult and back to (c) young, his knowledge goes from a ➡️ a+b ➡️ a+b+c. So, his age is sort of irrelevant.