For those who didn’t read the article, the game is already released, it’s the Paper Mario Thousand Year Door remake. In the Japanese text of the original gamecube release, Vivian was a trans character. The English localisation of the Gamecube release cut out all references to her being trans.
The article is saying the Switch remake’s English translation now contains the cut dialogue that fleshes out Vivians backstory.
that’s so fugly. gotta love it when stuff gets not lost, but thrown out in translation because some snobby corporate idiotfucker is too condescending to tell you the truth. How many other times has that happened in the last three thousand years, I wonder rhetorically.
I’d like to take a moment so sit right there while we discuss most of the history of anime localization.
Some things, like honorifics, dont translate well to English.
For example, the -chan, -sama, -kun etc suffixes are super annoying when the English voice actors try to use them.
They’re fine in the English subtitles against the Japanese audio though
In the original Japanese translation, Vivian is referred to as an otokonoko (which also can mean just “boy”) and the game often uses otoko (man) and otoutou (little brother) to refer to them - so the intention was most likely to paint them more as a crossdresser.
English localisation completely removed all traces of these, just makin Vivian a girl.
And now the remake, for both languages, makes Vivian explicitly trans.
Wouldn’t be the first two decades old Japanese game that had to rethink crossdressing/trans characters in their remakes.
I was assuming your link was addressing Bridget from Guilty Gear
Bridget is another one. At least they got a better ending than the real life counterpart.
I feel it’s worth noting that everyone calling you he/him or “little brother” or “man” doesn’t make you not a girl. She’s referred to in game as オトコノコ (otokonoko), which is written ambiguously like that so it can either be 男の子 meaning boy or 男の娘 literally meaning “male daughter”. When she’s referred to as ‘man’, she feels insulted, and she uses feminine first-person pronouns and calls herself one of “three sisters.”
Saying she’s “just a crossdresser” is a possible interpretation, but not one that is clear and unassailable. In translation, she’s either just a girl, explicitly trans, or somewhat ambiguous more like the original Japanese, so the people publishing the game don’t seem to think of her as just a crossdresser.
All that to say, she’s been trans for a while, even explicitly, it’s just happening in the English version of the game now.
I feel it’s worth noting that everyone calling you he/him or “little brother” or “man” doesn’t make you not a girl.
Obviously, but when the narration and descriptions use those as well, it gives it more importance than just having other characters misgender them in conversation.
男の娘 literally meaning “male daughter”
Which is the otokonoko I linked to. If the term was used today it would be much more ambiguous, but the game came out in 2004 when that term was essentially only used for" crossdressers" in Japan - what I guess we’d these days call femboys - and basically never for trans people. That meaning came almost two decades later, and some would even argue that it shouldn’t be used for them at all.
Birdo?
End Birdo Trans Erasure!
I remember reading this in my own Super Mario Bros. 2 manual.
And yet, for the 80’s, progressive as fuck.
That’s the problem with progress, you cringe when you look at what things were like before.
Protip: I know you think the 80’s was just 20 years ago, it was 40 actually
The 80s were a different time. Honestly I’m surprised Mario wasn’t originally on coke. And Luigi, and Toad…AND OBVIOUSLY royal princess peach can get the good shit.
But as it pertained to sexuality, being homophobic, being transphobic, it was the norm in the 80s.
And it was worse too, because racism absolutely existed in the 80s, just as it always has. However people in the 80s knew racism was wrong, and bad. Even in the 80s, you knew you didn’t want to be known as a racist.
But when it came to sexuality in the 80s, it was cool to call someone a fag, or laugh at a man in a dress, or anything that wasn’t “straight guy, straight girl, or two straight girls exparementing with each other at a party for others entertainment.”
So today if someone asked “Did you just call (obviously gay person) gay???”, you’d be mortified that they thought that about you.
Back in the 80s, you’d say “Hell yeah I did!!!” and then you’d high five them. Because back then, putting people down for sexuality was seen as today putting someone down for being a pedophile. If some today asked you if you were sexually attracted to young kids, you’d be repulsed and say no. But if you were British Royalty you could go to any house in your kingdom, take any child, and then tell the parents you’re taking their kid to live with you as a sex slave. Today we’re past that. We’ve gotten to the point where we all agree thats wrong. But in the 1600s, English peasants would brag to each other that THEIR kid was chosen by the king. Like it were an honor, rather than an arrestable offense it is today.
As we advance as a species, we’ll look back at centuries ago and say “what were they thinking???”
Then again, theres about 13 undiscovered, lost, still armed nuclear bombs that the Americans lost in test drops. Mostly dropped into oceans, they’ve been deteriorating away for 70ish years. Wherever they are an earthquake could set them off. Maybe an aggressive shark. The point is, there are 13 points which we KNOW at some point, will set off a WWII era atomic bomb. This will have an unknown outcome, 13 different times. Any one of which might end Earth. Or maybe it causes some tidal waves. No one knows.
Another thing nobody knows is how many atomic bombs the Russians lost.
My point is, we all might might die, because of a war that ended 34 years ago. Of which, the whole point is to NOT use nukes. (Oops)
We may NEVER get to see the moment that humans have progressed through their own toxicity.
Still not as transphobic as Poison from Final Fight. Originally in Japan, she’s just a woman. But they made her trans in America because people might get mad if they are allowed to beat up a “real” woman.
Idk why you’re being downvoted; It’s stated that they know she’s trans, then throughout, they misgender her five times and also discredit every trans person, ever, with the usage of the word “thinks”. Transphobic at the worst, ignorant at best.
Came in here to say that. Maybe Birdo doesn’t count since Mario II wasn’t a “real” Mario game?
Even notwithstanding all of the below (several enemies and other aspects of Mario 2 showed up in later Mario games, so we can only suppose its as “real” as any), Yoshi is also a strong contender for being trans. He is consistently referred to as male but cranks out eggs at an assembly-line pace and thus might be biologically female.
But then, so does Birdo. So who the hell knows how dinosaur-things work in Mario’s world.
Hence the quotes. It wasn’t one in Japan. It was called Doki Doki Panic in Japan and the sprites were altered to Mario characters, but only the playable characters, when it was released in the U.S. later as Super Mario Bros. 2.
Will they have a character that goes to jail because he wanted to play old video games?
It always had a trans character; they’re just going to stop pretending that they’re not.
I’m sure gAmErS will have a totally reasonable and normal reaction to this.
I know some that will…
