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
All of this is true, but I think what I was replying to was more concerned with censorship and rewriting things to fit a more Puritan or at least prudish outlook on the world.
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 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?
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.
End Birdo Trans Erasure!
I remember reading this in my own Super Mario Bros. 2 manual.
That description is transphobic as fuck
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.
It always had a trans character; they’re just going to stop pretending that they’re not.
That’s great, but, I mean, it’s Mario. How are we supposed to know?
I haven’t played Mario in a while. It seems like, given the general art style, in order to make it obvious enough to notice, they’d have to flirt with stereotyping.
I don’t know. Maybe I’m overthinking it.
Okay - can we localize mother 3 now then?
Bowsette confirmed!
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