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.
bible
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.
when the narration and descriptions use those as well, it gives it more importance than just having other characters misgender them in conversation.
Maybe, but it could also just be the nature of the culture at the time to talk about trans people that way. “A boy who thinks he’s a girl” is just, by our current understanding, a transphobic description of a trans girl.
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.
I’m not close enough to say with any authority that it was or wasn’t, but the use of that word, even in third person narrative descriptions of her, doesn’t really sound like “they’re definitely just a crossdresser” so much as someone euphemistically describing a trans girl. Especially when the character herself references herself as a girl. That right there is really the most important part.
By all means don’t just trust the word of a random girl on the Internet, but there ya go
Birdo?
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That description is transphobic as fuck
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Why did you have to do me like that with the 80s pro tip?
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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.
This is completely wrong. Lost nuclear bombs are not going to be functional in the slightest after decades, as they require very precisely timed detonation of explosive charges to actually trigger the main fission reaction. They’re not like chemical bombs, which will explode with enough heat or pressure. And after decades the circuitry to control the explosive charges will be long dead.
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Not before the explosives expert kid from 101 showed up.
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Also, the fissile material has been radioactively decaying for decades and should no longer be refined enough to go critical.
I’m not sure about that, plutonium-239 has a half-life of 24k years and uranium-235’s is far longer.
That’s not what we’re talking about.
You’re probably right, and in terms of the design yield absolutely right.
But if just one explosive charge were to miss fire, you could theoretically still get a fizzle that measures in single digit or even tens of tonnes of TNT.
That’s pretty trivial as bombs go, but it would be incredibly dirty.
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.
Shit, interracial marriage was not acceptable to the majority of Americans until 1994. People deluded themselves into thinking that was not racist.
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This rant took me on a journey.
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As a gay man- at least in my local community, the loophole does exist, and I’ve heard a good number of queer people use it (though only in conversations with people they know will be comfortable with it). 🤷
I don’t necessarily take issue with it being used in a clinical tone like this. Context is context tho, and I don’t speak for everybody ofc. °_o
TBF it’s from 1988.
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.
Yeah it was also 1987 and the worked Was filled to the brim with right-wing propaganda. Even people who wanted to be progressive didn’t really know how to refer to anyone correctly, there was no one to teach them.
Why don’t we cut it some slack for even existing at all? Is this really worse than nothing? Literally my first exposure to the concept of trans.
Idk why you’re being downvoted
Because 1. that term is thrown around so often and so loosely-defined now it is sometimes losing its meaning, 2. nobody was intentionally trying to upset anyone, especially back then, and 3. not everyone agrees with the concept as a whole to begin with. Regardless of your beliefs I don’t even fault e.g. christians for only believing in biological male and female, as that’s what their book says and you’re not going to change everyone’s mind so easily or at all.
I don’t think you’ll get much agreement for your third point, but I completely agree with your first two. Reading something from over 30 years ago and applying modern sensibilities to it is stupid.
I’m pretty sure their book doesn’t say anything explicit about this topic. They choose to interpret passages in specific ways to foster their agenda, which is not ok at all.
BULLSHIT 2:43 AND THEN THE LORD SAID, BIOLOGICAL WOMEN SHOULD SHUT THIER MOUTHS IN THE CHURCH, BUT TRANS WOMEN CAN SPEAK, BECAUSE TRANS WOMEN ARE BIOLOGICAL MEN AND WE SHOULD HATE THEM, PASS DISCRIMINATORY LAWS AND DISSEMINATE LIES AND PROPAGANDA ABOUT THEM WHILE WAVING A FLAG AND CARRYING A BIBLE. (/s)
Yea, there is no mention of trangender people in the Bible, and honestly, its not my religion and I dont believe any of it, nor should any of it dictate my life. I am not a Christian, and I have freedom of religion.
Lol at the down votes for pointing out a straight fact.
We can put qualifiers on it, like how text like this likely did more good than harm, but it’s still undeniably transphobic
lmao
Came in here to say that. Maybe Birdo doesn’t count since Mario II wasn’t a “real” Mario game?
Birdo is a permanent character in the main roster of characters and Mario 2 is a real Mario game. I will not tolerate all this Bowser propaganda in here.
It was a real Mario game.
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.
And then it was re-released in Japan with those changes as Super Mario USA, and characters and concepts from it have appeared in subsequent Mario games. So even if it didn’t start as a Mario game, it’s very much a “real” Mario game, and has been since the 90s.
Oh I know. It actually started as a Mario game though. Then the festival was coming up so they made it Doki Doki Panic. Then Nintendo of America balked at how Mario Bros 2 was basically an intensely difficult expansion pack, and the rest is history.
Regardless of all of that tho, Mario 2 USA was always cannon for the series after it was released.
Edit. I’m not refuting you, just adding more contenxt.
Isn’t it the opposite? It was reskinned to be a Mario game because Mario 2 in Japan is what we now know as the lost levels. I don’t think this was originally anything but doki doki. Hence the completely different mechanics.
No it started in R&D as a new Mario game. They wanted to explore vertical scrolling. Similar to how Breath of the Wild was prototyped as a Zelda 1 game. They needed something for the festival so they used it for that instead of Mario.
That’s why they chose to use it for Mario 2 USA. It was at it’s core a new Mario game anyways.
Similar to how Breath of the Wild was prototyped as a Zelda 1 game.
What’s a “Zelda 1” game and how is it/BotW similar to the vertical scrolling thing?
You’re correct. I’ve never heard this anywhere else and I literally took video game history classes at a college that is partnered with Nintendo of America.
They’re both correct, but TachyonTele is more correct about the history of the game as it started development in the beginning. But it’s also true that SMB2 in USA was made by reskinning Doki Doki Panic because the real SMB2 was deemed too hard for western players.
And I’m not surprised a video game history class wouldn’t know about internal development design decisions in 1980s Japan and only knew about what was stated publicly in interviews over and over etc.
Mario 2 USA was released in Japan as well. Later, though, in 1992.
“Yume Koji: Doki Doki Panic” was created from a prototype vertical platformer game Nintendo was creating, but licensed it to Fuji Television instead.
So no, Your story is backwards - it was always a Mario game. The Yume Kojo characters ARE the reskin.
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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.
Birdetta.
Toad.
Will they have a character that goes to jail because he wanted to play old video games?
I’m sure gAmErS will have a totally reasonable and normal reaction to this.
I’m sure they won’t dox developers and voice actors as usual
I know some that will…
you don’t have to go far, look at one of the comments here in the replies
It always had a trans character; they’re just going to stop pretending that they’re not.
It’s Zelda. They’re putting an end to the age-old mixup once and for all!
Link finna get pegged.
Link was the princess all along
I mean he was already cross dressing in BOTW
Toad, birdo, the shy guys can’t all be guys, they must have a hundred trans characters at this point, right?
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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.
The Paper Mario games are RPGs, so they’re a lot more dialogue-heavy than a normal Mario game. In this instance, the character explains their identity to the player, directly.
Ah, That makes more sense. Character creation would help a lot with this issue.
There isn’t any character creation in Mario RPGs. You roleplay as the characters presented. All of this is like 30 years old at this point. There isn’t anything new coming to light.
They already have Birdo in the games tho, maybe it’s a new character 🤔
Birdetta. Don’t deadname her.
Did they actually change it? I had no idea 😅
From the SMB2 manual from 1988.
I feel like the trans part really overshadowed the “spits eggs from -her- mouth” part. Is that a common thing for males or females of her species?
When I was a kid I could shoot milk from my eyes, so
Common for both… but only when some Italian asshole is throwing turnips at them.
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Mail them all to me so I can burn them!
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Fucking idiots downvoting obvious satire
/s? 🤔
No, it’s serious. I’ve been smashing my Nintendos ever since they’ve gone woke. Go woke, go BROKE after all.
Having to repurchase my consoles all the time gets really expensive after a while though
lol, no one seeing the joke here?
Bowsette confirmed!
This is how Nintendo will get banned in Florida. I hope DeSantis and Ninento sue each other and blow through tons of money on legal fees.
Oh jeez those tattoos are awful. Why the fuck do people do that to their bodies?!?
Because they’re free to do whatever the fuck they want when it comes to tattoos?
Horrible horrible horrible.
Thanks for your shitty opinion
Oh gosh! I’m not allowed an opinion on tattoos? Wow.
No, one said you aren’t allowed to have your shitty opinion. I just told you that your opinion is shitty. I could have just downvoted you like everyone else for your shitty opinion. But I felt like taking a break moment out of my day to tell you that your opinion was shitty. You are definitely allowed to continue to have shitty opinions, but everyone else is also allowed to tell you that your opinion is shitty.
I’ve always thought throat tattoos looked weird but I’m not sure how that’s relevant here?
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Okay - can we localize mother 3 now then?
