In canon, Saiki doesn’t believe he’s trans. He believes he’s cis.
So here’s the thing. A trans narrative for Saiki is gonna be a lot different to your usual just based on his powers alone. Let’s explore that a bit.
He believes his true gender to be male. He’s a male on his birth certificate as well so he IS assigned male at birth. However!
He attributes his coming out a girl to his shapeshifting ability, which presented every time his mom had an ultrasound. He’d be a whole host of different things, which the doctors also attributed to imaging errors.
However we all know that testing for sex before birth via ultrasound isn’t exactly 100% definitive.
He just says ‘previous examinations’. He doesn’t specify which examinations those were but by and large the most predominant is the ultrasound. Very recently (like, 2011 or so) blood tests to determine sex have also become more common but while Saiki’s year of birth isn’t really told we can guess, based on the publication date (Saiki K began serialization in Shonen Jump in 2012) and his age at the beginning of the manga (16) he was PROBABLY born in 1996 if we ignore Asou’s writing in the timey wimey stuff to justify all his Christmas and New Years plots without the characters ever moving forward a grade (which would then make him even older). So it’s safe to assume that he’s talking about ultrasounds as opposed to something more modern.
Now, his shapeshifting is one of his powers. If that’s the case why would he stay male when he loses his powers after putting in Kusuke’s implant? Because he never actually loses them. They start showing up again pretty well right away.
Ignoring power fluctuations in times of stress, his powers return in this order:
X-ray vision the day after that:
Saiki mentions his first power was shape shifting and that the others all developed after he was born. We can see parallels in earlier chapters focusing on how much of a dickish baby he was before he grew morals (lmao) and they seem to at least loosely follow this pattern. I therefore don’t think it’d be a stretch to assume these abilities are showing in their original order of appearance. (Well they might not be, I can’t remember tbh) Which could mean that the shape shifting just Never Left. Saiki’s always had his shape shifting and he either kept it through the transition to reducing his abilities or the blip was so short as to be unnoticeable.
So in summation, Saiki believes his true gender is male. He even feels guilty reverting to his sex at birth to take advantage of a women’s only sweets promotion. He couches needing to justify it in a fourth wall break but the little ‘you may be right’ says a lot to me.
He’s basing this off ultrasound examinations, which he then goes on to say were faulty based on his shapeshifting. Likewise, we know that even in real life ultrasound sexing isn’t 100% accurate. Saiki came out a girl, but within an hour he’d switched his sex and he’s stuck with male ever since. He doesn’t mention his thinking process so it’s safe to say he doesn’t remember the events - he’s recounting this based on what he’s been told.
SO. To me, this equals Saiki being trans even though he firmly believes he’s cisgender. His little baby brain went all ‘hey, somethings wrong here’ and then he spent the next hour shifting his sex and he’s stayed a boy ever since because, despite his original sex, that’s his true gender.
Really adds another level of tragedy onto the pile if he ever succeeds in locking all his powers away too because without his powers, there too goes his shapeshifting. He’d be forced to adapt to not only a new body, but a new life of gender dysphoria which he’d previously been spared from since he spent the however many previous years in his ideal, MALE, body.
Anyway this was just another short form essay on how Saiki K’s life is a Disaster, don’t mind me.
