Hello! I saw your post asking about the form of "i" that Drayton uses in Japanese, and I'd like to give a little bit of an answer: Drayton uses "oira" (written in katakana) to refer to himself, which you can hear in his Pokemas' Japanese voicelines here: https://youtu.be/KjTPed0YBe4
If you play Indigo Disk in Japanese, you can also see him using "oira" to refer to himself!
Basically, "oira" is the form of "i" used by people who are laidback, mischievous, playful, and/or someone with rural background, though that's just a very general way of describing it as Japanese pronouns have a lot of cultural context and nuance that's hard to translate in English, so it's not always set in stone as to which kind of character that uses certain pronouns.
Even the way the pronoun is written, or how a character switches their personal pronoun throughout the story or depending on the situation, contains a detail of a character. Kieran, for example, uses hiragana "ore" in Teal Mask before permanently changing to kanji "ore" starting from Indigo Disk and that carries over even to the postgame. In Kieran's case, the difference of how his personal pronoun is written (from hiragana to kanji) is one way to show his change of personality from Teal Mask to Indigo Disk, and the fact that he still uses kanji "ore" even in postgame shows that he never returns to how he was in Teal Mask as everything that happened permanently changes him, kind of like how he still uses his Decisive Battle theme in postgame rematch! But that's just one way to interpret it!
You can read a little bit about Japanese pronouns here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pronouns_in_Japanese and https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/JapanesePronouns/FirstPersonPronouns
As a bonus, another notable fictional character who also uses katakana "oira" to refer to himself just like Drayton is... Sans from Undertale, even then he changes the way he refers to himself as well depending on the situation, but for most of the time he uses katakana "oira".
Sorry for the length, but I hope it answers your question! I'm still learning Japanese so there might be mistakes here and there. I'm open to correction though, and I recommend looking out for more resources to learn about personal pronouns! Learning about the difference of pronouns in Japanese is difficult, but also very fun!
You are goated for this 🥹😭 Thank you!!
This was very informative! "Oira" does seem to fit him pretty well, based on your description. It is a shame that Japanese's abundant nuances are lost in English, but it is what it is. Maybe one day I could start seriously learning it too, whenever my life irl has more free time. I will for sure start trying to do more research, so I appreciate those links!
That attention to detail with Kieran is so cool, and also makes me a little sad. Poor guy went through a lot, it makes sense that experience in the dlc permanently changed him.
And thanks so much for that tidbit about Sans. I've seen humorous fanart with Drayton and Sans from Japanese artists and knew I was missing out on the context 😂
