Hey, Capcom made 2 Giant Rоbо parodies with Z-Akuma and Rоbо Raizо. Someone in Capcom must have been a fan of the Giant Rоbо. So why not? It’s a good OVA series.
hi! thank you for all your insight into the japanese text of yttd! can you please elaborate on alice's dialogue in ytts? you said it's "more definitive in the other direction" do you mean it's fairly obvious alice isn't meant to be possibly interpreted as trans in it? why do you think vgperson went that way with it then?
To put it simplest, in Alice's talk in YTTS, he explained that his way of speech was due to his strange upbringing. I’d say that it’s very likely and probably intended for the takeaway to be a genuine straightforward explanation that Alice considers himself a cis man, and his way of speech does not reflect any intended identification of femininity.
Let’s say there’s still some room for trans interpretation, but the actual text definitely does not do anything like confirming he’s trans. Please also remember that this is a Japanese game made for a Japanese audience with Japanese standards.
Elaborated explanation below:
Alice very much straightforwardly talks about how his mother is a weirdo who took a common saying (about how having a daughter first and then a son would make your children easier to raise) and turned it into an idea that she thought would be fashionable, and so she raised him as a girl, (and likely Reko as a boy). Eventually, Alice confronted her about this and his mother accepted it very easily which threw him off.
Gotta be noted that both of the Yabusame siblings seem to like their mother more than their father, though they call their mom kind of a weirdo. (Reko’s personal information, pretty sure Alice talking about wanting to apologize to his parents with his Mom being the focus parent...)
Now for the relevant text about how Alice was feeling by the time he decided to confront his mother.
Vgp's translation:
But as I grew, it seemed increasingly wrong. I felt definitively masculine...!
A More Straightforward translation:
But as I grew, it seemed increasingly wrong. Both my body and spirit were growing more masculine..!
See the 肉体? That’s “body.”
This is the sticking point, essentially. Alice talks about his body also growing more masculine being part of the reason why he wanted to confront his mom about the way she was raising him. Which imo, doesn’t lend itself to being as vague and supportive of “trans!Alice” as the Vgp’s fan-translation does.
Frankly, this is one of the points I’d actually disagree with Vgp about her translation for, that I mentioned in my first post. I do think this change was likely purposeful, and I’m personally not sure how I feel about it.
Vgp's on record for her translation of Witch's Heart stating that if the OG material was going to confirm Noel as “not trans” (which is a popular fan interpretation in the western hemisphere), she considered that to be an unfortunately-common turn of events and felt it would be a waste of the original vagueness of the previous point.
In her translation notes, she talks about in the case that the trans interpretation was shut down, that she was thinking about fudging it to allow for Western fan interpretation. The original material didn’t take the option off the table in the end at the crucial scene and so this didn’t happen.
Witch’s Heart Translation Note Link (warning for spoilers): https://vgperson.com/posts.php?p=witchsheartnotes
I assume this is what she did here as well, tbh. This is an example of one of the translations where I do think there was likely a bias and a decision to keep it more vague for Western fans. It's not like I don't understand why she might have done it, but for translations, I feel like you have a duty to keep as close of a meaning as the original as possible and I do think this didn't help the Western fandom's separation of interpretation of the character vs. Japanese fandom's interpretation.
Before anyone mentions Nankidai RTing “trans!Alice” art posts and the like, I gotta say that Nankidai is extremely terrible at English, to a massive extent. During the YTTD festival streams, he was stumbling over trying to sound out English names, and his JPN fans were joking about how he was so terrible it was cute. (Japan does have a mandatory English Language subject in school after all.)
He does not read English text, nor does he bother to try to translate them into Japanese with Machine Translation.
Personally I do think that even if you subscribe to Alice being trans as a headcanon, (which I totally think is valid) the “Gonbee is Alice’s Real Name and Alice is his deadname” logic I’ve been seeing around is completely bullshit. In the Japanese it’s more obvious, but Alice almost mistakenly said his real name when asked, and swapped for an obvious pseudonym at the last moment.
Vgp does mention this in her translation notes, so I’ll just briefly rehash it here.
Alice stutters and replies with “Ya... Yamada Gonbee.” when he’s initially asked his name.
See the “Ya”? He was completely about to use “Yabusame” but changed it out for one of the most generic surnames in Japan at the last moment. Using Western naming order, this is admittedly harder to convey, and I can totally understand why Vgperson just skipped it.
Then he uses Gonbee (権兵衛), which Vgp has also stated to be a super antiquated and weird name. What she doesn’t mention is that it’s also a name commonly used for “Some Guy”, or a name for a random unknown man. If you look up the kanji, it is essentially a “John Doe” equivalent.
The effect in English, is probably close to something like Alice calling himself “Yohn Smith”. Which is weird, and very obviously a bad fake name.
TLDR: Alice is mostly suggested to be a cis man due to the fact that he uses his body becoming more masculine as he grew up as a reason for his confrontation with his mother.
hi! finally somebody that knows what they’re talking about when it comes to the original yttd. people are saying.. gin says transphobic and homophobic things in the original, i’m 100% sure this is not true. can you, like, confirm the actual dialogue? they claim gin calls alice the t slur and f slur 😐
Alright, so I'm gonna be straight and say I did a fair bit amount of research trying to figure out how to frame this particular response. If someone's argument was that this particular subject is a repeat occurrence, I can easily say no to that.
There is only one relevant bit of text to this argument. Let's discuss it.
6/30/21 EDIT: Got some information from a friend. I’ll bring it up in a reblog of this post.
In the Japanese, Gin calls Alice an "okama murderer" at one point. (Chapter 2-1, Day 3, Morning, optional dialogue) In English, Vgp translated this as "girly murderer".
Okama is a word with a lot of history and nuance. Like many such terms, it's a vague and ill-defined word. Someone who was born male and acts femininely is called an okama. This can vary in what it refers to.
Okama in a general sense can be used to refer to: gay men, crossdressers, transgender women, and/or men who behave or speak in feminine ways. Someone can be called an okama for any of the reasons above, and could call themselves an okama for multiple reasons as well.
Okama is currently considered a generally offensive term. However, while it is used derogatorily, it can also have more neutral meaning. Some people label themselves as "okama" and personally use it as a method of identification.
In Japanese society, it seems as if it's still a pretty common word, both as a self-referential identity term and as a slur. Within the queer community, there are people who consider it reclaimed and use it jokingly amongst other queer friends, similarly to how some gay English speakers might call their friends "queens." The term is also considered much more of a overdone gay-coded archetype in media, and not necessarily real people behavior.
Japanese is a language that's super dependent on context and intention, so that plays into how the term can be used.
That being said, you'll probably hear the word okama being used derogatorily in Japan. For example, some older Japanese people may not realize how insensitive the term is and may still use it easily. It is also a very common insult used by school children in Japan.
This is the lens we'd probably want to examine Gin's statement with.
From what I personally observed, Gin's tongue is considered pretty poisonous for a elementary school student by general Japanese fans. He refers to most people with a general scathing nickname based on his observations.
Alice speaks in two types of speech. One manner is brash and masculine, and one is well, onee-speak, which is an exaggerated feminine way of speaking.
Gin calling Alice an okama is specifically him referring to Alice's feminine manner of speaking and attitude. There's not much grounds to argue that Gin calling Alice a "f*g" or "tr*nny" here because tbh, I don't think Gin has any context to believe that Alice is gay or transgender just from him being rather feminine at times.
(I know Alice is considered trans-coded by a lot of western fans, but while I do consider it open for headcanon, it is... not as supported in the original Japanese content. I believe Vgp adjusted some of his YTTS dialogue to leave it more open to interpretation vs the Japanese text which is considerably more definitive in the... other direction.)
It is true that Gin absolutely means it as an insult, so it's hard to say that him calling Alice an "okama murderer" is not intended to be derogatory. Calling it straight-up transphobic or homophobic is a harder sell though, imo.
For example, if a kid calls someone a sissy, they certainly mean the insult as putting down a perceived slight in being "girlish", and it's certainly insensitive and lacking in respect towards girls. Would I call the kid a transphobe or homophobe or misogynist? I think that's an extreme reaction. Also, they're a kid.
So to answer your question!!! Frankly, no, Gin isn't the most woke kid on the block, and I personally would say that he's pretty insensitive. This particular dialogue, however, isn't meant to be directly transphobic or homophobic.
If other people want to weigh in on this, they're more than welcome to. I gave this question some thorough consideration to come to this personal conclusion, but I'm certainly not going to call myself an expert on Japanese queer culture.
Also, speaking of Gin and Japanese cultural context: Gin calling Qtaro and Kurumada "gorilla" is not a racist dogwhistle. In Japan, the term gorilla is synonymous with muscles and strength, and any characters with muscles or exhibiting a lot of strength can be referred to as a gorilla. Sara and Kanna can get this treatment due to their ridiculous power levels in Nankidai's joke sketches.
Okay, a JPN-fluent friend mentioned that there’s another bit of dialogue that Gin being a Extremely Rude Boy that directly relevant to this discussion that was softened by the Vgp’s fan-translation right at the beginning.
I didn’t notice myself before, but yeah, there’s definitely a tonal change for the sake of western sensibilities. Again, I understand where Vgperson was going with this, but it’s probably not very accurate to the idea that Nankidai probably did want to push of Gin being an insensitive little kid who’s rude.
Anyway...
VGP’s translation:
Sara: B-Big sis...?!
Gin: ...Huh? It's not big bro, is it, woof?" / Maybe I got it all wrong, meow...
Sara: That's not the problem!
My friend’s translation:
Sara: ...Nee-- nee-chan!?
Gin: ...Eh? Could it be nii-chan, woof? / Don't come closer, meow.
Sara: Of course that's not it!
Basically yes, this does suggest that Gin was assuming Sara to be crossdressing or trans here, which is generally considered be "weird" or "perverted" in Japanese society. It’s not nice or pleasant of him.
But again, I would be careful about calling a child character who’s deliberately written to be insensitive to be purposefully and actively malicious about these kind of things. This is definitely a character decision on Nankidai’s part, as Mishima (in YTTS) has the experience, empathy, and awareness to be mature and sensitive about LBGTQA+ subjects.
All Mishima’s thoughts suggest that he’s doing his best to be respectful and it’s a fairly progressive outlook when he asks about Alice’s occasional very-feminine behavior/tone, as well as Kanna’s sister being asked out by a woman. (Though he shows a bit of shock over it, that reaction is less about the gender, and mostly due to the fact that Kugie was asked out by an “adult”.)
So yeah, not sure I would call Gin transphobic or homophobic still, because he’s still a child, but he’s reflecting a specific part of Japanese social views that make sense for the character I believe Nankidai intended to portray.
I've been seeing a lot of TADC in Danganronpa spaces recently, so what about Danganronpa in TADC spaces?
Speedpaint & Rambling below the cut!!
🦷🎪🎀🐻
I worked on this on and off for like a solid 2 weeks, but I decided to lock down and render it all finally! This kinda serves as my last thing I'm doing before I watch Goodbye Despair. I just lingered on Trigger Happy Havoc for so long because I know Goodbye Despair is the fan favorite and I know I'm gonna love it, but I wanted to give the THH cast some attention before I did that :)
(Also i really liked @bitter-rayjay's rendering on one of their DR pieces I found so I heavily referenced it. Don't know if you have to credit for heavy inspiration of a rendering style, but im doing it anyway. Hope thats alr, I just found it cool <3)
(Songs are Intermission Time & Super High-School Level Despair Inducing Punishment <3)
i don't think that they would be able to 'sense death' like some other pokemon can. But i do believe that they would be all to aware of mortality.
As in, they know that all things end but they have no clue when. Which probably would lead into them being very high maintenance pokemon due to them having some extreme level of anxiety.
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