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Author Topic:  Character Behaviour and Personality Autism(?) LGBTQ(?)  (Read 3689 times)

Hachiko

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This question might come off as offensive without meaning to be. It is something I have wondered a time. What is the Japanese archetype for characters like Noel in Sleepless City/Cinderella Party or Ren from My Forged Wedding/Party?

Is the awkwardness they show something  mental or a true character trait?  Not stupid mind you, they're both very endearing.  But Ren is 120% devoted to his plants and Noel to racing and particular music. The way they reply to MC and others quickly turns irregular or strange. It can't because they are foreign right? I don't really understand how this could be cultural.

I also think it's great to have cast members as transwomen/femme even if most of the cast ignores pronouns. Does anyone remember the femme character from My Sweet Bodyguard? Wish I did.

Why so much diversity in this moment? I'd like hear thoughts.

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« Last Edit: May 01, 2015, 01:49:50 AM by Hachiko »
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Aiwethryne

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Reply #1 on: May 01, 2015, 03:10:45 AM
I've been listening to so many podcasts that happen to talk about trans people lately. My brain is like a wellspring right now.

Otome games seem to often have crossdressing men or transgendered women, but they act like what people expect the extreme stereotype to be, which in my mind consists of gaudy makeup and sounding like flighty, teenage valley girls. It encapsulates many things I despise about Fil soap operas. In games like My Forged Wedding, Sleepless Cinderella, UtaPri, etc., it makes me tug at my hair in agony that they are all basically the same archetype. The depictions feel more like taunting examples, even while I am sure that the intent is to show that they are accepted in society. I just wish that they were in roles outside of things that are often gender-specific, like the flower arranging. Why can't they be lawyers? Even though they identify themselves as female, that does not predicate that all their interests must be girly.

Same with gay men. It is like otome games are saying that every gay person will be like a dainty flower with remarkable fashion sense. On the flip side, these games dismiss the transgendered men as though they do not exist in the world, much less seen as potential partners for the heroine. The simple rarity to even have a protagonist with short, "boyish" hair is incredible.

I do not understand what you mean by "femme." The one transgendered person was Mariko, the terrorist. Mariko was like a ball of hormones with a hair-trigger temper, but every time Kaiji spoke to Mariko was to contest her identity. Kaiji needed to be shanked for instigating more danger for the MC. I could not take Mariko seriously as an antagonist because she felt like a parody of transgendered women, which upsets me. Only the MCs seem capable of recognizing them as women, when the Voltage men persistently go, "But you're a man." Ugh.


The archetype for the silent characters is literally "the quiet type," or dandere. They show their feelings by actions, not words, as subtle as they may be. When they do show how they feel, everyone suddenly has heartattacks from the cuteness. Usually they are seen as mature and capable, if they do not need to say more than one word to get their point across. Quiet people are also often equated with being intelligent, which is annoyingly true in real life, as completely incorrect as it may be. But, 99.9% of anime silent characters are utter BADASSES at what they do.

By canon, I would not think that characters like Ren would ever be considered autistic, rather stoic and only able to open up after an adjustment period. In Ren's case, excessive interactions can be too much effort, when he would rather sleep or work. I know a person who has a degree of autism which made it difficult for him to process another person's reactions as positive or negative and reciprocate, and he said that girls would tell him that he was completely deadpan in everything he did. Ren in the paid version, on the other hand, fully notices the MC's feelings and even admitted that he chose to ignore them. Ren's facial expressions are meant to be full of life. He is picky about food, and it comes across on his face really easily. He blushes and shies away. An autistic person may have difficulties even getting that blush.

The awkwardness is more because the writers are trying to force the characters to remain in that role. Where is the character growth? It is a popular archetype, so they do not want to mess with run of success, and it does not help that events more or less "resets" everything.
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Vixey

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Reply #2 on: June 04, 2015, 09:12:37 AM
My Sweet Bodyguard's Mariko for some reason never came across as female to me, more as a crossdresser or dragqueen. But I think it's still appropriate to address a dragqueen as female when she's in drag, unless I'm ignorant. So it's understandably still annoying to see the guys refer to Mariko in drag as "he" when it's like "Come on, I'm a woman right now." Maybe he (I forget if Mariko is his drag/stage name or real name) just likes to do crimes as a woman and is a man elsewhere. That's sort of how I picture it, but that's only my interpretation. Perhaps Mariko is actually canon transgender and I'm way off base here.

Arithmetic's 7 Hotties All My Engrish also has a dragqueen character but having not played yet I don't know how they handle it. Could be transgender I'm not sure, but I think I've seen a screenshot of dialog that indicated the character referring to himself as male in "male form."

Lilly from My Forged Wedding is obnoxious and loud and FLOWERS FLOWERS FLOWERS but I still love her. And the reason I love her character is because of how the MC canonically treats her from the start as the woman she presents herself as, without any hesitation. I think it's wonderful that the interaction is written this way, though it is very disappointing that they have Kunihiko ruin that progress every chance he gets to ignore Lilly's chosen gender identity. On the other hand, this is also more realistically reflective of how things can be, but better utilized would be for that character to either learn from it or be scolded for it by characters other than the one being hurt. Instead it's the same "stop calling me that!" with nobody else ever stepping in. It upsets me more and more every time it happens because Kuni should KNOW better. Then again, that's life? And real people are indeed like that. I will say that most everyone else they show interacting with Lilly, including the other main guys and even media, consider her female which I hope can drown out the fewer voices of dissent like Kunihiko. It's funny, Takamasa Saeki who is a known womanizer before meeting MC, is the first of the group I would expect to be afraid of a man or transgender woman coming onto him and protective/defensive of his own perceived masculinity; and Kunihiko who seems the most calm, chill, mature, and adaptive guy of the group I'd think would be the most understanding and accepting of Lilly as a woman. And yet it's totally the opposite with those two. Saeki almost encourages homoerotic moments among his friends and enthusiastically treats Lilly as the beautiful entrepreneurial woman she is.

And Ren, it's hard for me to comment since I don't have the best grasp of his character and still see him as a one-joke sleepy character nowadays, but in the current June Bride event seeing him paired with the MC he is a lot more "with it" then I see him otherwise. I think he says and does odd things and seems off because he is constantly sleep deprived from overworking and therefore a bit loopy. Someone mentioned to me that on the main route, he spends less time working in the lab and more time with the MC (therefore more rested I assume) and seems more responsive and "normal."

But again I could be ignorant here and perhaps Ren is on the spectrum of something I mean that's the whole thing with the spectrum idea is that there are various degrees of deviation.

All in all, it's interesting stuff to think about!

Oh and Silvio from Once Upon a Fairy Love Tale, I have always read him as heteroflexible or something, like he'd take sexual favors and have an orgy with anyone and anything.
Meanwhile Cinderella Contract's Yuri, who is the deviant and perverted yandere, is someone I could totally see being closet (or perhaps open) homophobic. It's interesting that two different perverts can come across in totally different ways for me.


ceicli

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Reply #3 on: December 24, 2015, 08:23:35 PM
About the transgenders in different stories.

I agree that Mariko was very much over the top and was simply a bad drag queen. She had a thing for Kaiji (or any good looking guy) and tried to behave when she was flirting, but it never lasted. They wanted to cuff her and didn't give her any respect (given that she wanted to kidnap the MC) which made her loose her temper and wreck things. The illustrations wasn't very convincing either.

The other cross dresser in MSB is Sora. I was actually disappointed when I read the story. In the presentation it says that he's "a proud cross dresser" which is totally false! Every time he has to appear as a woman he objects until the wallpaper falls down, but he's the most "womanlike" of the bodyguards so he don't have much choice when they need a woman and no female bodyguard is available. I really wanted him to have fun with it, but that wasn't the case. :(

In Seven Hotties, the one Vixey was after is Celis. They haven't released a route with him yet, but he shows up in the other stories. Quite often dressed as a woman (very convincing too). I read somewhere that he kept doing the cross dressing because that's the work he got as an actor (like Victor Victoria and Tootsie, both 1982). He wants the MC to see him as a man but only dress like himself on special occasions, so the others mostly see him as his female persona.

I like Lilly too. Vixeys description is spot on, Lilly is very loud and obnoxious, but she works. I think the reason that Kuni objects so much is only because that she is running after him and keep having romantic dreams when Kuni just isn't interested. If she was running after someone else (Saeki or maybe Takao) I can hear him say "Take it easy..." but when it is about him self, no way. That's why he calls Lilly for Rintaro all the time, to keep the distance.

In Once upon a Fairy Tale I see Elio as the "female" typed in the group. He is not cross dressing but they have given him the Japanese stereotypical things they like to portray gay men with (designing dresses and wants to make the MC pretty, touchy feely and hugging all the time, needy and such annoying stuff).
Silvio is more the sadistic type, but sure, he can be a cross over in the intimate things. But he do acts manly.

Another one I think of is Akito in MFW. They portray him a bit ambiguous, maybe because he works as a beautician (he have to be feminine to do that right?) but his actions are very clear.

There might be others but I can't think of anymore right now.

About the quiet guys, the MC learns to see the signals that he uses and then it's not a problem. In some events and sequals most of the guys tries to evolve and "be a better boyfriend. The only one I havn't seen much of that with is Takuto (ThiefX). Both Noel and Ren really wants to do their best (when it comes to Noel I try not to focus on his work, the writers really don't know anything about racing *sigh*)
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Aiwethryne

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Reply #4 on: March 06, 2016, 12:15:38 AM
The other cross dresser in MSB is Sora. I was actually disappointed when I read the story. In the presentation it says that he's "a proud cross dresser" which is totally false! Every time he has to appear as a woman he objects until the wallpaper falls down, but he's the most "womanlike" of the bodyguards so he don't have much choice when they need a woman and no female bodyguard is available. I really wanted him to have fun with it, but that wasn't the case. :(

I thought that, too! I was expecting so much out of his crossdressing, but he just hated it because he thought himself too man to be the one always forced to do this. In the GREE version, did he ever even get his female sprite? For a supposed master of disguises, he did not only need to dress as a woman, right? But the fact was all but forgotten by the middle of his story. Now, I'm totally not sure about the paid version, but his crossdressing felt more like a gag detail in his character background than something to grow with.

Thinking of other crossdressers in otoge, there was Hakuouki's Kaoru, of course. In NTT Solmare, there was some character in Shall We Date?: Heian Love. I only vaguely remember him, but he was so short and cute. Then Johannes Gilbert in Forbidden Love (I think it was one of his main stories), but that was super temporary. All still considered themselves men, but there were deeper reasons for both the Heian Love guy and Kaoru. Hikaru in Brothers Conflict was the most gender fluid of anyone.

Ah, and in the BL game Vampire Darling, Satsuki crossdressed. It feels like BL games do crossdressing more often than in otome games.


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Reply #5 on: March 08, 2016, 06:38:22 PM
So with Ren and his focus on plants and research all the time, I would argue he may be autistic, maybe on a lower spectrum though. However, the writer probably did not mean for him to come like that. They probably just wanted to fit him into a certain stereotype as Aiwethryne mentioned and Ren was the end product.

As for the transgender characters, so far they all seem to be following the same stereotype to me. I wish they would break out of that mold to be honest, for all of their characters.

Btw, I love the Hachiko avatar! Nana is my favorite anime/manga!
« Last Edit: March 08, 2016, 06:40:18 PM by kokoro-cafe »



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