Guilty Gear Strive

[Kill Your Idols]

Fucking sick, another androgynous character lost to the tranny void. One of the main appeals of Bridget's character is that he was resolute in his masculinity despite looking so feminine. It forced people to accept Bridget for who he was, not what he looked like, but I guess that nuance is lost with the superficial trans culture where Bridget can't just be Bridget and has to conform to a label.

I thought the point of all this gender identity discourse was to allow for more expression and creativity with how we interpret characters, why is it more stifling than ever?

 

[Danny.exe]

I'm almost certain this is the result of some retard doing localization. I went through the effort of picking apart original Japanese text and nothing that I found actually refers to Bridget as "she" or "her," just a lot of neutral/universal pronoun use. Stuff like "Jibun" (自分) is like an official way of saying "myself/himself/herself" and I saw that used over anything that is specifically male or female. Because of that I'm convinced either someone doesn't know how to read or has an ulterior motive, and looking at other localizers lately it's definitely going to be the latter rather than the former.

 

[Rotollo 2]

They look like they are trying to please both the trap and tranny bridget people in some ways, as a result pissing everyone off
Just makes him look like he got groomed by goldlewis or some shit, having him accept he has a more feminine side and telling people to fuck off would be more original and based

So basically he got groomed into being a tranny. that's not a good message they're trying to send.

Representation above all else, damned if it makes sense

 

[Sandraker]

Daisuke should have went the route of making him more masculine than ever since that was his entire point on top of that being a community joke itself.

How do you go thru your whole character arc and in the end just go "maybe I am a fag"

Insane fucking choice

 

[Hammr2]

I'm almost certain this is the result of some retard doing localization. I went through the effort of picking apart original Japanese text and nothing that I found actually refers to Bridget as "she" or "her," just a lot of neutral/universal pronoun use. Stuff like "Jibun" (自分) is like an official way of saying "myself/himself/herself" and I saw that used over anything that is specifically male or female. Because of that I'm convinced either someone doesn't know how to read or has an ulterior motive, and looking at other localizers lately it's definitely going to be the latter rather than the former.

Edit: The "I'm a girl" JP and EN voicelines.

Daisuke should have went the route of making him more masculine than ever since that was his entire point on top of that being a community joke itself.

How do you go thru your whole character arc and in the end just go "maybe I am a fag"

Insane fucking choice

Concept art of original design for some char in GG Strive, even Testament was buffed, but everyone knows how that actually turns out.

 

[Danny.exe]

Edit: The "I'm a girl" JP and EN voicelines.

I'm shit with spoken Japanese, I was only able to really pick apart the text because of Jisho. I'll see if I can find someone who knows spoken better though, and post what they tell me.
Edit: So in the JP script, Bridget is responding to being called "little missy". But compared to the EN line, it's more of a playful "I'm a girl (♂)" rather than "I'm a girl (meaning my identity is female)". It's a teasing thing that's common for Japan's otoko no ko culture.
Makes more sense than trashing everything he grew up learning.

 

[The Fair Lady]

View attachment 3577080

Another character who's whole lore did a 180.

Well fuck.

 

[Rotollo 2]

I'm shit with spoken Japanese, I was only able to really pick apart the text because of Jisho. I'll see if I can find someone who knows spoken better though, and post what they tell me.
Edit: So in the JP script, Bridget is responding to being called "little missy". But compared to the EN line, it's more of a playful "I'm a girl (♂)" rather than "I'm a girl (meaning my identity is female)". It's a teasing thing that's common for Japan's otoko no ko culture.
Makes more sense than trashing everything he grew up learning.

So they took a typical "Tee he, I'm a girl" teasing and turned it into him saying he is trans
Localizers are so fucking subhuman

 

[Danny.exe]

So they took a typical "Tee he, I'm a girl" teasing and turned it into him saying he is trans
Localizers are so fucking subhuman

Not even the first time this year that it happened to a crossdressing character, either. Trannies despise crossdressers and have a huge hateboner for okono no ko culture. It's why you see "trap" characters get twisted around in tranny communities, they're trying to claim something that really only has a small connection to them. This whole ordeal looks exactly like what we've seen the sideshow do for a while now.
If Bridget were actually a trans character now, we'd probably see some JP material describing him as a "newhalf" or "transvestite", because those are the common terminology over there for that type of person.

 

[FoolhardStar]

Wow, some portion of ArcSys made Bridget trans? Bridget, the boy who was forcefully raised as a girl by his parents because they wanted a daughter and not a son? Bridget, the character who was more than confident in who he was, in spite of looking androgynous? You mean one of the leading examples of traps in video games, who was still plenty confident in his masculinity (and also served as great contrast to how most of GG's men were pretty in-line with typical ideas of masculinity)?

They have no idea how fucking terrible this looks, do they?

 

[Takayuki Yagami]

Wow, some portion of ArcSys made Bridget trans? Bridget, the boy who was forcefully raised as a girl by his parents because they wanted a daughter and not a son? Bridget, the character who was more than confident in who he was, in spite of looking androgynous? You mean one of the leading examples of traps in video games, who was still plenty confident in his masculinity (and also served as great contrast to how most of GG's men were pretty in-line with typical ideas of masculinity)?

They have no idea how fucking terrible this looks, do they?

Why would they, considering everything else they do?

 

[Ōtakemaru]

So far the Japanese don't give a fuck about this as usual. I find it unfortunate that regardless if you give a fuck or not you have to deal with this weird ass "development" because even if you want to respect the old lore and call Bridget a "He" you will get crucified by the west for doing such sin, literally forcing you to obey the new shitty lore change if you want to participate in the community and not get banned from events. It is utterly shitty. I honestly wish we can just all agree that we can call Bridget both a (He or She) and thrown in the towel instead of RESPECTING A FUCKING FICITONAL CHARACTERS PRONOUNS. (What have we become!? )

It's not like Daisuke will burst through my wall for calling Bridget a "he" and strangle me to death.... right?
Either way this change of "development" makes no sense, no build up or explanation. I honestly found the most insulting line to be from a livestream where a guy called Bridget a "he" and some rando gave him the arcade clip, my man said "what the" and the clipper just said "Don't question it. Just correct yourself." That has to be the most insulting line I've ever read.

 

[Lightsaber Dildo]

It's clear they have no idea what they're doing with this Bridget thing. His profile uses the wrong pronouns, and he has a little story beat where he...

Spoiler: small story spoilers

...pretends to be a girl to fool another character, but he's still a guy and admits to it at the end.

So I can't tell if it's being blown out of proportion, the localizers fucked up, or both--and all the reactionaries are throwing fits depending on their opinion.

 

[X-Shaped Weeaboo]

So I can't tell if it's being blown out of proportion, the localizers fucked up, or both--and all the reactionaries are throwing fits depending on their opinion.

In a lot of ways I'm ok with Bridget being Trans since his original shtick was "Tee-Hee you're attracted to a boy" and that's kind of an annoying gimmick Japanese media keeps returning to. Some people might call it overcorrection, but I prefer the attempt to make some sort of emotional connection since I've always felt their backstory was extremely convoluted just to justify the character design.

On the other hand, I'm getting conflicting information everywhere and Western response has been, as usual, ride or die with no nuance whatsoever.

Either way I think the whole thing should have been made more clear from the start. And no, random Twitter user, I'm not talking about localized dialogue, I mean the developers of the game either clarifying or outright saying "Yes, this is what we wanted to do." I'd respect it a lot more if the promotional material wasn't so vague.

 

[Welsh Catgirl Enjoyer]

Trannies despise crossdressers and have a huge hateboner for okono no ko culture. It's why you see "trap" characters get twisted around in tranny communities, they're trying to claim something that really only has a small connection to them. This whole ordeal looks exactly like what we've seen the sideshow do for a while now.

Caught this tidbit in a video. But worth noting that they also treat it as a "point scoring" thing where the popular characters are worth the most points.

The example given was in the Fate series. There's a character called Chevalier d'Eon who is either bigender or trans as direct localisation use an equal mix of he/she pronouns or go with "them" and this has apparently been largely consistent to the point that it's pretty much irrefutably true.

But despite this the localisers are always targeting Astolfo and trying to claim that he's trans despite messaging being pretty clear that he's a crossdresser, backed up by his story.

The reason why is because Astolfo is a far more popular character (I wouldn't be surprised if he's the most popular fate character) but most of you probably didn't even know Chevalier exists till I said here. He's worth more points to them.

Even if you decided to make a game with one character who is very clearly a crossdresser, and the other is very clearly trans, if the trans one is less popular they'll try to "claim" the other one. And if the trans one is outright hated they'll probably find reasons why they "don't count".

 

[Ly Erg]

Didn't arcsys clear things up with Testament in one of their interview videos when it came to the localisation differences on what Test is and it was basically "Neither or none?"

Not sure if we will get an explanation. But surely it would be easy for someone native in Japan who is fluent in English or vice versa to switch to JP voice acting with English subtitles and see if there is notable differences in the script? I know localisation is not 100% translation due to the way the languages are structured differently along with slang and terms that wouldn't work overseas or vice versa.

 

[Dom Cruise]

Despite the translator nonsense at least Bridget looks cool, first new design since the character was first introduced 20 years ago, that’s wild.

 

[Rotollo 2]

Despite the translator nonsense at least Bridget looks cool, first new design since the character was first introduced 20 years ago, that’s wild.

yeah unlike testament it's not a radical redesign, everything about it still screams Bridget to me. makes this whole shitshow even more retarded imo

it's not like Daisuke will burst through my wall for calling Bridget a "he" and strangle me to death....

if he says that bridget's trans I will supplant it with my own reality. after all that's what people do with characters like kanji, nato and chihiro by calling them gay/trans, aren't I allowed at least one?

 

[The Fair Lady]

Sounds like the whole thing is a mess. Nice going, Daisuke.

 

[Danny.exe]

Caught this tidbit in a video. But worth noting that they also treat it as a "point scoring" thing where the popular characters are worth the most points.

The example given was in the Fate series. There's a character called Chevalier d'Eon who is either bigender or trans as direct localisation use an equal mix of he/she pronouns or go with "them" and this has apparently been largely consistent to the point that it's pretty much irrefutably true.

But despite this the localisers are always targeting Astolfo and trying to claim that he's trans despite messaging being pretty clear that he's a crossdresser, backed up by his story.

The reason why is because Astolfo is a far more popular character (I wouldn't be surprised if he's the most popular fate character) but most of you probably didn't even know Chevalier exists till I said here. He's worth more points to them.

Even if you decided to make a game with one character who is very clearly a crossdresser, and the other is very clearly trans, if the trans one is less popular they'll try to "claim" the other one. And if the trans one is outright hated they'll probably find reasons why they "don't count".

Spoiler: Somewhat off-topic sperging

I'd say that Chevalier d'Eon is at least actually close to being trans, but again it's not as blatant as westerners might try to label it. Real life's Chevalier d'Eon was a man who was able to exceptionally pass as female, to the point of being a spy that frequently made use of female names and disguises. Apparently late in his life he insisted on being a woman, and can be seen as an early example of someone that may very well have been transgender. But within Fate series, Chevalier can literally do a sex-change at will, and it's never one or the other outright stated at any point, so "they" is the best way to refer to the character.
But you can't twist that into something retarded, so as you pointed out they'll latch onto Astolfo who's just a crossdressing guy. Chevalier is probably the closest representation they'd get from Fate but that's just not good enough. Haven't seen any localization that tries to fuck over Astolfo that hard yet, though, and I've seen some retarded shit they put on FGO for others.