Have you heard the story of what happened during Yuri on Ice’s run?
Early in the show, Victor asks Yuuri if he has a girlfriend, using the Japanese word
for woman, “onna”, which is a natural way of trying to figure out his proclivities,
if you know what I mean.
From here on, when referring to potential or past lovers of Yuuri’s, Victor is sure
to use the gender-neutral term “koibito”.
Yet, the subs, at least in the initial airing, gendered this term, continuing to use girlfriend.
In an ordinary show, this would be a frustrating decision, but a harmless one.
In this series, one that consciously portrays gay characters throughout its run, a mistake
like this is glaring, hurting the subtle romantic back-and-forth that takes up much of the show’s
first half.
While we can talk all day about how lover isn’t a perfect term, or how partner or
SO convey nuances not contained in “koibito”, it can’t be argued that in this case, girlfriend
was the wrong translation, one that’s actually managed to reach the ears of many anime fans
due to the show’s high-profile nature as a queer work.
Yet, Yuri on Ice is far from the only instance of this happening.
Anime translations regularly remove gender neutrality present in the Japanese script.
While it’s fine to add a gendered pronoun to a sentence that initially lacked one when
we know the characters’ gender for certain, it frequently creates large issues in regards
to queer characters.
Subtitles are often, unconsciously to be sure, a tool of cisheteronormativity, entirely confusing
viewers as to how scenes should be read.
I can certainly imagine some watchers being perplexed as to why Victor, one of the gayest
men alive, would assume the guy who clearly crushes on him has a girlfriend, even after
being told that he doesn’t.
This, indeed, is the actual problem with anime subtitles.
It’s very important that we target subs when looking at this.
This isn’t because dubs aren’t a part of this dangerous trend; they very much are.
Yet, dubs are far more blatant and as a result, far more frequently called out for this practice.
It’s hard to discuss Sailor Moon, especially its initial English release, without the topic
of “cousins” coming up and it’s far from the only case where this has happened.
Yugioh GX’s dub gendered the antagonist Yubel, in spite of the fact that they’re
a malevolent Duel Monster spirit who has no need to be gendered.
Sure, they were a human at one point, but Nanachi was too and you don’t see the subs
gendering them, now do you?
Although now that I think about it, most of you probably don’t know that Nanachi’s
gender isn’t specified.
Hell, if you want an extremely prominent example, just look at Kirby.
Even in modern times, dubs frequently get a bad rap for straightwashing characters,
and for good reason.
The Maid Dragon dub legitimately changes Kobayashi from a typical yuri character, “but we’re
both girls”, into someone who’s specifically not open to dating another girl, “I’m
not into women or dragons”.
This is an egregious change, one I was upset about when it happened, and it certainly deserved
the coverage it got; I won’t defend the Lucoa joke later in the dub, it’s not funny,
but unlike that one, this legitimately changes a character on a base level and it’s a shame
the Kobayashi example got less press.
Wonder why the anti-SJWs didn’t get as angry at it.
A real conundrum.
Anyway, while these are certainly bad changes that deserve to be criticized, they are criticized.
Everyone is aware that dubs, especially old ones, straightwash characters and change the
text.
What people seem to forget, somehow, is that subtitles do the exact same thing.
Any translation is, of course, a new work unto itself, and won’t ever give you a duplicate
experience to someone consuming the original version.
However, in simply being an addition, something you read at the same time as you listen to
the Japanese audio, subs seem to subconsciously come across to most viewers as a natural part
of the work, not a new entity.
And so, when subtitles erase the gender-neutrality of a sentence, oftentimes irrevocably warping
the perception of what’s going on, it simply goes unnoticed.
After all, if you don’t know Japanese, how could you tell?
And even if you do, you’re probably not paying the closest attention to the audio
if you’re still at the point where you watch with subs, right?
I know I’m not.
Yet this is still an important issue that needs to be addressed, no matter how hard
it is to notice during a normal watch.
This straightwashing and ciswashing that occurs through translation is something that almost
certainly comes from unconscious biases, not active thought on the part of translators,
and yet it’s detrimental, so let’s explore the ways it can hurt one’s understanding
of a work, so that we can pay closer attention to it.
We shouldn’t allow a situation as egregious as the Yuri on Ice case to occur once again.
I’d like to begin with a casual example of this, because it’s important to see how
pervasive it is even when it doesn’t meaningfully impair the show.
In Tonari no Kyuuketsuki-san, main character Akari meets and decides to move in with vampire
Sophie after falling head over heels for her at first sight.
When she goes to school the next day and talks about this sudden move, she never refers to
Sophie’s gender and yet the subs use she/her.
This ordinarily wouldn’t be the biggest problem, but immediately after this, one of
Akari’s friends asks if she’s moving in with a boy or a girl, causing another friend,
Hinata, to freak out at the prospect of her precious Akari, a mere high schooler and her
crush, deciding on a whim to move in with a new guy.
This joke doesn’t work when all of them refer to Sophie as a girl just moments prior.
Fortunately, unlike in some cases, this does not strip the queerness from the anime, Akari
is still in love with Sophie and Hinata’s crush on Akari remains obvious, it only hurts
an inconsequential joke, but it’s a good introductory example of how this can occur.
There’s no chance of malicious intent in this case, it’s simply a bad translation,
and it’s key for us to understand that this is typically what happens here.
Few translators are trying to remove queer subtext, they’re especially not trying to
create nonsensical exchanges, most of them are just working off what feels natural, but
what feels natural is not always what’s correct.
An interesting case occurs in Märchen Mädchen, where main character Hazuki is brought into
a world of magic, quickly crushing hard on school leader Shizuka.
Now, fortunately, when her step-sister corners her about why she’s skipping school, Hazuki
refers to this person she’s come to like using they/them.
However, this step-sister uses he/him in the subs, despite that not being the case in the
Japanese.
Compared to other examples, this isn’t actually bad.
The translators clearly know to use they/them in certain instances and when they do use
a gendered pronoun where it’s not in the source, it’s an instance where said character
does assume the gender of the person they’re referring to; given that she talks about Hazuki
being set for life, it’s clear she assumes that this potential partner is a boy.
Yet it still indicates a potential poor direction, one that’s avoided here but oh-so-often
not in other cases.
I have no criticism for the translators here, it’s a solid adaptation that doesn’t fall
apart like the series’s production does — Oh, poor Maerchen Maedchen, I love you
so, if only you had been treated properly — and in many ways this serves to indicate
situations in which it’s fine to add gender where it initially isn’t — after all,
Japanese simply uses gendered referrants less often and it would be awkward to avoid in
all cases, as long as the gender is known by the speaker and those they’re talking
to, us transtrenders haven’t abolished gender quite yet after all — but there’s still
a hint here of the danger that the other examples present.
Let’s move onto cases where this danger actually crops up, situations where it’s
not just bad, as in Kyuuketsuki, but actively detrimental.
Take the instance of Kino’s Journey.
In the 2003 series as well as most fan translations — let’s not even get into the godawful
Tokyopop version of the light novel, which outright butchers almost every element of
the series that it touches, from gender to prose to not adding weird one-liners out of
nowhere — Kino is referred to with she/her, in spite of the fact that they aren’t gendered
by the text itself, being androgynous enough that others see them as either a boy or a
girl, depending on the person.
Say what you will about whether Sigsawa intended Kino to be non-binary, I certainly have my
issues with the man’s politics — it sure is disappointing when writers whose stories
I like get way too close to “Japan did nothing wrong” — but it’s inarguable that the
text never says that they’re a girl, only that they were raised as one, and well, those
aren’t the same thing.
Gendering Kino here, at least outside of their origin story and especially after they truly
take up the name Kino is wrong, it introduces an element to the series that is not present
in the Japanese, and it’s just one example of this.
Thankfully, the 2017 anime’s subs avoided doing so.
Now, if only the 2017 series had chosen better stories to adapt and a better director to
lead it, but hey, it was still a fun time.
Another clear example of this is Fullmetal Alchemist’s Envy.
Envy is a shapeshifter and a homunculus, once again a character who has no reason to be
gendered and, in the Japanese text, isn’t.
Hell, their “main body” is pretty damn androgynous, so why in the world did every
translator decide that they should be considered male?
Is it because they’re flat?
They have female voice actresses, so perhaps it was because of Viz’s decisions?
Wherever the choice initially came from, it once again erases a character who’s not
gendered in the source.
Anime is hardly a place full of stellar non-binary representation but when what we do get is
erased by subtitles, it only makes the situation worse.
Crona in Soul Eater provides another example.
Unlike in Envy’s case, the fandom has conducted a lot of debate about their gender — it
remains actively unspecified by the mangaka, it must be said — almost certainly due to
the fact that, well, Crona is cute and Envy isn’t, unless you’re into them, which
would be cool, I suppose.
As the Lily “debate” shows, people want the characters they find cute to be cis girls.
Compulsory heterosexuality sure is annoying, though I don’t think you should be into
Lily beyond finding her adorable whether she’s cis — she isn’t — or not, given, uh,
look at her.
Regardless, Crona is intentionally ambiguous.
Despite this, both the official manga and translations refer to them with him.
This is slightly different than the other cases, as it was done less because the translators
saw them as male and more because they didn’t think they had any options other than he/she;
a common, though incorrect, idea, one that we need to abolish asap.
Yet, it remains a problem, giving ample “official” ammo to those in the debate who refuse to
recognize Crona’s ambiguous — and perhaps, non-binary — gender as what it is, not to
mention all the confusion it causes.
This is perhaps even more glaring than other cases, as rather than just not recognizing
that the character is non-binary, they knew and just didn’t care.
Fire Emblem in Tiger and Bunny is yet another example, and this time, the subs damage a
character who’s not just queer-coded or lacking gender but queer as such, drawing
upon historical depictions of gay and trans characters in anime, no matter how fraught.
Their narrative is bound up in the fact that they’ve faced oppression and scorn for being
who they are, and at one point, they proudly state, “They say a man is made of courage
and a woman is made of love.
So what does that mean for people who are gay?
We are invincible!”
This is an out-and-out non-binary character, someone who’s had to deal with the way gendered
expectations are forced on people, managing to overcome these expectations in becoming
a hero, and eventually finding pride in who they are.
They’re cool as hell and I doubt even the most backwards cishet could listen to that
line without admiring them.
And yet, the subs repeatedly refer to them with male pronouns.
I could see that being the case for the characters, there are situations, like in Tokyo Godfathers,
where active misgendering occurs, and he/him can be used in those instances.
But when a gender ambiguous characters is referred to with ambiguous language, and yet
the translation genders them anyway, it’s a problem, and once again a sign of how cisnormativity
covertly sneaks its way into people's’ minds.
Yet, the one that most bothers me is a decision made in the 90s shoujo drama, Oniisama e.
After suffering the great hardship that’s only natural to a shoujo protagonist — seriously,
this is one of the most melodramatic shows ever made and I adore it — main character
Nanako is given a partner.
As she says to her older brother, she’s fallen in love with a new person at her university,
and she’s very happy, nice words to hear given how poorly her last love worked out.
Yet, for some reasons, the subs refer to this new significant other as a man.
I’ve checked this a good half-dozen times throughout the past year and I can say with
certainty that the Japanese does not gender Nanako’s new partner.
For a show that stands as both the first TV yuri anime ever made and an adaptation of
one of the genre’s first manga, this is not just frustrating, it’s horrendous.
I’ve seen people criticize the show for having a “gay until graduation” ending,
something which admittedly was common at the time — though more often, the girls would
just swear off romance or die after the failure of their first relationship — when that’s
not what happens in the slightest.
It may not say for sure that she ends up with another girl in the end, and perhaps that
merits criticism, but it hardly forces her into straightness either.
This is, I believe, the most detrimental example in the entire piece, because if you trust
the subs here, your entire understanding of what the work’s conclusion is saying will
be ruptured beyond repair.
If you can see this example and still defend the process of removing gender neutrality
purely because, “Using they/them is awkward”, then you’re not worth talking to.
In a world of expanding queer rights, as these topics come up more in anime, this is a problem
we have to deal with.
Viewers’ perception of certain characters and themes are entirely shifted by these simple
errors and we as a community need to ensure that translations don’t do this.
And, well, I suspect it won’t be long at this point before anime introduces an explicitly
x-gender character.
What does it mean to be x-gender, and why would someone who identifies that way show
up in anime?
Well, you’ll have to wait until the end of the month to find that out, but if you
think I’ve made too many snipes at the right-wingers in the community in this video, or you’re
happy to have seen me do so, get ready.
Because next time, I’m turning my sights toward the bad apples on my side of the aisle.