RE: Guilty Queer 2: The Sequel
Way back in 2019, I wrote a piece for this blog about the Guilty Gear series and how it had played a big role in my own journey through life and gender. Guilty Gear is a franchise invested in the character's growth and allows them to change based on the events of the storyline. I mean, just look at Ky’s transition into a thriving wifeguy and father.
Like the metal genre that inspired many of the game's motifs, has always been pretty gay. The most recent installment in the series, Guilty Gear: StrIVe (get it because IV is 4), turns the volume up to 11. After the reintroductions of Testament and Bridget after a decade+ long absence, Strive has some of the best queer representation I’ve seen not just in video games but in media overall.
(Spoiler and note: I’m going to use They/Them and She/Her to refer to Testament and Bridget respectively)
I didn’t expect that either of these characters would come back to the series. In prior installments, Testament was an antagonist turned brooding recluse. Prior to Strive, their story dealt mainly with their lingering guilt for their own actions and inability to forgive humanity for what they experienced during the crusades. Their only remaining purpose in life is protecting Dizzy who leaves on her own adventure at the end of the game.
Fast-forward to their reintroduction and Testament is now at peace with themselves having also adopted a more fluid sense of gender coupled with a more androgynous presentation. With Dizzy gone and too much free time, they also picked up a pages long list of hobbies including streaming, failing to improve at art and building gunpla. There is even some subtext implying Testament and Johnny are more than friends. We just love to see an empty nested gay thriving.
This kind of stuff is what makes this series so special to me. Testament’s arc with gender wasn’t just tacked on for representation points. It was earned through over two decades of storytelling. The focus on character development makes it easy to feel invested in these characters that aged and matured along with me since I picked up a copy of Guilty Gear XX in high school.
High School was not an easy time for me. I was an effeminate kid and used to get regularly beat up and called slurs. It got so bad that my parents pulled me out of public school and put me into a private all boys high school. During that time, I also started to go through puberty. I learned how to front machismo enough to get by in a school where the halls were permanently stained with axe body spray and the dress code required students keep short haircuts. All the while my body was changing in ways I didn’t want and didn’t understand. Some nights, I’d lay in bed imagining a different life where I had been born a girl and cry. In the morning, I’d put on my polo and go back to school.
There has never been a point in my life that I did not know I was trans but I resigned myself thinking that I had just drawn an unfortunate lot in life. I wanted to make my parents happy and correctly assumed they would not be accepting of a gay child. Finding Bridget in Guilty Gear was a light bulb moment for me. Here was a story about a character pressured by her parents to present in a way she didn’t want while still striving to carve out her own form of masculinity. It wasn’t a 1:1 fit but her story got me thinking that maybe I too could find my own form of masculinity that would feel right for me.
She was the first character I ever “mained” in a fighting game. I played her story modes over and over again trying to tease out every bit of her characterization. Through Bridget, I found and projected onto other otokonoko media, started learning about makeup/cosplay in secret and started eating a lot of soy thinking it would turn into estrogen in my body.
Over several years, I got interested in weight lifting which led to a desire to build the body to cosplay Gilgamesh from Fate. My connection to Bridget and other otokonoko characters waned as my body became more muscular but my interest in feminine things and expression never fully went away. At a fighting game tournament, my then girlfriend surprised me with a Bridget keychain knowing how much I still loved the character. That keychain has been in my wallet or hanging on my purse ever since.
It took many years, but eventually I did it. I built the body I had been aiming for. To my colleagues, friends and family, I was an extremely attractive man. I looked in the mirror after hitting my goal weight couldn't see that in myself. I had all the things I thought I wanted and the affirmation of colleagues, friends and family but it felt empty. Sure, I was fine in my day to day life, but I couldn’t envision a future for myself where I wasn’t dead, a woman or tied down with regret before dying.
Fast forward and I’m now approaching my five year HRT anniversary. The endocrinologists I’ve worked with have told me that this is where most people stop seeing non-surgical changes. There have been some tough feelings coming to grips with that. My relationship with my body is better but remains complicated. One of the last things I expected over the last few days was for Bridget to come back into the Guilty Gear franchise.
Strive takes place 7 years after XX where Bridget last appeared meaning she’s probably around the same age I was when I decided to transition. Her story picks up with having the fame, wealth and masculine affirmation she was looking for but feeling lost regardless. After soul-searching with Goldlewis (who I read as a gay man regretting denying his sexuality when he was younger) and Ky, she decides to accept herself as a woman. After having a feminine identity pushed onto her, she’s found her own sense of femininity on her own terms. I cried when I first watched her arcade ending. I cried again when I watched it a second time on stream. I’m crying while I’m writing this.
It’s hard to express how it feels to have this character reappear at the start of a new story arc while I feel like I’m at the end of one of my own. In some ways it feels like meeting an old friend again and realizing you’re both girls now. On top of that, the way the voice actors, directors and writers handled this scene is incredibly nuanced and sensitive. It’s one of the last things I would have expected from a video game with such sparse dialogue, but this is Guilty Gear.
Outside of a loud group of weirdos that don’t understand Japanese and insist Bridget being trans is a translation error, the reception I’ve seen has been gushingly positive. People with no prior interest in fighting games are thinking about learning Guilty Gear because they want to learn more about this character.
I still have a lot of feelings about this but I’m not sure how to best express them. I guess I’m just really happy to see my friend again and excited that a whole new generation of people get to meet them too.
Maybe she can be to some other people in need what she ended up being to me.
