Reaoka

>Advertisements, posters

>At the start of the game.

>People happy to see best assassin boy.

>Not playable in story mode

>Arcade mode not canon.

A couple people have expressed interest in me posting my thoughts on the subject of Chaos potentially being a character who is attracted to men. So I hope that this post will be food for thought, both for people who already believe wholeheartedly that he is gay, and for those who have never considered that idea before.

In short, I do believe that Chaos was written to be into men. I specifically read him as bisexual. So, I will get the brief but strong evidence that he's into women out of the way first.

Chaos' specific power, Umbral, is to make a manifestation out of a book, and the physical characteristics of the manifestation correspond to the topic or other feature of the book. A short time after gaining this power, he's internally monologuing about his experimentation with Umbral, and he says this.

This is a suspiciously specific denial, which he makes out of nowhere. It's easy to read this as an indication that he was imagining using his powers for this purpose, and therefore finds some female idols attractive.

It would have been creepy for Chaos to actually make a living manifestation of an idol's swimsuit pictures, but he didn't do that; that's not what he's poorly trying to conceal here. He's defensive about anyone-- the viewers? Himself?-- even thinking that such an action has crossed his mind. Upon some examination of other things he's said and done, it becomes evident that this defensiveness extends to the subject of men, too.

Let's take a look at the first line. It's suggesting something to us. Let's consider the situation of a standard female character saying something like, "I'm really interested in that girl. Uhhh, not like that though!" Our reaction as readers would likely be that unless she created the reason, there's no reason for anyone to think that she's interested in another girl like that, i.e. in a romantic or sexual way. So it is a clear indication that there is something up with the character's feelings on sexual orientation.

In the original Japanese for this first line, Chaos' "that Gordeau character intrigues me" is 「あのゴルドーって男が気になる。」 The phrase 気になる, similar to "interested in" in English, can be used to demonstrate romantic interest or even love confessions. (Here's one source for that, but several others are available on the internet.)

However, Chaos did not in fact actually say "it's not like that, though" or a similarly loaded line to correct himself. So on its own one could take this line as him being tsundere about Gordeau in a friend way.

But then we look at it in the context of his other line with Enkidu. This is an extremely similar format and joke-- Chaos says something that could be pretty innocuous, but then thinks he said it wrong/weirdly, and then rephrases it. We know that the Under Night writers are capable of having subtle running gags between different parts of the story (ex. the concept of rolling someone up in a blanket like sushi to capture them is brought up in Wagner, Merkava, and Seth's Arcade modes), so this is intentional. And what's the common denominator of these lines? It is only that Chaos says something which could be taken as an implied attraction between two men.

Therefore, if he keeps rephrasing such sentences, he thinks and worries about gayness... kind of a lot.

There are also instances of other characters associating Chaos with gayness. In the timeline, the earliest one is during Enkidu's Chronicles mode, wherein Hilda uses the word 恋女房 (koinyōbō, "one's dear wife") in reference to Chaos and Gordeau's relationship two times. Chaos is there for the first instance, and Hilda is responding to him explaining Gordeau's feelings. The second instance is after Chaos leaves the meeting to check up on Gordeau.

For the second one koinyōbō was not translated at all, so I put the Japanese for it. It is along the lines of "Yeah, yeah. Good grief, when it's about [his] beloved wife, [Chaos] sure is single-minded..."

In both cases, Hilda is pretty clearly making a joke out of the fact that Gordeau and Chaos are so close, and Chaos is so loyal to him.

The other time Chaos seemingly gets accused of being gay is during his Arcade mode. He comes across Yuzuriha, who seems to be a stranger to him, and she complains about a "belly-flashing pervert" who she just encountered. Chaos realizes she's talking about Gordeau, and questions her intensely on his whereabouts. After that, Yuzuriha says this--

So, she thinks he's gay. And she finds it creepy likely because she already thinks Gordeau is creepy... simply because Gordeau wasn't wearing a shirt, so she's jumping to pretty big conclusions in both cases.

From these examples we can see that the writers made a point to have characters joke about/accuse Chaos of being into Gordeau, and for Chaos to think about gayness himself, multiple times. Why would they do that? We can narrow it down to one or more of three potential reasons.

1. They think it's funny. 2. They're trying to make a point about this innocent straight guy being accused of gayness just for caring about his friend. 3. He IS gay, and the writers are nudging us in that direction.

Let's pick up this other interaction from Enki's Chronicles mode which could provide support to any of these points.

First Chaos avoids leaving the party with Enkidu. In the Japanese he says 「男２人で一緒に帰ろう」, "two men leaving together," which makes it even more clear that he feels odd and conflicted about leaving with another man specifically. This is another example of Chaos worrying about being perceived as gay or thinking about gay men.

Then Enkidu makes a reasonable point about how Chaos' worry is strange and contradictory. The translators seem to skip an entire line before "I guess I won't say anything...", which is 「端から見た際の問題であろうしな。」 If I were to take a stab at translating it, I'd say it is "I suppose it's a problem of how the situation is viewed from the outside." If I'm being generous, that provides a bit of support to option #2 for why the writers would do this, because Enkidu seems to be reluctantly identifying that perhaps two men would be mistaken as lovers by outsiders.

But I do ultimately think the answer is a combo of #1 and #3-- the writers think this is funny, and Chaos is attracted to men.

If the writers really wanted to have a theme with Chaos about not assuming guys are gay just because they're close to another guy, then when Chaos is alone and not recently accused of being gay, or when Chaos and Gordeau are alone, then nothing gay should happen. If under those conditions, gay thoughts or actions or words still appear, then they would be delegitimizing their own theme.

But gay thoughts do still seem to happen when Chaos is alone and not recently accused of being gay. For example, the "that Gordeau character intrigues me" line. That was from his Chronicles mode, which is his earliest appearance at any point on the timeline. It was before the viewers were shown any gay accusations being flung at him. If we aren't shown it or told it, then we have no reason to believe that Chaos has exterior reasons to worry about being associated with gayness... but that line still seems like it's him worrying about being gay.

Let's take a look at this other part from his Chronicles mode.

There is admittedly nothing overtly and undeniably romantic about these lines, but they have a romantic feel to them. This is after Gordeau asks Chaos to join Amnesia, and they throw the pros and cons of the arrangement back and forth for a while. Chaos doesn't think there are enough pros to join, but this is the main thought that pushes him to eventually say yes. He's joining for Gordeau.

And Chaos' reaction to his own feelings also makes perfect sense in the framework of how defensive we know him to be regarding gayness. He dismisses his feelings here, as ridiculous, laugh-worthy.

It is notable that the word he uses for "drawn by" is 惹かれる, which is often used in romantic or sexual contexts. It is also notable that this scene is not a joke.

And that's the evidence that Chaos thinks about gayness even before he's been accused. There are also gay occurrences between Gordeau and Chaos when they're alone.

Before I present those things, I want to clarify that I don't think Chaos and Gordeau are the bi male rep of the century. I am just presenting things as they are, even though some of it may be cringe-y, poorly written, or stereotypical. If you plan to make content about them please use critical thinking before just going along with whatever the UNIB writers did; for example you might want to refrain from applying the label of "wife" to either of these characters.

Anyway, at the beginning of Gordeau's Arcade mode, he has this interaction with Chaos.

When Gordeau jokes that he’s Chaos’ master, he uses the word 亭主 teishu, which can mean “master”, “household head”, “owner” of an establishment, or “husband.” “Master” is a fine translation, but this gag is repeated later and for that it's good to remember that it also means husband.

Later on, Gordeau refers to Chaos as his faithful servant, for helping him. We can see that the word he uses is 女房役 nyōbōyaku, "manservant", and happens to contain some of the same kanji as koinyōbō, the word Hilda used in reference to them several months prior. On its own, the 女房 nyōbō part just means "wife"... and Chaos uses that word in the next line.

When he argues against being Gordeau's servant, for some reason he shortens the word nyōbōyaku to nyōbō (the red-underlined portion here). I’m not sure whether this is a normal abbreviation of nyōbōyaku or if it is indeed very loaded, but the Japanese fanbase often acts in a way that makes me think it could be the latter. In which case he’s saying, “Who’s the wife? No… whose wife am I supposed to be?!”

Then there is the green-underlined portion. Chaos is saying "If you're talking about the nyōbōyaku in baseball, maybe you're correct in that case?"

In baseball, nyōbōyaku, the term Gordeau used for "servant", is also a term for the catcher. Why would Chaos say this? How is he like Gordeau's catcher in baseball?

The localization makes this common innuendo more obvious--

"Granted, I'm always on the receiving end, but still."

I won't assume the writers are dumb; I'm sure they knew what they were implying, and it's clear that the localizers did too. These characters are gay, Chaos is bisexual.

Here's the image that comes right after, by the way. They could not have picked more romantic lighting if they tried.

UNIversary Week Day THREE!!! Your favorite relationship, platonic or otherwise :)