One thing I want to point out!
Japanese is something known as a ‘pronoun drop’ language. This means in instances where it is not necessary to specify the pronoun, it is not used. A lot of common Japanese phrases translated as having a subject and object actually only include a verb, such as 大好き (‘daisuki’), usually translated as ‘I love you’, but which literally only means ‘love’.
On top of that, it’s very unusual for third person pronouns to be used. Japanese has many, many first person pronouns and many, many second person pronouns but only two third person pronouns: 彼 (‘kare’) he and 彼女 ('kanojo’) she. These words are used so infrequently that they’re actually both used to mean boyfriend and girlfriend respectively, for example is '私の彼’ ('watashi no kare’), my boyfriend. Instead, one generally uses their name, for example, '田中先輩は今日勉強しますか？’ ('Tanaka-senpai wa kyou benkyou shimasu ka?’) can be reasonably translated as “Will he study today?” if that fits the flow of conversation better.
This is why so many anime characters are ambiguously gendered! It’s very easy to navigate the Japanese language without ever acknowledging the gender of the person being spoken about. Even characters whose gender isn’t ambiguous can go entire series without it being explicitly acknowledged.
What’s noticeable about this conversation, then, is that the speaker uses 彼 throughout. Even when grammatically unnecessary, the narration goes out of its way to use the male third person pronoun for a character it had just established as a trans man, in a way that makes it clear that it wants the viewer to perceive the subject of the conversation as a man.
It’s a nice touch that gets lost a bit in translation :)
ellievsbear
vaporwave
snowghoul
pixelskylines
andulkaphoto
yousharknotpass
blakekathryn
theartofmadeline
