#mario-kun

So we all should know this story by now. The dialogue in Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door was altered/censored when brought over to the west. Said dialogue was dialogue that revealed Vivian's gender identity

Eventually in the remaster of PMTTYD the dialogue was revealed to have fixed this to an extent. So they altered the the remake's text where Beldam insults Vivian altogether, and would give Vivian new dialogue later in the game that would reveal she is a trans woman.

Now the typical crowd of culture vultures decided to cry and whine about the fact Vivian is and always has been trans, and tried to claim it was a retcon. They also purposefully tried to misuse the fact that in in both her party profile in PMTTYD and her Catch Card in Super Paper Mario on the Japanese side, she is called a otokonoko. From here they tried to claim she is a femboy and that it was femboy erasure, even though this crowd also hates femboys.

Now they purposefully ignore the fact that the word otokonoko is often applied to trans women when it doesn't apply to them, basically mislabeling. This is partially because Japan can be just as bad as the West is when it come this type of stuff, I went into this on my post about Birdo. An example being Samus being called a n*whalf(it's an e that goes there if you need to know how to spell it) as a "joke." Anyways, back on otokonoko. As stated before this term is often misapplied to trans woman, which yeah is being applied to Vivian a trans woman makes sense.

This is something we have seen before with one Bridget from Guilty Gear. The character was labeled a otokonoko for a long while while she intended to be a trans woman. The culture vultures also did the exact same thing they did with Vivian to Bridget. But the funny thing is Daisuke Ishwatari would outright confirm Bridget is indeed a trans woman, he did this in Guilty Gear Strive “Developer’s Backyard”(9/14 Release). "We’ve received many inquiries about Bridget’s gender. After the events of Bridget’s story in Arcade Mode, she self-identifies as a woman. So, as to whether 'he' or 'she' would be the correct pronoun for Bridget, the answer would be 'she.'"

Also, while I hate to reference it, even Mario-Kun in spite of it's atrocious depiction of Vivian, understood Vivian is meant to be a trans woman. Something to note is while she isn't treated well in it, the Japanese Nintendo Encyclopedia Wiki acknowledges she is trans as well.

All that to say, Vivian is indeed intended to be a trans woman.

Heads up this post references something that happened in the Mario-Kun manga, and by no means supports the messed up tropes and stereotypes it displays. It was wrong then and it is wrong now, this post is purely for educational purposes.

So when discussing the canonicity of Super Mario-Kun to the games with some people, some had brought up a piece of information about Mario-Kun that I didn't know about. That is that Mario-Kun has an extremely transphobic depiction of Vivian in it.

So I looked into it and yes this is indeed the case. On the left is a picture of the panel in question from Super Mario-Kun Volume 34, and on the right is one that was translated. Source of translated image: Reddit r/AreTheCisOk's post on Super Mario-Kun's Volume 34's transphobia. So the manga has Vivian kiss Mario and Mario comments on this kiss being rough which Vivian responds by saying it's because she has facial hair. Which results in Mario running from Vivian in disgust and misgendering her by calling her a man.

So yeah whoever wrote this part of Mario-Kun decided to take Vivian aka one of the few confirmed trans characters from the Mario series, and play off of transphobic stereotypes. It starts off with having Mario get kissed by a trans woman and upon learning of her being trans, it plays off the transphobic trope having trans people particularly trans woman be depicted as deceitful and not presenting who they really are. Then following it up by having Mario run away in disgust all while misgendering Vivian. Honestly the worst version of Mario.

Btw, if you are wondering why such transphobia does exist in this manga, it's because Japan can be just as bad as other places when it comes to their mistreatment of other people. See my post On Birdo's Gender for a bit more information on this topic.