>>40947637>Aw beans, I'm gonna have to be That Jerk who corrects the mistranslated story about Gou in the new Pokemon anime being non-binary, huh.>First, the existing English news stories (e.g., below) are misquoting everywhere. The voice actor never says anything about Gou’s gender or creator intent & there’s no reference to Blanche. In fact, the VA refers to Gou by 彼 (he/him) throughout.>The English stories *appear* to be pulling from the card at the bottom of the interview (full article below), which refers to Gou as 中性的な美少年 (an "androgynous pretty-boy”) then goes on to talk about how his character design a bit.>Now, both 美少年 (pretty-boy) and 彼 (he/him) are pretty straightforward gender markers, but 中性的 (androygynous-esque) gave me pause. Could there be some linguistic nuance I was missing?>So, I checked with my dear Japanese-American friend who's fluent in Japanese and more involved in the JPN queer community.>Short answer: Nope! 中性的 is about presentation, not identity.>Gou *was* intentionally created w/ both masc- and femme-coded physical traits, so it’s probably fair to call him GNC. And by all means, feel free to interpret him as non-binary or agender! Don’t let this ruin your headcanons!>But if you’re looking for creator confirmation of a canon non-binary Pokemon anime character, I'm sad to say we're not there just yet. I'm bummed, too.>And hey, translators? journalists? DON’T DO THIS.>You should double-check everything anyway, but you should be extra-careful w/ conversations abt marginalized representation. We're all starved for queer rep in our anime as is. It’s just mean to get people’s hopes up like this.tl;dr """""""journalists""""""" are fucking retards
