taotrooper | Oh Brush Gods, not again with the fucking gender thing

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Oh Brush Gods, not again with the fucking gender thing

So, um, okay. In the Japanese version of Okami (and Okamiden, I guess? IDK) Amaterasu -and Shiranui for extension- didn't have an actual gender. We can agree on that. Then in the English game, there were hints for female (Waka using French female pronouns and adjectives, Yatsu seeing her as a maiden) so most people think of her as a gal in fanon. Me included, but that's not the point.

So now the English localizators of Okamiden have randomly decided that the Shiranui incarnation is male. "Always remember: it’s people that assign gender to the gods." ~~And by people, we mean us.~~

No, your reason is utter bullshit. Shiranui might be another incarnation, but she was the original Amaterasu with full powers and memories. Shiranui is the name humans gave her because they didn't know who the fuck the white wolf was, and they used "it" pronouns. Waka thought of Shiranui as Amaterasu. Ishaku called her Ammy. The Brush Gods called Amaterasu their mother, but they were born from Shiranui. No one is seeing a huge distinction between Ammy and Shiranui in the original game. Actually, does she turn into a dude in the final battle to you guys?

Why don't you just say WE FELT LIKE CALLING HIM A GRANDPA or admitting you are afraid of girl ~~fleas~~ cooties instead of using the Japanese lack of gender as a loophole? Mind you, I'm not pissed that Shiranui gets her gender changed to male. It's the inconsistency. If they had changed BOTH Amaterasu and Shiranui as male, I wouldn't agree but I certainly wouldn't complain about it. Then it's just a translation choice. But by doing this picking, it feels just wrong and badly thought. IT'S THE SAME CHARACTER, YOU DUMBASSES.

Sigh. I'm done with my wank. Back to replaying Ghost Trick and uploading Okami fanart on Tumblr.

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... what. Why would anyone do that. Why. /facepaaaalm

Why would the translators do that.

That's really silly of them to have done that x|

It's even sillier that they have to make a long post on FACEBOOK to say why they're OMG SO RIGHT. And it's still bullshit.

Wait but isn't Amaterasu based on the Japanese sun goddess? Therefore, her being a girl would be a given, and Shiranui by extension.

But either way what.

She is very loosely based on the sun goddess, yup. The thing is, the creators of the original game said hundreds of times that the wolf character is neither female or male for some reason. But while you can get away with gender neutrality in Japanese, Western languages are a different beast and I guess that's why the translation swayed sometimes to female and you couldn't hold Kamiya's decision of genderless anymore. There were some wanks/discussions about it of course, but few people would think of her as a male -and it was because of the peeing stance, go figure. So it's complicated.

But yeah, what is right. Especially when regular Ammy is still a girl and Chibi's mother to them. IDEK.

ooohhh I see. But really, given her basis being a goddess idk how she couldn't be a girl. I can't see her as a boy at all. :/
but idk this still kinda confusing to me. D:

Hi, I'm butting in because I'm a creeper and I suck and stuff.

I understand the game designers being so explicit about the wolf character being gender-neutral, but I kind of disagree with getting away with gender neutrality in Western languages. Yes, with romantic languages like Spanish and Portuguese would be very tricky (if not impossible) to have a neuter character mainly because that concept doesn't really exist in those languages. However I feel that with English, they could have pulled off the neutrality very well. For example, instead of having the brush gods say "Mother to us all", maybe they could've said something along the lines of "Our heavenly creator". And if I'm not mistaken, weren't there times when NPC would say something like "He's a nice doggy"? Couldn't that have easily been "It's a nice doggy"?

Idk, correct me if I'm just spouting hot air!!

I do not agree with their choices. >:(

Me neither, sigh. I'm going to consider this a translation mistake and she's still a female-gendered sexless wolf to me in both forms. Because I CAN.

Silly Kiri, of course Amaterasu at full power would suddenly turn male. A mere female couldn't be that powerful.

Wait, so every time I max up the level of a pretty healer girl in an JRPG, she grows a penis? *eyes TotA save files and despairs*

Nah, just the ass-kicking girls. Raine and possibly Colette are safe, but watch out for Sheena and Presea changing genders.

No, you see, it's the healers -female or the elusive male, to be fair- I max up because they're the ones I need the most in my parties. To be honest, Persea and Sheena never fit my Tales-playing style (protagonist/magic swords(wo)man/healer/mage combo) so I never leveled them up that much. I did keep Sheena fairly decent because of the pact fights, but not as Raine or Genis or Zelos. TotA was an exception because in my second playthrough I used the 10x exp thing and I have everyone on level 99.

I (still) haven't played TotA yet, so I don't know in practice which of the girls are primarily healers and which are physical damage-dealers; I used the ToS ladies because I'm familiar with them.

Tear is a healer with some mage, Natalia is an archer with healing/buffs, and Anise is all physical damage. But the point with the ToS girls is, just because they're action girls doesn't mean I'm going to use them more.

IIRC, with ToS, all the characters level up at roughly the same rate, even if they don't get used in battle. (Personally, I like controlling Sheena, since she has fast attacks and is more of a challenge than Lloyd. Presea I almost never control, since I don't like how she handles. I'm very OCD about switching characters into the battle party regularly, even if there's no real advantage beyond getting them to use their techs enough to unlock the next set.)

But you don't understand! There's no way guys would play a game with a powerful female character, so the localizers would have lost half of their potential fanbase!!1!!

Seriously, why do these things still happen?

B-but Amaterasu's not even the main character in this game! And I doubt Shiranui's role is that big. Chibiterasu is still a boy anyway, so they're not playing icky girls ~~except 2/5 of the companions are girls and 1/5 is a mini-Waka thus a paragon of pink-colored fruit~~.

It's funny that the biggest game Kamiya did after leaving CAPCOM was Bayonetta. Together with all the ladies with a power position in Okami (Sakuya, Himiko, Otohime), I don't think his decision of a genderless Amaterasu is for misogyny or marketing.

The situation just reminded me of the whole Rapunzel/Tangled thing ("Won't anyone think of the boys?!"). ~~Maybe the localizers used radical, bro-like dialogue for Kurow to make him less fruity.~~

The women in Okami all display different types of power than the typical "Rah, rah, I'll kick you in the eye" stereotype, too. I wasn't blaming Kamiya or the original development team, but rather the localizers who don't seem to be in touch with the series.

You know, I hadn't thought about the bro-speak being used like that, but it makes a lot of sense. It's kinda sad, especially since Kurow seems to be more of a skirt-chaser (sort of) than Waka, and I don't think that all the 'dude' ticks can make the fucking pink wings any manlier anyway.

Oh, I wasn't blaming him either. But yup, one of the things that I love from this game is that these ladies can do great feats without wielding a sword. Action kung-fu girls are cool and all, but it gets boring to only see of those after a while. I'm hoping that Kagura and Nanami are good companions, regardless.

I'm torn. I see how this could be all about OMG NO GIRL COOTIES, but also... from a more technical POV, it could also be a different localization team that worked on Okamiden and didn't bother to go and look at Okami for pointers on how things were translated there.

... Unless it really is the same team, in which case, WTF INDEED.

Edited 2011-01-31 20:14 (UTC)

Had to dig up a little and it's not the same team. Even worse, the team lead had this blog entry at the CAPCOM community website assuring that he did his homework: played the original game and devoured everything about it (artbook, strategy guides, info in the interwebs, etc.) because he truly wanted to do it justice. So it's not that they're ignorant, they just... chose to be assholes and rewrite things.

Uuugh, then yeah, that's just BS. Did they expect people not to notice??

Oh, people DID notice after they post a character profile on Facebook saying that Shiranui was Chibi's grandfather (which is veeery WTF on its own but I don't know if it's in the Japanese game or something they pulled too... so Amaterasu is her own father?!) Either way, some people boggled by this and they quickly mansplained it to fandom with the bullshit linked above.

Dude. "No gender = Male." Riiight.

It's even more outrageous because while technically a genderless wolf, the character was heavily hinted female-like in the translation *points at that part in her rant*. So if we must give this character a binary gender at all, female would suit her role and personality best. She's a BAMF who, at the same time, is a force of divine creation and a motherly figure to other gods and beings. So it's not only that the default is wrong: it just doesn't suit the original canon to say that before dying she was a male wolf because they feel like it.

ಠ_ಠ

^ My face when reading that post.

..... o_O

Seriously, I get the genderless language, but as pointed out, Shiranui = Ammy = Amaterasu = sun goddess. Is that really so hard for game developers to understand?

It's the translations and localizators the ones at fault, but apparently so.

i was never under the impression her gender was argued. she's supposed to be "the sun goddess" and "mother to us all" they only say that about EIGHTY TIMES in the game

but why would okami be male LMAO just to suddenly decide OKAY THE SUN GODDESS IS NOW MALE BECAUSE PEOPLE'S FAITH.

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