Entries tagged with japanese language

OK, seriously, full spoiler warnings in effect here!

So, first of all, you all should be aware that I left a lot of clues to the fact that Kiyoshi was Hakuba in her first scene. A lot of Kiyoshi’s dialogue is very clearly being answered as Kaito, once you read it knowing that a version of Kaito is behind Kiyoshi’s existence.

Second, a note about ‘her’ name. I can speak and write a little Japanese and I like playing with name meanings when I can; I also note that fanon!Kaito is very fond of wordplay (even if people have of late been arguing that canon!Kaito is less into heist notes than the fans think of him being). While it’s never given in the text of the story, Kiyoshi’s given name is written in kanji as 白. KID’s used an anagram of his title as an alias before; in this case, Hakuba just borrows a kanji from a previous alias–the “ 白” (haku) from 白馬 (Hakuba).

Finally, for anyone curious, here’s what the Kiyoshi disguise looked like, along with one of the doves:

~or why previous posts don’t really end the confusion~

So, the thing is that while the Powers That Be, so-to-speak, seem very much in favor of Tieria being non-gendered, series dialogue seems to contradict that a little. Not just the English (which, of course, calls Tieria “he” and “him”) but the Japanese as well.

But, as some people have pointed out in the tags when reblogging previous posts, at the beginning of the anime, Tieria uses “ore” [俺] as his personal prounoun (i.e., to mean “I”). “Ore” is very strongly gendered; it is only used by men.

Later in the series, he switches to “boku” [僕], which is also gendered as male. Toward the end of the first season, he starts to use “watashi” [私], which is gender-neutral.

These switches are very explicitly part of his character arc, as they coincide with character development. There’s good meta about this out there on the internet somewhere, but I’ve completely lost the link. In any case, the changes aren’t necessarily about Tieria’s gender identity–though you could definitely headcanon a relationship if you wanted to.

Recall again quantumseraph‘s discussion of the fact that the modern Japanese language doesn’t distinguish between “sex” and “gender.” I’ve been using “gender” a lot because I’m more comfortable with the word, but this kanji, [性] could refer to either gender or sex. The only way to know is context, and that passage I translated wasn’t giving me much.

That said, it’s not as if characters who present as different genders from their biological sex are unheard of in anime, manga, or Japanese entertainment in general, so Japanese authors obviously do have the ability to get around this linguistic inconvenience. It’s a shame that they couldn’t have done so a little more explicitly with Tieria, because it would be really nice to know whether there’s a canonical difference between the character’s biology and self-image.

Originally posted 8/3/2015 with 7 notes

Some Stuff About Kiyoshi Rogers (Steeplechase Spoilers for Ch. 16 and earlier)

Tieria Erde and Pronouns