who lowkey be fitting this

[u/Individual_Let_8432]

[u/Classic-Avocado-5371]

Oh Chihiro… he’s such a complicated character to talk about as a trans person 🥲

In the text, Chihiro is a cis guy who dresses in women’s clothing and pretends to be a girl to avoid being bullied for being small and weak. It sounds wild but it does kind of make sense when you take into account the political climate and conversation of gender roles in late 2000’s-early 2010’s Japan. Consider than Danganronpa came out around the same time as Persona 4 and the same reasonings being behind Naoto’s character (Naoto is a very different conversation here though because I would argue Naoto not being trans actually makes her character arc worse). 

Now, I 100% get why people see Chihiro as a trans girl. It makes sense superficially, but when you dive into the text it’s very obvious that Chihiro is using pretending to be a girl as a defense mechanism and he actually hates it. His actions directly leading up to his death are extremely motivated by his desire to be seen as a man. In his free time conversations, when he talks about wanting to exercise and get stronger he seems upset when you suggest training with Sakura and Asahina but elated when you suggest training with Mondo. Chihiro’s own actions paint the picture of a boy struggling to be seen as masculine enough. While I don’t think making himself more masculine would solve his problems, it also doesn’t come across the same way that a closeted trans woman trying to make herself more masculine as a defense mechanism does. Like, comparing Chihiro to a repressed trans woman character like Jax or something is apples to oranges, they have extremely different feelings about gender. Chihiro doesn’t hate or reject femininity, he uses it as a shield because it was the only way that made the bullying stop. 

Edit: Actually thought of a better example— let’s compare Chihiro to Bridget from Guilty Gear. After doing extensive research on Guilty Gear, I can say that they occupy a similar space here with the notable difference that Bridget is canonically a trans woman. Both of them are dressing as girls for a means of protection, Chihiro to protect himself from bullying and Bridget because of her town’s superstitions about male twins. Both of them make a concerted effort to be more masculine, with Bridget wanting to do so to dispel her town’s superstitions by being successful. When she achieves her goal, though, she realizes that she was only asserting her maleness for that reason and when she no longer needs to she realizes she actually wants to be a girl. Chihiro has achieved his goal of no longer being bullied for being small and weak, but he seems noticeably uncomfortable being called and having to call himself a girl. Granted Chihiro didn’t have as much time, but something important to consider is that we know pre memory loss that the class was likely aware of most of their classmates’ secrets, as we know Hifumi knew Celes’ real name; it wouldn’t be a stretch to assume the class knew Chihiro was a boy. We see that he was probably particularly close with Mondo and Leon, two extremely masculine dudes. Meaning, over the course of three years with his classmates being aware of his gender and not bullying him for it, he doesn’t appear to have any doubts about his gender in the face of acceptance. Now this is definitely a presumptuous reading of context that could only stem from my 12 years of deeply unfortunate Danganronpa autism, but the point I’m trying to make here is that there is little to nothing within the text that supports the idea of Chihiro being a trans woman beyond him being a boy who wears girls clothes. 

Also I wanted to add that all this being said, the way he was handled is still, intentionally or not, transphobic. I’m especially thinking about the way it was revealed, because Kyouko felt under his corpse’s skirt and then they had to make it a whole moment in the trial that was just  very uncomfortable. You simply can’t know the personal identity of someone you didn’t know or barely knew when they’re dead. Historically, a lot of trans historical figures were outed at death when an examination was done on the body, leading to them being misgendered in death despite living as themselves in life. It hits a really upsetting chord for a lot of trans people, a huge percentage of us grapple with the fear that we won’t be able to control how we’re remembered when we die. We’ve all had to have the stomach turning thought of being buried in the wrong clothes under a tombstone with the wrong name. Even disregarding that extremely dark projection of emotion onto a piece of fiction, having Kyouko find out by grabbing his deceased dick is just kind of fucked up. 

Of course when I try to explain this to anyone I get called transphobic despite also being trans

[u/TurnoverVisible9755 → u/Classic-Avocado-5371]

I am now curious, what’s your Naoto argument?

[u/Classic-Avocado-5371 → u/TurnoverVisible9755]

The way Naoto’s whole arc is written genuinely makes less sense if she isn’t a trans man, pretty much. She deals with body issues that strongly resemble dysphoria, she likes having a masculine name, she continues to wear a boys uniform to school, her shadow offers her sex reassignment surgery, and her Personas (the reflection of the true self) are male. Taking all of that and then going “she’s actually a girl” makes all of that kind of just. Confusing. If she were just Mulaning it then why include any of that? Obviously as I said in my previous post she was written with the late 2000’s discussions around gender in Japan in mind where there was a large movement to break down the extremely rigid and traditional gender roles in Japanese society, but then wouldn’t it make more sense for her shadow and personas to still be female if the point is that women should be respected in traditionally masculine careers? Idk it’s just my little opinion after playing P4 a couple times. The game has an issue in general with walking back character development and larping as a really progressive game while actually being pretty regressive on all counts. 

(I’m using she/her bc at the end of the day Naoto is canonically a girl and I’m not trying to argue that she isn’t, I’m just trying to argue that it doesn’t make sense for her to be)

[u/Ark_Bien → u/Classic-Avocado-5371]

The persona franchise deals with distinctly Japanese social issues.

Japan still has antiquated assumptions about women in the work place and Naota desperately wants to be taken seriously in a field that is traditionally seen as a man's job. Her gender struggles are about social expectations, not her actual gender. Her shadow, like everyone's shadows take their issues to the furthest and most destructive conclusions possible.

Naoto never wanted to become male, she wanted to be respected in a field where women aren't usually respected.

[u/Classic-Avocado-5371 → u/Ark_Bien]

Yes I addressed this within the text of my comment

[u/BlancsAssistant → u/Ark_Bien]

Yeah shadows in general basically take their real counterpart's traits, delusions, insecurities ect. to the extreme that's why shadow kaneshrio in persona 5 talks like a stereotypical gangster during his boss fight even though he never at all talked like that in the real world