*takes a glance at my next scheduled Danganronpa brainrot essay* oh my god no not chihiro’s gender no, no, nnnooooooooo-

The AFAB character who presents as a boy but is secretly a girl (because there is no other option than the binary, of course /s) is not uncommon in Japanese media. Putting aside my opinions on which ones are the worst written offenders, I’m thinking about it being a result of real, historical events or personal stories in which women were forced to pretend to be men in order to advance in life, get the opportunities they wanted, be left alone, or walk hand in hand with the love of their life.

By the way, since there are a lot of weird users on this platform: trans rights are human rights. If you disagree, go be weird elsewhere, I’m here to talk about the cute character from the 13 years old video-game.

Either way, the result is that it’s common, and the story is often similar - either “my parents wanted a boy” (which is a reflection of another, more recent if not current part of history) or “I needed it to accomplish something/to be left the fuck alone while I did my thing.”

Now what I’m thinking about is the fact that Kodaka likes to be subversive. He likes to take a common trope and put it upside down. One question about Chihiro has always been, to me… is the crossdresser character all that subversive? I mean, “cute girl is actually… 🥺 a boy 🤭” is really not that uncommon in Japanese media. I’ve already explored how both Mondo and Chihiro speak to toxic masculinity from almost opposite places, but just being different from Mondo doesn’t feel like a satisfying answer to what is the subversive stereotype about Chihiro in the very first place, on the very surface.

What I think it may be is this: “what if instead of a girl who has to dress up as a boy to be left the fuck alone, it were a boy who has to dress up as a girl to be left the fuck alone?” Often with the “boy who dresses up as a girl”, the writing has a lot more to do with liking it this way. (“What? Trans? Other gender identities? What are those?” /s) When it came to Chihiro, dressing up as a girl was a defence mechanism against societal pressure.

It came off as weird, something women are more likely to experience - the pressure that men are somehow “the norm”, the fact that men are accepted more, left alone more - like from a realistic point of view, it was such a specific and odd choice that many players wondered if there wasn’t something more to Chihiro’s choice to present as a girl, somewhere it came from in the first place. But I wonder if that’s not in fact meant to be the subversive aspect: “we’re used to stories of women having to dress up as men for these reasons, but imagine a story in which it’s a man having to dress up as a woman!”

At least, that’s what may have been going through Kodaka’s mind at the time. Then came what I view as the better aspect of Chihiro’s writing, which is the exploration of toxic masculinity, how much it hurt him, and how much he accidentally contributed to it by buying into the idea that women are in fact weak while men are strong.

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