Off topic, but I just wanted to tell you that I had never heard the term "anecdata" before, but I love it so much now that I hear it.
I'm stealing it.
New "Wildocking" Animal Limb Combiners from TakaraTomy
- Thread starter Donocropolis
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Off topic, but I just wanted to tell you that I had never heard the term "anecdata" before, but I love it so much now that I hear it.
I'm stealing it.
It's not an anecdote, it's a small-batch, hand-crafted artisanal data point.
Yeah it’s generally the default way to self-refer for young boys to teens but when used by women shows a young, less polite, rough and tumble, usually active and sporty personality.
The thing is, when it comes to TakaraTomy-original Transformers media, when Takara wants us to know a character is female, they make out loud and clear in an obvious way, since this is still considered a "Boys' Toys" property first and foremost over in Japan. Female characters don't get equal treatment to male characters over there, sadly. If a character is female, there is no ambiguity. The show would make that clear, and any bio or profile would likewise use unambiguous female pronouns to indicate female characters, whereas male characters tend to get gender-neutral pronouns in their Japanese bios and profiles. That's just how Japan tends to treat girl characters in Japanese-original properties aimed primarily at young boys.
Take the overly stereotypically girly portrayal of Cybertron Thunderblast as a glaring example. Or how Arcee was portrayed in Q-Transformers as overly cutesy and blushing in embarrassment and shyness just because she was a girl (the only girl in the show, even). Or, hey, even how Transformers: Go! had zero female characters in it at all.
Back up to this particular case, the bio for Thunderbeak on Takara's website uses no female pronouns or gives any indication of Thunderbeak's gender at all. If Thunderbeak was female, the bio would absolutely go out of its way to point that out and say so, unlike bios for male characters where "male" is just automatically assumed by default because "Transformers is for boys" in Japan.
Hasbro has come a long way in giving us more and more female characters, but Takara on their own is still lacking in that department.
Take the overly stereotypically girly portrayal of Cybertron Thunderblast as a glaring example. Or how Arcee was portrayed in Q-Transformers as overly cutesy and blushing in embarrassment and shyness just because she was a girl (the only girl in the show, even). Or, hey, even how Transformers: Go! had zero female characters in it at all.
Back up to this particular case, the bio for Thunderbeak on Takara's website uses no female pronouns or gives any indication of Thunderbeak's gender at all. If Thunderbeak was female, the bio would absolutely go out of its way to point that out and say so, unlike bios for male characters where "male" is just automatically assumed by default because "Transformers is for boys" in Japan.
Hasbro has come a long way in giving us more and more female characters, but Takara on their own is still lacking in that department.
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Could be any number of factors. Takara could have just gotten a new writer. Could be the bio people and anime people are different teams. Could be the bios are working off preproduction material where character traits weren’t set in stone. I personally think it’s for the same reason many anime songs sung by female characters are written with boku even when the character doesn’t usually use it. It’s so that when male fans sing along or in this case, roleplay, it’s more neutral.
The delivery and speech patterns are definitely more feminine than the usual way female seiyuu voice characters meant to be boys or young men. It’s pretty much a stereotypical female bad guy voice.
The delivery and speech patterns are definitely more feminine than the usual way female seiyuu voice characters meant to be boys or young men. It’s pretty much a stereotypical female bad guy voice.
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I don't disagree, which is why I was caught off guard by this in the first place.
Nevertheless, we should be able to get around the issue entirely by not needing to use any pronouns at all when doing the fansubs for this episode, since Thunderbeak is mainly only ever referred to in the first- and second-person in the episode, with only once being referred to in the third-person but which was by name.
I recently noticed that Thunderbeak's wiki page does use "he/him/his" to refer to the character, and until we get a clearer picture it might be prudent to use singular "they/them/theirs". It can always be reverted if we end up with another JBW Airrazor.
It's because one of the wiki's Japanese experts weighed in on the matter.