Persona 2: Innocent Sin and its transphobic line of dialogue

[JB2448]

Does anyone have more info about this? From the excellent Waypoint article about Atlus's history of mishandling LGBTQ characters and themes:
https://waypoint.vice.com/en_us/art...dling-of-lgbtq-characters-catherine-full-body

Catherine: Full Body's hard swerve into transphobia should come as no surprise to anyone who's played the original Catherine or the Persona games from the same team. Persona 2: Innocent Sin has a character respond to a trans male's appearance by saying "She looks cute."

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I don't remember this at all. Like, at all. Does anyone have more info on it? A screenshot or some context?
All of the other examples from the article I can remember quite clearly, but this one is just not coming up for me.

 

[Deleted member 50374]

Uh uh. You can reciprocate Jun's feelings in Persona 2, and they literally never mention it. I call bullshit.

Edit: ok confirmed. Yet this passage sucks.

 

[PlanetSmasher]

There was a trans character in Innocent Sin? Man, I remember literally nothing about that game except for how awful the combat was.

Either way, late 90s/early 00s Atlus and late-2010s Atlus are two very different beasts. And unfortunately in Atlus' case they haven't improved.

 

[Jessie]

What did the original Japanese say? Pronouns are a lot more complex in Japanese.

 

[Strings]

I vaguely remember a thread about this article when it originally released, and a lot of us were confused by that mention too.

 

[Jawmuncher]

I'm curious about this as well. I've never played very far into Persona 2 (Despite owning both versions on PSP).

 

[Deleted member 41520]

What did the original Japanese say? Pronouns are a lot more complex in Japanese.

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This cant be passed off as a localisation issue

The transphobic buck stops with someone. Even if it was a translator making a mistake, someone checked it and greenlit it. But that doesn't feel likely

 

[Deleted member 2102]

I do, yeah. It's a blink and you'll miss it thing - in one of the stores (armor shop, I think), Eikichi misgenders a trans NPC in a way that's played for laughs. I don't have a screenshot for it, and due to the nature of P2's shop dialogue changing after every few plot beats, it's easy to miss. It's an unfortunate bit considering the game is otherwise good with its LGBT themes.

It's also incorrect to tie it to the modern Persona team, though. This was a different group of writers, and more reflects what was considered "acceptable" (though still gross and insensitive) than Atlus's values. Devil Summoner, released around the same time, had a tastefully handled trans club owner named Madame Ginko, for example.

 

[higemaru]

What did the original Japanese say? Pronouns are a lot more complex in Japanese.

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I'm curious as to this too. Unlike every other example in the article which reinforces transphobia visually and thematically, the example in P2 could be a translation error or the translator just totally whiffing on trans awareness. There was very, very little nuance surrounding trans identity in cis-het world until like, 2014.

The other Persona games are really bad about this though as is Catherine. However, P2 was headed by different people than those games as I understand it.

EDIT: ^ check post above, gives context. Seems less like a translation mistake, the joke was probably in the original Japanese too.

 

[Komii]

Does anyone have more info about this? From the excellent Waypoint article about Atlus's history of mishandling LGBTQ characters and themes:
https://waypoint.vice.com/en_us/art...dling-of-lgbtq-characters-catherine-full-body

I don't remember this at all. Like, at all. Does anyone have more info on it? A screenshot or some context?
All of the other examples from the article I can remember quite clearly, but this one is just not coming up for me.

Click to shrink...

It's one misseable conversation with an npc, so you'll hardly find any screenshots, maybe only watching a full let's play

 

[Jessie]

This cant be passed off as a localisation issue

The transphobic buck stops with someone. Even if it was a translator making a mistake, someone checked it and greenlit it. But that doesn't feel likely

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I mean, context is important. Was the transphobia rooted in the original Japanese (like Catherine), or was it added by localization?

It was extremely common in the 90s/early 2000s to switch characters genders around. Sailor Moon and Inuyasha both cis/straight-washed queer characters, off the top of my head. I'm wondering if this was another one of those situations, or if it was translated faithfully from Japanese.

 

[BocoDragon]

Seems to me that no one in any culture got sensitivity to trans issues right circa 2000.

 

[higemaru]

Seems to me that no one in any culture got sensitivity to trans issues right circa 2000.

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Gender identity is a cultural thing and while I'm unfamiliar with how every culture perceives gender, I think the more pertinent argument to make is that Western culture is/was completely insensitive to trans issues until like, 2015. Japan has its own issues I am sure, but I can't help but think that a lot of that stems from Western culture bleeding into their country and altering cultural thought processes.

 

[L Thammy]

This cant be passed off as a localisation issue

The transphobic buck stops with someone. Even if it was a translator making a mistake, someone checked it and greenlit it. But that doesn't feel likely

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Without having seen the original script, it actually sounds pretty plausible. Bear in mind that it's significantly easier to avoid mentioning an individual's gender at all in Japanese - partly because more roundabout second and third person references tend to be preferred, partly because word order isn't as important and pronouns can be dropped completely.

I will agree that those involved in localization at at fault for what they produce, though.

 

[JB2448]

Seems to me that no one in any culture got sensitivity to trans issues right circa 2000.

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That being said, Atlus has become arguably the worst with it after Persona 4 and Catherine: Full Body.
One of my best friends put it best (somewhat paraphrasing):
"The Persona 3 beach scene is how you get someone depressed for a day. The way Naoto is handled in Persona 4 is how you get people killed."

Edit:
"Naoto is how you ruin a child's life, 3 is how you get people killed." was actually the direct quote. Sorry about that.

 

[BocoDragon]

Gender identity is a cultural thing and while I'm unfamiliar with how every culture perceives gender, I think the more pertinent argument to make is that Western culture is/was completely insensitive to trans issues until like, 2015. Japan has its own issues I am sure, but I can't help but think that a lot of that stems from Western culture bleeding into their country and altering cultural thought processes.

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Are you saying Western culture is behind other cultures on this? I think western culture is the vanguard of modern trans acceptance, unfortunately. Japan has much stronger gender roles than here and has since long before western influence. That's true of most societies on earth. At least the patriarchal ones that have dominated for the last 10,000 years. I'm a little skeptical that all tribal life before that was as enlightened as the Native American tribes who accept "third sex" and such, but I don't really know.

That being said, Atlus has become arguably the worst with it after Persona 4 and Catherine: Full Body.
One of my best friends put it best (somewhat paraphrasing):
"The Persona 3 beach scene is how you get someone depressed for a day. The way Naoto is handled in Persona 4 is how you get people killed."

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Of course. The way in which they have met the last decade of increasing trans acceptance looks bad.

 

[JB2448]

"Naoto is how you ruin a child's life, 3 is how you get people killed." was actually the direct quote. Sorry about that.

 

[Richter1887]

Atleast with Persona 2 you could argue that it was something "acceptable" for the time but modern Atlus? They have become even worse. I don't know how Atlus will ever improve since it seems people don't care about these issues sadly.

 

[Celine.D.Sykes]

Oh my... you're telling me this two decades old game have a controversial pun in it ? In something like 5000 of dialogues ? I can't believe it.

How shitty must be your life that you have nothing else to do but searching for shit like this in old games nobody gave a fuck back then ?

It's Persona, not Horizon Zero Yawn or any other wannabe progressist bullshit game, it's meant to be controversial and it's perfect that way. The only fact that it's triggering some of you is the proof that it should stay the way it is for the upcoming games. Persona became popular because it tackles controversial subject in a controversial way. It's not meant to respect your "safe space".

Fuck this forum.

 

[Hate]

Woah

 

[JB2448]

Oh my... you're telling me this two decades old game have a controversial pun in it ? In something like 5000 of dialogues ? I can't believe it.

How shitty must be your life that you have nothing else to do but searching for shit like this in old games nobody gave a fuck back then ?

It's Persona, not Horizon Zero Yawn or any other wannabe progressist bullshit game, it's meant to be controversial and it's perfect that way. The only fact that it's triggering some of you is the proof that it should that the way it is for the upcoming games. Persona became popular because it tackles controversial subject in a controversial way. It's not meant to respect your "safe space".

Fuck this forum.

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Thanks!

 

[Gradon]

Oh my... you're telling me this two decades old game have a controversial pun in it ? In something like 5000 of dialogues ? I can't believe it.

How shitty must be your life that you have nothing else to do but searching for shit like this in old games nobody gave a fuck back then ?

It's Persona, not Horizon Zero Yawn or any other wannabe progressist bullshit game, it's meant to be controversial and it's perfect that way. The only fact that it's triggering some of you is the proof that it should that the way it is for the upcoming games. Persona became popular because it tackles controversial subject in a controversial way. It's not meant to respect your "safe space".

Fuck this forum.

Click to shrink...

Yikes. Bye.

I've heard conflicting stuff about Persona 2 myself, ranging from it had good bi representation to the transphobia mentioned in the OP.

Atlus has no excuse.

 

[Lord Vatek]

Oh my... you're telling me this two decades old game have a controversial pun in it ? In something like 5000 of dialogues ? I can't believe it.

How shitty must be your life that you have nothing else to do but searching for shit like this in old games nobody gave a fuck back then ?

It's Persona, not Horizon Zero Yawn or any other wannabe progressist bullshit game, it's meant to be controversial and it's perfect that way. The only fact that it's triggering some of you is the proof that it should that the way it is for the upcoming games. Persona became popular because it tackles controversial subject in a controversial way. It's not meant to respect your "safe space".

Fuck this forum.

Click to shrink...

Wow. What a meltdown.

As for the topic at hand, yeah I'm becoming more and more convinced that Hashino isn't the only problem at Atlus.

 

[808s & Villainy]

I mean, context is important. Was the transphobia rooted in the original Japanese (like Catherine), or was it added by localization?

It was extremely common in the 90s/early 2000s to switch characters genders around. Sailor Moon and Inuyasha both cis/straight-washed queer characters, off the top of my head. I'm wondering if this was another one of those situations, or if it was translated faithfully from Japanese.

Click to shrink...

I wonder if this was the actual case, not intentional misgendering. Persona 2 also changed the races (along with their sprites) of some characters so I wouldn't be surprised if they changed the genders as well

 

[Astral]

I don't remember this at all honestly.

 

[Hitomi J-Scrub]

Don't give them more attention. They're banned so the topic doesn't have to get derailed.

 

[Crossing Eden]

Oh my... you're telling me this two decades old game have a controversial pun in it ? In something like 5000 of dialogues ? I can't believe it.

How shitty must be your life that you have nothing else to do but searching for shit like this in old games nobody gave a fuck back then ?

It's Persona, not Horizon Zero Yawn or any other wannabe progressist bullshit game, it's meant to be controversial and it's perfect that way. The only fact that it's triggering some of you is the proof that it should stay the way it is for the upcoming games. Persona became popular because it tackles controversial subject in a controversial way. It's not meant to respect your "safe space".

Fuck this forum.

Click to shrink...

Hella yikes. There's so much wrong in your post I don't even know where to begin. Let's start with the fact that more often than not controversy for controversy's sake and nothing else tends to lead to incredibly derivative and brainfead media that hasn't nothing to say. Especially in the gaming industry which has an abhorrent history with certain subject matter.

 

[Another Castle]

Oh my... you're telling me this two decades old game have a controversial pun in it ? In something like 5000 of dialogues ? I can't believe it.

How shitty must be your life that you have nothing else to do but searching for shit like this in old games nobody gave a fuck back then ?

It's Persona, not Horizon Zero Yawn or any other wannabe progressist bullshit game, it's meant to be controversial and it's perfect that way. The only fact that it's triggering some of you is the proof that it should stay the way it is for the upcoming games. Persona became popular because it tackles controversial subject in a controversial way. It's not meant to respect your "safe space".

Fuck this forum.

Click to shrink...

Wew.

Pretty obvious to me you don't know anyone whose life could have been overtly affected by these "perfect," "controversial" jokes.

Given this is your reaction whenever anyone looks back at something and goes, "Huh, I guess that was pretty shitty of them," it seems to me you are the one who's triggered.

 

[DarkStream]

EDIT: Wrong thread

 

[Another Castle]

Anywho... Yeah, I kind of feel like this series (and Catherine, which really sucks because it's the one game I've played at a competitive level) just keeps doubling down on its shitty sexual politics. I feel like the more the series is criticized, the more they try to write in awfully executed LGBT characters. Hell, with Full Body they're straight up rewriting a whole game over it.

It's weird too. As a young'n, Naoto was kind of a quiet comfort for me up until the end where they finally "accept themselves" for "who they are," or whatever the excuse was. Especially since this was when I had started truly grappling with my identity, it really felt like the message was to just swallow my feelings and get on with it. Never played a Persona game before 3, though.

I dunno. I keep buying these games. Not sure how I can keep defending that.

 

[Lumination]

This cant be passed off as a localisation issue

The transphobic buck stops with someone. Even if it was a translator making a mistake, someone checked it and greenlit it. But that doesn't feel likely

Click to shrink...

Innocent Sin came out in the late 90s, right? As awful as it is to think about, things were different back then. Casual homophobia/transphobia was a regular pop culture thing. I wouldn't crucify a company or a series based on a single line from that time period.

I would crucify them for the Naoto stuff and whatever's happening in Full Body. And that's enough to stand on its own, without dragging up stuff from the 90s as if it was some kind of smoking gun.

 

[Komii]

Yikes. Bye.

I've heard conflicting stuff about Persona 2 myself, ranging from it had good bi representation to the transphobia mentioned in the OP.

Atlus has no excuse.

Click to shrink...

The bi representation is really good but old persona team wasn't ready to deal with themes like trans characters by then(they'd probably make a better job than current team now though)
I'm pretty curious about the original line now, only things i could find about the scene was that it involved a trans male character wearing on a skirt and eikichi said "she's cute", but japanese has some many ways to say the phrase without including a gendered noun so i wished folks talking about that line had the decency of at least mentioning when it can be triggered so i could check >_>(not doubting whether it was there or no, it's just that the way this game handles city dialogue makes it very easy to miss stuff)

 

[L Thammy]

Innocent Sin came out in the late 90s, right? As awful as it is to think about, things were different back then. Casual homophobia/transphobia was a regular pop culture thing. I wouldn't crucify a company or a series based on a single line from that time period.

I would crucify them for the Naoto stuff and whatever's happening in Full Body. And that's enough to stand on its own, without dragging up stuff from the 90s as if it was some kind of smoking gun.

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It still exists, it can still be looked at through a critical lens, and it can still be a part of a history or pattern of behaviour. I wouldn't take one thing someone did years ago and condemn them forever because of it, but I don't think even the article in the OP did that.

 

[Bhonar]

Oh my... you're telling me this two decades old game have a controversial pun in it ? In something like 5000 of dialogues ? I can't believe it.

How shitty must be your life that you have nothing else to do but searching for shit like this in old games nobody gave a fuck back then ?

It's Persona, not Horizon Zero Yawn or any other wannabe progressist bullshit game, it's meant to be controversial and it's perfect that way. The only fact that it's triggering some of you is the proof that it should stay the way it is for the upcoming games. Persona became popular because it tackles controversial subject in a controversial way. It's not meant to respect your "safe space".

Fuck this forum.

Click to shrink...

LOL this post has it all

even a shot at Horizon haha

 

[Sleepwalker]

Never got into P2 due to the mind-numbingly long random encounters, but yikes. I guess it was par for the course in those days, but still disappointing considering how well the game handled gay characters as I understand.

 

[Glass Arrows]

As for the topic at hand, yeah I'm becoming more and more convinced that Hashino isn't the only problem at Atlus.

Click to shrink...

It's not like he could have written every line of dialogue in the games he directed, so I never thought it was exclusively his fault.

 

[Razorrin]

I wonder if this was the actual case, not intentional misgendering. Persona 2 also changed the races (along with their sprites) of some characters so I wouldn't be surprised if they changed the genders as well

Click to shrink...

That was persona 1, and it was always a controversial localization, with really dumb decisions to make it appear more "American," for release, like changing the guy who's persona is sin wukong, the monkey king, into a black kid, Yikes!

As far as I'm aware, Persona 2 has been fantastic for LGBT causes for the tact it handled bisexuality with the protagonist, among other themes, and it's a shame this joke was ever in it, even said by Eikichi, everyone's favorite guy!

I hope if the duology gets ported to newer systems, that they can change that line, as it's a black mark (no pun intended) on a fantastic game.

 

[Lumination]

It still exists, it can still be criticized, and it can still be a part of a history or pattern of behaviour. I wouldn't take one thing someone did years ago and condemn them forever because of it, but I don't think even the article in the OP did that.

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The article does not. I mentioned it, but accidentally deleted it in the edit. And yeah, it's fair game. Just don't see a need to overreact to it.

 

[Taruranto]

There was a trans character in Innocent Sin?

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I mean, there are two actually, and one of them even has a portrait. Did people actually play IS?

But the article is poorly written, they refer to Naoto as him which is ???.

 

[Rezon]

Oh my... you're telling me this two decades old game have a controversial pun in it ? In something like 5000 of dialogues ? I can't believe it.

How shitty must be your life that you have nothing else to do but searching for shit like this in old games nobody gave a fuck back then ?

It's Persona, not Horizon Zero Yawn or any other wannabe progressist bullshit game, it's meant to be controversial and it's perfect that way. The only fact that it's triggering some of you is the proof that it should stay the way it is for the upcoming games. Persona became popular because it tackles controversial subject in a controversial way. It's not meant to respect your "safe space".

Fuck this forum.

Click to shrink...

You're the triggered one here buddy, what a snowflake

 

[PlanetSmasher]

I mean, there are two actually, and one of them even has a portrait. Did people actually play IS?

But the article is poorly written, they refer to Naoto as him which is ???.

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Like I said in the post you responded to, my memory of IS has mostly faded to the point at which all I really remember about it is the horrible, horrible battle system.

 

[LegendarySkitch]

I mean, there are two actually, and one of them even has a portrait. Did people actually play IS?

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You realize not everyone remembers every single character right? I haven't played it in like 8 years. I don't remember this at all

 

[L Thammy]

The article does not. I mentioned it, but accidentally deleted it in the edit. And yeah, it's fair game. Just don't see a need to overreact to it.

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I'm not sure why the idea of overreacting is coming up. The article mentioned it as part of a discussion of Atlus' handling of LGBT+ issues. The topic the OP posted is just asking about the line because they don't remember it. Neither of these seem particularly over the top to me; one is brought up because it fits into the context and one is highlighted because they're seeking more information about it in particular.

This isn't really directed at you, but as sort of a general comment. I often find that people complain about people overreacting to problematic things in older media, but I don't think acknowledging that reality exists is an overreaction. There's a huge gap between "oh hey, Friends had a lot of gay jokes" and "Netflix should remove this trash and Matthew Perry should be murdered via assassin". We can still watch and play things from over ten years ago, we can still talk about them, why wouldn't this stuff come up as well?

 

[Komii]

Like I said in the post you responded to, my memory of IS has mostly faded to the point at which all I really remember about it is the horrible, horrible battle system.

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Game has several misseable lines of dialogues inside town and most if them change between missions, and mid dungeon crawling, if you leave the dungeon and walk around, you can miss sidequests this way too, as well as some background info on some main characters (like how people treated a certain someone at school and how did they respond do that)

 

[Deleted member 11413]

It's not like he could have written every line of dialogue in the games he directed, so I never thought it was exclusively his fault.

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Japanese culture is conservative. These attitudes are common in Japanese culture. I'm sure there are plenty of ATLUS employees with transphobic/homophobic views. Games are a collaborative effort, so multiple people probably had a hand in every single one of these decisions. Hashino led the projects though, so it's understandable he would bear the brunt of the criticism.

 

[Deleted member 31817]

Wow I never thought a Persona game made several years before the most recent one which still has glaring issues with the portrayal of LGBT characters would be transphobic.

/s

 

[ZiggyPalffyLA]

The whole fucking series has major issues with homophobia and offensive portrayals of gay men yet it's gotten a pass for years. Fuck people who normalize it (yes, including Sakurai).

 

[Bradford]

I'm playing through Innocent Sin right now in Japanese, so I'll keep an eye out for this joke and post a screenshot comparison for the script if I can find it, just to see if it's an issue with the original script or with the translation.

Gender identity is a cultural thing and while I'm unfamiliar with how every culture perceives gender, I think the more pertinent argument to make is that Western culture is/was completely insensitive to trans issues until like, 2015. Japan has its own issues I am sure, but I can't help but think that a lot of that stems from Western culture bleeding into their country and altering cultural thought processes.

Click to shrink...

If you want to blame western culture for this you'll need to go back to the Meiji restoration, maybe even during the rise of Rangaku to place that blame. Japan's got issues with LGBTQ identities the same as everywhere else, despite some pop culture making it seem like this is not the case. This stuff has roots going back pretty far in modern Japanese culture, which is precisely why threads like this pop up all the time.

 

[OrangeNova]

While I'd be curious what the original Japanese is, and the amount of dialogue(especially in the PS1 era) makes it seem like it could be a mix up.

Their track record with this stuff doesn't bode well.

 

[Lumination]

I'm not sure why the idea of overreacting is coming up. The article mentioned it as part of a discussion of Atlus' handling of LGBT+ issues. The topic the OP posted is just asking about the line because they don't remember it. Neither of these seem particularly over the top to me; one is brought up because it fits into the context and one is highlighted because they're seeking more information about it in particular.

This isn't really directed at you, but as sort of a general comment. I often find that people complain about people overreacting to problematic things in older media, but I don't think acknowledging that reality exists is an overreaction. There's a huge gap between "oh hey, Friends had a lot of gay jokes" and "Netflix should remove this trash and Matthew Perry should be murdered via assassin". We can still watch and play things from over ten years ago, we can still talk about them, why wouldn't this stuff come up as well?

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My comment wasn't directed at the OP at all. It was at the person in my quote, which you responded to as well. I thought the article was a fine read and the OP was pretty innocuous. Sorry for the misunderstanding; I'd rather not derail the thread further.