Undertale / Deltarune / Toby Fox Discussion

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Two Dollars said:
Wait, really? I’m genuinely surprised, even Kirby has neutral pronouns in Japan.
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Kirby has actually been referred to by 彼 (kare) a few times in Japan, which is the rough equivalent to he/him as a masculine third-person pronoun. In the media where he talks (like manga and light novels) he also talks in a relatively masculine way, like you'd expect a young boy to talk. Going off something Sakurai said, the official stance on Kirby's gender seems to be basically "he's mostly treated as a young boy, but he doesn't have a physical gender like a human so if he wants to hang out in female-only spaces and do girly things (as he's been officially shown to do sometimes) then that's completely normal since he's not technically male."

Smack Patrick said:
Cool, any other neat tidbits you can share if you know them?
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Susie talks in an almost exaggeratedly masculine way in Japanese, including using the first-person pronoun ore (オレ), but there's a few times in chapter 1 when she's caught off guard and instead uses atashi (アタシ) which is basically on the opposite end at the most feminine first-person pronoun. When she talks to Toriel at the end of chapter 2, her trying to act formal at first and call her ma'am is translated as her talking in a more formal and feminine way with the same pronoun change.

Lancer uses boku-sama (ボク様) as a first-person pronoun, which is a combination of the more formal/innocent sounding masculine pronounce boku (僕) and the honorific sama (様) which not something you're supposed to stick at the end of a pronoun but there's a thing in Japanese fiction where sometimes a guy will call himself ore-sama (オレ様) to show he's super full of himself. So Lancer's usage is a weird combo that conveys he's both acting conceited yet is actually an innocent kid who doesn't really know what he's doing. It's also a thing in Japanese fiction for characters like royal princes to use the honorific ue (上) when referring to older family members, such as calling their father chichi-ue (父上), which is a super respectful term that's archaic as far as real life usage. So Lancer mixes the super respectful/formal with the cutesy and casual by calling his dad papa-ue (パパ上). Him calling Rouxls "lesser dad" is translated as him calling him "sub-papa-ue" (サブパパ上).

Seam is called Nui (ヌイ) in Japanese, which means sewing or stitching (縫い) and is a Japanaese anagram for inu which means "dog". Even though they're more of a cat, but whatever. They use atashi (あたし) as their first-person pronoun and their speech generally leans torwards sounding feminine.

December's nickname is different in Japanese. Instead of Dess, it's Dise (ディセ) which I guess you could reverse romanize as Dece. Basically it's the first two syllabols of Decemeber as view by a Japanese speaker, like "dih-say". Noelle calls her Dece-oneechan (ディセおねえちゃん). If you're not a weeb, oneechan is a simultaniously respectful (because of the o- at the start) but cutesy (because of the -chan at the end instead of the normal -san) way of saying big sister.

Oh yeah, something that may or may not mean anything, in Japanese there's seperate words based on if a sibling is older or younger, you can't refer to a sibling without making that clear. When Susie mentions the cursed sister character in Dragon Blazers 2, in Japanese she makes it clear it's an older sister. Speaking of Dragon Blazers, it's called Dragon Blader in Japanese, which I can only guess is a reference to the SNES JRPG Soul Blazer, which in Japan was originally called Soul Blader.
 
Smiling Trashbag said:
I wonder how they'll feel once they discover that the japanese translation (which Toby oversees) doesn't use neutral pronouns for Kris.
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Unless I’m mistaken pretty sure there was something like this like months ago or something and the Main outcome “your translation isn’t an excuse to misgender kris “ or something,

Not sure if the Japanese translation got brought up though
 
Newcomer 42 said:
Is Kris considered a boy in Japanese then?
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No, it's just that Japanese can more easily side-step ever referring to Kris in a gendered way by having characters refer to him by name or in ways that drop the subject of the sentence (using neither his name or a pronoun). The lack of a "they" means there's just nothing suggesting he's "non-binary", which is something most Japanese people have even less of a clue about than most English-speakers.

For reference, the Pixiv encyclopedia article on him written by Japanese fans says
性別については代名詞としてthey/themが用いられる等(原語版)、作中を通して言及が避けられている。
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basically meaning "In regards to gender, things such as using they/them as pronouns (original language version) are done so that the text avoids ever giving a definitive statement."

The Japanese Wikipedia article simply says "Gender is unknown." (性別は不明。)

If you mean more what do Japanese fans consider him regardless of the game being vague, a boy obviously, everyone does.

To give a different Asian perspective since it popped up in my google search: Namuwiki, which from what I understand is like a Korean Wikipedia with a more informal tone and more popular there than actual Korean-language Wikipedia, has an entire section about gender in their article on Kris where they talk about it being kept vague and the they/them pronouns being used in English, and mention how some English-speakers "who are sensitive to these matters" believe Kris is non-binary, but concludes that it can't be said for sure if the gender-neutrally is because that's how Kris identifies socially or if it's because the monsters can't tell his physical sex.
 
Retarded Weeb said:
No, it's just that Japanese can more easily side-step ever referring to Kris in a gendered way by having characters refer to him by name or in ways that drop the subject of the sentence (using neither his name or a pronoun). The lack of a "they" means there's just nothing suggesting he's "non-binary", which is something most Japanese people have even less of a clue about than most English-speakers.

For reference, the Pixiv encyclopedia article on him written by Japanese fans says

basically meaning "In regards to gender, things such as using they/them as pronouns (original language version) are done so that the text avoids ever giving a definitive statement."

The Japanese Wikipedia article simply says "Gender is unknown." (性別は不明。)

If you mean more what do Japanese fans consider him regardless of the game being vague, a boy obviously, everyone does.

To give a different Asian perspective since it popped up in my google search: Namuwiki, which from what I understand is like a Korean Wikipedia with a more informal tone and more popular there than actual Korean-language Wikipedia, has an entire section about gender in their article on Kris where they talk about it being kept vague and the they/them pronouns being used in English, and mention how some English-speakers "who are sensitive to these matters" believe Kris is non-binary, but concludes that it can't be said for sure if the gender-neutrally is because that's how Kris identifies socially or if it's because the monsters can't tell his physical sex.
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"It's just up to interpretation" bros stay winning

I knew Toby had it in him
 
Retarded Weeb said:
Speaking of Dragon Blazers, it's called Dragon Blader in Japanese, which I can only guess is a reference to the SNES JRPG Soul Blazer, which in Japan was originally called Soul Blader.
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Interesting detail. When someone mentioned reccomendations for RPGs similar in tone to Undertale/Deltarune, I was actually going to mention the Quintet trilogy of soul blazer, illusion of gaia and terranigma, more so since Toby seems to have referenced them a bit, like how Lancer hanging out in your pocket is similar to Lily doing the same thing in Illusion of Gaia. Also, the different versions of the prophecy remind me a bit to the light & dark Ark reveal in Terranigma
 
Toby's yuri fetish will rob us from this.

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Retarded Weeb said:
No, it's just that Japanese can more easily side-step ever referring to Kris in a gendered way by having characters refer to him by name or in ways that drop the subject of the sentence (using neither his name or a pronoun). The lack of a "they" means there's just nothing suggesting he's "non-binary", which is something most Japanese people have even less of a clue about than most English-speakers.

For reference, the Pixiv encyclopedia article on him written by Japanese fans says

basically meaning "In regards to gender, things such as using they/them as pronouns (original language version) are done so that the text avoids ever giving a definitive statement."

The Japanese Wikipedia article simply says "Gender is unknown." (性別は不明。)

If you mean more what do Japanese fans consider him regardless of the game being vague, a boy obviously, everyone does.

To give a different Asian perspective since it popped up in my google search: Namuwiki, which from what I understand is like a Korean Wikipedia with a more informal tone and more popular there than actual Korean-language Wikipedia, has an entire section about gender in their article on Kris where they talk about it being kept vague and the they/them pronouns being used in English, and mention how some English-speakers "who are sensitive to these matters" believe Kris is non-binary, but concludes that it can't be said for sure if the gender-neutrally is because that's how Kris identifies socially or if it's because the monsters can't tell his physical sex.
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Honestly before I even heard about all this discourse I just assumed Kris was genderless, not non-binary.
I had assumed, and still do to a certain point, that the reason they refer to him without gender isn't some heckin' valid representation nonsense but rather something significant to the plot. (i.e. revealing that they are not actually human, or what have you.)

If it was le heckin' valid representation I feel like Toby would have just said so at this point. It's obviously meant to imply something that will only make sense after the game is finished.

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