rhymes with chameleon

Also the Zelgius flashback is not significantly different but ( Spoilers )

If you've ever wondered plot-crucial questions like, "How did Lillia end up with Ashnard?" you should probably check this out. This thing was pretty dramatically different in the Japanese.

( Huge Spoilers )

FE9 Cutscene: United ("The Bonds that Bind Us")

( United )

The fourth question on this page reads:

Penname: A Sexy Male Thief

Age: 16 Gender: Male

Question

This is a bit of a spoiler, but in your latest work you can have a female thief named Heather join up with you, right?

From Heather’s interactions with Nephenee, Ilyana, and “absolutely wonderful”¹ Lucia, she seems to be very fond of girls, but what the heck made her that way?

Does she simply dislike men, or was she traumatized against them and because of that worries incessantly, sleeplessly, and is so troubled that she cannot interact with them normally?

Since I used Heather as my number one unit through the very last chapter, I cannot help but worry greatly about this.

So I ask of you, please, won’t you enlighten me? orz.

Answer

She herself asserts that “such is her nature,” so wouldn’t you say she was born that way²?

I LOVE YOU NINTENDO

---

Translation notes:

¹ Not written as a quote in the OP, but the phrase is borrowed from what Heather says about Lucia.

² “born that way” is admittedly a pretty loaded phrase in English, but it’s a pretty accurate match to “生まれつき” — “by nature” or more literally “by birth”.)

So I finished that long-held-out no-resets FE9 Hard run, and wondered for the umpteenth time what "narisokonai" (all hiragana) was supposed to mean. So it occurred to me that I could check the RD glossary in Japanese.

What it says is quite interesting.

なりそこない(ナリソコナイ)

旧デイン国王の生物実験によって本来の性質を歪められたラグズを指す。 「化身」するとずっと元に戻らず常に高い戦闘力を維持できる。 しかしその代償として短命になる他精神が破壊されて凶暴化する。 特別な薬を用いることで使役できる。 実験途中に生まれた失敗作であることから、この名称で呼ばれる。

Coming from a biological experiment of the former Daein king, this term refers to laguz whose original nature has been warped. When they "transform"*, they can constantly maintain a high level of battle performance without returning to their original state. However, as compensation, they become short-lived, and their hearts are destroyed and changed to be brutal. They can be enslaved by the use of a special drug. Because of the fact that they were failures born from the middle of an experiment, they are named thusly.

So I'm guessing narisokonai is broken up something like, nari from become (noun form) and sokonai from to fail in doing (as in an experiment; noun form).


*Transform = "Keshin" - This is a term in itself in the glossary, which is explained further in its entry:

化身(ケシン)

ラグズ特有の能力。 一定の間"気"を高めることによって姿を変えること。 "化身"中は戦闘に関係するあらゆる能力が上昇する。

The characteristic ability of the laguz. It refers to how, after a fixed time, coming forth from raising their "ki," they change their shape. While "transformed," every ability related to battle is improved.

And yeah, "ki" here is the same as chi/qi/whatever, mystical Asian energy force thing.

It's interesting that laguz transformation is apparently done and maintained by powering up DBZ-style, instead of the "flipping a switch" style of transformation I had assumed. It makes more sense with why they have to morph back, too.

Because I like him more than Kyza and Zihark and I did it for those two, so why not. Nothing earth-shattering, just the usual cuteness.

Picture of the artbook entry.

セネリオ
傭兵団の若き参謀

　傭兵団の参謀で、その知略は一国の軍師にも引
けをとらない。アイクに対する絶対の忠誠を誓っ
ており、彼以外に本心を見せることはない。
　実は、デイン国王アシュナードとその寵姫アム
リタ（竜鱗族）の息子なのだが、セネリオ本人は、
そのことを知らない。

if .....
アイクとの支援関係をＡにすると、エピ
ローグでアイクと２人で旅に出る。セネリオ
にとっては、アイクのそばこそが自分の居場
所だったということが。


Soren
The Mercenary Group's Young Staff Officer

As the mercenaries' staff officer, not even a whole country's tacticians outdo such resourcefulness. He holds a vow to direct his absolute loyalty to Ike; he does not display his true feelings to anyone else.

In truth, he is the son of Ashnard, King of Daein, and his favorite mistress Almedha, but Soren himself doesn't know that.

if .....
If his support relationship with Ike is A, in the epilogue, with Ike the two of them leave on a journey. As far as Soren is concerned, Ike's side is the place where he belongs.


Translation Note: I'm not totally sure what that "ga" is doing at the end of the last bit hanging out there. My theory is that 分かる is implied at the end, which would just mean that "he knows that Ike's side is the place where he belongs". I doubt it'd produce a radical difference in meaning.

raphiael mentioned that someone said Kyza is canonically trans, to which I was like "wtf, since when?" Since they provided a source, I decided to check it out myself.

Long story short: It's true. It's all true.

Here's a picture of Kyza's entry in the 20th Anniversary Art Book.

Transcription:
キサ
体は男、心は女？

普段は模範的な兵士なのだが、
興奮するとなぜかオカマ口調にな
る。リィレとは、隊長であるライ
を巡ってライバル関係にあり（も
ちろんライにその気はない）。


Here's a fairly literal translation I drew up. I'm using "he" here, but I need to note that there are no gender-specific pronouns used in the Japanese -- I'm using this as a syntactic demand of English only. Also I tried to preserve what goes in what line, but a few things are shifted around because, again, the grammar is fundamentally very different.

Kyza (kisa)
Male body, female heart?

Although usually an exemplary soldier,
when excited, for some reason his speech becomes that of an okama.*
With Lyre, in regards to Commander Ranulf,
he is in a rivalry.
(Of course, Ranulf is not gay.)
EDIT 6/15/14: Revisiting this, I'm less sure of this line. The dictionary I used indicated that "sono ki" is a euphemism that means homosexual, but now that I have more experience with the language I think it may be indicating his general disinterest in their tiff over him.

*okama: This is a general Japanese cultural term, and to my understanding it can mean anything from an effeminate gay dude to a crossdresser to a transwoman. In my limited understanding, I'd compare its scope with drag queen.
EDIT 6/28/14: ... But as an often-derogatory word that some queen people choose to reclaim, it may be more similar to fag in that sense.

Feel free to get a second opinion on this. I'm 100% confident in the factual aspects of my transcription/translation.

With regard to Kyza's feminine speech... here are some examples from 3-7 "Catfight".

[キサ]
いいえ、是非
あたしに！▼

Kyza uses atashi! (A rather cutesy and definitely feminine word for "I", usually reserved for the likes of Mia and Mist.)

[キサ]
あ、あんた…
人が気にしてることをよくも……▼
ライ隊長！
こんな貧相な猫娘には
不相応な代物だと思うわ！▼
知的で戦闘力に優れるあたしにこそ
相応しいものですよね！？▼

Pure level of emotionality aside, it's worth noting that Kyza's sentence endings are also very feminine -- in particular, the use of wa is considered exclusively feminine.

But before you start celebrating about Tellius being progressive and all that, I feel the need to point out a few things:

- I'm not intimate enough with Japanese culture or LGBT movements to say, but the use of okama definitely strikes me as a non-progressive term.

- Lololol romantic Ike/Ranulf is officially not canon SOREN FOREVER. I mean, uh, look, one of those rare words of god on sexuality!

- Devdan's (and Danved's,, if we're keeping track) speech is equally feminine, if not moreso. In the Japanese version, his quirk was sounding like a coy woman. It somehow got translated to sounding mentally impaired. I'm pretty sure it was meant to be played for laughs.

- I'm not convinced Kyza wasn't meant to be played for laughs. I think you're looking at a gag character more than a flagbearer of trans characters in mainstream media.

- And for that matter, joke character or not, let's not forget he wasn't allowed in our mainstream media. Given that the translators were comfortable with the only black character in PoR talking in third person, and nuking the romantic aspect between Ike and Soren in FE9, I somewhat doubt that their motivation was sensitivity regarding gay stereotypes.



Also I think I owe measuringlife an apology about this subject.

You were right all along, man. You were right about fabulous Kyza.

I'm going to wake up from this dream any minute now.

EDIT: I translated Cat Fight, for those of you who are more excited by Japanese Kyza than Ike/Soren. :P

More recent version here.

( PoR Ike/Soren A Support )