Onmi said:
Technically Kanji isn't Gay. He's more Pansexual than anything since he seems to latch onto anything that can comfort him (after all he wanted just as much as eveyrone else to see Naoko in a swim suit)
Don't forget, part of Kanji's massive confusion about his sexuality is caused by Nao
to. He doesn't understand why he feels the way he does around this "boy", then comes to grips with it.
Then finds out she's a girl.
A large part of his sexual confusion is the fact that he's slightly afraid of girls at first, after the way they teased him. But you're right: Kanji's sexuality is never openly stated and is more of a message about accepting yourself rather than "HOMOSEXUALITY IS OKAY MMKAY?"
Which is a good thing.
Naoto's character would also have been interesting to look at in this article. A fifteen year old girl who dresses and acts like a boy to the point of binding her chest, so that "people will take her seriously."
She has been doing this so long that everyone actually thinks she's a boy. She doesn't want to be a girl; apart from school, she works as a detective, in a workplace that is predominantly male. She has enough trouble being taken seriously due to her age, so she tricks everyone into thinking she's a boy to stop that also being used against her. This whole fear of not being taken seriously has made her start to hate being born female; she just wants to be a boy. This represents itself in her area in the world in the television, with her shadow being a young boy crying for attention. Who wants to perform a gender reassignment surgery on Naoto.
After saving her from her dungeon, she becomes more accepting of her gender, but she's still a little uncomfortable about it. When completing her social link, she fully accepts the whole "Yes, I'm a girl, but it shouldn't change things" message.
I've noticed the entire game is pretty much a representation of issues that teenagers can go through. Wanting to find their own place in the world, popularity, gender issues, sexuality issues... It's rather deep.
Serenegoose said:
You know, as trivial as it might be to some people, the treatment of the 'birdo' character really has gotten to me, especially as this article was apparently about how we're so bigoted towards LGBT people, during which birdo is referred to as 'a guy who thinks he is a girl' and is 'gender confused' Wow, way to be incredibly transphobic whilst decrying homophobia. And then to put LGBT as a tag? Be honest. You apparently only care about LG and B at a push issues, or you wouldn't be so casually hateful towards a trans character, even if the character is -birdo-.
The "guy who thinks he's a girl" line is a direct quote from the SMB2(?) manual. It may explain the usage of that phrase.
