Guys I Watched Dead Meat's Danganronpa Kill Count And It Honestly Irks Me That They Considered Chihiro

guys i watched dead meat's danganronpa kill count and it honestly irks me that they considered chihiro a "they"

headcanons aren't canon!!!! chihiro is explicitly said to be male bc he was literally bullied into it to protect himself bc of japanese gender roles

if he was trans, he wouldn't have gone to mondo to be stronger- mondo was literally everything chihiro wanted to be from an outside perspective

and i don't think taichi would be the type to misgender his kid

canonically, chihiro is male. it's fine to have headcanons as long as it doesn't directly impede a character's story/arc. if you don't get that, you don't understand his character or story.

EDIT: (under the cut)

gender roles in japan are (or at least were) very strict. boys were supposed to be strong and chihiro was not, so he got bullied relentlessly for it. since he was seen as weak and feminine, he decided to pretend to be a girl to get the bullying to stop. and it worked. the only issue was that if he was ever found out, he’d be bullied even more for crossdressing.

chihiro never wanted to be a girl and only did it because he wanted the bullying to stop. he is quite literally uncomfortable at the others treating him as a girl.

chihiro looked up to mondo because he was a strong man and wanted to be trained by him- he even declined sakura’s offer because she was a woman.

the second motive made him motivated to share his secret- to be strong enough to let the truth out and finally be himself. a lot of his dialogue gives an insight on his insecurity of being weak and his desire to be a strong man. he wants to be a man.

if you headcanon him as trans, that is fine. that is your headcanon. my personal problem is that it feels like a lot of the takes i’ve seen undermine his story or it’s just people insisting he’s canonically trans. his character arc and over all characterization is very heavily centered around the topic of gender and gender roles/masculinity and i’m pretty sure it’s supposed to be a critique on those topics. and it’s important to keep in mind that these topics are seen differently between somewhere like the usa and japan. this game was released in 2010 and no game after has stated that chihiro identifies as anything different. alter ego- a program that chihiro created and i doubt he intended on sharing with anyone uses he/him pronouns for him. chihiro programmed something secret and gave himself he/him pronouns. the AI of chiaki that chihiro also helped create refers to chihiro as her and monomi’s father. it’s not supposed to be anything all that deep.

can his story be seen as an allegory? yes, absolutely. if you resonate with that, then that’s your comfort space. but don’t be one of those people that project onto the character.

my issue with dead meat’s kill count is that usually they follow canon and mention canon elements. to put chihiro as a “they/them” is just incorrect, no matter how much discourse it may create. this is my complaint. i know they took the safe route, but it is explicitly said that chihiro is a boy and identifies as such. i don’t remember if this was the japanese version only, but mondo refers to him using masculine pronouns and nicknames. chihiro is canonically a cisgender male and he always has been.

if you can identify with the trans take, that’s great- but please understand his character and the journey he goes through within the game. he’s not supposed to be trans representation so don’t look at it him like he is.

tl;dr - while i personally dislike the “chihiro is trans” headcanon, i don’t care if you do. my issue is that if you’re going to cover the game’s story and it’s characters, it needs to go off of canonical elements. acknowledging outside debates is fine, but don’t let headcanons bleed into your actual coverage.