The latest Animal Crossing game seems to have changed effeminate male characters into female ones for the 3DS game’s English language release. As pointed out by Legends of Localization, Animal Crossing: New Leaf‘s Japanese version features two characters named male “Grace” and “Roland”.
Both Grace, a giraffe, and Roland, a camel, both speak in effeminate styles. For example, Roland uses the female pronoun “atashi” to refer to himself in the game. How do we know they are actually males?
On the game’s official Japanese page, you can see the sex of each character listed as female. Grace’s listing even says, “Oh, just so you know, Grace is a he.”
However, as Legends of Localization notes, the character, renamed “Gracie” and “Saharah”, were changed into females for the West.
Kotaku is following up with Nintendo as to what prompted the change and will update this post should the company comment.
Update: As Kotaku reader reofeir notes, these characters have always changed sex for Animal Crossing’s Western releases.
SEX CHANGES IN ANIMAL CROSSING? [Legends of Localization — Thanks Clyde!]
Comments
11 responses to “Animal Crossing Characters Changed Sex For Western Release?”
It’s not really news and it’s not a big deal.
No, what’s really news is I hear in Japan, Street Fighter character Poison is actually a man!
Stop the presses!
edit: not that condone this sort of change. maybe it is a bit of a deal. SHRUGS
Dont forget about Birdo, Naoto (in a way) and the guy from chrono trigger.. and probably a few others
Id guess if you were gay and unable to marry the person you want to then this is a big deal. The reason the gay male giraffe character is changed to a female is because of how stupid the majority of americans are when it comes to homosexuals and their rights.
What makes the giraffe character gay? If we’re going to have a stupid debate and make this about gay rights then you can tell me what about that giraffe makes it any gayer than the rest of the Animal Crossing characters?
Let’s not get silly about this. Just because you’ve got in your head that a voiceless animal in a G-rated game is homosexual doesn’t mean you need to make it an issue about human beings getting married if they change the character.
It doesn’t appear to be a gay marriage issue, but it does relate to LGBT issues, particularly in this case transgender concerns. By eliminating characters that don’t conform to gender roles, or by altering them so that they become gender conformist, they are eliminating the opportunity for players with non-gender conformist experiences to see themselves reflected in the game.
Obviously, if you have no similar experiences of erasure from the games you play then maybe it seem like a non-issue for you. That’s your prerogative, but if you consider it a non-issue you shouldn’t care enough to comment when someone else takes issue.
Dont all camels have really long eyelashes?
This was ‘news’ for City Folk.
Sad to see Nintendo discriminating against the European transgender camel community.
Honestly I don’t know what gender 70% of the characters are.
Even worse though, if you try on a dress in the store as a guy, the chicken (goose?) working there says something like “it’s good to be adventurous sometimes”*. CLEAR DISCRIMINATION RIGHT THERE!
*so I’m told by a friend who did that.
Stand down soldier, this wasn’t written by Patricia.
I bought a dress day 1. You can’t stop me!
Welcome to 12 years ago.
Seriously, what a nothing story. I can’t believe you actually contacted Nintendo for comment! I hope they laughed you off the phone when you called them.
You know in this day and age, if there was media attention given to these characters being LGBT (or just plain metrosexual), it would eventually, if not immediately, come out in favour of keeping it like it was in Japan. there needs to be more discussion of LGBT characters in ‘children’s’ media and its a shame Nintendo were too afraid to do it.