A Brief History of Trans Women in Nintendo Games 

The whole finding a vibrator to prove she’s a girl has gotta be the wildest statements I have EVER seen regarding a Nintendo game. Period.

I think Vivian is the best trans representation thus far, because not only her looks aren't a parody and she does look like a woman, but she is also victim of transphobia coming from her sisters, which is sad, but very relatable. And also, the way she decides to accompany Mario because he accepts her for who she is, which makes her happier than her sisters ever did, is very sweet and also relatable. Basically, Vivian is the most accurate depiction of what being trans is like.

This was cute. I was aware of the examples, but I wasn’t aware of how explicitly they’ve coded Birdo as trans. The Captain Rainbow punchline does make me smile a bit, just because it’s a funny reductive way they conclude she’s a girl.

Mario apologizing for transphobia took me OUT 😭😭

Just to clarify a bit on the Samus thing, the person claiming Samus was trans (while also making fun of trans people by using derogatory term) was a backround artist who had nothing to do with Samus's design, and the person who later corrected it was one of the two involved in creating Samus. So, the original claim was made as a transphobic joke by some random backround artist.

Two short corrections/additions: The Italian version of TTYD is actually surprisingly progressive in its translation of Vivian, validating her identity rather than continuously implying her to be a guy There is a female equivalent of the Black Belt class in the form of the Battle Girl, so the fact that Beauty Nova doesn't refer to her past self as a Battle Girl makes her identity as a trans woman a bit more explicit in the English version as well

i always thought it was really weird and nonsensical that vivian's sister called her ugly all the time so the context of her being trans and the original dialogue being transphobia instead just makes so much more sense. it's such a shame that one of the best trans characters in gaming had her identity completely erased in the US version

Seeing Birdo being called "it" was so painful

I’d like to imagine Gerudo Link has had a more positive impact than bad; it definitely made me realise some things about myself

I do remember hearing that BOTW’s Link was specifically designed to be androgynous so that any gender of player could see themselves in him, so I always thought the Gerudo outfit was a representation of that. The outfit, and Links ability to be in Gerudo town with all the woman and still be comfortable with himself and them, really spoke to me as a nonbinary person. Though as much as I think that the Gerudo outfit itself was included without any ill will (especially since I don’t know if discussion of trans people in bathrooms is as prevalent in Japan as it was/is in the US/UK and other English speaking countries), I definitely cringed when I was talking to Vilia. There is no excusing the way they treated her :[ I can only hope that Tears of the Kingdom continues to make strides towards inclusivity, as well as other Nintendo franchises

Birdo is a total queen. Excited to play her when Kart Deluxe updates

I'd like to point out the Monty Python image you used at the end to demonstrate trans women being used as a punchline. That character, Loretta, came out to her friends towards the middle of the movie and after that scene, she was properly gendered throughout. The joke was that she wanted to have babies but did not seem to grasp that she biologically could not. It is problematic, but it was probably, unfortunately, the best representation a trans woman could hope for in 1979.

There’s a few more trans Nintendo characters not mentioned here, both from Animal Crossing. Gracie, the giraffe fashion designer, is trans according to the very first game in Japanese (unfortunately it’s a lot of the same transphobic rhetoric, apparently there is a line that the cranky villagers could say sometimes that reveal her “real name” which sucks, but I’m glad she’s at least successful as a character). The other is a villager character named Velma, a goat. It should be noted that she is the only female goat to have a goatee, although that’s not what I’m focusing on; in the GameCube game, her default clothing is a Gracie-made design. I like to think that they’re girlfriends and that Gracie made that outfit for Velma.

Birdo is a girlboss, I don’t play her, but the people who do are the ones you can really trust. I think the history of how minority groups in general were portrayed in media is very interesting. It’s always a bit of a rocky road to say the very least. I think with trans people we are mid way through the story. We’re not at a state where good trans representation is common, but we’re also not in a state where they are made a complete mockery in media. It’ll be very interesting to see how it develops because I do believe it will and is getting better, it’s just a matter of when.

The part of link cross dressing to enter the garudo village was ( in my opinion) just a call back to ocarina of time were he had to infiltrate the village to advance the quest too, but when got caught he was kicked out because he was a male. And Nintendo knowing and heavily leaning into that link is seen as androgynous giving him the chance to cross dress to sneak in. I really hope that it was just that innocent idea why the developer made it that way, regardless of politics ( especially the game took a longer time to make)

Feels kind of misleading to mention Samus. Considering she isn't trans. But It's good to see you explained the reason for bringing her up though, she appearing on the thumbnail was one of the only reasons I clicked on it. This video is great and explains these all very well.

Love that Yoshi is canonically dating a trans woman.

First off fantastic video, second There was one additional positive for birdo in the Mario kart series, in Mario kart 8 (and deluxe) there are advertisements on the side of race track that advertised the “Women in racing organization “ and one of the versions of the ad feature birdo alongside peach and daisy

I am so upset that Poison was totally overlooked as she originated from a Capcom game exclusively on Nintendo.

I saw Vivian as a transwoman because of how she uses she/her pronouns in English and because of her excitement in meeting someone else who is interested in trying a different gender expression to their asab. This could definitely be me projecting how I feel about meeting other people who don't conform to their assigned sex. But it was nice to see someone who looked nice and seemed happy presenting as their true self.

Huberts hair just has that "I want a feminine haircut but not that obvious so I will not get in trouble" quality to it

Eh I don't think hubert is trans. I just think hubert wants to do something he can never do and he can't say it out loud because of his character nit really able to be vulnerable to others

Vivian is now officially trans in the english remake!

In the Manga, Samus is shown to be biologically female and referred to by those close to her as female. I had read the manga multiple times to find any evidence for or against her being trans (also because it’s a good read) and found none to support it. It does, however, seem to portray her more as asexual.

Birdie's section made me cry :( I love her sm

TIMESTAMPS (@ymyrgul feel free to copy these into the description): 0:00 - Intro 0:42 - Birdo 8:04 - Samus 10:37 - Vivian 12:24 - Beauty Nova 13:56 - Vilia 19:21 - Hubert

Honestly this video was very informative. I came, unfortunately, expecting some reaches based on small amount of evidence as that is what I am use to but honestly this video was breath of fresh air as you clearly pointed out your evidence, where you got from and you made it clear when you knew something and said thing was confirmed versus being hinted at or suggested at. I will say, while a bright outlook on Hubert as trans, I think it is just him wanting to ride a pegasus as there is another instance of this in warriors where the main male protagonist exclaims outright that he wishes to be a pegasus knight as he admires them and thinks knights are cool. Now obviously I could be wrong and the intention for Hubert to be trans is what was intended but I think it's simply that he wishes to ride a pegasus instead of a wyvern due to their elegance and probably more steady flight. Hubert just seems like that kind of guy.

I think we can all agree that the first trans character ever was the pawn in chess........ You know, cause it can turn into a queen.... PLS DON'T KILL ME

It’s worth mentioning on the note of Birdo that in Mario Kart 8 on Royal Raceway, there’s some signs for the Women of Racing Organization, which features a render of Birdo along with renders of Peach and Daisy, I just thought this was notable since it’s more than a text entry somewhere in the game about her and you didn’t mention it in the video

Link and Samus aren’t trans? What do you mean?

as a Zelda fan I can say I truly thought that maybe Vilia was dressing like a woman because you know.. the legend of the Gerudo is that every 100 years a male gerudo is born and he becomes their king, but this male Gerudo would be Ganondorf and well years years later it be taboo for a male gerudo to be.. around gerudos, so to protect him he had to be dressed and act like a Vai, though we can all see Vilia started to actually Feel like a true Vai and so he became a She, raised to be female being ok with that and being femenine made it right for her. Bet she has a lot of struggles since her physic is not that 'pleasant' sadly; so here we can all see she lives outside the city a little solitary to avoid the bullying or maybe the 'suspicious' looks of something that poor Vilia has to hide.. but the book says t..they are a hylian..? oowh;

Three Houses is one of my favorite games. I haven't thought about the note Hubert made, but it's a nice headcannon, I enjoy it

I think Kirby has a decent amount of good trans rep, although there aren't any transfem/trans woman characters. It's moreso in regards to non binary people, Kirby is gender neutral in Japan, Morpho Knight is referred to exclusively with it/its and Fecto Elfilis is referred to with they/them. There are other characters who are speculated to be non binary as well, such as Gryll who's literally never referred to with any pronouns of any kind (due to having only made a major appearance in a Japan only puzzle game where nobody references them besides themself and only making cameo appearances afterwards.) The cool thing about Kirby is that while trans topics are never mentioned specifically, Kirby and other characters such as Dedede are shown as being gender nonconforming without it being presented as anything wrong. In fact there's some White Day and Valentine's Day artwork posted to the Japanese Kirby Twitter account (white day is a day where people give reciprocal gifts after Valentine's Day.) The Valentine's Day artwork only shows female characters making treats while the male characters wait outside for them, whereas the white day artwork shows the opposite (only that the female characters are off screen.) The sole exception is Kirby who's present inside as both parties make their gifts, him also having a chef hat implies that he's also helping with this. This could imply that Kirby may be bigender. I wanna also bring up Pokemon again, there's a Japan only manga named How I Became A Pokemon Card. This manga features a trans boy named Akari, his transgender identity being a secret to everyone. except his mother until he was forced to wear a skirt in middle school. Akari's first Pokemon was a Pikahu, but the sad thing is that his mother only gave him said Pokemon once he promised that he'd act more feminine if he got it (in addition to considering it his graduation, birthday and christmas gift all in one.) Heck he didn't even want a Pikachu at first, as he wanted an equally cool Pokemon to his best friend (Akira) who got a Scyther. Upon getting the Pikachu, he stormed off into the woods in anger and once pursued by Akira and Pikachu, his best friend Akira scolded Akari by claiming that he wasn't acting like neither a male or a female, but rather like "a pathetic human being". In the end Pikachu proves it's worth by defeating a herd of Ariados and Akari learns that coolness isn't an objective fact, but the transphobia he faces isn't really addressed or called out (at least according to the Bulbapedia page, havent read the full manga yet) Idk if this is exactly good rep, but the manga does portray Akari as a boy so I suppose it's fine? Pokemon is an interesting series in terms of gender in all honestly, not only are there many pokemon with undiscovered genders but some glitchs/translation errors actually have led to some Pokemon changing genders. The Pokemon Azurill has a different gender ratio to it's evolutions and 1/3 female Azurill will evolve into a a male Marill prior to generation 6, where this was fixed. In Pokemon Mystery Dungeon Explorers of Time/Darkness/Sky, the character Wigglytuff is presented as a man as they're referred to exclusively with he/him pronouns. They would later reappear in Super Mystery Dungeon however this time being gendered with she/her in the English localization, this was just a translation error but Wigglytuff's personally one of my favourite PMD characters so headcanoning them as trans is kinda nice to me. It's also worth noting that most legendaries are gender unknown/genderless but Solgaleo and Lunala are referred to as being both male and female (despite being coded as genderless), and every legendary in Mystery Dungeon is gendered in a binary way. Honestly PMD's approach feels like just something poorly aged, like they assumed people wouldn't understand if they used they/them pronouns but unfortunately this still hasn't changed with the newer titles (the last title being a remake of the first game which came out in 2020, unfortunately not changing any genders/pronouns.) sorry for the super long comment, but i hope you like it! I think there are also some non binary people in Mother 3 but idk much about that game myself, so yeah.

I’m surprised there wasn’t at least a passing mention of how it’s canon that all Toads choose their gender. It was meant to explain why all the Toad children we see are guys (excepting Mario RPG which is very likely not canon anyways) but it was cute of them to say. I also remember the transphobes being mad at this so, you know, all the better to say every Toad or at least every Toadette is trans.

Loved the video. The inclusion of the original Japanese script in many a case was a nice touch. Weirdly enough, I'd say James Somerton's video on generally intersecting ground ends up feeling more positive in the end. Then again, bigger pool to fish from. That said, this further reinforced my opinion that Paper Mario is Nintendo's greatest series, despite never playing it, nor other Nintendo titles!

With the pegasus knight thing there's something very similar that happened with Ignatz and Marianne's supports in Three Hopes! Please watch them, the whole support session honestly feels so trans-coded and Marianne's very sweet about it.

While not a trans character Xenoblade Chronicles 3 has a non-binary character named Juniper, they are never referred to with male or female pronouns, their english voice actor is non-binary and even in the game's code their gender is 2 where male characters are 0 and female characters are 1, Juniper is a hero character which are optional 7th party members, though Juniper is a non-optional hero as they teach the party how to rail grind which is necessary to progress

Why is Samus there? She's not trans, that was just some bullshit rumor someone on Twitter posted.

I personally don't think Samus is transgender but everyone else sure is! Great video miss!

If you read the manga, you see that samus was actually a little girl at one point, showing that she is (most likely) not trans.

I have to, jokingly, respond to link's age being a problem... I think the problems of Link's chronological age in any relationships might be offset by him having severe memory loss most of the time >.> Link's dating life is *fraught* in this story!

Yoshi is T4T real

The Pokémon one about the black belt went WAY over my head as a kid, all I could think was just beating her Pokémon 😂

I personally wouldn't call Samus Trans but instead missgendered woman, but i get where are you going for

Thanks for making this video. It's interesting to see and I enjoyed it. You asked for feedback and all I would say is sometimes your music is a little louder than it needs to be while you're talking and so it distracts from your voice. Other than that, good vid. I subscribed ❤

Shiver was highly implied to be non binary during the build up to the release of Splatoon 3. I don’t remember the details but people have said the same guy who censored Vivian being trans in NA was the one who said Shiver was female. Most people have moved on from this discussion but our fandom enjoys hcs of Shiver being many identities. Personally I use she/they for them. It’s disappointing we were so close to getting an enby idol, but at least they destroyed gender in the player customisation

The Spanish, French, and Italian flags killed me.

Hey, I have no idea how this showed up in my recs, but I was genuinely floored to check this (I like listening to things in the background) and see the viewcount was so low!! I really really enjoyed this, and the amount of research and personal translation, including explanations and clarifications of such is incredible. I appreciate content like this so much, and it genuinely kinda shocked me to see it bc I'd never seen this topic brought up as far as Nintendo characters go. I'm NB and GF, and even if I don't share some of these (i suppose one or two could be considered as such, while others are obvious and undeniable) headcanons, its downright lovely to see such heartfelt sympathy in interpretation. I also like, NEVER EVER comment on videos (maybe three times in ten years lmao) and i wanted to say before anyone came in to be ugly or shitty to you, that you've done a great service, your editing was great, i couldnt stop laughing near the end with the spinning gerudo etc. I really honestly wish you the best, and i hope you make many more videos on things you find enjoyable or just wish to share, and that you learn quickly and easily even better ways to portray ur thoughts thru them. Thank you again for this!!! I look forward to more from your channel!!! Have a wonderful day! ♡♡♡

I'm cis, and thought that in this day and age, trans rep would be great, but this video has really opened my eyes, thanks!

a great video! a lot of sad moments, but i see you tried your best to lighten the mood in the end felt a pinch of "ouch" when you said "i will refer to her as birdo, even though i believe birdetta is her preferred name". sure you made this decision out of good intentions and this is just a character in a videogame who cannot be sad because somebody used the name they don't prefer, so i stayed till the end and wasn't disappointed. thank you for your content!

On the topic of Fire Emblem, there's another trans character from that series, that being Kyza from Radiant Dawn. In the Japanese version of the game, they use a clearly feminine speech pattern and their page in the 20th anniversary encyclopedia says "body is male, heart is female?" while also refering to them as an okama (which, from what I understand, is a Japanese term which can mean from effeminate or crossdressing man to trans woman). In the English localization they removed almost all of that and Kyza is refered to as a guy, and then in the more recent mobile game Fire Emblem Heroes they use they/them pronouns for them (which is why I've been using those throughout this comment), kind of implying they're non-binary. Overall, pretty interesting, but unfortunately the representation here is almost on the same level of transphobia as Birdo's "he thinks he is a woman", and keep in mind that Radiant Dawn came out in 2008....

This was an amazing video. That being said, i feel like the Hubert one at the end is kind of a stretch. If the devs were intending him to be trans or trans-coded, there would be more than one piece of evidence to suggest that. And likewise, while it’s true that pegasi usually don’t allow men to ride them, it is implied in Thracia 776 and Fates that they are willing to cooperate with men if the rider wishes. In fact, male Pegasus knights are encountered as enemies in Mystery of the Emblem. And even beyond that, does Hubert even know that Pegasi almost only allow women to command them?

Nice video overall, though I mostly disagree on the conclusiveness (or even likeliness) of Hubert being a trans woman. The rest seem pretty obviously transcoded (other than Samus, of course), but Hubert seems to value the occupation of being a pegasus knight more, not really the being a woman part. It isn't hard to imagine how appealing being a pegasus knight would be, in fact, in the note Hubert explicitly states that they wish to be one to "indulge in the lofty view", nothing to do with being a woman. I myself have a sort of personal example relating to this. I had a wish (and to be honest, I still sort of do) that I would be able to become a mother, which is impossible as I am male. Nothing to do with wanting to be a woman, I just wanted motherhood, as I saw it as the deepest, most intimate connection you can have. Is it possible that Hubert is trans? Yes. Your interpretation is perfectly valid, just I am not very convinced is all. Sorry if it seems I am denying Hubert's trans-ness for the sake of it, my sole intention is for discussion and laying out my thoughts.

I'm a Trans Girl and love Nintendo Games and well not perfect representation i atleast appreciate the company trying to represente trans woman^^

13:00 I believe that the referenced dialogue is actually when she defeats you, as it is meant as a "I have improved from my previous state and that's why I won"

A very well made video, was a really nice watch. Thank you for ending on a possible high note

And I tought that Birdo is the name of the species like yoshi.

Samus is not trans, but there is a translation error in the american instruction booklet that accidentally describes Samus as a male, this is no proof that indicates that samus is trans but it is something curious to point out

Very in depth and engaging high quality video essay. Great content, keep it coming!

Fun fact: In Mario Kart 8 in the Sunshine Airport track there are voicelines over the loudspeakers in the airport section. One of these voice lines mention a “Miss Birdo”

Ignatz had a similar Pegasus knight experience in Fire Emblem Warriors: 3 Hopes. Which even before Ignatz's Support with Marianne, I read Ignatz as queer due to how hiding love of art seemed like a closet metaphor

I actually have an interesting fact about Catherine that I love sharing. In Super Mario Bros. 2, the original pink Birdo you fight from the start of the game, and the one that Nintendo tends to use for all their sports games and generally considers to be *the* Catherine, actually leaves the game about halfway through and her final appearance is as a friendly character. You fight her for the last time as a miniboss at the start of the second world in the original NES game, and then she vanishes until the end of fourth world, where she shows up to fire an egg for you to ride across a chasm on so you can enter Fry Guy's fortress. After that? She just leaves. All of the rest of the Birdo minibosses that appear in the game are the Red and Grey/Green varieties, but we unfortunately don't know their names because the original Japanese manual only used the original Catherine name preceded by the boss's color to describe them, and that's a real shame. While Catherine can be fought in her final appearance in-game, since she's just the miniboss object placed in a non miniboss context, her placement and the fact that she is the only way to get across the chasm to get to Fry Guy gives the implication that she is there to assist the playable characters rather than fight them. This is also slightly given further weight in Super Mario Advance, where both Clawgrip's entrance and some scrapped content for Mouser and Triclyde reveal that most, if not all of the bosses were meant to be regular sized enemies or animals that Wart turned into monsters using Dream Magic. If Robirdo's color is correct, which all of the bosses match their shrunken versions, even Triclyde's Cobrat form would have used his palette, then that is undoubtedly meant to be Catherine transformed into a monster and made to fight the player in the third world. After something like that, defecting to the side of the protagonists would only make sense, giving a bit more context to why she appears to help the players get to Fry Guy.

Maybe someone has already pointed this out, but the Japanese description of Vivian at 11:48, especially the way they wrote "Otokonoko" does not necessarily specify that Vivian is a male "daughter". Rather, I personally believe Vivian is just called "boy" here. The word "Otokonoko（男の子, 男 meaning "male", の "of", and 子 "child" = so "male child" altogethter）" is a very generic word for "boy", so generic that I can bet every 5 year old Japanese child knows it (though they obviously would not know to how to write it in Kanji). The word for "male daughter" that ymyrgul meant also reads "Otokonoko", but is written 男の娘: notice the second kanji is different here. It is a pan where the kanji 子 "child" in the original word is swapped with 娘, which means "daughter", or "young female". And it has, although a case of it being used is reported to be found in a magazine in the 70's according to Wikipedia, become somewhat popular almost only through its Internet usage and Japanese Otaku culture, and thus is an Internet slang that only people who are old enough, but not too old to be a nerd on the Internet, can understand. In the description at 11:48 the word in question is written オトコのコ, using neither of the kanjis but katakana, which makes the real meaning somewhat ambiguous. So you COULD interpret that as "male daughter", but considering the fact that the word 男の子 is far more generic especially when compared to its Internet slang version, and also that Nintendo always follows its policy of being family friendly, and googling the Internet slang version could lead you into some NSFW content, I believe it's pretty unlikely that Vivian is mentioned as "male daughter" here. Though I don't mean to deny the idea of the character being confused about its gender, at all. The way the character is described in the game, especially the appearance obviously, clearly depicts its gender ambiguity, which, from the western perspective, may be seen as those of trans, I suppose. I just wanted to share some linguistic and also somewhat cultural take of mine as a born Japanese who has been living in the country for the most part of his life.

I feel like Birdo is Birdetta’s dead name ✋🏾😔

I can't help but feel a weight on me as I think about trans representation in media. So much of it reinforces tropes that are used to villainize us, or otherwise portrays us as less than in some way. We're just people, it's not difficult or complicated. We just want to be seen as normal people 😫

Good video. I liked how you presented your evidence for each character to show why you came to each conclusion. While I knew about some of these (Birdo, Samus, the Pokemon trainer), I got to learn about more possible representation. The positive representation of Vivian was the best insight, as I've yet to play that game. My only criticism of the video is that the volume mixing is a bit off. The background music sounds a bit too loud and it was difficult to hear you in certain spots. Regardless, keep up the good work.

While I'm not trans, Link definitely did something to me.

I think the Hubert one is off base. as a long time fan of FE, the series has had some mixed representation throughout, good and bad. Hubert wanting to be a Pegasus knight doesn't really confirm much at all as he wouldn't be the first in the series to be a male who wishes they could fly on pegasus back, usually in games without the male flying class option of wyvern knights(usually still not genderlocked). Most likely in this case the reason for it being anonymous is the idea of him, a rather straight lace and serious type of person, wanting to ride what is seen as kind of a feminine graceful creature would be seen as very "out of character" and would probably be embarrassing for him to admit as it kind of goes against his whole aesthetic and the way he tries to present himself to others. A better example of a potentially trans character within the series would probably be Kyza in the Tellius entries, as the Japanese lore info + in game traits about how he speaks suggest he is likely FtM. as far as I'm aware he is the only good case for trans reps in the series with solid evidence to suggest it, though there are several bi/gay reps throughout

the way ppl really thought link crossdressing had anything to do w american laws against trans people is astounding to me.. like i can see the connection but come on this shi was in development for years before its release in JAPAN. not everything is about the us ffs

hoping the TTYD remake addresses vivian's trans identity in a positive way, unlikely but hoping there are also some characters that aren't explicitly trans but are coded that way, penny in scarlet and violet probably being the most notable. my reaction to penny was that she felt like maia arson crimew as a pokemon character, and crimew is nonbinary. her ace is also a sylveon, which has the same palette as the trans flag, and even says "Shine bright like the starry sky and become who you really want to be!" when she terastallizes it, and that line sounds like it's encouraging someone to come out

This was so so important work and I hope you keep it up beyond Nintendo

Samus IS NOT TRANS. Edit: most of the characters in the video are not trans. I don’t mean to be rude, but it is true

Now that Paper Mario TTYD is being remade I can't wait for the people who melted down over Starfield's pronouns to melt down over a trans character in a Mario game because the culture war has melted all of our brains.

This video made me realize I was trans for some dumb reason it’s been a year at this point and I am going to the gender clinic very soon I just want to say thank you :)

Great analysis, thanks for compiling all of this and sharing! I had to laugh at 17:58 though, I love the serious discussion while watching spinning T-poses with soothing music in the background lmao

I'm glad you mentioned the Zero Mission interview. Absolutely wild that that still exists on Nintendo's web page right now.

this was a really good video thank you for making it💕

the japanese description of birdo actually refers to birdo as ヤツ which translates to "guy, lad" so unfortunately it's pretty much just as transphobic as the english the whole first sentence 自分をメスと思いこんで口からタマゴなどをはくヤツ translates to something like "a guy who thinks of himself as a girl who spits up eggs and things of the sort"

samus ain't trans

The end of the video was super sweet and Im happy to know about that now! Great video!

i played the Italian version of Paper Mario: TTYD back around when it came out, and I can say: in that version, it is EXPLICITLY said that Vivian is transgender. Amazing representation!

The internet made me think birdo was a homosexual guy when I was really young. The internet sucks

It was interesting to see the common headcanon that Samus is trans finds somehow a basis from an official source, although such a bad one at that

loved this sm!!! looking forward to more videos like this

Captain Rainbow is crazy how did they make that game

As someone who recently came out publicly as a trans woman, I saw this in my recommended and had to check it out. I knew about Birdo, the Blackbelt/Beauty from X/Y and Villia. I had no idea about the rest of these. Thank you for sharing them. Trans people like myself need more representation within gaming. Especially positive representation. Though some of these examples don't really give "Good" representation, it's still important to have it, as well as sharing with with others like you did in this Video. Also to answer your question no, men who go as female wearing female clothing don't count as cross dressing. They are already women just not physically, their just wearing their normal clothing. I myself am currently physically male but portray as female wearing feminine clothing can confirm that it's not cross dressing. (Also personal thanks from me about covering this topic. You've earned a sub! 💟

Japanese games have a surprising amount of gender divergent characters, like Poison. I’ve always wondered why, given Japanese culture is fairly conservative

hasn't Samus always been a woman though?

3:08 you have to take in mind that is the American version of that, Nintendo of America was very transphobic they're also the ones who gave her the name birdo in the first place

Was hoping you'd cover the Magypsies from Mother 3, they're an interesting bunch for sure

I'm so fucking excited to watch this been waiting so long

This is an awesome video :D!!! Nice job! :)

i hope this doesnt sound transphobic but i dont think that Link was supposed to be trans or that they meant gerudo town to be transphobic, i just think they just made it that way for story stuff (yes i love zelda.) but anyway, i love this video oh my god just everything is so good

i really enjoyed this video!! you have a very relaxing voice 💟

Since we're talking about trans women in video games, iirc Madeline from Celeste is also trans :)

Had no idea birdo was trans . I heard the rumor she was a guy or not gendered and it’s very unfortunate that that’s all I heard abt her ☹️ birdo had always been a fav of mine she doesn’t deserve the mistreatment she gets

You know? I'm surprised Zelda and Sheik weren't even mentioned. Even though Sheik's gender is going to be the subject of debates until the heat death of the universe, there's a loooooot open to interpretation regarding it. While yes, at the end, it's revealed that Sheik is ultimately just a disguise so that Zelda can run around Hyrule without arousing Ganondorf's suspicions and that she used magic to do so, it opened the door to discussions as to what gender Sheik is. Ruto believes Sheik is a boy, Sheik never really clarifies because they feel it's not important as opposed to the greater task of destroying Ganon, and Zelda never clears it up after the fact. Later Nintendo descriptions of Sheik have also been mum on Sheik's gender as well, which has only furthered the debate. Given the content of this video, I wouldn't assume you'd come to a conclusion one way or another, but I felt it was at least worth mentioning because the capability for Zelda to use magic to change herself biologically to be a man to better play the part *is* there. Hell, there's some people who think Sheik and Zelda are two separate personae entirely, yet sharing one body.

Oh god this is so good I thought you’d have way more subs, this is great

Birdo actually appears in Wario Woods before Mario RPG. There she is actually the helper and kind of plays the role of Helper of Toad. I have no idea what the manual says about her in the game, but she is in there.

"Pegasus" Shows Alicorn XD I used to think Alicorns were Unicorns just with an upgrade.