#ok i edited it and ended up talking about adonis a little anyway cuz it matters still

[ozfi]

enstars is an interesting case in the department of how it handles transfemininity in a lot of ways, but especially in contrast between the first and second games.

es! releases in 2015, and starts early in the school year. these are highschool students in 2015 being both transphobic and misogynistic separately and also together to arashi (and anzu), functioning as the game chastising arashi in this early stage by shutting down her attempts at being seen as a woman but also as the characters being... highschoolers in 2015, seen clearly in the way that as the game/timeline progresses, the characters who were rude to her treat her better and more appropriately, and even apologize for their actions & fix the way they talk to and about her. this also functions as a way for the game to gradually handle trans issues more progressively than at launch (though, unfortunately, because of being a mobage with essentially a year-long story, it has to go back and fill in the timeline at times.)

then it introduces shu (2016), who is openly and obviously more intentionally feminine than any of the other "male" characters, has a part that is represented and often speaks through an extremely feminine doll (shu's own stated gender goals), and the writers gave her the trait of being especially fond of the first years/nazuna (because they have a young androgyny/femininity that puberty took from her) which was taken very badly by en fandom at the time and exacerbated in translation in ways that made her seem a lot more creepy than she actually was, though often the game treated the idea as though it was possible through nazuna's reactions, and, while when she eventually addresses wishing she was more feminine and talks about how puberty ruined her life it isn't demonized or punished in the text like arashi's wishes were, she still exists in a very murky grey area where nothing gender-wise is confirmed in the way arashi's is.

but this means in es!! (2020 jp/2022 en), when the official en tl is removing arashi's pronouns entirely and rewriting all instances of her expressing her thoughts about her gender, including explicit lack of comfort with being called masculine and disliking being shunted into male roles, shu is less punished for her femininity in the game because she exists in that grey space where she isn't canonized as a trans woman, still functionally uses he/him, is still referred to as a man by fandom, etc. even in being compared to her clearly transfeminine grandmother, the grandmother is referred to as a grandfather ingame. if you look at her es!! valkyrie outfit, it has actually gotten more gender affirming than it was in es! (she canonically makes her own unit uniforms. and most of the valkyrie outfits in general)

while arashi herself has gotten no less feminine, and in ways jp es!! tackles the issues of transphobia and transmisogyny a lot more head-on, it doesn't remove the problem of an official branch of the game trying to erase this aspect of her character and leave it not only to ambiguity but obscuring it fully (this is an example, but it's far from the only one). both shu's grey area and arashi's censorship are pretty blatant examples of "men" being able to express things that are extremely gnc and complicated in regards to their gender, but they can't go so far as to actually call themself a woman - and even if they do, officially or fandom, People Will Still Insist They're A Man.

this can be expanded upon by analysing the way gender is treated in the rest of enstars. okay, transphobic teenagers in 2015. it happens. but akira has said he considers the way he writes enstars' idols more neutral, and in a lot of ways he does write them more like women (given his previous writing experience). even aside from that, there's a lot of controversial and socially important things he clearly wants to address, and does! to varying degrees of success. there's a lot of enstars characters with complicated relationships with their gender (kuro, obviously. tetora. tori. madara. adonis. nazuna. hinata. midori. should i go on?? its most of them, if not all.) and they're pretty thoughtfully addressed (past a certain point. sorry early tomoyan.), but the only character that goes far enough to strike the violent transphobic chords is the one that is canonically stated to not be a cis man: arashi, the trans woman.

additionally, mayoi on release was treated much the same as misinterpreted on-drop shu, because her initial blurb mentioned being fond of anything "young and child-like", phrased in the worst way possible. ...... incidentally, it ended up being about her lost childhood and finding comfort in younger, smaller, and cuter people because she never really got to be like that. though this isn't the only way this trauma manifests, as she also experiences intrusive thoughts about this exact thing. she has at least one story where the joke is that you Think she's being weird, but surprise! she was helping! you thought she was being gross with shinobu's ninja outfit, the way the story framed it in the first place? nope! she was just making another one to match. Don't you feel bad that you fell for our... really weird bait and switch? (hello again to every instance of nazuna hearing about something vaguely wrong happening to one of ra*bits and taking it as badly as possible, mostly towards notably more feminine characters like shu, mayoi, and izumi). you've probably already noticed mayoi is clearly exceedingly feminine in design and also in narrative role, with tatsumi calling her his wife and the mother of alkaloid. weird how that lines up!

though i do have to note this does often depend on the specific writer in charge of specific stories - akira has a better track record with a lot of the serious social issues (and, as main writer, general characterization) than, say, kinosei or yuumasu. said story with that mayoi gag, King of Thieves, was written by kinosei. not that akira is perfect - the very idea is laughable - but stories with the other writers are generally more likely to either be bland or have characterization bits people really don't like in them.

there's a lot of things about enstars i like, and there's a lot of ways it genuinely excels, but the flip-flopping of how gender is treated by the game/narrative as a whole, how it's officially erasing arashi's transfeminine identity, and has intermittently dipped back into """feminine men""" being predatory as a gag especially at the same time akira is talking about legalizing gay marriage and the lgbt community being awesome, is more than not good, its actually regressive as fuck. the ways in which it excels are actively belittled by having their progressive points pushed back on for the sake of pandering and easy money. does it mean anything to have stories about supporting the lgbt community when other content leans back on stereotypes that paint trans women as predators? does it matter that mayoi clearly has ocd when her intrusive thoughts are things the writers want her to act on? what does it mean to have stories about how troubled adonis is by colorism and racism in japan when hes showing more skin than others in every single 5* he has? and sure, its a mobage, its intended to make money. its just another example of capitalism putting profit over people, much less having stories with meaning that it can actually maintain.