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Testament is back on Guilty Gear Strive's 5th season character.
- Thread starter Keihart
- Start date
Keihart
Member
Yeah, is a little weird, but then again, you never see male characters getting the female sounding voices on western dubs.
Dr. Claus
Banned
Referred to as a male/man in Japanese news/interviews/press releases and in the trailer. Seems the western localization is trying to change stuff. Testament has always been androgynous in design, but it seems the western translators/localizers are taking it upon themselves to push their personal views rather than what is actual canon. Kinda peeved about that.
However, aside from that I am ecstatic. Dude looks like he will be a ton of fun to play.
However, aside from that I am ecstatic. Dude looks like he will be a ton of fun to play.
Bruno_Arrais85
Member
Freaking yes!
plasmawave
Banned
That's because there's no they/them in the Japanese language, at least not in the same way like in the English language to address non binary people.
Icymanipulator
Member
Ok shit. Might have to finally give this a try.
Dr. Claus
Banned
They directly reference him to being male in Japanese. There is no debate about this, this is just the reality. Its meddling from western localization.
plasmawave
Banned
Which video?
JunkerWoland
Member
Much as I recognize elements of Testament were always going to be difficult in current year, from purely a visual-design perspective, this is not how I wanted to see the character return. My feelings aren't about preferring one social movement over another and had this been a new character I probably wouldn't care, but to me this design isn't Testament. That said, to not be disingenuous, I also don't care for a bunch of Strive's aesthetic choices, so it's just one more to throw onto the pile.
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Dr. Claus
Banned
I'm 100% on board with this, but worried it's just the "localizers" projecting their view onto the character.
It is absolutely just the localizers. Just search up Testament Guilty Gear on any Japanese news site and the japaense announcement video. Even the official JPN site refers to him as a dude.
Lethal01
Banned
Where? I've been going through the Japanese GG:Strive site
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plasmawave
Banned
No, it doesn't. Not in the video or their websites.
Dr. Claus
Banned
His bio on the JPN site says it quite explicitly. As does the reveal trailer.
![[Sigma]](/data/avatars/m/701/701747.jpg?1726376545){kind=avatar}
LazyParrot
Member
Can you read Japanese, or did you use Google Translate? My Japanese is far from perfect, but I don't see any mention of his gender in that bio.
Japanese is a lot less reliant on pronouns than English, so translation tools will often guess at the gender and insert them even if there aren't any in the source text.
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Nocturno999
Member
When I read "they", I thought they were referring to the pixies he hangs within the video...
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SlimeGooGoo
Banned
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SlimeGooGoo
Banned
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DeltaPolarBear
Member
WHAT?
That is EXACTLY wrong. The Japanese language use asexual pronouns by default unless specified. Who taught you that?
I question you know anything about Japan now. Testament is a man because Japan made him to be. Japan is very used to hiring women to voice men. They might be in women's clothing, that doesn't change anything.
Dr. Claus
Banned
Funny thing is, America does the same. Hell, one of the most popular and influential cartoon characters was voiced by a woman (Bart Simpson)! Doesn't mean Bart is trans or nonbinary, ffs.
The Japanese versions and releases still refer to Testament as he/him directly. As Kliff's *SON*. Not a difficult thing to do and no I don't use terribly designed Google Translate either. Testament is very androgynous, but his sex/gender has never been up for question.
Green_Eyes
Member
LazyParrot
Member
You said the Japanese press release and bio clearly refer to him as male. I'm assuming you were talking about these two sites:
「テスタメント」参戦決定！ 最新アップデート情報のほか、シーズン2に関する情報を公開 | NEWS | GUILTY GEAR -STRIVE- | ARC SYSTEM WORKS
GUILTY GEAR -STRIVE- OFFICIAL SITE
テスタメント | CHARACTER | GUILTY GEAR -STRIVE- | ARC SYSTEM WORKS
GUILTY GEAR -STRIVE- OFFICIAL SITE
Can you quote the parts where he is referred to as a male? Not even saying you're wrong, but like I said my Japanese is far from perfect, so I'm honestly just wondering what I'm missing.
Edit: Showed the texts and trailer to a native speaker of Japanese and she said there's nothing identifying him as male in there at all. Since you refuse to provide examples and appear to have moved on to other threads, I'm just gonna assume that you're full of shit.
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lyan
Member
And in the opening of GGX the writer used 少年
Though this is all before whatever messed up stuff that happened.
Werewolf Jones
Member
I wanted Marilyn Manson. I got fucking Rose the Hat from Dr Sleep instead.
Doom85
Member
Ruka from Steins Gate and Hideyoshi from Baka and Test are male characters voiced by women in the dub (though Hideyoshi is given a lower voice than most women would have IIRC) and I'm sure there are others. But I might be misunderstanding your statement as I don't follow GG that closely so I don't know how Testament has usually been portrayed and such. If so, my bad.
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brian0057
Banned
Keihart
Member
Yeah, i was refering to the more popular characters voiced by womans like Naruto or Goku, but i guess there are some.
Testament had a male voice before so it's a change for japanese fans as well.
The pronoun tho? that's only an english thing.
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LazyParrot
Member
Yeah, they obviously referred to him as a guy in the older games, I don't think anyone is disputing that. But the poster in question claimed that his current English bio was intentionally mistranslated and that he is referred to as male in the original Japanese text, as well as in the trailer and the accompanying press release. As far as I can tell that isn't the case, but as I said, I'm willing to consider evidence to the contrary.
It's been years since I last played GGXXAC, but I'm pretty sure his voice and overall look were more masculine back then, so it doesn't seem all that far-fetched to me that this whole design/voice change thing is an intentional effort by ArcSys to re-classify the character as nonbinary or genderqueer or whatever the hell you're supposed to call it these days.
Black_Stride
do not tempt fate do not contrain Wonder Woman's thighs do not do not
I actually always thought Testament was super androgynous but dressed more feminine.
I think only the original games portraits had them looking male male....but the outfit has always been bth sides.
Hell id go as far as to say this outfit is actually more masculine than their original outfit which for all intents and purposes has a boobtube.
Keihart
Member
I would guess most fans have absolutely no problem with the androgynous nature of testament(since it has always been that way as you point out) and now looking even more feminime, i think most of the questioning comes from the pronoun stuff since that is something very weird and mostly reserved to english speakers. Even when people try to acomodate this "they" stuff in other lenguages like spanish or japanese, it doesnt make much sense, although some people still make the effort, american culture hits everywhere.I actually always thought Testament was super androgynous but dressed more feminine.
I think only the original games portraits had them looking male male....but the outfit has always been bth sides.
Hell id go as far as to say this outfit is actually more masculine than their original outfit which for all intents and purposes has a boobtube.
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Labolas
Member
I am fine with the redesign because the character was always androgynous to begin with. But the pronoun bullshit is definitely something for the western woke crowd froth over. Dude was always male and will always be male, hell, that's how we referred to him as even before this shitty change has happened.
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Javthusiast
Banned
Great design.
Keihart
Member
see ya online in ten years
Spukc
always chasing the next thrill
Keep laughing when i snag it for 30 tops with all the fighters. At least i'm not part of the problem enabling these fuckers
Keihart
Member
I just find it funny because is a non problem of fighting games which would be evident if you ever were a fan of playing them at arcades.
Fighting games have been GAAS before the term was even coined for video games, you would go to the arcade, play the lastet version available and if you were lucky , you would be able to play the next update within the month it launched, now, you get to play the latest version at home as soon as it launches, which was never the case before DLC and season passes.
Not only that , but season passes are way better than getting the old Arksys treatment of a new game every year with some balance and some shitty story mode and maybe a couple of new characters, dividing the player base and syphoning more money from individual users instead of the current model where everyone keeps playing, the game gets cheaper and you get the updates as soon as they are available, keeping the playerbase healthy as long as possible.
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Spukc
always chasing the next thrill
Look at SF5 day 1 just no
Keihart
Member
A bad launch has nothing to do with the system.
I could argue with , look at Tekken 7 day 1.
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Spukc
always chasing the next thrill
That's 16 fighters vs 37 with tekken 7
Also tekken 7 is is basically free.
I will one up you. Just look at DOA6 on steam, and the shit you can buy. And tell me how the current state of modern fighters is not totally fucked
670$ worth of dlc
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Keihart
Member
yeah, pretty disenginous example right there while pretending that tekken 7 is not a good example of why the model works with fighting games.
Tekken 7 was never "basically free", the game launched at full price, with all those characters and stayed up making seasons until now (as i said, part of the model is that the base game goes down in price for a lower barrier of entry)
DOA sells a bunch of micro transactions that has nothing to do with characters available and is there specifically for the fandom which is a very big part of that game since it's inception.
This discussion is completly off topic tho, but still, funny stance towards fighting games considering the history of the genre.