Danganronpa, Transphobia and our own Ignorance

Couple of disclaimers/warnings to mention before this post gets rolling. First things first, unlike my review of Danganronpa this piece will contain some spoilers for the game. I'll stay away from the really big reveals and bombshells the game drops but if you don't anything spoiled you should turn back now.

Secondly, be aware this piece is written by a cisgender male and is meant as a reflection of my own ignorance regarding trans issues as much as anyone else's. For a trans perspective of the character this post will be discussing I recommend you give this link a quick read.

I was disappointed with Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc. The central premise and clever moments were enough to hold my attention to the end and give it a tentative recommendation in my review, but ultimately when it's all said and done the majority of the things that have stuck with me regarding the game are the things I didn't like about it. I was planning to do some kind of followup "Danganronpa leftovers" post to get into character arcs and motivations and other things about the story that didn't click with me, but instead it all comes back to one major problem to me:

"That second case really is kind of gross."

To summarise as quickly as possible; the second case of the game involves solving the murder of a young girl Chihiro inside the women's locker room. As the facts of the case start to become clear there's evidence to suggest that the scene of the crime was actually the men's locker room and that the body had been moved. The new mystery emerges of how Chihiro could have possibly got into the men's locker room in the first place considering only a boy's keycard could open the door and any attempts to enter the room with someone else would lead to execution. The solution to this problem; Chihiro turns out to have been a boy this entire time, who dressed as a girl because he considered himself "too weak" and thought life would be easier for him dressed as a girl because the people around him would expect less from him.

It should be made perfectly clear that Chihiro does not identify as a transwoman within the fiction (which is why I'm using masculine pronouns), and this is used as a defence of the character claiming that a non-trans character can't be transphobic. Ignoring the huge elephant in the room that even if the above scenario isn't transphobic, it's pretty much inarguably extremely misogynistic, as the game also implies that Chihiro was self concious about his "weakness" and wanted to make himself stronger so he could be accepted as a boy again. In other words; Danganronpa directly correlates "becoming stronger" with "gaining masculinity".

But even ASIDE FROM THAT, just because a character isn't designed to be a trans person doesn't mean they contain zero commentary on trans people from the writers point of view. The whole plot point of "hiding" in the female form to escape your "weakness" to hold the masculine form in of itself is evidence that the writer neither acknowledges or represents trans people. The fact that Chihiro's entire character arc involves earning his way back to masculinity is also a distinctly transphobic (and highly misogynistic) narrative, as if to imply all trans women are cowards and all trans men are not worthy of the male form. Also, as soon as the remaining cast of characters discover that Chihiro, a character they have only known as a young woman during the several weeks they spent time together, they immediately and without difficulty start referring to the character by masculine pronouns themselves. Again this can't be called "misgendering" as Chihiro doesn't identify as trans, but this can be taken as a point that by the writer's logic gender is entirely defined by the physical form. Case in point, even though the rest of the cast only know Chihiro as a woman, one feel of his goolies after death is enough to completely rewrite everything they ever knew about him.

This all comes back to a larger problem I have with Danganronpa's narrative in general. The characters aren't terrible per se, but often they just feel like pieces of a puzzle. All I remember about Leon is he was good at baseball because it played a crucial plot point in one of the murders, Byakuya is a giant asshole which is an excuse to have him rearrange one of the crime scenes for no reason and never comes up again, Toko has some kind of multiple personality disorder (note: this game doesn't have great depictions of mental health issues either) where her two personalities have entirely separate memories from each other which comes into play in a few puzzles...but otherwise isn't really addressed or explored in any meaningful way. Whereas in Ace Attorney, a series initially based around exploring the behaviour of people on the witness stand, the characters are central to everything going on around them and the clever puzzles come second, in Danganronpa characters seem to just be puzzle pieces that the designers slot together to create elaborate murders. The same can be said of Chihiro, I'm not saying the character is the writer(s) trying to express some kind of anti-trans political message, he's just another puzzle piece where "gender" is the key to a solution. However, this doesn't mean Chihiro isn't a reflection of the writer's internal ignorance.

The ignorance on display really is extreme, as the Mammon Machine link at the top of this post points out Chihiro's character isn't consistent with any real life trans-narrative, so the fact that the character not only exists but is largely unquestioned by Danganronpa's audience speaks to a larger cultural ignorance. This is the only place where I can give any kind of personal perspective on this issue as a cisgender male. I certainly don't feel any strong sense of identity from my gender but I'm also certainly not a contradiction of societal gender roles (which are garbage) either in terms of how I act or the stuff I like.

Because of this the question of gender issues never really occurred to me while growing up. I never felt weird about it as a child and at that age you don't question these things, at least not in any intellectually meaningful ways. Other than general unfocused lessons of "tolerance" transgender issues aren't really brought up to children or young adults whatsoever. In media trans characters are usually horribly represented or more often regulated down to nothing more than a punchline. I'm trying my best to educate myself and read more on the subject of trans issues now, but the fact that I was able to make it to my late teens without being aware of these issues at all is A) not that rare and B) extremely problematic.

And since that is so common in BOTH Western and Japanese culture, that's why we get characters like Chihiro from Danganronpa. The fact these characters exist and are accepted despite having zero connection to reality and making ridiculous assumptions about an entire group of people show that the world has got a hell of a long way to go in terms of accepting and understanding trans people. Myself included. 

On reflection, I initially wanted to write something like this to explore some of my issues with how Danganronpa handles characters and the writing in general, but I just haven't been able to stop thinking about how stupid the second case is and what that says about the people making it and playing it. Don't get me wrong, I still for the most part enjoyed Danganronpa, I still think it's worth checking it out, and you don't have to feel guilty about playing it because of some of the grosser elements contained within. Just remember, trans people are real, they do suffer due to how our culture views them and society treats them, and media getting it this wrong certainly doesn't help anything. So don't feel bad about liking Danganronpa, that's not my point, just perhaps dedicate some of your time to understanding why it got this so wrong.