Here’s some fanart I made from watching someone stream Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn.
Daein were the bad guys in Path of Radiance and gave off some Zeon vibes (especially with some of the general mooks’ designs). After being defeated in the previous game, Radiant Dawn shows that the country’s now being oppressed by a fascist military force while the heroes are a plucky band of rebels, which brought Zeta Gundam to my mind. And after seeing Kurth’s shitty disguise, I just had to draw this scene from the show.
I didn’t want to comment on this until it was officially released and I could see it running on my own game, but yes: Fire Emblem Heroes officially uses they/them pronouns for Kyza in English, and doesn’t shy away from mentioning that Kyza has a crush on Ranulf.
Above: screenshot from Fire Emblem Heroes (2022)
Above: Sharena’s official comments for “Meet some of the Heroes”
There’s been a lot of confusion and fandom drama surrounding the decision to give Kyza they/them pronouns in English for FEHeroes, and this is partly because:
- Kyza was referred to as male he/him in the English Fire Emblem Radiant Dawn from 2007 (also true for the Spanish version).
- Later on, a number of fans started using she/her for Kyza, explaining that Kyza was probably supposed to be a trans woman in the Japanese Radiant Dawn (because of reasons I’ll be explaining later).
- Now, Fire Emblem Heroes has changed to They/Them pronouns in English.
I’ll also add that mentions of Kyza’s crush on Ranulf were removed or ‘reworded’ in the non-Japanese releases of Radiant Dawn, but FEHeroes decided to be open and clear about it instead.
So was Kyza trans in the source material? Was Kyza officially gay? Why are people mad or confused? Well, with my questionable skills communicating in English, I’ll try to be as informative and objective as posible:
The short answer is:Kyza is indeed officially queer and has a crush on Ranulf in the source material, which is the original Japanese Fire Emblem Radiant Dawn from 2007. FEHeroes giving Kyza They/Them pronouns in English is correct, since it complies with Kyza using standard neutral Japanese in the source material; at the same time, they/them pronouns is a good way to reflect Kyza’s apparent genderfluidness that is also very much canon in the source material. To top this, in FEHeroes they’ve also opted for giving Kyza a kimono that mixes elements from the typically male and female new year wear.
It’s correct for people to say Kyza in non-binary / genderqueer even when not taking into account the current development in FEHeroes. However, Kyza was only ever confirmed to be queer, never confirmed as gay or trans specifically (but also not negating those two concepts either.) Kyza’s queerness was presented in a positive way in Radiant Dawn, albeit stereotypical (for Japanese standard in 2007).
Up until this point, I’ve avoided explaining much so that the ‘short answer’ actually remained as short as possible. So now, let’s go with the LONG ANSWER:
Drew Rafiel from Radiant Dawn for my mother during mother’s day. Only now did I realize I could publish it here haha…
(So the details of this piece were impossible. Thankfully this is probably one of the last works of mixed art of digital and traditional as I have bought an Ipad for drawing so I can focus on digital art.)
