#monark

The trailer for Monark, a new JRPG from former members of Atlus (the studio behind the Shin Megami Tensei series, Persona, and Catherine) dropped today. It looks great and I can’t wait for its release in early 2022! Despite not knowing a word of Japanese, I was immediately drawn to this character, Shinya Yuda.

I looked up translations of the press release and thought that the first one was a mistranslation (all of this is news from the past 12 hours after all), but no. Here is the current bio for this character:

“One of the protagonists’ fated comrades, who will lead him to his four conclusions. Shinya is a boy in second year of middle school. He’s also the son of the principal, and has been receiving a special education to inherit the school. He’s versed in martial arts and has a well trained body.”

Given Atlus’s history with trans/gender nonconforming characters, I can’t say I’m surprised. To be clear, I’m not saying that a boy can’t look like this or that a character that looks like this MUST be a girl

What I am saying is that I really, REALLY hope this character won’t play into the whole "trap” trope. Even worse, this character is in 8th grade (to use the language of American education), so probably 13 or 14 years old. Please, FuRyu, don’t continue the problematic tradition of transphobia from your time at Atlus.