Purposely confusing and purposely without a definite answer.Īnd, if you're interested I also went on a 03' Envy gender side-tangent here, as it also furthered the confusion and whatnot over the years: None of the above? Totally □□ cause that's just the way they are portrayed. Can they be seen as male! Yea! Female? Sure thing! Non binary? Absolutely. I think that stating Envy can't be non binary (not saying you did this, dw!) is disregarding all the characterization, design, and thought, Arakawa put into the character. However just because Envy likely wasn't made with the intention of being nonbinary representation, doesn't change the fact that they were coded as such. They present themselves as extremely androgynous (feminine and masculine qualities) and I think this was done intentionally to further Envy's character. ( spoiler for next sentence) Envys true form is that of a weird worm slug, creatures that have both sex organs. It was 2001 Japan, androgyny in anime was quite popular at the time, and Envy is a "shapeshifter", so I think in this case the author did it simply because that was what made sense for a shapeshifting character. Was Envy made with the idea of them being representative of Non-binary/genderfluid/agender people? Likely no. I would say that this likely extends to Brotherhood as well, despite the translators use of he/him (and other languages, Czech for example, used she/her). They simply state "Envy" a bunch of times, which at first doesn't necessarily mean much however when looking at the other character profiles (I put Greed for instance), gendered pronouns are used! I would say that this (along with the gender neutral pronouns in the manga) generally confirms the fact that at least in the manga Envy was intended to not have an explicitly stated gender. When you read Envys profile, they never use pronouns. Normally it roughly translates to 'This' and is used towards objects).Īnd, I also found the Manga Profiles mentioned!! This was written by Arakawa herself, if I'm not mistaken. But I did catch them saying "Kono Envy" a couple times, which (roughly) translates to "I, Envy" and is non-gendered (from what I've read this is essentially a way to speak in first person but particularly in a more arrogant way (very fitting for Envy), so "kono" is rarely used this way in real life. I tried to get clips of Envy speaking in Japanese in Brotherhood to see if I could catch them specifically stating Ore, Boku, Watashi, etc, but I didn't catch anything (not to say Envy didn't say any of those, cause who knows). When translating the show, since They/Them pronouns weren't as widespread or well known at the time, it's possible that's why he/him was chosen to be used when dubbing the show, as well as in subtitles. This makes adding pronouns to fit the English language structure more difficult.įrom what I've heard the Japanese manga Envy uses gender neutral pronouns as well, and therefore possibly the Japanese dub too (however once again I don't know japanese so this is all what I've heard). Often times the language is set up to be "X was done by Envy" rather than " insert pronouns did X". When you look at how the Japanese language uses pronouns, you find that they don't actually use it as much compared to English. This info I'm relaying was taken from others). Saw the comments and wanted to chip in with some stuff! Although Hiromu Arakawa (or Envy themselves) never explicitly states "envy is this gender: _", she still left the character purposely androgynous, and along with difficulties translating, I don't think it's queerbaiting from the show/book itself but possibly from the fandom instead (and for that I'm so sorry :( it sucks when you get your expectations up and you're let down).Įnvys gender is difficult because it's kinda all over the place, but I first want to start out with one of the most confusing factors: the translating (I'm also no linguist nor do I speak Japanese so take this with a grain of salt.
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