Board Thread:Questions and Answers/@comment-25951143-20150101110046/@comment-26871067-20160927161256

Rez spb wrote: Well, I really tried to follow this thread, but halfway up I got fed up with that trans-, 'their' and 'correctness' stuff. You care about that too much instead of looking towards how did the situation even occurred in the first place.

I have 2 points after giving this issue some thought.

1. The author simply did not think of a gender at manga's earlier stages. I mean c'mon, Alluka was introduced really late. So while the author was in concept stage, Alluka was 'just another Zoldyck brother' because... there are no girls in the family. But later on when the character of a person called Alluka blossomed in the author's mind, Alluka did become a girl with Killua referring to her as a girl. So we have earlier 'boy' concept replaced with a more recent 'girl' one, and in this case you should forfeit 'trans' stuff and accept that the author... simply changed his mind. We can assume that the 2nd edition of manga should be released, correcting earlier chapters from 'boy' to a 'girl'.

If there were no timelines to release manga, if it was a regular book and not a serialization, we probably would've never even had this change in Alluka's gender: it would've been proofed and rewritten before going public. But here we are.

2. But as 2nd edition is probably just a wishful thinking (I doubt anyone will actually go that lengths just to make some people on the Internet happy), we will most likely be left with an explanation, that to the outside world there are no girls in the Zoldyck family. This is a strongly patriarchal family, a traditional family, a strange family. But the males dominate there all the way. There were no girls we know about in the bloodline (Kikyo is not a born Zoldyck, but a wife of Silva, unrelated by blood, and we even don't know a thing about Grandmother, but it's safe to speculate that husbands and wives are not blood related in the family). Yeah, with all that 'boys should inherit family business' stuff so popular in Japan. Given that even Kalluto is a boy in kimono, there's even more reason for the family to raise their only daughter alongside other brothers as a boy. All the butlers call her 'bocchama', they obey their masters and actually enforce their will (even on Killua with all that level 4 stuff). So they say what they must, not what they think. Later we see a change from boyish clothes in Alluka's childhood to a definitely girlish miko outfit. With plushy toys all around. Why go for such lengths if it is your 'son' with 'a strange deviation', who you call 'it'? Seems illogical to me. Locking a girl, providing her with 'all-that-any-girl-would-want' and calling her 'it' while referring to Nanika is actually way more solid explanation. So, both Killua and Illumi calling Alluka 'a brother' when talking to an outsiders Morel and Hisoka, and Killua only calls Alluka his sister before Gon (the only exception to the rule due to them being best friends).

So point 2 is probably how they will address the issue instead of point 1 even if point 1 becomes an accepted truth (by the author, whose opinion is yet to arrive). It's a bit more complicated than it should be to my liking, but still explains it all better than 'oh they just love transgenders and crossdressers, and we love them, and those people are speeecial' stuff you are talking about in hundreds of comments above.

Having said that, I strongly believe in point 1: a hassle because of a haste. Author changed his mind from a abstract brother to a specific sister and provided us with a girlish girl in the end. So be it, Alluka is a girl now. This is embarrassing to read. Multiple points in the Election Arc have members of the Zoldyck family (minus Killua and Alluka herself) referring to Alluka as a boy. It is literally right there in the text - the Zoldycks (again, minus Killua and Alluka) believe Alluka to be a boy because of her body. Killua, who understands her (which is a plot point), both refers and thinks of her as his little sister.

So here's some information on "the author, whose opinion is yet to arrive": Yoshihiro Togashi has put a transgender character in both other works he has published - there's Miyuki in Yu Yu Hakusho and Kyoko in Level E. Both of these characters are explicitly trans - Miyuki is called transgender out loud, Kyoko's storyline literally involves his sex change.

All your comment has done is proven that you didn't pay attention to the actual series enough to make a statement. Adding in the implication that Togashi is completely silent on the issue, when his inclusion of trans characters is literally a thing he does, just makes it more patently absurd.

But it's pretty obvious why you made your comment, and it's that you're transphobic.