Samus Aran is a woman. Deal with it!

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Everything old is new again.

That's something you have to consider when dealing with online twitter based activism, which is pretty much a rehash in itself. Every argument, every hot take, everything that's been thrown out is pretty much a repeat of something we've already dealt with. So imagine my surprise when I wake up and hop onto twitter only to find that once again some person of questionable intelligence is spouting the bizarre word salad that is Samus Aran is transgender..

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Same Ish different year.

Because y'know..... reasons.

Anyway, let's actually get down to the truth of the matter.. Samus is certainly not transgender, and the developers of the original Metroid did have the intention of making her a woman during the game's creation. In an interview with Hirozaku “hip” Tanaka on the website shinesparkers, Tanaka stated that during the development of the game a member proposed that it would be interesting that Samus actually be a woman. After a vote between the developers it was agreed on. Unfortunately no one knows the exact identity of that developer that made the suggestion, but clearly that decision played a large part on the future of the game and it's legacy.

It's very likely this may have been due to the influence of the movie Alien on the production of Metroid, which was prevalent in the references on the game, Ridley being named after Ridley Scott, the metroids themselves being similar to face-huggers, Sakamoto's admission of HR Geiger's influence in the creature designs. Tanaka designing the soundtrack of the game based on the atmosphere and tone of Aliens, right down to the Nintendo power comic making Samus look like a combination of Ellen Ripley and Leia Organa, despite Sakamoto claiming that his interpretation of Samus was based on Kim Basinger, due to watching The Getaway.

Now, let's figure out what exactly lead to this either intentionally deceptive, or hollow-headed individual skimming old interviews to pull this supposed hot take out and push it into the wilds of the internet.

Of course we all know the story of how Samus was referred to as a “he” in the instruction manual for the North American version of Metroid, but in the same manual she was also considered a “cyborg” who had alterations to her body hence the arm canon. This was also early Nintendo which didn't exactly have the quality of translation that later games received, as treehouse, which was originally intended to be the quality control portion of localization wasn't created until sometime in the 90s. Clearly the ending was intentional, but the cybernetics could be interpreted as the mental link between Samus and her powered suit. 

Developers had intentionally set this up for the ending reveal 

The second instance that's more the likely culprit is the 1994 interview which appeared in the Japanese strategy guide for Super Metroid. The interview is featured on Metroid-database.com and features the many faces of the development team; One in particular being Matsuoka Hirofumi, background designer who worked on the graphics for the game.

 

The Joke in question..

The infamous quote in question was a response to a question asking him for a secret of Samus that only he knows, in which he responds with “Samus isn't a woman. As a matter of fact she's actually a shemale”. Kind of a “big if true” statement, if you looked at it that way, but it actually comes off as joke. The other members of the development team really have very few responses to the question aside from Sakamoto stating he knows where her beauty mark really is, Yamamoto Kenji stating that Spore spawn's voice is his, and Kimura Hiroyuki claiming Samus' measurements were 106-60-90

Above: Massive Hongolonga dadongas

In a later interview, Sakamoto was asked about whether Metroid will ever come to the Playstation 2. An odd question in itself, but the response to that was interesting as it's translated two different ways. The google translate version has it stated as “Samus swings both ways? We can't have that! Certainly you will enioy it on Gamecube. While the actual statement reads as “It's about as likely as Samus actually being a newhalf”. The kanji for “newhalf” which is Japanese slang for a what we now call pre-op transgender, but back then was called transvestite.

Google Translate version

Kanji with translation

Above: Some additional context

So of course, the Matsuoka quote finds it's way into an article on the infamous hack writing website The Mary Sue, in an article penned by failed Massachusetts U.S. house primary spoiler candidate  Brianna Wu, and Ellen McGrody. The article goes through multiple rounds of mental gymnastics to make the argument proving that this particular statement was indeed fact, also going so far as to invalidate Sakamoto who he, himself claims to be the “father of Samus Aran”, in the following quote

Looking to negate Matsuoka’s remark, some gamers have pointed to a FAQ on the Japanese Zero Mission site by Yoshio Sakamoto, co-director of Metroid. There he says Samus being a newhalf is not impossible, but unlikely. Others have pointed to Samus’s portrayals as a child in Metroid Zero Mission, Metroid Other M, and official manga as proof that she is actually a cisgender woman.

This is where we get into the uglier world of cisnormativity and transgender erasure. Over the years, Nintendo has slowly altered Samus’s design into a petite blond woman with large breasts. Finding her sexually attractive, some gamers are flat-out uncomfortable thinking about her as a transgender woman.

Even stranger still, The article goes on to have no definitive proof of their claim, but proceed to use suspension of disbelief as an argumentative point.

Fans asking for ironclad proof of Samus’s apparent transition can suspend their disbelief enough to believe there are bird aliens that develop powersuits, but can’t believe a girl could declare her gender identity at a young age. Besides, this is the same canon that purposefully misgenders the main character in both the Western and Japanese manuals for the original NES release in order to keep her gender a ‘surprise’.

And finally like anyone losing in an internet argument we fall back into the appeal to authority fallacy to really nail it home that the writers have absolutely no clue what they're talking about.

No matter what fans say, the intent of the creator is the only opinion that really matters. When J.K. Rowling announced that Dumbledore from Harry Potter was gay, that was the end of the discussion. Some fans couldn’t accept or understand it, but her public statement was the only source that mattered. It’s an authorial acknowledgement that this character, like any, can realistically be queer or transgender without it having to define them.

Ahh yes let's listen to the background designer over the co-director and man who claims to be one of the "Father of Samus Aran", because the the writer of this article fails to understand context. 

Only someone with a superior intellect would make this Reed Richards level reach to come to this conclusion, but oh no it's not over, yet. There was a third article that apparently not only complained about the backlash from the previous article and then in a roundabout way pulls the “we were just trying to have a conversation” card.

Sakamoto’s further comment doesn’t invalidate the idea that Samus could be transgender, it just brings up more questions. Why would creators disrespect a character and trans people by dangling her potential transgender status as a joke?

Because people make jokes, and sometimes those jokes might hit a bit too close to home, but at the end of the day they're just jokes.

Just like when people were clowning Wu over her talk about the moon being a tactically advantageous spot for the earth, and how moonrocks dropped form there would have the power of hundreds of nuclearbombs should they fall into earth's gravity well. We all had a good laugh at that, but instead of “reclaiming the joke” which you stated in this article you went on to claim that everyone laughing were sexists and your issue was being a “woman on the internet”.

How odd, that being a woman when it suits you seems very advantageous, doesn't it? Almost as if it's your own personal Phazon suit.

As for the tweet itself, apparently that got an adjustment as someone was so bold as to fact check it and now it can be seen with this nifty little blurb on the bottom. Okay, maybe Elon's Twitter isn't so bad after all...

Thank you, 

and I'll see you Next Bossfight.