Robin Newman (Ace Attorney) and the Bipolar Gender

Well-known for its eccentric characters who spice up a normally mundane environment, Ace Attorney is a series of visual novel games about lawyers finding contradictions.  The most recent series installment, Ace Attorney: Dual Destinies (2013) features a character who presents one big contradiction.

Robin Newman jumps wildly between two gendered extremes, caricaturizing them both – and, by what can be called the ideal relationship between fiction and reality, renders gender appropriately hilarious.

Pokémon and the Art of Gender Differences

"Are you a boy? Or a girl?"  Despite the professor's notoriously binary inquiry at the start of every game, the Pokémon series (1996-current) is very good at handling gender fairly – not only through the human characters, but also through the Pokémon themselves.

The friendly sort of franchise which uses its popularity to promote positive things, it also understatedly presents a positive atmosphere with regard to gender.  It captures gender diversity with an open attitude, from having fun with fluidity, to featuring gender differences that make a difference by not making a difference.

Naoto Shirogane and the Androgynous "Escape"

> The concept of androgyny can inspire progressive thinking about gender equality.

> The aesthetic of androgyny, in reality, doesn't always represent progressive purposes.

Both of the above are true.  When looking toward Japanese pop culture for ideals, it's important to note that Japanese culture itself does not necessarily reflect these ideals.

Persona 4 (2012) is a game that addresses many issues of gender and sexuality in Japanese society, in the rare direct terms of characters' personal psychological consciousness.  Rooted in motifs of Jungian psychology, the mystery-fantasy RPG features an interesting spread of characters who have each their own "shadows," parts of themselves they don't want to face.  One among the cast is the androgynous young detective, Naoto Shirogane.

The ideal of androgyny has to do with transcending cultural expectations in a way that fosters individual identity over categorical norms.  The reasons for Naoto's cross-dressing, however, couldn't be any more to the contrary.

Touhou Project and the Single-Gender World

I believe that a society without gender distinctions is a powerful ideal.

Theoretically, the ideal of universal "androgyny" entails no gender.  Simply, if no one is assigned to either the male or the female category, individual expression becomes unlimited and undefined.  Anyone could express any mix of traits formerly delineated under those two categories, without being arranged into any sort of hierarchy.

...But technically, in a world of one gender – for example, a world identifying female only – you could similarly say that there are "no gender distinctions."

(fanart from pixiv.net)

The provocative premise of a single-gender society comes up quite a bit in feminist science fiction.  It also comes up in... a Japanese shoot-'em-up PC game?  Sort of!  Albeit in a completely different context, the ongoing Touhou Project series (1996-current) comes pretty darn close to being an ideal, single-gender world.

Jamie (Harvest Moon) and the Marriage of Opposites

Expanding the focus from strictly anime to animesque videogames may serve well for a wider perspective on androgyny.  In such an equally-"animated" medium, characterization occurs not only through visual design, action, and voice, but also through one last critical dimension of interactivity.  In this medium, the player's position necessarily affects the story's reality.

There are plenty of games with amazing androgynes to offer in this light of player-guided mutability, which inherently opens doors to exploring themes of ambiguous identity.  One example that doesn't get nearly enough attention is a particular console installment of a niche farming RPG, Harvest Moon: Magical Melody (2006).

Wait!  Don't tune out at the childish title and chibi style!  While admittedly targeting a young demographic, the game offers some genuinely valuable morals and genuinely unique implications about gender.

See that ambiguous figure... on the fence there?  That's Jamie.  Jamie is the aptly-unisex name of the single most important androgynous character in the history of androgynous characters, so listen up.