Humans often judge other by appearance. And with appearance, they also decide who’s male and who’s female. If we choose to interact with these people, we automatically know where to place them in our social circle and what behaviors are acceptable. Once that idea is set, it can be pretty difficult to change that later on.

Maybe that’s why sexual identification is so important these days.

Anime has been doing this for the longest. But before I hit the 2D world, let’s see what’s going on at the real world first. =]

Recently in Japan, the skirt has been getting considerably more attention.

Via Itai News

Quote:

“Unisex is becoming a keyword in men’s fashion. ‘Skinny pants’ aren’t just for women, now men wear them too, and with the advance in fashion gender men increasingly don’t feel a problem with wearing a skirt.

Skirt wearing men started increasing in the fashionable areas like Shinjuku a few years ago, and there are men who wear high heel boots too.

They probably became aware of how there are so many fashion items for women which show a good sense of style.

By the way, it looks like when they wear skirts they prefer to remove the hair on their legs.”

But in reality, this isn’t much of a surprise to me. Remember when the necktie started to become acceptable for women to wear it? It’s the same thing.

What do you think will happen in the future? Do you think fully cross-dressing will be a norm in society?

Now into the 2D world.

Show this image to anyone who doesn’t know what game this is from and I’m 99% sure that they’ll tell you it’s a female and leave it at that.

A trap is a character who looks like the opposite sex. It’s usually a male dressing up as a female, but in order for a trap to ACTUALLY be a trap, they must be able to pull it off correctly and almost flawlessly. If not, then it’s not much of a trap, right?

You might be saying: “Puberty alters a man’s body-” Puberty can be interrupted. Destroying male qualities to replace them with female ones has never been easier. Especially in the world of Anime where you got all that crazy magic and shit.

IDOLM@STER is a game developed by Namco. The character you’re looking at right now is called Ryo Akizuki.

• During Ryo’s childhood, his cousin, Ritsuko Akizuki used to try out different kinds of clothing on Ryo, but usually girl’s clothing.
• He has female qualities. He likes to cook and clean.
• At first, it seemed like Ryo didn’t want to dress up as a girl.
• But he ended up doing it anyway because it was the only way to become a popular idol. He would first debut as a girl in 765 Productions, and then be given an opportunity to debut as a boy later on.
• That is, if he doesn’t get too fond of his situation at first. =]

Original Source

Formal Explanation:

“In this title, the idol herself is the main character, and we thought some male players would resist the idea of ‘becoming a girl.’ In that case, we thought what if we made the story so that there was a boy acting as a girl. His personality is normal, so we believe a large number of people will be able to relate to Ryo.”

– Dearly Stars director Toshihiko Kajioka

Well… I don’t think I’d be able to relate to a guy like that. Resist the idea of becoming a girl? In MMO’s, I always pick the girl character. In other platform games and console RPG’s, I almost always pick the female characters. One of friends who had Super Smash Brothers Brawl would always play as Peach, not only was she a good character, but you could peek up her dress with the camera.

I guess that’s one of the other reasons why people bought the game. By the way, you’re not thinking Peach is a trap, right? =0

Anyways, the idea worked! Many people bought IDOLM@STER just because of that. Never underestimate a trap’s power. =]

Now onto something else:

Behold, the divine queen of all traps: Jun Watarase!

Want the 1600×1200 Version?

From the 18+ Eroge Happiness!, Jun Watarase is an androgynous male who cross dresses as a girl because he says that the female school uniform looks better on him and he’s more popular among the male students that way. He says many ironic things, such as how perverted men are… When he himself is also male…

So why is this interesting? Traps prove that our conception of what’s female and what’s male is not perfect. Suppose you find a cute image of a girl on the Internet. Doesn’t matter if it’s 2D or 3D. You like her and you start collecting more images of her. THEN…. You find out it’s actually a well-dressed male in a female outfit. Most of the time, you can’t help but feel awkward in this kind of situation. Would you still like her, i mean, him? Or would you turn away? Answer this question in the poll below!

There’s also the current debate of Trap + Trap = Yuri? Or is it still a Yaoi?

In Anime, this is pretty easy to do. Since the body types are more or less generic, most of the time, all you have to do is slap on an outfit of your choice to quickly change the gender of your character. It’s easy, and it usually gets more attention than the other stuff around.

So about Jun Watarase… Still don’t believe me?

And it’s not only Ryo Akizuki and Jun Watarase who share the spotlight in the kingdom of traps! There’s a LOT more.

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