Can the translation team confirm?

Japanese doesn’t have pronouns like English. It’s always gender neutral

I thought it was either? Like I've read manga before that distinguished between a character using a gender neutral pronoun and a gendered one. Plus in some shows too like hunterxhunter where Killua refers to his trans sister with her preferred pronouns while his family refers to her with male pronouns.

Japanese doesn’t have pronouns like English. It’s always gender neutral

What the heck was that Mangago? Anyways Japanese does not use he/she. And I wouldn’t put too much stock in anime translations. There’s been plenty of times they’ve referred to a male as a female based on how they’re drawn.

Ok thanks for clarifying!

And oh 100%, I meant more so translation notes in bl. Like sometimes I'll see a note about how a character's purposely using a gender-neutral pronoun to hide the fact that they're dating a guy.

Pretty sure it can be either. If you refer to a third person, for example, it can be ano hito=that person, kare=him, kanojo=her. Same with 1st person, boku and ore is more masculine and often used by male, but watashi is more gender neutral. Japanese also tend to drop the subject when it can be inferred from context, so sometimes you may not be able to tell if a person's talking about a guy, a girl, or a turtle ┑(￣Д ￣)┍

Can't help ya on your question tho

Actually, I just noticed riku referred to his friend as he in one of the panel in ch 1. So it might just be the translator?

And @Daya Oh ok thanks! The type of scanalation groups to put that much effort are usually pretty thorough enough that I'd consider their notes being more or less accurate. So I was confused for a min there haha

So what word do they use for he and what word do they used for she

Just saw this an aw, yeah I was wondering. Cause everything was getting excited but I don't expect someone who inserts a "oh you just look like a gay dude" 'joke' about a trans characters or the line "I'm a girl (at heart)" to be conciously using correct pronouns :/

Yeah, and on a thought bubble in another panel, Riku said "this guy might be a weirdo who likes wearing girl's uniform, but he's a good friend."

I think it was translated using they because the subject was omitted. The actual sentence in Japanese might have been, "Mizutani isn't my girlfriend. Just a friend." which might sound a bit awkward w/o a subject.

Another example where the translator used they is when Ichigo's friend was talking about their first encounter. He said, "they're cute, with the little body of theirs" and Ichigo thought he was referring to the girl. But you can't be sure with the way he said it. He might actually be talking about Riku.

So I hate to break it to those who think otherwise, but Riku most probably didn't use the right pronouns ╮(￣▽￣)╭

That’s boyfriend and girlfriend not he/she

They can mean both. And kare/kanojo doesn't have to refer to bf/gf when used in a he/she context.

Tbh I'm surprised the translation group wouldn't even include a note on that to say they're the ones who're using the correct pronouns given that this manga otherwise has transphobic "jokes".