It came out of nowhere, the reveal that Bridget from Guilty Gear is transgender.
One of the most famous “femboy” characters in video games suddenly has gone through an actual gender transition, and y’know what? That’s kind of swell. Obviously, I always want games to strive for LGBT representation, so this makes me pretty happy.
Nothing groundbreaking or earth-shattering. It’s a little disappointing that the only characters who actually gender transition in video games seem to be the ones who were already androgynous or had other gender issues around them for years. It’s honestly probably guilt on the part of the developers for making these kinds of characters into the butt of jokes, almost universally male characters who look/act like women, and constantly the source of memes and in-jokes that are definitely not so funny nowadays.
To hear that Bridget from Guilty Gear is trans is to go, huh, I guess I saw that coming. Especially after Guilty Gear already did it with a different character, Testament, earlier in 2022. One big difference here is, a character disappeared then reappeared suddenly being nonbinary. With Bridget from Guilty Gear, the character literally accepts her gender identity onscreen in a cutscene of the game.
As you might have expected, this caused a rampage of controversy. Bridget from Guilty Gear is now one of the biggest battlegrounds of social media culture war whatever bullshit people always like to go on about, and it’s mind-numbingly dumb. I won’t link you to any of it or even really describe it in detail, because it’s too stupid and too caustic for this blog. We know I’d never intentionally incite controversy, after all; this blog is a space for good feelings and nice vibrations.
The plot summary of the outrage is, a very large chunk of Gamers think that Bridget is still a boy and that this is either the fault of woke activist translators, or alternate universe story mechanics. Both of these things are incorrect, but the sheer power of denial is creating an insane situation. Apparently, this character was as sacred to some as Luke Skywalker was to the fans that hated The Last Jedi. I genuinely never would have thought.
Bridget’s a girl. But it might take a few weeks or months for the majority of people to accept that. Probably wasn’t done in the most tactful or effective way, so Arc System Works probably needs to get on that and be a little more direct, but hey. A new transgender fighting game character is always nice!
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