Maou-sama, Retry! Episode 1 Discussion

Hiina said:


Seeing as Aku says boku (male variant of I in Japanese), I'm pretty sure he's a boy. Women sometimes use it as well but they are usually more tomboy-ish, and the character design is all frilly girly, so I still think he's a boy



I'm just super happy with the fact that the main character is voiced by Tsuda Kenjirou <33

narutosister said:


not really... i some case girly girls will use boku.. its not only for tomboish girls... its like the use of -kun- its for males but there are people who put put kun for girls even pempered girls.... one example is in fruits basket- they add kun to the female lead and call her tohru-kun instead of chan. it has nothing to do with how girly/ tomboish the person is XD is something in their culture and language

Hiina said:


That's true. Except they use the suffix -kun for women so that it sounds less cute and more respectful, especially in work-related situations. It says more about the one speaking than the one being spoken of. :) For example, if a male superior at work keeps calling a female subordinate -chan, that could be taken as a subtle (not so subtle) way of emphasizing she's a woman, and if they aren't on good terms it can be seen as a form of making her feel less than. Using -san is still the usual way to speak to someone else in a polite manner but in some cases, when the speaker chooses to do it, they will use -kun for a woman.

Japanese is a really gendered language and this presents some problems on multiple levels. When talking about boku, even though in recent years some Japanese women have started using the traditionally male pronoun to refer to themselves and it's slowly getting more accepted, it can still sound a bit off. Even more so if they use ore, and espcially to native speakers.

In anime culture there's a trope called bokukko, meaning a girl who uses boku to refer to herself. Even though this doesn't always mean she's tomboyish this is however usually the case. Aku looks like a young girl, being frail and cute and by wearing cute girly clothes. Also acts like one, being very timid and blushing quickly, etc. BUT, uses boku. This is done so the audience doesn't know their gender for sure, even though the situation usually ends up being ''boyish girl'' or ''girlish boy''. Girls would then be seen as tomboys, not necessarily because they look like boys but because they behave like ones and use male pronouns. Therefore a girly girl can be girly girly, but when she uses boku a lot of people will still feel she's tomboyish. As Aku doesn't act like a boy, at least boyish in the way of traditionally more rambunctious, I think Aku is a girlish boy. Even if just to surprise the audience.

I could be wrong though.

And that, folks, concludes my essay.

(Sorry for the more formal speech. I've been proof-reading a Master's thesis for three days straight, so casual English sounds wrong at the moment @__@)

DarklordVor said:
Quite surprised by the negativity. I thought it's a nice start, pretty fun and straight forward with cuteness in it. Even the animation is better than DAL III, which was an absolute horseshit, yet rated 1 point higher than this anime.

Vysarine said:
For such a bad score I enjoyed it more than I was expecting

Blonde Rem is an angel as expected

Lol the irony that she's named after AKU, THE SHAPE-SHIFTING MASTER OF DARKNESS

zamandzoe said:
It was soooooo boring.

All I took away is that we have a blonde Rem.