Guilty Gear Strive: Dual Rulers is an upcoming anime based on the popular Guilty Gear video game series, though it kicked up controversy from the latest game in the series.
The returning controversy surrounding the series concerns the character of Bridget, and that controversy has been going viral on social media after the casting announcement for that character in the anime.
For context, ever since Bridget’s first appearance in Guilty Gear X2 back in 2002, Bridget has been canonically described as a cross-dressing man (Editor’s note: otokonoko or 男の娘). His parents disguised him as a hide his identity.
However, things changed with the release of Guilty Gear Strive, when Daisuke Ishiwatari (creator of Guilty Gear) started referring to Bridget as a transgender woman who uses she/her pronouns.
This caused quite a stir in the fandom, with many players denouncing the change as catering to progressive western standards, while other players lauded the change for representation with its inclusion of transgenderism.
While the series has officially explained Bridget’s backstory and confirmed the character’s gender as female, the official social media for the upcoming anime seemingly made a mistake (source) with a now-deleted post referring to Bridget as a man, seen below:
As the original post was likely deleted very quickly, it seems no archive of this post was made and we couldn’t find one linked or saved anywhere – the source’s screencaps and save of the announcement slide are all we have.
The official account for the Guilty Gear Strive anime later reposted the announcement for Bridget, saying, “Although Bridget once struggled with questions of identity, the encounters along Bridget’s journey helped discover her own path in life.” This fixed the current canon that Bridget is female or trans.
People were quick to notice the inconsistent pronoun usage in the original post. This would seem to lead credence to the idea that Bridget being transgender is just something being done to appease certain American fans, and not actually something that is believed by the creators of Guilty Gear, who are overseeing the anime.
Alternatively, it could be argued that it’s the other way around, with Ishiwatari meaning the character to be transgender, but fearing to make this known to Japanese fans.
Or perhaps both takes are wrong, and this is just a problem with whoever is running the official anime account and it was simply a mistake – as the original post actually misspelled actress Manaka Iwami’s name as “Maika Iwami.”
Whatever the case, something that people on both side of this culture war issue agree upon is Guilty Gear should be consistent in what is considered canon.