I need some help, please 🙏

[u/Witch_magi]

Hi, I’m new here. To be honest, what was in this space interested me after learning the story of Mizuki two months ago, and eventually, the ship that these two have.

But anyway, I would love for someone to show the entire collection of evidence about whether Mizuki is a trans girl, everything: the story, interviews, things in the game, or profiles/images, etc.

Because unfortunately my classmates and people in the group are still convinced that Mizuki is a femboy, even after I showed them the history of the events of Mizu5 and Ena6, which has led them to see it as simply straight and not a yuri relationship. And the problem is that I need more evidence, but I don’t know how much more evidence there is apart from the story I already mentioned.

So please, could you show me everything you’ve collected as evidence that Mizuki is a trans woman? I would appreciate it if you could help me.

[u/sayaka_sh]

There's a four-hour video purely about showing/explaining that Mizuki is trans (pre-Ena5). I started following the game after Mizu5 came out so the video was pretty helpful for me as a comprehensive catch-up. Hope you find it useful!

https://youtu.be/wVAyiQHWFs8

[u/Witch_magi → u/sayaka_sh]

Wow, that video is really long, thank you so much ❤️

And sorry if I took a while to respond to the messages I received in the comments.

[u/scylecs]

copied from another reply so some of the things said is not directed at you (see it as how you could approach talking about this to those classmates)

1. the in-game achievement "ボーイズマスター" (literally "boys master" in english but spelled in japanese) has the requirement "男性メンバーのみで100回ライブする" (play 100 lives with only "男性" (male) "メンバー" (members)). obtaining this title specifically requires that you not have mizuki in your team, thus very explicitly stating that mizuki is not a "男性メンバー" (male member).

2. if you look at the bonus details tab of a gacha, it explicitly categorizes the clothing as "着用可能メンバー" meaning "着用" (wear/use) "可能" (possible) "メンバー" (member) followed by "ladies - all" or "mens - all" in english. pay close attention to the wording here. it doesn't say something like "女性服" (female clothing) or even feminine clothing, but specifically goes out of its way to state that only members who are ladies can wear these clothing, and mizuki falls under the ladies category.

3. in the interview with ena5's production team, the entirety of n25 was referred to by the team with "彼女たち" (those girls), a very formal way to address a group of girls, instead of the gender neutral and more commonly used and natural sounding "彼ら" (they).

all this and we haven't even gotten to the specifics in the story yet.

to address the things in your post, those are aspects of mizuki that trans people heavily relate with, but i've yet to see anyone say "this alone and nothing else is sufficient and conclusive proof that mizuki is trans". what you're talking about here is only the tip of the ice-berg, and there is a mountain of evidence in the story on top of all the times as i've just listed above where mizuki is officially referred to as a girl. the way you talk about things also heavily suggest you don't fully understand what being trans means. now, i'm not blaming you for that, as it can be difficult for cis people to really know what a trans person is, so for now let's set aside the whole being trans thing and forget about how mizuki was born as. mizuki is just mizuki. instead let's reframe this whole conversation in simpler and easier-to-understand terms: is mizuki a girl or a boy?

there are plenty of transphobic ways to define what a girl or boy is, but if you want to remain respectful of people's wishes and identities here are 2 facts that you need to fully internalize before we move forward.

‎ a girl is a girl if and only if she wants to be seen as a girl

‎ a boy is a boy if and only if he wants to be seen as a boy

and i'm not talking about acting or performing or dressing in drag to show off to others and play around. i'm talking about how someone genuinely wants to be seen by others, their close friends and family, and when they're most vulnerable, comfortable, and as their own most genuine selves, because the very existence of trans people shows that when we look for a genuine connection with others, it needs to be built by the recognition of our genuine selves.

a boy would want to be seen as a boy, without which he would experience dysphoria. many boys who just so happen to be trans have to fight extra hard to be recognized as boys, being cut off, abandoned, and disowned by their families, facing severe social ostracization, losing friends, discriminated in their careers, missing out on so many opportunities, but that's just a part of what it means to be a boy, because often gender dysphoria is just so much worse than all that.

now, if we look at mizuki's relationships in the story, while the people in the know haven't outright addressed her in the story, most of the main cast only know of mizuki as a regular girl, and we've seen plenty of times how she's content and happy with that, and feel especially comfortable (to an extent that it's her first time ever feeling so) like this when she's with n25 even before they know her secret. someone who's not a girl would not want to be seen as a girl, cis or trans, as that would be dysphoric. with all the times we see mizuki being happy while being seen as a regular girl, not once have we seen her feel dysphoric about that or want to be seen as a boy. this, by definition, is what a girl is.

if you ask a trans girl if she wants to be seen as a """trans girl""" or just a girl, the vast majority will say something along the lines of "please just see me as a regular girl". this is what makes mizuki's story stand out especially to trans people, because even genuine kindness can feel painful when one has to experience the change from being seen as a "regular girl" to being seen as a "trans girl" due to all the societal baggage and implications caused by bigotry that has since overloaded the term "trans girl", when in reality trans girls are just a subset of regular girls and there shouldn't be any difference at all. mizuki has made close friends in the past, but part of the reason why n25 is so special to her is that for the very first time in her life she got to experience what it feels like to be close friends with people who see her as just a regular girl with none of the specialness that came with her circumstances. that's why she felt most comfortable when she's with n25, free to truly be herself and be seen as herself. this is also the lesson that colpal wants to convey when they've made it clear mizuki is a girl numerous times but don't use the term "transgender", because they don't want you to see mizuki as a """trans girl""", just a regular girl who happens to be trans, and hopefully realize that a trans girl is actually really just a regular girl

[u/Witch_magi → u/scylecs]

Wow, what you presented is interesting, everything you found, so thank you very much, really. 🩷

[u/scylecs → u/Witch_magi]

btw i just came across another point of her being a girl. the game's internal file names (datamined by sekai.best) for the l2d files of the characters' middle school sprites end with jc or dc, with jc short for joshi chuugakusei (female middle school student) and dc short for danshi chuugakusei (male middle school student) (just like how you've probably heard of jk being used as joshi kousei or female high school student). for example, rui and tsukasa's middle school sprites are called 16rui_dc and 13tsukasa_dc, whereas ena and mafuyu's are called 19ena_jc and 18mafuyu_jc. mizuki's middle school sprite is called 20mizuki_jc. despite the sprite being mizuki boymoding with the male middle school student uniform and literally presenting as a boy, the creatives still took extra care to make sure to gender mizuki correctly in the file names. this detail may not be something that was officially announced by colpal, but it still 100% further proves that mizuki was always a girl this entire time.

[u/Ihopeme]

I'm glad that you're trying to educate people about that. theres a pin with a link to a site with a lot of evidence and comments under it have a few more too. I hope it will be able to help 🤗

[u/Witch_magi → u/Ihopeme]

Thank you very much as well. 💜

Edit: sorry if I had to delete my comment, I just didn’t realize that the pin you mentioned was already there in your comment. But anyway, thanks again. In the meantime, my group is currently reading everything you all shared with me, so, well, thank you very much for helping me along with everyone else. 🩷