This is correct
Poison and Roxy were originally designed to be girls
" In the Street Fighter X Tekken artbook, a footnote from Yasuda states that he’ll always personally view Poison as being a female in Japan and only being transgender overseas, due to having originally conceived her as the former."
Yasuda = Akira Yasuda = Akiman
Now in current canon i consider Poison to be a tranny just as i consider Birdie to be black (retcon), but back to FF1 days they were girls in the intention of theyr creators
I made a Ending for my Setsu concept. It continues the parallel of him being the polar opposite of Ibuki.
Summary
Ending:
Unable to defeat Zeku, Setsu returns to Sarusuberi University to ponder the offer to join Zeku’s “Striders”. When he returns, he has found that the membership of his ninja club has skyrocketed. Almost all of the new members are girls, Setsu assumes they all joined up to learn self defense. An honorable endeavor, but he is completely oblivious to their true motives. One member in particular always remains close by him, she 's already a skilled ninja in her own right. Setsu is delighted to find an advanced training partner. Ibuki is mortified that club with the “hot guy” turned out to be a ninjutsu club. “Not Again!!” she yells as a confused Setsu looks on.
Also this entire notion that somehow this points to some great step forward in Japan at the time and it was squeamishness on CapUSA’s part…
My god…
Talk about some western-centric thinking…
Like, do we all realize it was so flippantly easy to make Poison/Roxy transgenders specifically because that lifestyle was seen as ridiculous and worthy of mockery at best and degenerate and disgusting at worst in regular Japanese culture? Mad Gear is VILLAINOUS and street gangs of thugs are one of the most reviled concepts in Japanese culture, so much so that you shouldn’t even show tattoos in Japan to this day because you’re likely to be thought less of because of their link to thugs, gangsters and criminals. Throwing transsexuals or cross-dressers into Mad Gear is not because Japan was/is so much ahead of the curve in accepting them, but that they were totally okay with painting them as villainous social degenerates hanging out with other similar riff-raff.
That said, Final Fight also takes place in America so Final Fight is a commentary on western “street life” based on what was seen in movies and other pop culture that leaked over to Japan at the time. I think a lot of people are WAY too used to living in a society where information is freely accessible and easy to come by, especially regarding other countries. I grew up buying copies of copies of copies of things like Dragon Ball Z on VHS…not being able to freely stream new episodes of Dragon Ball Super on Cruncy Roll. Final Fight is a reflection of what the Japanese saw/heard in pop culture and then put into the game. That, of course, includes their own societal views overlaid on top of that but it’s no different from early mid to late 80’s movies about “Ninjas” made entirely in the west. Neither production had any great insight across the ocean.
Mid to late 80’s New York was seen as a cesspool of crime and corruption so you get guys like Edi E and Belger and the Mad Gear gang connected to the both of them. And that includes a bunch of “degenerate transsexuals” like Poison.
Sorry, but Poison has always been better off as a woman because then she’s a bad-ass bitch instead of a “weirdo you can beat up” as envisioned by the newhalf thing.
Don’t quote me on this but I think it’s because of their hundreds of years of all male Kabuki theater with men portraying female roles throughout their plays. Over in the West men usually crossdress as women in performances for comedies while over in the East they perform as women in multiple genres and not just comedy.
Yes, it’s also played for comedy usually via misunderstanding
Poison, however, is a violent gang-member trading in sexual wiles whilst being a transsexual. She’s the picture perfect example of transsexual as degenerate social outcast. That’s her entire archetype in a nutshell
Japan: "What’s the best way to display a degenerate street gang of violent criminals?
Also Japan: “Step one: Make them HELLA diverse to show how inclusive they are”
Also also Japan: “Nailed it, bro. Diversity is Mad Gear’s strength. Oh by the way, they’re all going to be totally cool with raping Jessica”
Totally also Japan: “Well, yeah, naturally. Hey, give the chicks dicks so they can get in on the implied rape too”
Japan 4 life: “You are batting 1000 today”
I’m not saying it was diversity for the sake of “fairness” or anything else. Only to make it more attractive and entertaining if you can consider it like that. Just like a fighting game, you include a lot of characters with different features and personalities to make it more fun and colorful.
Yes, and those inclusions are, as we already know with Capcom of Japan especially in the late 80’s, to reflect certain cliches, tropes and stereotypes.
Like what Poison represented by slapping the “newhalf” label on her character.
Yes but those hundreds of years of Kabuki roles being male only continues into today. The point being, having a male dressing up as a female over there is less stigmatized over there then it is in the West because they’ve been doing it since the past well into the present. The Elizabethan era ended back in the 17th century and so did their all male role play customaries, the Greeks are even further back in history.
Tbh the composition of MGG is much much more simple
They designed the gang to cover various stereotypes of criminal world
Punks, bikers, big goons, paramilitary nutcases, corrupted cops, elegant mafia guy etc
In that group they dropped hookers too
It increase variety as are the only women
It gave them the excuse to add some fanservice aside Jessica
It fit the composition of the group
Poison was to FF1 MGG, what Chun Li was to SF2 cast
And there was no controversy, they was females
This straight from Akiman
Simple as that
Then, after
USA fucked up and started bitching and whining to make it fit west moral standards
Then Japan was like “whatever, if disturb you they got vagina, pretend they got dick. Problem solved”
One line to deal with usa bitching without have to change anything
All other possible moral shades and implications have been added after by fans
In Yasuda’s words he still consider FF1 as the FF1 they created, with female hookers
Then, years after, Poison char got picked and gained new roles.
To make her stand out they used the usa situation as excuse to make the char have something unique.
But that’s all stuff that happened after, FF1 Poison/Roxy were extremely simple: hot hookers that join the scrap being part of MGG
They would probably go with the more popularize western interpretation of the bio and persona in the more recent games, it had more memorable pop culture impact in the 90s era of the FF series that also a major influence in modern day Capcom history because of the controversy in censorship issue.
Why would they do that? Because the majority of people are more into that idea, people would care more of Poison being a new half or trans than what she was originally invision as a female in the drawing board. which is nothing more than a generic disposable random 1 dimentional variation of thugs in Final Fight without the design principles of being recurring character in the franchise.
Plus japan majority in the 90s isn’t even concerned or bothered if she is a female or a male, same with the transition of her gender. Regardless of that whatever Poison is, yet the gender is the least important but the better choice is the popularized.
It is her interaction, appearance and the way she fights will always standout noticeable in traits of her character in modern times which is the surface and historical design of her compare to her originally intended design in the gender part.
If Capcom is still considering Poison as female, it would be too late and it’s likely they don’t, They should have done that before Poison was release in modern games to correct the issue, if they planned it. So probably Capcom is just letting it be ambiguos but in a more into either a crossdresser, newhalf or trans instead of a female in the said speculation.
Going back to the cartoon Poison backstory isn’t important to be a spotlight anyway or her relationship with Hugo if there was. There are far more relevant and important character in SF originally and main characters in FF to be discussed more than Poison sexuality and relationship in a cartoon.
There’s a billboard on the CAPCOM building advertising Street Fighter V’ that stands in the futuristic city in the image below. Technically that’s Street Fighter V “DASH”, DASH being the Japanese label for Street Fighter II’s Champion Edition. So MM7 predicted SFV:AE:
