So in the interest of keeping the conversation on the right track, I've done some research now that the game is out to make sure that I am (and thus this thread) not misrepresenting the game on how it presents things, by skimming through the cutscenes for the new route. If the purpose of this thread is call Catherine out on how it presents gender, then I want to call it out for things the game does and not second hand information.
So, quickly, here's how some of the problematic elements are specifically presented in game, without too much commentary from me.
-The gender reveal segment
In the scene, Vincent accidentally sees Rin in a compromising position, where he can see... downstairs, after they have fallen unconscious due to their shower not working. At this point, he has already thought of Rin as attractive. Vincent has an anime style, over the top, "GASP" moment where his mind has apparently stopped working. He asks "Are you a guy", to which Rin confidently responds "yes that's right". Vincent then spends a while thinking about the situation, and when Rin asks if he's alright he slaps their hand away and says "Don't touch me". Rin runs off.
Vincent then regrets his actions, and Erica later calls him out for being an ass. It's at this point that the pronouns for Rin change from she/her to he/him.
-Trans coding
As stated in my opening post, articles claimed that the results thingy of the final stages of Rin's route featured the colours of the trans flag.
Here's a picture of the trans flag from wikipedia:
And here's a quick screengrab I took from a video by youtube user DismArchus, "Catherine: Full Body- Close Encounter EX Stage (10th Day) (JPN) | Standard-Normal [All Gold Prizes]":
Now there's no white here, but the pink and blue shades are pretty similar (I'm slightly colourblind, so this is all I'm willing to commit to lol). This is notable because the game normally uses blue and pink anyway, but they're much bolder variations that don't have the same queer link. These colours are also roughly part of Rin's design, and Rin's design even features the colour white. (Again, slightly colour blind, so ymmv, but it's pretty similar at the very least)
-Queer stuff
So I'm not going to go completely in depth here because this increasingly just becomes the plot in general towards the end, but broadly Rin's route ends up being about challenging preconceived notions about love, and not letting gender/being an angel/being an alien stand in your way. There's a few things that I feel are worth mentioning. Someone, I think it may have been Erica? Says that "same sex couples are getting more common nowadays". Or something like that. Toby also *seems* to have a more friendly relationship with Erica in the new scenes, although this doesn't erase the fact that he still deadnames her in one ending.
There's also the fact that Rin's piano playing "Opens people up to new ideas". For Vincent specifically he claims that he would have fallen for Rin anyway, but it's a wrinkle that you can think about.
-The aliens
Not much new to say here other than wow they really are played for comedy in the majority of Rin's ending, huh.
I've got complicated thoughts on all of this new information, which I'll probably post about in detail later. Short version though, there's a lot that I wish I knew before I made this thread, for both good and bad reasons? The broad points are still right and I stand by them, and Fully Body is in fact, still transphobic and bad. But not only is there some better than expected nuance worth discussing here in regards to the bad things and how they're ultimately handled, there's also some bad subtexty things that I haven't seen raised yet.
It's a complicated discussion, I'll be back later with personal thoughts, but here you go. Criticising things is hard, even if you're broadly right!
I'm glad you took a closer look at it because, honestly, i stand by the idea that the game is genuinely trying in its own misguided way to present a positive view of queerness through rin's route. hashino even mentioned in an interview that they wanted to do something like rin's route in the original game but didn't think people would've been as accepting of it a few years ago. the main problem is it's written by a bunch of very ignorant straight people who do not understand the complexity of gender, sexuality, etc. and thus ends up doing a lot of insensitive shit - conflating cross-dressing and transness most prominently, which is not uncommon amongst The Straights and shows a pretty fatal lack of actually consulting any queer people about any of this.
despite the fact that it handles a lot of the aspects of both erica and rin's characters very poorly, i also think it's a bit unfair to write all of it off as "atlus hates gay people" - I think the existence of the rin route at all shows that's not true. but if they're going to try handling this kind of subject matter they need to get a lot better at it.
