Talk:Luka Urushibara/@comment-27107859-20190328170210

I don't get this discussion as a whole. We all know that Japan isn't exactly the most forward-thinking nation in the world when it comes to homosexuality and transgender. Or better, for what I know the general public doesn't have many negative opinions about it, but many people think that those things are mostly a juvenile issue that changes with time.

Said so, the story clearly plays on the idea that "Luka wants to be a woman" at the start, and Okabe and the others change the past (as a joke, at the start, as they don't think that such a stupid email could really change him to a girl but it was worth trying from both Kurisu and Okabe POVs as they wanted to experiment) with that idea at its core. But then we see little difference in his character, when He becomes a She.

On a meta-narrative level, this is the first flag that the change worked, but something else didn't.

In chapter 8 we see that Luka has feelings for Okabe IN BOTH TIMELINES, as it is implied by Okabe. It's not exactly explicit, but one now can think that Luka indeed wanted just to be more confident in order to ask Okabe out. But his/her confidence didnt' change with her sex, as Luka is still Luka after the change. And as she now doesn't have the memories of her previous male self, she didn't even know that she already tried to change that big limit.

So, coming back to the issue of "Is Luka trans?". If you ask me, Lukako is more of a fluid gender, and bisexual at that. The writing of the character may not be consistent with our knowledge of psychology but... hello, it's not consistent with basic biology. If you change the sperm that created Lukako, you can't have the same fucking body.

So, take that as the author wrote it: a bait-and-switch about his/her feelings for Okabe, and not a gender issue. Focus on how Lukako would the same person even with a change of gender, showing that after all gender is just a part of our identity and so on. For once, y'all, focus on what the story is about, focus on the characters, not on your ideas of the real world.