Talk:Birdo
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"Birdo, as described in the original first edition manual: "He thinks he is a girl and he spits eggs from his mouth. He'd rather be called 'Birdetta.'" A later printing of the manual omits the last sentence, but keeps the initial description. However, in Japan the manual says that the character's name is Catherine and would rather be called Cathy. Birdo was tough to beat, too, at the time. Birdo was not actually a baddie, however, like the perennial villian of the Mario Brothers games, "Bowser". Birdo was simply misguided, a little overenthusiastic, and ultimately, fell in with the wrong crowd. Birdo's motivation for trying to defeat Mario is given by the one line attributed to the character: "Ooh, you are so cute, I am NEVER going to let you go!" Birdo, basically was lonely, and had poor courting skills. As is common in Mario games, characters who were once former opponents often become friends and compatriots of the core Mario gang, and so it is that so very many years later, Birdo is back, to play tennis and have fun with the gang. Indeed, a picture in the Mario Tennis manual show Birdo and Yoshi, Mario's very favorite dinosaur pal, together apparently as a romantic couple! Birdo plays a fast and accurate game of tennis, and presumably is a regular at the Mario Tennis Clubhouse, flirts with Yoshi, and is an accepted part of the Mario 'Scooby Gang'.
I guess it might be considered more tongue-in-cheek than a story according to Nintendo Canon, though...
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[edit] Screenshot
I found the SMB2 screenshot rather blurry... perhaps someone who owns the game can provide a reasonable substitute? Radiant_* 12:47, Jun 1, 2005 (UTC)
- That looks like a screen shot from Super Smash Brothers Melee, if you go the the Super Mario Bros. 2 page you'll see a screen shot of the SMB2 stage from a different angle. I'll see if I can find a picture straight from SMB2, either the original or the SNES remake. On a seperate note, sorry about the screw up on the Japanese Birdo, there's a FAQ on GameFAQs that says that someone at Nintendo was playing a joke and added the bit about Birdo being a tranvestite to the English version. -- VederJuda 14:50, 6 September 2005 (UTC)
[edit] The pluralization of "Birdo"
A previous writer listed the plural of "Birdo" as "birdoes." This looked funny to me, so I switched it to "Birdoes" with the logic that the generic race of "Yoshi" is "Yoshies," according to the in-game text of Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island. Honestly, I think it should by "Birdos" — no "e" — but since Nintendo uses "Yoshies" I guess it makes more sense. Kidicarus222 06:27, 12 October 2005 (UTC)
- Yoshies makes sense, because Yoshi ends in an 'i'. Yoshis is too clipped to sound right. The final 's' would come out as an 's' sound instead of a 'z' sound. Birdoes, however, has no justification, since Birdos looks right as it is. It's ok to add an 'e' when the word needs balancing, but Birdos is balanced as is. (PS This is probably the dorkiest thing I've ever debated.) --Carl 10:45, 12 October 2005 (UTC)
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- I used "Birdoes" with the "e" because the plural of words that end in "o" like "potato" and "tomato" are "potatoes" and "tomatoes"—does anybody remember when Dan Quale thought the spelling of the singular was "potatoe"? I know there are people who spell them without the "e", but the proper way is to end in "-oes"; ending it "-os" makes it sound like a Spanish word. The only exception I can think of is "Oreos", but that's because there's a vowel before the "o". -- VederJuda 10:57, 12 October 2005 (UTC)
I thought of an exception in favor of "Birdos" over "Birdoes." In the Legend of Zelda gams, the chicken creatures are called Cuccos or Cuckos or something — not Cuccoes. Besides, "Birdoes" looks a little like "Bird does," whereas no one would mistake how to pronounce "Birdos." Kidicarus222 20:53, 12 October 2005 (UTC)
- I'd say no. The page discusses most of Birdo's appearances as a "she" -- the specific character. There are other Birdos, just like there are other Yoshies. But you still have Yoshi -- a he -- and Birdo -- a she. Besides, "he" and "she" can also refer to animals, as long as the animal's gender is known.
- Hmm, the tomatoes thing makes me think thta Birdoes has a kind of vegetable feel. Birdos seems a little more natural. Also, does anyone else think that the "she"s in the article should be replaced with "it"s? My argument is that Birdo is an animal, and its gender is sort of confused anyhow… --Carl 02:14, 14 October 2005 (UTC)
- Thought about it and realized that "Birdos" is better based on the logic that not all words in English ending in "o" take an "e" in the plural. And I'm not just talking about Spanish words. "Rhinos" and "hippos" is correct. Thus, the "e" isn't compulsory. I say change it to "Birdos" now.
[edit] Japanese name
In Japan, Birdo was referred to as "Catherine". In Japanese, it's "Kazaarin" (カザーリン). --PJ Pete
[edit] HORSE the band's Birdo
Under the Non-Game Apperances, I added a bit about HORSE the band's song about Birdo.Ashton Brood 00:52, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Fixed a Misspelling
It once read: After defeating Birdo by grabbing her eggs while riding them, then trowing them at her 3 times...
I have changed trowing to throwing. (My very first edit!) Master Strike 14:43, 18 September 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Birdo is listed as a guy in Japanese games.
Specifically, in Super Smash Bros. Melee, Birdo's trophy in Japanese calls the Birdo character a male. Can anyone back that up? It's similar to the claim that Yoshi is asexual (although that one was ultimately proven true).
Update: Here's a link in particular: http://boards.gamefaqs.com/gfaqs/genmessage.php?board=935598&topic=31436586&page=2
Several quotes from NessEggman: No, they didn't. Birdo is still a male in the Japanese games. I was telling my friends about this and they didn't believe me because they didn't have the manual for SMB2 (and no one read manuals anyway). So one day we were reading the trophy descriptions for just about everything in Smash Bros Melee to practice reading Japanese and it talks about how Katherine is a boy obsessed with the thought of being a girl, which was especially funny, because this is when we learned the name of Birdo in Japanese was Katherine, and one of the two friends there with us was named Katherine. ... Yeah, but people say that it was a translation error. Anyway, I asked another Japanese-speaking friend to type the description of the trophy for me from his game in IM, and the last line says "Convinced that he is a girl, when called 'Kathy' he becomes very happy." ... Here's a romanization of what I typed: "zibun o onna no ko da to omoikonde..." ... The rest of the description before it is just stuff about shooting eggs from his mouth that Mario or Peach can ride and stuff.
I'm going to add this info to the main article. Unless someone more skilled in Japanese comes around and can disprove this, it's sticking to it. I distinctly recall Birdo called a guy for Doki Doki Panic as well.
Update: New translation from the Japanese Mario Kart Double Dash site also implies that Yoshi and Birdo are romantically involved.
Yes, but the Japanese version of MKDD also has no indications whatsoever that Birdo is a gay male.
There's no truly solid indications that it's hetero OR gay beyond the behavior of the character and that one translated quote.
-A note from someone on the Vivian talk page:
Birdo was a male in the Japanese versions of the early Super Mario games, until the later games where Nintendo decided it was best to describe Birdo as a female because people assumed he was always a girl, though that was not their initial intention. Also, Vivian is a male in the Japanese version, despite his personality and appearance in the video game being depicted as a female. This was all confirmed by a staff member from Nintendo who I emailed to ask these questions.
Therefore, Birdo is NO LONGER MALE.
... Therefore, Birdo is - CENSORED - ouside of the Japanese release. 208.101.160.214 20:24, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
Okay, now you're just in denial. A freakin' Nintendo employee stated that Birdo is now FEMALE, even in Japan!
Go read the Japanese info. Come back after you try translating. Thank you. 208.101.143.63 22:51, 12 January 2007 (UTC)
After careful deliberation, I've decided to come here and provide a compilation of the information thanks to the GameFAQs user, NessEggman. That link will eventually become useless, as topics on GameFAQs will purge to make room for more. I feel that these uncovered facts need to be documented somewhere before it's too late, and this seems to be the perfect place for that. Since I am not an expert on Japanese, these are edited versions of NessEggman's posts. I must say, though, that it is a somewhat long explanation, but it is very thorough, and should answer many questions. Read on if you have the patience.
In Japan, Birdo has always been male. Many translations from modern Japanese sources prove this. On the Mario Kart: Double Dash Japanese website (http://www.nintendo.co.jp/ngc/gm4j/02.html), Catherine's profile reads, "Yoshi no kanojyou ni mie te jitsuha kareshi?!" Translated, that means "Looks like Yoshi's girlfriend, but actually s/he is Yoshi's boyfriend! Let's join the race with your eggs!" or "Appears to be Yoshi's girlfriend, so is s/he really a boyfriend?!" or "Appears to be Yoshi's girlfriend... or is that boyfriend?!" It doesn't say 'he' or 'she'. The "s/he" in the final part of the sentence is only in the translation because it has to have some kind of subject in English. In Japanese, this is dropped (it literally just says "really, boyfriend?!"). Japanese rarely uses pronouns, especially gender-specific pronouns, so it is really unlikely that they actually use 'her'. It could potentially be argued that this is saying something like, "Catherine appears to be Yoshi's girlfriend, so does that mean Yoshi is a boyfriend?" However, the structure of the sentence in Japanese implies that both parts of the statement (before and after the gerund miete) would be referring to Catherine. This is a pretty simple structure in Japanese. Basically, if the last part was talking about Yoshi, they would have had to actually say Yoshi; you wouldn't be able to drop it unless you had the same subject as the previous part of the statement (which was Catherine). If you put it into an online translator, you're going to get a sentence with "her" in it. This is because the Japanese use the pronoun 'her' to mean "girlfriend." So if you say "It is Yoshi's HER", that means it's Yoshi's girlfriend. Technically, the sentence calls Cathy both Yoshi's girlfriend and boyfriend. In addition, in Super Smash Bros. Melee, the English description of Birdo's Trophy clearly says it is a girl. The Japanese text for Catherine's Figurine says that he has an obsession with thinking about being a girl. Furthermore, Catherine's Japanese Wikipedia page (http://www.geocities.com/megamanxtreme/catherinewiki.jpg) states, "While It's appearance, speech and general behavior would have you believe that it's a woman, it is, in actuality, a male transvestite."
Basically, both the Figurine in Super Smash Bros. Melee and the line on the Mario Kart Double Dash site don't literally directly say if Catherine is a boy or a girl, but they both talk about him as if he were male. If he were female, it wouldn't fit within the context; he wouldn't have to convince himself that he was a girl, nor would it be confusing if he would be called "girlfriend" or "boyfriend."
Boy characters thinking or acting like girls is very common in Japanese entertainment such as games and anime. Oftentimes, if a character is too girly, it will be changed to a girl overseas. Pokemon (made by Nintendo) has many examples of this, especially in the cartoons. For example, a character from Team Rocket, Kojiro / James, is often seen in women's clothing. In an edited episode, he even wore fake breasts and played with them to tease Kasumi / Misty (in a girls' swimsuit, no less). There have been past Nintendo games that have had male characters that were turned female when brought to America, like Vivian from Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door. In the original Japanese version, he was a boy, but he was changed to a girl in most official translations, most notably the English one. He was another 'guy-who-was-obsessed-with-being-a-girl', and even had a crush on Mario. While the Japanese game called him a male the entire time, several American players refused to believe the initial translations, saying that those were merely jokes saying that she was a guy. This is due to clashing cultural differences.
The reason why they allow a character they created to change gender is because of censorship in places like America. Japan generally follows a different standard when it comes to censorship. In Japan, a boy obsessed with being a girl is considered a funny comic character trait that appears in kids' shows and games all the time, so they have no problem showing this to kids. However, American kids aren't Japanese kids, so obviously they can't just tell American children, "Look at this weird transvestite dinosaur! Doesn't it make sense here in a completely different culture?" Since they cannot do that, they have to edit it to fit. Almost every game is edited when they bring it to America; sometimes they even make all new menus and graphics for games just because they think it might look a little more appealing.
Crossdressing in Japan is really different from that in America. While people don't just go out on the streets as the opposite sex, it's not uncommon to see famous guys dressed up like women. The popular pop group boy-band SMAP had a TV segment where one of the members (Shingo) dressed up like a woman and cooked breakfast for people. Very popular group Morning Musume. released a single in which the three lead singers of the song dressed up like men and sang about going to a dance with girls, and in the music video, they even tried to pick up the girls, and in the extended version on the CD (the 4th album), before hand they talk about dating girls, and the other girls refer to them as boys. Anime (which is for kids or all ages) also has many instances of this. Nuriko from Fushigi Yuugi, a comic/cartoon for young girls, had a man who dressed like a woman to get into the King's harem, and even after the rest of the cast discovered his gender, he still was obsessed with dating the man. Even games for all ages like Chrono Trigger had characters like Flea who admitted to being a male while dressing like a female and blowing kisses and Crono and friends. The theme is so common in just about all kinds of popular media in Japan, even for kids. It probably may not be easily introduced to American kids, but that doesn't mean that Nintendo wouldn't do it when Nintendo is Japanese.
I will conclude in NessEggman's original words, "I'm not saying this because I think that Cathy is a boy. I know this. Just as when you play the US version of the game you know she is a girl. You're not like confused or too stupid to figure it out, the game tells you she is a girl! In Japan, the games have always made it clear that he's a guy that tries to be a girl. You don't have to like the fact that he's a boy, but you can't deny it just because it doesn't match up with your interests. Of course, I guess you could always just say I'm lying, but then again, I could just as easily tell you I've never played the game in English and I think you are lying about him being a girl. And you could show me things in the games/websites that say he is a girl, and I will tell you to "prove your translation" and things, because for some reason you can magically change the games and websites to say different things." Metalsonic89 05:45, 16 January 2007 (UTC)
- "Catherine" is clearly and officially male (and therefore transsexual), and "Birdo" is clearly and officially female by way of retconning. They are different versions of the same character in different regions, happens all the time. However, this brings up the question: If there's an article about a video game character that is both transsexual and not transsexual at the same time, should it be in the "LGBT video game characters" category? Because when you do this, "Birdo" is listed under this category although she is clearly no longer transsexual according to Nintendo, and this creates confusion. -IG-64 06:53, 2 March 2007 (UTC)
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- I say yes. Mainly because the character originally came from a Japanese game, was listed as such in official Japanese, and continues to be recognized as such by the Japanese developers and community. You can think of the American games as a separate continuity, but that doesn't change the fact that Nintendo of Japan is the leader behind the business.
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- Well, if this page works on that train of thought shouldn't the article be titled "Catherine" instead? Maybe with a subsection for Birdo that outlines the differences of the character in America? I've also noticed that the article currently refers to Birdo as "her." So if the article reflects the fact that Nintendo of Japan is the leader, shouldn't this be changed as well? -IG-64 17:35, 4 March 2007 (UTC)
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- You're talking about a significant change in character, here. Differences between the English and original Japanese version, from sex to name, should be noted. It can't be outright ignored, since just about ever video game page has a noted difference on their pages (usually the title or censorship).
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