FE8: Sacred Stones Localization: Does Aias’s Death Quote Specify the Tactician’s Gender? [JPN vs ENG]

This post is part of a series on reader requested (and personal curiosity) comparisons between Fire Emblem games’ Japanese and English scripts.

Today, I look into a reader request from twitter:

“I have a quick request. If you defeat Aias in Eirika’s Ch13 (FE8), he compliments Renais’ tactician. Do you know what he says in Japanese, specifically if he says the tactician is female? Thank you in advance!”

Short answer: Aias does not specify any gender of the tactician in Japanese either.

Let’s take a closer look!

The following dialogue occurs upon defeating the boss of Chapter 13 Hamill Canyon (Eirika’s route):

Japanese	Literal Translation	Official Localization
強い・・・な。 俺の敷いた陣形をここまで見事に破ってみせたのは・・・ お前たちが初めてだ。 レネスの知将に最大級の敬意を・・・	So…strong. To destroy my formation this way…with such a magnificent display… You [all] are the first. [My] highest respects to Renais’s tactician(s)…	Very…impressive. You’ve pierced the battle formations I’d perfected… No one’s ever done that. Renais’s tactician has earned my highest regard.

You can see I made the Literal Translation even more literal than usual, since we are looking at very nuanced language. But despite doing that, we can see there are no gender references as expected. It’s rarer in Japanese to see gendered language such as clear pronouns in general, so that was not unexpected.

However, it’s clearer in Japanese that Aias is addressing the army as a whole (as evident by using a pluralized “たち tachi” after his “you” (お前 omae, a very informal you). The English could go both ways in that case.

The other take away is that there is no clear use of singular or plural for 知将 chishou (word for “tactician” in both translations). The English makes it clear it is singular, but the Japanese can be read to be one or multiple tacticians if you wanted to. That would make sense if multiple characters in the story help form the strategies (say, Seth and Eirika) in JP. But the English (and Japanese) would still make sense if they are referring to the player specifically (though the player is not a character in this unlike FE7).

The localization is very accurate here, so there is not much else to say!

So, to answer the reader question: Aias’s line is very much the same in Japanese, and does not specify the tactician’s gender at all.

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References

Quick Infographic:

Original Japanese Script

The following video was used for the Japanese conversation reference:

Official Localization

Aias’s line from serenesforest.net’s game script.

“Very…impressive. You’ve pierced the battle formations I’d perfected… No one’s ever done that. Renais’s tactician has earned my highest regard.”

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That was straightforward enough!

I will continue to look at fun differences between the versions of Fire Emblem and other games. Any dialogue you’re interested in? Let me know in comments or via email!