Introduction

Our team for this project included Amber Walker, CYW, Hana Nguyen, Minjin Li and Sergio Lagunas Gracias alphabetically.

For the current project, our team decided to choose two characters from the Japanese anime series “Steins Gate”, from 2009. The reason is that even though females are able to use masculine features in Japanese, males are seldom seen to express their feminine sides, which was relatively a challenge for finding two male characters with one containing feminine features. Two characters will be specifically analysed within this series, there will be the classic masculine male character 「岡部 倫太郎」（Okabe Rintarou）, and relatively neutral-feminine male character 「漆原 るか」（Urushibara Ruka）.

Official Website: http://steinsgate.jp/

Aim

The focus of our team within this project was to analyse the differences between the gender features between the two. There were areas to focus upon and pay attention to closely. Their expressions, how actions were taken with their emotions; Their appearances, representations of their personalities and identities, and their stances for their targets and dreams throughout the plot of the story.

 

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Biography

岡部 倫太郎　Okabe Rintarou

Okabe is a 18 year old male university student who has the aim, target, and duty to pursue his future, through the approach of his hobbies and fascinations, engineering and inventions. Though, for his largest ambition was to create a time machine, which opens the story of the series “Steins Gate”. Throughout the series, we will see changes to Okabe’s personality, which results will affect his style in speech in terms of what type of masculinity.

At the start of the story, we understood Okabe’s overwhelming masculinity through speech, emotions, actions, and appearance, which he was determined to cover his immaturity. As the story progresses, we can see subtle changes to his speech as he becomes more mature in personality and methods of thinking.

His appearance throughout the show is most likely to be in a “swaggy” laboratory coat alongside long pale trousers. This further encourages his behaviour to be “professional”, “knowledgeable”, and “coolness”, which are the typical traits of teenage males.

In support for this fact, is that Okabe calls himself “Hououin Kyouma（鳳凰院　凶真）”, which is a nickname for his engineering research, this also shows his childish and naive side. Furthermore, this can be further proven where Okabe is too embarrassed to call Kurisu, a girl that he is rather fond of, by her real name, and instead uses nicknames due to shyness of him, with aspects of a teenager in or at the end of puberty.

Notable aspects in regards to this character is where he often uses extremely masculine features for speech in an audience that he either knows or being close with, while neutral features in front of unknown audiences due to his behaviour being relatively shy.

「ただの好奇心だったんだ、遊びみたいなものだったんだ……」said Okabe, later in the story before Mayuri being gunned down by mercenaries, which his confession also explains the reason for his attitude and behaviour early on in the story.

 

漆原 るか　Urushibara Ruka

 

Ruka is a 16 year old male but has a rather strong feminine appearance and personality. He’s a rather formal, timid, emotional, and shy character, as he often blushes or trembles, especially when he’s talking with Rintarou. He doesn’t push his opinion out and is very submissive. He also believes a lot of Rintarou’s stories he tells him as he’s a very pretty gullible too.

Ruka comes from a family that runs a shrine. His upbringing in a religious household probably had an influence in him speaking so formally in everyday conversations.

When he was first introduced in the show Ruka was working at a shrine dressed like a Miko(巫女) , or a shrine maiden in English. Miko’s work at shrines that assist the shrine priest in rituals and typically wears red hakama and white haori. They are usually women’s role as to why they are called a shrine maiden in English. Ruka’s father wears a white haori and a blue hakama, which can be in role differences as seen in this picture below.

To add on to dressing like a maiden, Ruka’s looks and mannerisms add on to him being mistaken as a female. All though this character doesn’t use the typical feminine particle ending like わ、or のね、but Ruka is very formal is seen to be a feminine attribute. As Okabe says “漆原るか声もしぐさも女にしか見えない。いや女より女らしい美少女” or is English:“Urushibara Ruka. The mannerisms and voice of a woman. No… More feminine than any woman”

(Appearance during timeline in female form)

In the middle of the series, Okabe was able to change the future by changing Ruka’s gender to be a female by Ruka’s request. Despite being female in that timeline, Ruka still refers to themselves as 僕 and seems like their personality and looks didn’t change at all.

 

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Plot Summary

For the purpose of this research, we will describe important and notable parts of the plot of the series “Stein’s Gate” that are required, please be aware of spoilers.

In short descriptions, at the start of the story we have Okabe Rintarou as a 18 years old teenager who loves to invent gadgets. As he was fascinated by time theories, he somehow succeeded to create the first ever time machine, which enabled him to send SMS messages towards the past through his mobile phone, to his mobile-phone-linked-microwave, then finally arriving on the destined phone number, which he later named “D-Mail”. Though this perhaps made him delighted as if he was a child having a new toy, it was the start of his struggle, as he uncovers different theories of fate, and unearthed the mysterious face of a European organisation named CERN (Organisation Européenne pour la Recherche Nucléaire).

The discovery of D-Mail was first introduced in episode 1, where a girl he liked since his first glance died, and he sent an SMS to his friend, a lab assistent, while the destination phone was connected to a microwave.

Halfway through the story, Ruka becomes a girl at some timeline (A timeline is a parallel world that is slightly altered due to changes in the past by time travel/modifications), by Ruka himself requesting Okabe sending a message to 17 years ago to his mother to eat more vegetables, it was believed mothers eating vegetables will likely give birth to a girl. We found out the true reason on why Ruka wanted to become a girl as a target. Ruka’s affection towards Okabe’s kindness were often ignored and he had to hide his feelings when he was a boy. Hence in this timeline, he, or she showed his, or her affection towards Okabe, where he/she confessed his/her love.

But since Mayuri, a girl that Okabe took care of due to the pass away of her grandmother, is destined to lose her life in the “alpha” timeline’s world due to fate. Okabe had to revert the changes in the “alpha” timeline, in order create a massive jump to the “beta” timeline in order to break the fate and save Mayuri. This meant Ruka can no longer remain a girl, and as she understood the reason of reverting the timeline, as a farewell gift, she invited Okabe onto a date. His, or her reason was that it will be forgotten anyways after a shift in timeline, hence why not accomplish his dream at least in some part of time. Hence we understood why Ruka insisted to become a girl by asking Okabe to send a text message to his mother before Ruka was born, which turned the outcome that Ruka became a girl.

During the time period where Mayuri was destined to die, in fact she died over hundreds of times in different timelines in “alpha” world, and Okabe had to endure the pain and sufferings, and constantly travel back in time in favour and attempt to rescue her, though as the number of times she died, it is also the number of times Okabe failed and constantly traveled back in time. Through the suffer and torture of fate, Okabe is seen to be maturing in a astonishing rate from the halfway point of the entire story.

Notable aspect is that at the rate of maturing, the entire story in this series spanned and undertook in only 3 weeks.

 

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Context

	Okabe Rintarou	Urushibara Ruka
First Person Pronoun	俺, (我が)	僕
Second Person Pronoun	きさま、おまえ、あなた	Uses people’s names
Sentence final particles	ぞ,な,よな,ぜ,よ	です、－ます、ね
Questions	コントか仕込みか？ そうなのか？ なんだこれは？ 分かったか？	ですか。「。。。」⤴
Commands	よせ！ 靴を脱げ！ 上げろ、答えろ、安心しろ	待って ーてなさい
Requests	-てくれ -てもらう -てもらいたい -て下さい	お願いします ーしてほしい ーてください
Vocabulary		丁寧な言葉 失礼します お待たせしました お肉

Based off the chart, Ruka uses a lot of neutral terms and talks politely to anyone. Like ending in ーます or ーたんです。There are not much feminine ending words but the fact that Ruka is always formal is a feminine attribute.

On other other hand, for Okabe, we see that he often uses normal masculine features as a typical teenage boy does. Where there will be a lot of commanding and ordering words, followed by imperative requests. Hence he often carries out speech with major confidence.

 

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Research

岡部 倫太郎　Okabe Rintarou

Throughout the episodes, Rintarou typically tends to end his sentences with ぞ,な, だな, よ which shows his standard usage of the masculine form. Some examples are presented in our screenshots, here he says 塗装されてないぞ?  And 人数が少ないな。

When he presents himself, he says 俺 quite often which makes him sound more assertive when he’s speaking to someone.

When he calls out someone, he usually says きさま、おまえ、あなた. きさま is usually used when he’s feeling a bit of anger towards someone. Under one of our screenshots he says, この三次元女の色香に惑わされて…貴様！which translates to “ Misleading by this three-dimensional woman’s incense … … you!” when he was confronting Kurisu Makise.

As for おまえ and あなた, they seemed to be used when he’s questioning someone. Also shown, he says お前の携帯話電話レンジ(仮)につなかって傷んだな？Which translates to “your phone was hooked up to the phone microwave?”. Also, when Rintarou asks questions, he typically ends his sentences with か or は (e.g. でも今は言うとおりにしてくれないか？).

As for making commands, he becomes extra assertive, usually majority ending his commands with ろ which with his tone, sounds very demanding. For example, he says 両手を上げろ! (Put your hands up!) or when he says 早く答えろ! (hurry up and answer me!). Lastly, When making requests, he usually isn’t polite compared to Ruka but instead also tends to sound demanding. For example, he says 急いで下さい! Which in this case he is being pushy to the driver rather than asking politely.

 

Episode 1 and 2	Masculine	Neutral
First Person Pronoun	21
Second Person Pronoun	10	1
Sentence final particles	27	3
Questions	19	6
Commands	14
Requests	5	3
Vocabulary	3

Examples:

1. これは、抗える者たちに対する、神からの最後通告と言えよう。
2. 行くぞ。
3. 人数が少ないな、やはり「機関」の妨害が入っているか……
4. お前はそれも知らずに、ここに来たというのか
5. 我々研究者の抜け駆けをし、この世紀の発明の発表会へと漕ぎつけた、たっぷりとその考えを聞かせてもらうつもりだ。
6. 幼馴染であっても、金は貸さん。
7. 貴様、まさか「機関」が送り込んだエージェント……
8. 外に出ていろ！！
9. 天才少女よ、次に会う時は敵同士だな、さらばだ。
10. 忘れるなよ
11. 我か右腕に取りついた悪霊が~！
12. そこのお前！いや あなた 待て！あっ 待って下さい！
13. 貴様脅そうというのか？
14. はあ…安心しろ
15. それより見てもらいたい この写真なんだが
16. そうか 分かったぞ
17. 確かにさっき1本ちぎった よな？

 

Episode 13 and 14	Masculine	Neutral
First Person Pronoun	16
Second Person Pronoun	6
Sentence final particles	13	3
Questions	15	6
Commands	26
Requests	9	1
Vocabulary	1

Examples:

1. もし見かけたらすぐ俺に電話するように言ってくれ！
2. 送ったらお前も戻ってくるな！
3. そこなに止まってんだよ！
4. 逃げろ まゆり！りょて
5. まゆりを見てないか？
6. いや 誰かしんじる？
7. 俺がやっておく、とにかく、秋葉原から離れるんだいいな！
8. まゆりは……もう出た後か？
9. 動くな。両手を上げろ。
10. お前たちが今晩ラボを襲い、俺たちを誘拐しようとしていることはわかっている。
11. 俺が未来から来たからだ！分かったか？早く答えろ！お前たちはSERNなのか？
12. 待ってくれ！頼む、まゆりを、まゆりを殺さないでくれ！

Analysis

From both pie chart and bar chart, we can see that the male character Okabe Rintarou speaking in way of masculine for 88% and neutral for 12% in episodes 1&2. And in episodes 13&14, the masculine feature takes 87% and neutral feature takes 13% of his expressions. The comparisons obviously show that his speech style strongly tend to masculine way.

The gender-related features not only shows people gender of characters but also deliver speakers’ identity, personality, emotion and stance. From the data that we recorded, Okabe usually use “俺” to represent himself rather than using “私” or “ わたくし”, which characterize him as a masculine role in the animation. When Rintarou talk to people, he use “貴様” as second person pronoun a lot. “貴様” as a dramatic expression shows speakers’ scorn. The gendered features like this reflect the personalities of Rintarou such as arrogant and self-centered. Also in the episode 13, when he saw まゆりdead in a time line and he reset the time for avoiding the tragedy happening and saving まゆり’s life, he spoke much in a command tone such as: “走れ！全力で走るんだ!” “逃げろ！まゆり!” which expresses his emotion of anxious. And he reset time repeatedly and trying his best to save his friend’s life and this world showing his firm stance of justice.

Besides,  the language as whole part can be analyzed by referential meaning, expressive meaning and social meaning. For example, in the episode2, when Okabe came back to his place and met a new part-timer in the downstairs grocery store, he talked with the new part-timer for a while and suddenly said: “いずれ この世界は俺にひざまずくことになる！フフフフ… ッハッハッハ…!” The referential meaning is “Someday, the entire world will be in the palm of my hand.” He spoke this phrase in a very confident and even arrogant mood, which also reflect his personality of “Chunibyo”(中二病 ちゅうにびょう). That is as a grandiose delusions he lives in a world of his own, and believes what he believe. As a researcher and mad scientist, he is tenaciously study the time machine with passion. For the audience, it also deliver indexical meaning such as assertive,dominant and direct.

 

漆原 るか　Urushibara Ruka

In episode 4 Ruka only shows up near the end. Not much words were said when Ruka was on screen but we found a couple of examples of him speaking very formal. In Graph 1 Example 1 is when Ruka first came on screen stating almost a shop keeping keeping a customer waiting at the scene saying “お待たせしました”. He has refrained from using any masculine or feminine pronouns and but based of what Makise has seen in Ruka based on looks and how his voice sounds, came to the conclusion that Ruka is a girl. The amount of how formal Ruka might have been due to being at the shrine with his father, but despite that, the next episode will show that even when not helping at the shrine he can be formal. This is how we came to the conclusion that being overly formal is a feminine characteristic for this character.

Now in episode 8, Ruka showed up alot more and we were able to get more examples of their speech style in a friend to friend situation. As you can see by the chart, Ruka refers to themselves by 僕(boku)、which is a masculine pronoun. Despite that one masculine distinction, the list stays on the neutral column as it did in episode 4. He still talks formally as you can see in Graph 2 Example 7, when asking for a request, saying ”お願いします” (onegaishimasu)is still very formal than saying お願い or どうも to friends. You do see some times when Ruka is speaks casually when talking to Mayuri.

Near the end of episode 8, Ruka’s request that he asked Okabe for has come true. Which was to become a girl. From the anime, his looks and mannerisms look exactly the same whether he’s a boy or a girl. In Graph 2 Example 9, Ruka responds to someone by saying “そうかな” which is a neutral sentence final. From the end of Episode 8 you can not tell if Ruka has in fact changed gender until you notice one of the characters, Mayuri, refers to them as るかちゃん instead as るか君(kun) when he was a boy as you can see in Photo 1 and Photo 2 down below.

Also in episode 10 and 18, Ruka still refers to themselves as 僕(boku) even though in this episode they are in a timeline where Ruka is a girl. As Ruka gets more screen time, we started to notice some more patterns. Despite being a girl, we noticed masculine sentence finals like when he said “これか？” in Graph 3 Example 4 or  ”何いってるんだろう” in Graph 4 Example 6. These instances are rare, but show that even as a girl, never say any feminine speech.

 

Episode 2, 4, and 8	Masculine	Feminine	Neutral
First Person Pronoun	9
Second Person Pronoun			6
Sentence final particles			3
Questions			4
Commands			3
Requests			2
Vocabulary			7

Examples:

1. お待たせしました。
2. はい。あの、こちらこと。。。
3. 会話：
   るか：今年で１７さいです。
   牧瀬：いっこ下か
   るか：ええ？そんあんですか。
4. 牧瀬さん、大人っぽいですね。きれいだし。
5. お父さんを呼んできます。
6. ああそんな所触らないで！
7. どっどうしたんですか？凶真さん
8. あ～あ待って！今日ここに来たのは凶真さんたちにお願いがあったらなんです。
9. 僕も過去にメールを送られてほしいんです！
10. 僕自分の容姿があんまり好きじゃなくて、女の子になれれば少しは自信が出るかなって
11. 本気で女の子になりたいんです。お願いします。
12. すみませんでした！
13. そっそうかな。

 

Episode 10 and 18	Masculine	Feminine	Neutral
First Person Pronoun	17
Second Person Pronoun			25
Sentence final particles			13
Questions	2
Commands			6
Requests			1
Vocabulary			3

(Please be aware Luka became a girl in episodes 10 and 18.)

Examples:

1. お邪魔してます。
2. 憧れるな僕こんなにスタイル良くないいから。。。
3. 僕岡部さんにそういうふうに見られていたんですね。
4. あっこれか。
5. ごめんなさい岡部さん。
6. 冗談。。。ですよね。
7. 僕と恋人になってください。
8. 早めに出たつもりだったんですけど、お待たせしちゃいました
9. 今日はいいてんですね。
10. 岡部さんっていろんなこと知ってるんですね。
11. 僕何を言ってるんだろう。なんだか混乱して。

In-depth Dialogue Analysis

ルカ：えっ？あっ岡部さ。。。いいえ、凶真さん

岡部：合言葉を忘れているぞルカ子よ

ルカ:えっ？あっ。え。。エル・プサイ・コ。。。コンガリ

岡部：「コングルー」だ

ルカ：す……すみません

岡部：それで荷物というのは？

まゆり：ここだよ。ごめんね。まゆし一人ではもてそうになかったのです。

ルカ：父がもらってきて。。うちでは食べきれないので

岡部：そうかラボへの食料提供感謝する。ラボメンの士気も上がることだろう

ルカ：よかったです。喜んでもらえて

岡部：あっいやその

まゆり：ルカ君毎日素振り続けてるんだよね

ルカ：はい,おか。。きょうまさんとの約束なので

岡部：有無羊頭五月雨はルカ子がふさわしい使い手とかんちしときに真の力を発揮する。忘れないよ。

ルカ：はい

岡部：では鍛錬の成果を見せてもらおう。おはらいはできるか？

ルカ：えっ？い一応は.でも、ちゃんとしたお祓いならお父さんの方が。。

岡部：うわあ～！ああ～！あっ。わが右腕にとりついた悪霊が～！は早くお祓いをあの力が全身を犯す前に。

ルカ：はい！

The dialogue above comes from the scene where Ruka was first introduced. The dialogue includes both Ruka and the main character Okabe. A third character known as Mayuri is also included.

This dialogue is the first encounter between Ruka and Okabe. We chose this scene because it introduces Ruka’s idiolect which reflects his personality, which is mainly timid, shy, and formal. It can be clearly seen that Ruka’s way of speaking leans more towards general neutral speech. Ruka’s way of speaking is formal, and in Japanese it is more common for women to use formal language.

For example, Ruka responds a few times to Okabe by saying 「はい！」 which is a rather formal way to respond to someone who is probably considered a friend. Another example from this dialogue that characterizes his way of being formal is when he apologizes to Okabe for forgetting the pass code. Rather than a casual sorry, Ruka instead apologizes by saying 「すみません」 which can be compared to the other character Mayushi who apologized in this scene with the much casual 「ごめんね」. Also, worth noting in this dialogue is that we can see how differently Ruka is viewed. Okabe addresses Ruka by calling him 「ルカ子」, implying that he views Ruka in a feminine way since ko at the end of names is usually for girl names. On the contrary, Mayuri usually calls Ruka, 「ルカ君」 which is usually used for boys. (This also helps later on in the series when Ruka is a girl where Mayuri started calling Ruka “Ruka-chan” to help indicate a change happened in that timeline even though you can’t physically see the difference.)

We view it is safe to say that men are more likely to view Ruka as feminine, but women view Ruka as more masculine or to help have a reminder that Ruka is in fact a boy. Ruka’s timid way of speaking can also be seen this dialogue as he often stutters or speaks with hesitation as he interacts with Okabe.

 

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Conclusion

Notable aspects in Ruka’s case, is that no matter he being a male or female, he and she both insisted and consistently used neutral gender features in speech. Our team came up with a solution, which is that since Ruka showed affection towards Okabe either being a boy or a girl wanted Okabe to notice him, yet Okabe consistently ignored the affection from both male and female versions of Ruka. Not only that, but Okabe once said 「お前が男だろうか女だろうか関係ない！そんなことはどうでもいい」, which means “Who cares if you’re a boy or a girl? That doesn’t matter at all!”. Hence, his actions justifies personality, and personality justifies style in speech, which dictated the outcome where Ruka used neutral gender features in speech regardless of sex. Ruka also mentioned in Episode 18 that “I think I’d feel better about myself if I was a girl.”「女の子になれれば少しは自信が出るかなって」. They stated that they would feel more comfortable being a girl because they already look like a girl. But even when Ruka is a girl they don’t have much self confidence anyway, as you can see Ruka saying here: “I wish I could be like that. I don’t have those proportions.” 「憧れるな僕こんなにスタイル良くないいから。。。」. Their actions and feelings are the same, whether Ruka is male or female and going back to what Okabe stated “Who cares if you’re a boy or a girl? That it doesn’t matter at all!”

In Okabe’s terms, comparing the speech from episodes 1/2 to 13/14, it is not visible about the differences. But taking a closer look, we can see that the amount of times Okabe spoke about “First Person Pronouns” has decreased dramatically (21 → 16), where his aim, his target, and his ambition no longer lies on himself solely. This is a clear sign of maturity that he is no longer the sole person within his universe, where he understands the priceless value of those who stand and support around him. His sufferings to save Kurisu and Mayuri have taught him maturity in an extremely difficult way, and we could use the word “purgatory” to describe his situation.

So in conclusion of this study, we have seen throughout this series, male characters have never fallen to say feminine speech. Even the most feminine male that we observed, Urushibara Ruka, stayed mostly in the neutral speech with some rare masculine speech. This shows that males never show their femininity through feminine speech but rather in a way of being overly formal, as Ruka showed in the series. Female characters on the other-hand are free to go from masculine, to feminine and even to neutral freely to express how they feel. In the series, even when Ruka was a female in the timeline, still refrained from saying any feminine speech and still kept speaking neutral and even some masculine, maybe due to the fact of still having a feeling that in a different timeline that they were a boy. So finding difference between two male characters might be harder than two female characters since females have more range to go around than male speakers. You can add formality as a different speech style to this study but formality is normally between the difference between position between the relationship.