Once there was a man named Te D. Woolsey, who was king of the translators. He had fame, power, and wit beyond your wildest dreams. Before they hung him from the gallows, these were the final words he said:

"My Neosquid is yours for the taking, but you have to find it first. I left my translation's meaning in Square One."

Ever since, gamers from all over the world set sail for Tokyo, Japan searching for Square One, the translation that would make their dreams come true!

Yo!
Ya-yo-ya-yo

Dreamin'!
Don't give it up Ryu!
Dreamin'!
Don't give it up Crono!
Dreamin'!
Don't give it up Marle!
Dreamin'
Don't give it give it up give it up give it up give it up
No!

Here's how the story goes, we find out about a translation in Tokyo, Japan
There's no doubt, the gamer whose eye is on it, he'll sing
I'll be King of the Gamers, I'm gonna be king

Ya-yo, ya-yo, ya-yo
Ho-ho

His name is Ryu!
That's Monkey D. Ryu.
Gonna be king of the gamers!

He's made of awesome!
How did that happen?
Yo-ho-ho, he took a bite Hot Wings!

Ya-yo, ya-yo

His name's Crono, just like a samurai.
And an L-A-D-Y Marle's not shy.
Popoi's doing that marksman thing.
Locke is cooking, Mallow's doctoring.

Ya-yo, ya-yo, ya-yo
Ho-ho

Set sail for Square One
It's the name of the translation
In Tokyo, Japan

Ya-yo, ya-yo
Set sail for Square One!

This review goes heavily into transphobia, internal and external, and the topics that brings (rape, pedophelia, suicide, death). These are the troubles trans people like myself must go through every day, and we should be allowed to speak up about it.

🎵You find yourself lost and confused, unable to comprehend the deep pit of anxiousness in your stomach or the torrential flow of tears from your eyes🎵

Being transgender is an alienating experience. Societal expectations of gender roles lock everyone, man, woman, inbetween, or something completely different into two states of ideologies: The ultra testosterone driven stoic and dependable men who rule this world, and the serene, beautiful caretaking women who hold it together. Anyone caught out of line faces scrutiny from their peers, rejection from their needs, and at worst, persecution and execution. It is an ever encompassing dogma that everyone must abide by, cis or trans, and to those who dare step out of that oppressive norm only have themselves to advocate for them. One Night, Hot Springs is one of the few games I have played to fully delve into the mindset of someone who must do so.

Haru is the cookie cutter hyper feminine trans girl, but that is all she needs to be. She is a template for the queer player to impose onto and for the cis player to learn from. She is the default character selection character for queerness because this game is about the general experience of being transgender, something in itself is so avant garde from the cisheteronormative narrative every work has that being so basic gives her her own personal story to tell. Years of hiding who she is has made her meek out of fear of retaliation for daring to be who she is. She doesn’t want to cause fights, yet everything she does that involves her trans identity makes her feel like it will, and confronting that fear is the only way for her to break out of her shell and grow as a person.

The game is short, but the branching paths that happen are only because of how Haru chooses to take things on. If she hesitates, doubts herself, or gives in to the ever looming shadow of her country’s litigation, her mood worsens and the overall outcome of this friendly holiday ends up becoming sour and unenjoyable, making her wish that she stayed home in bed. The fact that failing 3+ choices results in the bad ending and ruining her day with Manami and Erika is considered worse than the normal ending where she just chooses to stay home out of fear of not enjoying things demonstrates this mindset perfectly. If you have no chance to fuck up, isn’t it better than doing so? That’s Haru’s entire thought process throughout this game, to not be a burden on anyone for her transness, yet the game makes it explicitly clear she is not. Only by standing up for herself in a firm yet polite manner does she end up making it through with an enjoyable experience.

It’s eerie how the game is able to encapsulate pure internalized transphobia just with the choices you are given. They may seem small and innocuous to the cis crowd playing, but to those who have gone through the trans experience they are all too real in how they are handled. Most of what harms Haru’s mood is her own flusteredness to say she is a woman, something that me and many other trans people have gotten wrong in this game, not because we do not believe we are who we are, but we often have to hide ourselves in real life, go by our assigned name and appearance and act like nothing is wrong. We have to know when we are given the chance to be ourselves and not let it slip away, we have to be the opportunists to let ourselves be open and out there to the world, even in small and comfortable ways that grow larger and larger over time. Only when Haru can show her true self to everyone can she finally enjoy a peaceful night out with her friends.

It is hard to discuss this game without the massive elephant in the room. Trans people worldwide are facing genocide. Persecution, smear campaigns, demonization, detransitioning are all demons we have to face in our part of the world, some worse than others. Where I live in the United States, we often are called pedophiles and freaks just for being who we are by the ones who want to not only silence us, but to straight up erase us. We are told to not interact with children out of fear of corrupting them to be trans themselves, we are not allowed to go into the bathrooms our genders identify us as because of fake fear of “protecting cisgendered people from being assaulted”. All of this is true in America, and yet even in a different country these still apply, and I think Haru is a perfect showcase of how these systems harm us.

Haru is a 19 year old trans woman living in Japan, a country with strict LGBTQ laws, banning same sex marriage and requiring transgender people to go through a myriad of invasive surgeries just to be who they always want to be. When the game was made in 2018, She would still be considered a minor under Japanese law, as adulthood is only reached at age 20, meaning she would still be ineligible for even attempting to become a legal woman in her own country. Just like in America, the stigma of trangender children is strong, only allowing adults to go through with it after visceral and unnecessary mutilation. Her system hates her, but these hurdles are ones she has to push through in order to even achieve happiness. She would be seen as a pervert and a cretin by everyone around her but she just wants to be herself. To go relax with her friends in a public bath without being seen as a man ready to rape another woman.

I myself have had to deal with many issues like this. While Haru had been trans since young childhood given how she said she had difficulties in school, I only came out as bigender when I was 20 years old, already a legal adult, yet not much for me has happened progress wise. I am not on HRT, I have never worn a bra nor a dress, I have only been recently starting to grow out my hair which my mother is not fond of at all, I am more or less physically at the same point I was 3 years ago. It does not help that bigender people are a minority within a minority, with the number of other bigender people I know being able to fit on one hand, and their experiences with gender are not the exact same as mine. I often feel I do not belong, feeling both masc and femme, which may make me be seen even more like a weirdo man in a dress to the public at large. At work, customers assume my natural voice is feminine and call me ma'am only to see I have not shaven in a week at the window and correct themselves. It's weird, I am bigender and this is technically not correct but it doesnt feel like being gendered in the way I want it to be. Even the bathroom, one of the trans person's biggest fears is something I am confused on how I will be able to tackle it, if I would even be allowed in either restroom once I undergo my physical transitioning. The other day I had a breakdown of my lack of progress, debating if I was even trans or just a man who wanted breasts, feeling I was detransitioning as numerous friends tried to help me snap back to a proper headspace. Internalized transphobia is fierce, and it is something that does not go away, even when you are pretty and beautiful in how you look, sometimes you don’t feel pretty and beautiful to yourself.

People online with no soul mock transgender people for their high attempted suicide rate, but often it is their shunning of us that leads to that number being so high. We face stigmatization from all corners of our lives that keep us huddled in our corner, how dare we try to break out. To be persecuted, executed, sentenced to eternal damnation in hell for going against what God wants is what they all want us to be, but we have to choose to fight it. To be queer is to be defiant. Let yourself be you and stand up for yourself. You will get knocked down, but you must always rise higher than where you stood previously. You must continue to grow into the self that you want to be, the one that society won’t have, and show that you exist and will not be treated in such a way. One day the world will learn to accept us, and I am glad that we are slowly taking back the rights we once had many centuries ago, even if through small means such as making video games, movies, novels, and other forms of fiction that depicts who we are. The queerness can be minor and retroactive, overt and positive, realistically harsh yet triumphant, or like this game, somber yet optimistic. We need to show our sistren and brethren that we are there to support them in any means necessary, and games like these are often the best way to educate others and show support to those who need it most.

Here is a link to a bunch of trans helpful websites. I hope you can use these to better help the community at large or anyone else in your personal life who may need it most. You could be the one to help them finally find peace.

And with that, I want to personally thank NPCKC for this quaint little piece which speaks volumes louder than many other works I have seen in my years. My life has been better for this experience, and it is a game I highly recommend to anyone who questions themselves or needs a bit more understanding on trans topics.