Ambiguous Gender / Anime & Manga

Flat-chested woman or Long-Haired Pretty Boy? You be the judge.^note It's the latter, at least in this continuity.

Examples of Ambiguous Gender in anime and manga.

A No Recent Examples rule applies to this trope. Examples for episodic works shouldn't be added until end of season for the season introducing the ambiguity (or after 3 months, for episodic works without seasons). This is to allow time for the story to develop the character and resolve ambiguity. There is no waiting time for non-episodic works.

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• In 07-Ghost, Kuroyuri's gender has yet to be revealed. Even the other characters don't know, Kuroyuri threatens them with death if they tell.
• In .hack; it's unknown if Helba's Player is a guy or a girl, or whether the player is a single person or a group using a collective identity.
• Husky from +Anima is an in-universe example; he makes it clear, in no uncertain terms, that he's a boy, but he's so pretty and feminine looking that everyone else gets confused sometimes — including his friends, toward which he resorts to...hilariously desperate measures to convince them.
• Belial from Angel Sanctuary. All the angels are supposed to pick a specific sex and take drugs to change their body to match. Belial quits partway through the process and ends up androgynous.
• The King in Arisa; the official translation uses the pronoun 'he' but notes that the Japanese pronoun is gender-neutral.
• Attack on Titan:
  • Hange Zoe, the Mad Scientist squad leader. Completely androgynous in appearance, because of the author's tendency to use Gender-Inclusive Writing, fans have long been confused concerning Hange's biological sex and/or gender. Word of God finally stated that since Gender Is No Object, fans are free to decide for themselves what they want Hange to be. The "Attack on School Castes" Alternate Universe bonus pages for the manga have Hange, a science teacher, called "Dr. Zoe." The anime and the live-action movie does portray Hange as female, however.
  • The androgynous Nanaba, until the editors confirmed that she is female.
• Hänsel and Gretel in Black Lagoon appear to be Half-Identical Twins, but they actually both have short hair and swap a wig and voices. As they both wear fairly-unisex school uniforms, their actual sexes are impossible to determine. In the "gender swap" omake, they don't change at all.
• The title character Maria Rose of A Brave Heart of Red Rose. A running gag in the series is whether Maria is a pretty guy or a pretty girl. It doesn't help Maria displays both typical boyish and girlish reactions and attitudes.
• In Bungo Stray Dogs, Q's gender has not been officially stated, and even his character page is written gender-neutrally, although most assume him to be male as the writer he based around was. Q's ambiguous gender is lampshaded in a BSD Wan! chapter where the Black Lizard try to investigate whether Q is a girl or a guy, but decided in the end it doens't matter as long as Q is happy.
• ChocoMimi: It's unknown what Picho's gender is, as the perspective on it tends to vary by character (and by volume). In the "Pichokleffon" stories, Picho is depicted as an androgynous child. Justified since Picho is a bird and thus their sex is not immediately obvious. They even say that they don't even know themselves, and only bird experts could probably discern it.
• Edward in Cowboy Bebop is introduced like this. Male name, lanky but with prepubescent features, typically dresses in a baggy white shirt and biker shorts (when in a dress, the effect is... sort of like drag). Regardless of attire, characters are often visibly confused, as Ed's behavior and voice reveal only childlike androgyny. In Ed's introductory episode, the ambiguity is resolved in the very last line, as we cut to an external shot of the ship while Faye wrestles with her: "Hey, you're a girl?!" Also, "Ed" is a pseudonym — her real name is the rather more feminine Francoise.
• Toto of Deadman Wonderland does this on purpose, although he occasionally slips up and uses gendered language.
• Dororo: It's hard to tell whether Mutsu is a feminine looking and sounding young man or a cross-dressing woman with a deep voice. She's confirmed to be the latter when Hyogo calls her aneue, an archaic word for older sister.
• Dr. STONE has Francois, the butler to Ryusui Nanami. Even Ryusui doesn't know what their gender is (nor does he really care). When revived from petrification (everyone wakes up naked), they immeditely grab a pair of clothes Yuzuriha has on hand and gets dressed in a flash.
• Frosch from Fairy Tail. All of the previous cats have clearly been male or female, and matched the gender of their Dragon Slayer companions. Frosch is given a fair few female indicators while paired with a male Dragon Slayer, and has an androgynous baby voice in the anime. When a question as to Frosch's gender came up on the Q&A section in one of the manga volumes, the people answering questions couldn't agree on what gender they thought Frosch was. Hiro Mashima has also told curious fans who contacted him over Twitter that Frosch's gender is a secret.
• In Family Compo, Shion is automatically thought of as a woman for the early chapters. Then Shion announces the intent to go to university as a man. Shion's cousin then searches the family photo albums and realises Shion has been switching genders at every school attended. Attempts to find proof of Shion's gender have failed.
• In Fruits Basket, Akito by Word of God is female, however she was raised male by her family and drawn masculine looking because of this. Before the gender reveal it's implied that Akito really is male so that's what the anime creators assumed. Therefore, in the 2000's anime Akito is male and in the manga and in the reboot Akito is female.
• Fullmetal Alchemist:
  • Envy, a shapeshifter with an intentionally androgynous Shapeshifter Default Form. While the gender is eventually revealed in Fullmetal Alchemist (2003) (in which he was originally male, having been created from Dante and Hohenheim's dead son) it turns out to not be really applicable in the manga.
  • Rose's child in the 2003 anime, is never referred to as any gender. They look boyish as a toddler in Fullmetal Alchemist: The Conqueror of Shamballa but it's still never confirmed.
• Ginga: Nagareboshi Gin has Pink Dragon. Fans believed that he was female for years (Not that we can really blame them) until it was discovered that Meteor Gin, the series' info book, very, very heavily implies that the wolf in question is actually male.
• Arimaru from Gamaran has a masculine sounding name, but is mostly referred to with feminine pronouns (though others use masculine ones). However, unlike most of the examples on this page, this is not due to the fact they're a gorgeous androgynous being but rather a grotesque, huge brute with dark skin and claw-like nails, and a really freaky face.
• In Heavenly Delusion, one of the children named Tokio in the nursery has an androgynous appearance, making them a mystery amongst their peers who have clearly defined features. Tokio is revealed to be a girl later in the story and gave birth at a young age of 14 years old. The reason her true gender was hidden at first is because Tokio had a similar appearance to Maru, and the revelation that the nursery scenes in the story were in fact taking place in the past (before the disaster that turned Japan into a post-apocalyptic wasteland 15 years later) meant revealing Tokio’s gender early on would’ve made it obvious she was Maru’s mother.
• Hellsing:
  • The various parts of the franchise and Kouta Hirano himself can't seem to keep consistent on whether Heinkel Wolfe is male, female, intersex or whatever, although the majority of instances appear to pick female. The Crossfire manga is the only one that's unambiguous, with Heinkel wearing a tight dress in one splash panel that leaves little to the imagination.
  • Alucard occasionally takes a form that looks pretty much like a girl in her early teens, known to fans as "Girlycard." Leaving aside the question of how Alucard being male in his base and true forms affects Girlycard's identity, Girlycard's voice doesn't change from the other forms in the OVA.
• Hell's Paradise: Jigokuraku has Shija, whose gender is listed as "unknown" in the author's Twitter post. They use male pronouns and serve as a shinobi in the Iwagakure clan, but their effeminate appearance and clingy personality leans towards female. It should be noted that despite the prevalent Stay in the Kitchen mentality among the setting, the manga has shown other female shinobis from the Iwagakure clan.
• New Zealand from Hetalia: Axis Powers had this going for a while until he was confirmed to be male. Hidekaz Himaruya seemed to have fun being deliberately vague about it beforehand, though.
  Fans: Is NZ a boy or a girl?
  NZ: Which do you think I am? :D
• Hunter × Hunter:
  • Nefelpitou. Unlike Kurapika nothing has been confirmed.
  • Alluka is referred to as female by Killua and male by Illumi to add to the confusion. It's implied she's a trans girl and Killua is the only one in the family who doesn't misgender her. Though this is still ambiguous since Killua doesn't hesitate to call his family out on all the other ways they've been abusive to Alluka. Further confusing the issue is that "Alluka" is a girl's name, but even the rest of the family uses it, so it's apparently her birth name.
• Most of the tanuki in Itsuwaribito since they don't display any visible Tertiary Sexual Characteristics, and when they transform, they can turn into either male or female. This was discussed regarding Pochi, whom Uzume believes to be male, but Neya believes is female. Pochi, being very young, doesn't seem to be aware that there is such distinction. The same applies to Pochi's fiancee, Tsukumo, who currently takes the form of a human boy they once befriended, but no one is sure whether they are actually male or female. Tsukumo's human friend did ask about it as well, and Tsukumo's answer was similarly vague.
• Is Junketsu from Kill la Kill male or female? Assuming all kamui have an assigned gender, we don't know this since it never speaks, aside from screaming when Ryuuko ripped it off of her.
• Kino, the main character from Kino's Journey, is pretty darn ambiguous. Kino's gender (female) is indirectly revealed in one episode, and in one of the movies Kino has a monologue about whether to use male or female pronouns (eventually deciding on "boku").
• In Knights of Sidonia, Izana is a member of a third gender created via LEGO Genetics to replenish populations decimated After the End. Members of this group start out intersex, but they will change to either male or female based on their attraction to a particular individual. (They become male if attracted to a female, and female if attracted to a male.) After falling in love with Tanikaze, Izana begins a difficult transformation into a girl. At the academy, their uniforms are just like the girls' uniforms, but with shorts in place of skirts.
• Najimi Osana of Komi Can't Communicate sometimes identifies as a guy, sometimes as a girl, wears the skirt from a girl's uniform with the tie of a boy's uniform, and is fairly feminine in appearance. Najimi wore a boys' uniform in junior high, and while they claim Tadano must be thinking of somebody else when he brings it up, a flashback to those days confirms that Tadano is telling the truth.^note The flashback is specifically Najimi telling Komi about those days, meaning it isn't Tadano being an Unreliable Narrator. This leaves almost everyone confused about Najimi's gender, to the point fan translations have characters referring to Najimi as "he/she". Tadano usually operates under the assumption that Najimi is a guy, keeping "him" away from the girls whenever there is a social outing that involves the girls getting naked.^note They sleep in the same room as and hang out with the girls during the class trip, but they are shown to have bathed before everyone else.
• In Land of the Lustrous, the lustrous have an androgynous appearance and go by they/them pronouns. However, in the original Japanese, most of the lustrous default to masculine pronouns.
• Love Hina: Nobody in the Hinata House seems to be sure of Tama the turtle's gender. Keitaro refers to it as a boy while Naru and Shinobu refer to it as a girl. Mutsumi presumably knows (since her family are turtle breeders) but she never specifies one way or the other.
• Otto during Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS. As revealed in the supplementary manga, even most of her fellow Numbers were unsure if Otto was a male or a female, with the few who knew being told to keep quiet about it by Quattro. Eventually revealed to be female, though Seven Arcs continues to play up her ambiguous gender by, for example, excluding her from the Numbers' Fanservice posters.
• Majestic Prince has Ange Kuroki, whose gender is never revealed and the show makes a bit of a Running Gag out of it. Even the main characters are stumped, and most of them keep going back and forth on what gender they consider Ange on an episode-by-episode basis.
• Mobile Suit Gundam 00 has the Innovators AKA Innovades, a group of Artificial Humans, most of which are either sexless or genderless according to the people who made the show (excepting Anew, who's completely female).
• The Morose Mononokean has Abeno's predecessor, Aoi, whose human form is never seen in full, and the English translation uses Gender-Inclusive Writing to refer to them. Aoi is a Voluntary Shapeshifter who once appeared as a man before Ashiya (while disguising as his father), but the fact that Aoi is a contender for the title of the "Princess of the Underworld might hint that they are actually female.
• My Hero Academia:
  • Anakuro Hirooki, a.k.a. Space Hero "Thirteen", is referred to as the "gentleman hero", but their actual gender is unclear. Both the manga and anime make it a point to never show Thirteen's body outside of their space suit costume, their costume appearing empty after being torn open by Kurogiri, and their hospitalized body being off screen while the scene focuses on their costume against a wall. The only part of their body that is visible in costume is their thin legs, which doesn't help. The anime further complicates matters by giving them a female voice actress in both the original Japanese and English dubs, as it is not uncommon to give male characters female voices to simulate a higher pitched male. In the English dub, they're the only one of the teachers helping out in the final exams who aren't addressed as "Mr." or "Ms."- in Japanese, the "-sensei" honorific is gender neutral. The question was finally settled by a guidebook released for the manga's five-year anniversary, Ultra Analysis, which revealed that Thirteen is... female.
  • The eighth-ranked hero Wash wears a costume resembling a washing machine that only shows their eyes under the lid in the darkness, and their real name is unknown.
• The 7-Tailed Beetle's host in Naruto. When the host comes back to life, they're confirmed as being a girl.
• Inukashi, or Dogkeeper, from No. 6. Their gender hasn't been confirmed. Though they use the masculine Japanese Pronoun "Ore" to refer to themself, there are scenes which present them in a feminine light, most notably the one in which the child that Sion sends to them calls them "Mama" as they hold him.
• One Piece:
  • Mr. 2 Bon Kurei apparently thinks that he falls under this category, although he isn't very feminine looking (aside from the makeup and tutu). Despite this, he's considered a one-man team in Baroque Works, which normally pairs male Officer Agents with a number code name with female agents who have holiday code names, and Mr. 2 has both. Emporio Ivankov and his Newkama army come a little closer by being able to change genders whenever he feels like it.
  • Haruta, going with the way the series' non-Gonk female characters are usually drawn (ridiculous hourglass bodies and big irises), is probably male, but exceptions are made from time to time. And even if Haruta's a male, then he is a quite effeminate-looking one, which isn't typical of the guys either. In the anime, they have a female Seiyuu (but a male voice actor in the English dub), though that is not Canon (they have no spoken lines in the manga). Word of God later indirectly confirmed Haruta to be a male by stating that no female members of Whitebeard's crew were present at the Marineford battle.
• Pokémon: The Series:
  • Most of the mons belonging to characters in the anime do not have their gender confirmed. Further complicating the issue are the ones that only have confirmed genders in one language. After that, viewers have to deal with whether to use male or female pronouns for the officially non-gendered mons (Ditto, Shedinja, a couple Steel-types, and most legendaries) as even the dubs have used genders in some cases.
  • Ash's Pikachu had been implied male in a few episodes of the dub, but his gender was confirmed in the episode "Where No Togepi Has Gone Before". In that episode, a Togepi used Attract against Pikachu and Meowth. Attract only works on Pokémon of the opposite gender; Meowth was confirmed male LONG ago, therefore the Togepi is female, therefore Pikachu is male (Attract affected him). The games have also confirmed this in their own way: ever since minor (not always obvious) physical differences between female and male Pokémon were added to the franchise, female Pikachu have a notch at the end of their tails, which Ash's Pikachu has always lacked.
  • Attract quickly became the go-to move to confirm a Pokémon's gender in the anime. Emolga abused the hell out of it before Iris caught her (and many times afterward too), and Snivy had the move used against her by another female Snivy.
  • The Staryu and Starmie from the anime, which are starfish-like Pokemon, confuse the issue even further. Despite one evolving from the other, the Staryu has a male-sounding voice while the Starmie's voice sounds female. According to the Pokédex in Japanese version, Staryu is classified as a Hermaphrodite.
• Prunus Girl: Aikawa says he's a guy on a regular basis and still ends up ambiguous — he's really good at playing a girl, periodically hinting at Recursive Crossdressing and inviting Maki to personally confirm his gender.
• Mammon in Reborn! (2004) of the Varia is stated to be a man but his future self looks suspiciously feminine. Also Daisy of Byakuran's Six Funeral Wreaths. Turns out to be a guy but for a while he was right in the middle.
• Sekirei: They play with this a little bit in the between-season OVA "Two Gossip Topics". In the first topic, "Sekirei Diagnosis," Homura (whose sex has been kept pretty ambiguous) stands in front of the diagnosis center wondering which direction to take (because there are male Sekirei such as Shiina). We never see Homura make a choice because the building gets destroyed during an incident inside. The same thing happening at "Sekirei Resort" also saves Homura from having to commit in the second part. But then it gets terribly serious once season two proper starts. It turns out Homura really is ambiguous, shifting between the two sexes until being drawn towards one through the attraction to an Ashikabi. That proved to be Minato, his sixth; Homura's powers (including Gender Bender) stabilize upon winging, but because Minato is male, Homura is seen more often as a female going forward.
• Possibly the most baffling example occurs in the dubbed movie Serendipity the Pink Dragon, in which the bird Peela-Peela is referred to as male in the first half of the movie and female in the second half. The voice actor seems to be female, though.
• Crona from Soul Eater. Japanese doesn't have to use gendered pronouns, and doesn't in this case. Any cases of "guy" or "daughter" in fan translations are so far just the translator's guesses. The author has stated that he neither knows nor cares what Crona's true gender is. The official English dub refers to Crona using male pronouns, but only because the writers (who are just as clueless) didn't want to resort using neutral pronouns 'it/they' because of the assumption that it would be "insulting" to Crona as a character.^note Which linguists have pushed as Proper, since English is "supposed" to use male pronouns when gender isn't known (of course of late this has been contested). It also has Medusa refer to Crona as "my child" or "it" to avoid any gender orientation, with the later doubling as a Woolseyism since it reflects how she treats Crona. Likewise, all the other characters far more often say Crona's name instead of using he, she, him, or her. There is also a strong possibility that Crona is non-binary, genderless, or both. Oddly, in-series Crona's androgyny is never commented upon except when Patty asks if Crona is a boy or girl when Kid fought Crona on the Nidhogg.
  • In reprints of the manga, Crona is called "they".
• Tokyo Ghoul does this occasionally with Juuzou Suzuya who was raised as a girl by his ghoul mom to the point of castration so he wouldn't grow up to be manly, and is androgynous enough that characters are confused as to which gender Suzuya is. In an omake Hanbee pictures Suzuya as wearing a wedding dress if they were to get married.
• Kuromaru in UQ Holder! appeared to be this for some time, claiming to be male but with several hints of being female. Turns out Kuromaru is from a species that has No Biological Sex until age 16, at which time they choose one and gain a form to match. Kuromaru anticipates picking male, but until then their form remained completely androgynous, and their body would even change to be more feminine or masculine depending on their feelings at the time. Ultimately, Kuromaru chooses to be female due to their feelings for Touta.
• The butler Opera in Welcome to Demon School! Iruma-kun is an androgynous cat-demon whose gender is never specified or even hinted at. The anime adaptation (in both Japanese and English dubs) maintains this by giving them an androgynous voice, and they're always referred to by gender-neutral pronouns. The Kalego Side Story Spin-Off even shows that when they were younger, Opera wore both the male and female school uniforms. Simultaneously.
• Yu-Gi-Oh!: Due to the revelation that the spirit of Blue-Eyes White Dragon was carried by Kisara's soul, there are debates whether Blue-Eyes is female or not. But it's never answered officially.
• Yubel◊ in Yu-Gi-Oh! GX. No body except a demonic arm, uses 'boku' and initially primarily a female voice. Then, Yubel starts shifting from a feminine to a masculine voice and back, and also mixes that in with the voice of their host's. Characters also refer to him/her as, well, him and her. The answer, of course, is that Yubel is an intersex human/dragon fusion spirit, with a literal male left side and a female right side. The weirdest part is, Yubel was once human, a friend of the young prince who would become Judai in a future life, and volunteered to become the demonic creature to act as his spirit guide. But even then, whether Yubel was a boy or a girl while human, despite being seen in a flashback, is hard to tell.
• Voltes V: There are no specific cues on Tako's gender, and they always speak in third person in the Japanese version. Though the voice actress is female (a few dubs change it to a male voice actor).

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