Goryo's gender?

kyoudai said:
Goryo was translated as a woman in episode 1 as well.

Most wikis and other evidence point to Goryo being male:

• The voice actor, Yusuke Kobayashi, is male. He played Natsuki Subaru in Re:Zero, among many other roles. While female voice actors commonly portray boys and occasionally men (Naruto for example), it's virtually unheard of for male voice actors to play female characters.
  
• In episode 1, Ebisu refers to Goryo as "Waka" (young leader). In my anime watching experience, I've never known of a woman referred to as Waka. Muhyo refers to Goryo as a "hyena yarou". A woman would never be called a "yarou" (bastard), as the "rou" part of it means "son". Contrary to all that, Goryo uses the first-person pronoun "atashi", a very feminine way of speaking about oneself.
  
• The chest is completely flat, with no shadow on the clothing as there usually is with female characters due to the breasts.
  
• The character's given name is Daranimaru. Given names, but not necessarily family names, ending in -maru are virtually always male (Shikamaru, Orochimaru, Tahoumaru, Hizamaru, Konohamaru, Ranmaru, Ushiwakamaru, etc).
  
• Both the Fandom page and the Wikipedia entry for the series list Goryo as male.
  
• The Japanese language Wik! page for Goryo lists his sex (性別) as male (男).

I admit that's all circumstantial, so I tried searching through official websites for the anime and the manga, as well, as the Twitter feed, but while they all mentioned Goryo, none of them listed a gender.

However, in the change history for the Japanese Wikipedia page, one contributor quotes a question from a reader in volume 8 of the tankōbon regarding Goryo's gender. The author answers the question, according to the quote in Wikipedia, is "さてどっちでしょう", or "Hmm, I wonder." So the best I can find, the question has not be answered canonically. It could be, however, that the author does clarify this at some later point which I could not find. (Since I do not have access to the 8th volume, I cannot verify whether this is in fact what the author says.)

My opinion: It's very likely that Goryo's sex is male (XY genome, male genitals). Whether Goryo's gender is male, transwoman, non-binary, or something else can be debated but ultimately not answered without input from the author.

When translators don't bother to research an androgynous character and instead assume a gender, they seem to get it wrong most of the time. It upsets me for several reasons.

katie_potaty said:
Wow, thank you for researching so thoroughly! I also caught that Ebisu called Goryo 'waka' and that's why I thought it was a mistake in Ep.1 but then in Ep.2 the other characters were still referring to Goryo as 'she/her' so I was confused.

I'm going to assume that Goryo is a male because of the VA, Ebisu calling him 'waka' and the fact that he appears male

kyoudai said:

Welcome. It was really bothering me too, so I had wanted to look for an answer anyway. But you know, even though he appears male most of the time, there are a few close-ups of his face that appear decidedly feminine, and he calls himself "atashi". I think the mangaka, script writer, and director are trolling us, especially when I consider the mangaka's answer I mentioned, but that's fine. I like androgyny and characters with ambiguous gender, so I do not mind.

What upsets me is the translator clearly didn't even attempt to research Goryo's gender, whether out of apathy, laziness, or both. Instead, they relied on their idea of how men and women should appear and act, and called him a woman. The least they could have done was to spend 10 seconds searching for the general consensus among fans and gone with that. If I'm nitpicking (and I admit I do too often), the creators probably intended the question of Goryo's gender to be hinted at but ultimately unanswered. Yet the translator presumptuously declared Goryo to be a woman, disregarding and overruling those intentions. It is sometimes difficult to avoid gender-specific language in English, but certainly not impossible. Ideally, the translator would have used language that accurately conveys that ambiguity. /end of my rant

katie_potaty said:
No I totally get you! A quick search on google will tell you that he is perceived as male by the fans and then after translating 'Waka' I would've referred to him as a man if I was the translator. Also it's a common thing in anime for a feminine man to LOOK like a woman so just assuming his gender based on appearance was not the way to do things!

I also really like androgynous characters too and it's one of the tropes of anime that's actually my favourite.