Catherine celebrated its 15-year anniversary on July 26, 2026. Beneath, we look at how this recreation was an early, if awkward, pioneer in trans illustration in video video games.
When Catherine launched in 2011 it was a step outdoors of the field for developer Atlus. The RPG powerhouse workforce wasn’t as in style as it’s at this time, and whereas it had constructed up a stable status from growing the Shin Megami Tensei and Persona sequence, Atlus had but to fairly break by way of into mainstream gaming. When the workforce determined to develop Catherine, it did so with the mindset of exploring extra grownup themes and identities. Chief amongst them was one in all gaming’s few examples of trans illustration. Although the intention of this character was properly which means, cultural divides brought about a little bit of controversy within the West.
After the lengthy growth of Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 4, the workforce determined to department out right into a wildly surprising route for its subsequent title. The undertaking would reunite Persona sequence director and producer Katsura Hashino, character designer Shigenori Soejima, and composer Shoji Meguro, and take them into a completely new style of recreation that allowed for extra mature storytelling.
Catherine tells the story of a person named Vincent. Vincent lives a cheerful life as a bachelor. He has a one-bedroom house, goes out consuming together with his shut pals practically each night time, and has a lovely girlfriend named Katherine that he’s lagging on marrying. However his life will get upended when he meets the gorgeous Catherine, a lady who’s temptation made flesh. Quickly after their encounter, he’s haunted by nightmares each night time in his sleep.
The gameplay takes the type of controlling Vincent in his day-to-day life, making selections in his relationships. This seems like a pure development of Persona’s college and social methods. However the actual bulk of the gameplay occurs when Vincent goes to sleep and he’s besieged by nightmares that power him to climb an ever-falling tower of blocks in a puzzle-game trend. It’s an incredible inverse of the Persona series–in that sequence, the gameplay ends at night time, and on this one, that is when the majority of the gameplay begins.
Breaking away from the highschool setting of the Persona sequence allowed the workforce to deal with extra mature themes of infidelity, alcoholism, marriage, and maturity. It additionally allowed the workforce to depict characters that you simply would not usually see in a high-school-set recreation corresponding to Persona.
Vincent goes to the bar every night time to drink together with his pals and decompress after the nightmare from the earlier night time. This enables gamers to progress the story and get some opinions from his pals that they’ll use to affect their future selections, or simply get drunk and take heed to some good music on the in-game jukebox.
One of many characters on the bar is a waitress named Erica. That includes a really female design, she acts because the one feminine voice within the recreation that continues to be a impartial level to Vincent’s issues, typically lending an ear to him and his pals in a flirty method and offering some extent of respite in an emotionally draining state of affairs. But the sport hints at her harboring a secret–something that was taboo in video video games on the time.
Erica is transgender.
The sport doesn’t go about this reveal in a tactful method, although. Over the course of the sport, Vincent’s pals start having the identical nightmares as he does. Erica chalks it as much as a lady’s wrath curse, however when she strikes up a romantic relationship with Vincent’s pal Toby, she begins to have the identical nightmares: nightmares that solely males have. Along with this clue, there’s delicate hints dropped all through the sport, however the reveal doesn’t totally occur till the “Katherine True” ending of the sport. On this ending of the sport, Toby discovers Erica’s true previous and the sport even refers to her as her deadname (her former identify).
This portrayal is problematic for a myriad of causes to Western tradition, however is exemplified within the “Full Physique” model of the sport, which contains a detransitioned Erica in flashbacks and in one of many endings of the sport.
Whereas Catherine doesn’t try to painting Erica in a malicious method, the cultural divide between Japanese and Western cultures and their acceptance of trans folks is on full show. Japanese tradition views gender and sexuality by way of a large and different spectrum that leads to numerous types of gender expression. For instance, within the West when somebody is transgender, it’s socially anticipated of them to undergo medical and bodily transition so as to “cross” by way of society. Certain, drag subculture is a factor for non-trans folks to gender-express, however this isn’t at all times tied to private id.
This isn’t the case in Japan, as gender expression typically leads to crossdressing communities or those that don’t resolve to medically or bodily transition. To them, dressing and presenting as feminine will suffice. Actually, this may very well be a results of a legislation handed in 2003 that can enable a trans individual to get a authorized gender change provided that they cross the hurdles of being single, over the age of twenty-two, endure gender-reassignment surgical procedure, and haven’t any minor youngsters. One can’t even have gender reassignment surgical procedure in the event that they’re on hormone substitute remedy.
This leads to Japan’s transgender subculture being extra fluid. Maybe that’s why Erica’s portrayal in Catherine relates a lot to her previous and never who she is within the second. Whereas she’s accepted by these round her, in-game it comes with a caveat. In Western tradition, maybe she can be portrayed as her true self with no regard to her previous and solely trying to the longer term.
That’s what makes Catherine such a posh recreation. It’s a recreation that tackles grownup themes and points however by no means makes gentle of them. It’s a glance into Japanese social tradition and the way it differs from the West. It’s a recreation that’s properly which means and by no means feels malicious regardless of arguably problematic components, and it allowed Atlus to enterprise into uncharted territory.
