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Culture War Roundup for the week of October 19, 2026

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  • Yugi learns that his true identity is an extraordinary Pharaoh, and that this real identity was lurking within his body and waiting to appear after some puzzling around
  • Pokémon have their identities changed in a powerful and stunning way; Charmeleon, Butterfree, from egg to eggmazing
  • Goku shifts into a Saiyan which changes his fundamental identity into something cosmically-important

A bit reductive, no? The pharaoh is an entirely different person, that Yugi needs to let go of in order to realize his own growth. And Goku changes to become more masculine. Stronger, faster, angrier yet simultaneously in control of himself. He doesn't become something else. He enchances what he already has. In Pokemon, the main characters do not evolve because that is clearly impossible. That kind of transformation is limited to a different species than us.

Sure but I think this is just a co-factor that didn’t exist in the past. The pharaoh is a whole other identity co-inhabiting Yugi’s body. Goku becomes more masculine, but the Saiyans are a totally different race that Goku realizes he truly is; it’s over 9000% different than just being a normal human. Ash doesn’t evolve, that’s true, but the Pokémon have kind of human-ish personalities; people love to cosplay them.

There are two different ideas here, dualism and power-level / level of divinity (to connect it to ancient religious ideas better, for example creator deity, Olympian, lower god, demi-god, angel, demon, mythical creature, etc.). Dualism is not the same thing as divinity or level-of-divinity. It's not really the dualism that is the issue, the beings are depicted as having stable qualities of soul that are revealed rather easily. Rather it's the power-level problem that invokes envy in people, beings that are much better than a human are depicted freely in anime. This happens a lot less in Western media, it's mainly superheroes and even then only Superman who is an alien. Many superheroes are just men who gain some kind of power from technology or a bestower, like Iron Man, Batman, and Spider man.

This could make someone value their own life less but I don't see how it could make them think they can be the opposite sex.