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While by definition you may be justified, how it is used and accepted in actual culture is more vague.

Your post only focuses on physical aspects, when in fact 'Bishounen' encompasses not only aesthetics, but their form of speech and their mannerisms as well. Now this is where it becomes muddied because you don't need to look feminine *and* behave femininely to be considered bishounen. In most cases, looking feminine is enough to be considered a 'bishie'.

In fact, to say that one is a bishie *only if* it's hard to discern their gender is narrowing the definition too far. Those individuals would be bishounen, yes, but on the extreme end of the spectrum. It's called 'bishounen' in the first place because it's determinable that they're male, but they have many feminine qualities, appearance and personality alike.

Being muscular certainly does help prevent a character from becoming a bishounen, but in reality that's not the actual reason why that's so. It's just that muscular men are not usually developed to become bishounen. Rather, the decision for a character to be muscular comes after the fact, not before. But even here, we have exceptions. Cloud Strife has always been drawn as a lean character, which has been depicted ever more so in Advent Children, but guess what, he's bishounen. Bidanshi just doesn't cut it here because Cloud was developed (because Nomura is such a swell guy) to be perceived as a bishounen for the masses of Japanese females who just swoon every time he's on another page of Famitsu. Zack Fair? Also a bishounen, and he has muscles too.

On the note of personality, I do want to note though that it's not unheard of for 'rough' personalities to be bishounen. A perfect example is Kamui from X (a series by Clamp). While he has a rather harsh personality and is a very capable warrior, he is in fact, a bishounen. Again, textbook definitions don't always decide what the culture as decided upon to be correct. Bishounen men as it developed in the 80s and 90s more or less had a certain formula in the way which they were drawn. This was because for whatever reason, 'bishounen' was becoming--and still is--very popular among the school-aged Japanese girls. They absolutely loved the look of bishounen. Thus, many animators took this 'bishounen' character image and pretty much plastered it on lots of different protagonists, regardless of what sort of personality they had. Kamui certainly doesn't have a typical bishounen personality, but he is considered bishounen because he was drawn to be perceived as one, and naturally fangirls flocked.

I'm digressing, but in the end, bishounen is not as narrowed down in definition as you seem to want it to be, Repliku. The labeling of bishounen has a hierarchy that is prioritized on appearance first, and personality second. You can give a character any personality in the world from homicidal sociopath to high school valedictorian, but if they're drawn to look/be perceived as bishounen, they will be considered bishounen. I'll agree with your opinion of Riku if we refer to KH2, however, KH1 Riku very much fit the bishounen image alongside his fellow bishie Sora.

But let's break the word itself. 'Bishounen' means beautiful boy. That being said, every time someone is labeled as such, it is *known* that everyone labeled under this title is a boy, therefore male. Thus, you're stretching it a bit by saying being bishounen is exclusive to those that are difficult to determine gender. Like I said, this are still bishounen, but are at the end of the extreme. The word 'shounen' has usually been a term coined toward younger males, (translated as 'boy') due to its lighter/softer connotation. But this soft connotation is also the reason why even though you may come across feminine looking males that are obviously well into their years of adulthood (20-30s), they can still be justified as being called 'shounen' (i.e. boy). More 'manly' men will almost always be referred to as 'otoko' (man).

For the record, I do agree with your list. Sephiroth and Dante are not bishounen, and anyone who thinks so doesn't understand the definition well enough.

Bottom line here: The difference between Bishounen and Bidanshi is based on image, not nit-picky details about their appearance or personality traits.

Examples of Bishounen:
Sora, KH1 Riku, Cloud, Zack, Kamui, Sakai Yuji (Shakugan no Shana), Sanada Kouichi (Kimikiss), Faye (Tsubasa Chronicles), list can go on.

Examples of Bidanshi:
Sagara Sousuke (Full Metal Panic!), Sephiroth, Heero Yuy (Gundam Wing), Kurogane (Tsubasa Chronicles), Kurosaki Ichigo (Bleach), Shannon Casull (Scrapped Princess), list can go on.

Ahahaha. Mish.

It's not only trust, but granted if there's a relatively uniform sense of maturity and level-headedness between the two people, I don't see much of a problem.

I'm biased however, since I was 17 when I started dating my girlfriend (who was 21 at the time), but even so, 17 and 22 I would consider to still be part of the same generation. I don't see much of a 'generation gap' problem happening here.

Fake. Old April Fool's joke.

Nomura was drunk when he thought up :Coded. Maybe that same night he thought up the title 358/2 days. =o

Well, if you're buying a PSP from anywhere outside your continent, chances are it'll come with an adapter that isn't suitable for your country's voltage. If you want to buy a separate adapter that can be used on its own, you'll probably want to buy a Universal AC adapter that does automatic conversion so you don't have to attach any additional transformers to the adapter your PSP came with. I personally agree that I'd rather buy an entire new adapter that can do this.

Play-Asia sells one on their site for ~17USD +S&H, and it covers just about all regions and does automatic conversion. So it's a simple plug-and-play procedure and can be used anywhere in the world (since the automatic conversion will immediately change the adapter's voltage to that of the country you're in).

Shadow Hearts on the PS3.

But that'll never happen because the development team disbanded years ago. *sigh*

In my opinion, everyone should never use a KHV post as their original source for their work. It should be done in a word processor first, then simply c&p'ed onto the forums.

Anyway, late on the response, but yeah--I had trouble going to my fanfic thread as well but it was simply a DBE and was fixed accordingly once the forums went back online.

Well, I meant that you should 'report' the matter by PM. There isn't a function on the forum that is specifically designed to tell a mod/admin that you've been unfairly derepped (none that I know of, anyway).

The only things you can 'report' are posts, but that obviously has very little to do with addressing unjust derepped.

Every time I see that phrase, I hear Setsuna F. Seiei in my head.

Anyway, I completely agree that the creature known as 50 cent should be banned from making any more video games.

As much as I agree with GX, there's nothing wrong with reporting dereps that are undeserving. Lots of people get derepped for reasons that they shouldn't be, and many members on this forum seem to just hand out negative rep simply because they 'hate' certain individuals and end up derepping them on posts that haven't broken any rules.

Of course, though, if this is a problem you've encountered, Kalhedgie, you should PM a mod/admin about it, not make a thread about it.

lmfao. Children.

Anyway, grats on recovering the forum.

lol, this doesn't even deserve my fanboyism. Obvious troll is obvious.

I knoe eh, it's such a ridiculous notion.

^ At the expense of the rest of the world? lol, actually, I'm not surprised. Screw everyone else, as long as I'm safe, huh?

Yeah, sorry but this is mostly your own fault. =\ Did you even bother to contact Nintendo support?

As well, I doubt the problem was your Wii being too old. I own one of the launch title Wiis with the first-generation chipsets and I've been able to play Brawl just fine.

I usually used Winamp when I was still a PC user (as many of the applications I used had plugins for Winamp so I could use them together (ex. Sysreset for IRC)). But after switching to Mac, iTunes obviously took over.

Pit's not crap at all, lol. Such silliness.