In Japanese, nyotaika 女体化, meaning literally "female-body-fication," refers to a man turning into a woman, a boy into a girl, etc, as a gender bender scenario in anime, manga, and other fiction, in which a character changes sex through magical or sci-fi means. It's also called nyota にょた.
For becoming male, the term is nantaika 男体化 instead.
Right: gender-bent version.
Anime: Ore, Twintail ni Narimasu., 俺、ツインテールになります。 (Episode 1)
Definition
Literally, nyotaika just means turning into a female body. Typically, this refers to scenarios in fiction, but I suppose it could also refer to physical changes in real life in transgender people.
As far as fiction is concerned, it doesn't really matter the method how a character turns female. It could be a magical method, a sci-fi method, a spiritual method, it could be a reincarnation, or special ability, or even a realistic method.
- tensei
転生
Reincarnation.- e.g. in Youjo Senki 幼女戦記, a salaryman dies and is reborn in another world as a girl, Tanya Degurechaff ターニャ・デグレチャフ. More specifically, in this case he turns into a loli, so it's rori-ka ロリ化.
- mahou
魔法
Magic.- Sometimes, a series about "magical girls," mahou-shoujo 魔法少女, in which girls transform into magical versions of themselves, will feature a boy that transforms into a magical girl, thereby turning into a girl in the process as a side-effect.
- seitenkan shujutsu
性転換手術
Sex-change surgery.- e.g. in Back Street Girls, a bunch of yakuza members fail their boss and are sent to Thailand for a sex-reassignment surgery in order to become idols.
It doesn't matter if the character changes sex permanently or only temporarily.
Typically, the plot of a series is that a character changes sex against their will. In some cases, the character ends up preferring to live as a woman. Series that handle transgender or transexual plots like this are called TG or TS fiction.
The term also refers to fan art, doujinshi 同人誌, etc., in which a character is drawn gender bent, regardless of whether they change sex canonically.
For every male character there is a female version. No Exceptions.
— Rule 63 of The Internet.
The term nyotaika is about what you end up with, a female body, not what you start with, so a sexless character, without genitals, gaining female genitals is nyotaika, and a hermaphrodite character, i.e. a futanari ふたなり, losing male genitals is also nyotaika.
Anime: Ishuzoku Reviewers, 異種族レビュアーズ (Episode 3)
- Context: Crimvael, who is a hermaphroditic angel, drinks a nyotaika potion to gain a fully female body in this episode.
- seitenkan no yakata
性転換の館.
Sex-change manor. Gender-swap mansion. Etc.
Conversely, if a character turned into a futanari instead of a woman, that would be called futanari-ka ふたなり化, "futanari-fication."
Grammar
The word nyotaika 女体化 is a noun, but can be used as a suru verb:
- nyotaika suru
女体化する
To nyotaika.
To female-body-fy.
To turn into a woman. To turn into a girl. - {nyotaika shita} kyarakutaa
女体化したキャラクター
A character [that] {nyotaika'd}.
A character [that] {turned into a girl}.
A girl-version of a character.
For reference, an example of the word used in practice:
- Context: characters see a girl appearing out of nowhere and are confused about where she came from. It's the protagonist, who has psychic powers, including the ability to turn into a girl.
- touzen, {boku ga nyotaika shita} ni kimatteru darou
当然 僕が女体化したに決まってるだろう
Obviously it's that {I turned into a girl}.
Of course it's me turned into a girl. - don
ドン
*sound effect used when something comes up suddenly.* - Saiki Kusuo motoi Saiki Kusuko ga na
斉木楠雄もとい斉木楠子がな
Saiki Kusuo, or rather, Saiki Kusuko [did].- He, or rather, she is saying who nyotaika'd, since it's marked as subject by the ga が particle.
- The name Kusuo ends in a kanji for "male," osu 雄, making it obviously a male name.
- The name Kusuko ends in ko 子, which is a common suffix in female names, and typically used when coming up with a quick name for the girl version of someone.
vs. Turning into a Trap
In some series, a character turns into a boy that looks like a girl, i.e. an otokonoko 男の娘 character, also known as a "trap" in English. In spite of such character's looks, they have a male body, so it doesn't count as nyotaika. Instead, it would be called:
- otokonokoka
男の娘化
Trap-fication.- Not to be confused with josou 女装, "[wearing] woman's clothes," i.e. crossdressing.
Examples include:
- In Sword Art Online, Kirito キリト has a male avatar that looks like a girl in the Gun Gale Online arc.
- In Knight's & Magic, the protagonist dies and gets reborn in another world as a boy that looks like a girl, Ernesti Echevarria エルネスティ・エチェバルリア.
vs. Turning into Princess Peach
For a while it was a meme to draw characters as Princess Peach, Piichi-Hime ピーチ姫, from Mario Bros., following Bowser's version, Bowsette. The term for this in Japanese is Piichi-hime-ka ピーチ姫化, "Peachification." This also counts as nyotaika in Bowser's case.
女体
For the record, nyotai 女体 means "female body" and it's a word that can be used stand-alone. For example:
- Context: Mineta Minoru 峰田実 being himself.
- haa...
はぁ･･･
*sigh* - nyotai φ sawaritai... motetai...
女体触りたい･･･モテたい･･･
[I] want to touch a female body... [I] want to be popular [with girls]... - chokkyuu da ne
直球だね
[That's] a straight ball, [isn't it].- In the sense of a straight ball in baseball, meaning someone is being blunt, direct.
女体盛り
By the way, there's a practice of eating sushi 寿司, or other food, on a (typically naked) woman's body called nyotai-mori 女体盛り. The second morpheme is the noun form of moru 盛る, "to pile up," in the sense of placing food on top of a woman's body.
Anime: Case Closed, Meitantei Conan, 名探偵コナン (Episode 808)
Jotaika
The word jotaika is a misreading of nyotaika 女体化, because the kanji for "woman," onna 女, is normally read with the on'yomi 音読み jo じょ, e.g. josei 女性, "female," joshi 女子, "girl," danjo 男女, "men and women," etc.
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