This brings up a problem I note every once in a while, even in
otherwise excellent fics.  For instance (to use a *very* illustrious
example), Richard Lawson's "The Nature of Love", which contains the
line:

And Kentaro began, for the first time, to doubt the personal
pronouns he used when referring to Ranma.

Now I'm far from conversant in Nihongo myself, but I know enough so
that lines like the above abruptly jar me out of my 'willing suspension
of disbelief'.  You can't write in English without using sex-indicative
personal pronouns (I've tried, briefly), but you *can* avoid making plot
points or epiphanic moments around them.

Third-person pronouns, by the way, don't really seem to exist.
Instead of a definitive "he", "she", or "it", sentences referring to
a third party tend to start out with one of the following:

"Ano hito wa" (That person)
"Kono hito wa" (This person)
"Ano <noun> wa" (That <noun>)
"Ano <noun> wa" (This <noun>)

This *can* be made to read as gender-specific, but only if you
replace "hito" with a gender-specific noun (ie "onna" or "otoko").

Actually, this is exactly what I was referring to.  *First* person pronouns
are sex-implicative (onna-Ranma uses 'boku'; 'watashi' can be used by
either) in
Nihongo, but not in English; *third* person pronouns are sex-indicative in
English, but don't exist in Nihongo.

This is how Ukyou could talk in the third person about Tsubasa for one
anime
episode/several manga episodes without ever assigning Tsubasa a gender.
Try doing
that in English.  The Viz translators couldn't; they made Ukyou lie.

Sorry for not specifying 'third' in the top part of my initial post.

Bert