>>281567337
If Haku had been a girl, why did she call herself a boy?
This is a common mistake made by Hakubuki and Geishaku alike. The most misread and misinterpreted line of Haku's, which is also the most used for evidence that she was a boy, is the statement she made to Naruto in the woods. Many believe she told Naruto that she was a boy, but this is actually incorrect. This is just how it was mistranslated. In reality, Haku told Naruto that she was a MAN, not a boy. In the Japanese version, Haku uses the word “otoko”, which means “man”. “Shounen” is the Japanese word for boy, and since Haku was 15 years old, that makes her middle school age level. If Haku had been a male, then that would have made Haku a “shounen” or boy, not a “otoko” or man. Therefore, the claim that she was a man was quite obviously a lie. This is a subtle nuance that was never carried over to the English version of the anime, but it is one that is critical to this issue, because it proves AS FACT that Haku was lying to Naruto when she told him that she was a man. Does that mean she was lying about being male? No. However, the point here is that she did lie about something, which makes it entirely possible that she was lying about being male as well. I can prove that she was lying about being male as well, and I will do that in the next segment.
So why did Haku lie to Naruto? A few explanations exist for this fact and most work together as one theory. The first and most likely is that she does this to conceal her identity and protect herself from being easily tracked down by the true tracker ninjas that were after her and Zabuza. This way, the target known to the trackers as “Haku” would be a boy that dressed like a girl, rather than a girl that dressed like a girl, or perhaps the description was not that detailed. Perhaps they were hunting for Zabuza and a boy, period. This means that while Haku is without the mask, she was a lot less suspicious because she truly did look like a girl.
