Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-6986530-20170327230407/@comment-24.176.2.221-20170404215336

And on a final note (I keep forgetting to say stuff and I can't edit comments as an anon), Michaela uses ぼく (boku) as a spirit. I don't know if there's any particular significance to her not having it in kanji (compared to Allen who spells it 僕), but she describes spirits as being genderless, so I think it's intended to be gender neutral. It's possible that the gender aspect of the dead crew's spirit data was wiped out or maybe mothy didn't have that detail in mind when revising Wiegenlied. It's also possible she was transgender beforehand, but again, her old life appears to have been erased when she became a forest spirit. After becoming the Millenium Tree she still uses 私, so her time as Michaela, female, is the identity she has now.