It’s less them/they it’s more of localizations and the inherent difference between Japanese and English. Like with the Crona debacle all those years back, Japanese pronouns are not necessary and can be naturally replaced with a person’s name or just “this person”. Since English needs pronouns for sentence flow translators use them/they. It was actually a misunderstand on Nao’s part, because everyone just used Sakuragi-san as no one was close to her, that led Nao to use the suffix Kou-kun because of the ambiguity of the Japanese language. “Kun” implies male but the language is changing and is becoming slightly more gender neutral. That why in the first episode with Kou-kun in the anime, the translators used “he/him” while in the coffee store despite the Japanese not having a pronoun in the dialogue at all. End of Japanese Language lecture.
It’s less them/they it’s more of localizations and the inherent difference between Japanese and English. Like with the Crona debacle all those years back, Japanese pronouns are not necessary and can be naturally replaced with a person’s name or just “this person”. Since English needs pronouns for sentence flow translators use them/they. It was actually a misunderstand on Nao’s part, because everyone just used Sakuragi-san as no one was close to her, that led Nao to use the suffix Kou-kun because of the ambiguity of the Japanese language. “Kun” implies male but the language is changing and is becoming slightly more gender neutral. That why in the first episode with Kou-kun in the anime, the translators used “he/him” while in the coffee store despite the Japanese not having a pronoun in the dialogue at all.
End of Japanese Language lecture.