Gender locked race?

[Lauront]

Yes, but you just said, they could have said it at any point over the years.

It's very much like Blue Mage.
Years ago Yoshi said he thought a true blue mage wouldnt work, and now we get it as a limited job to much backlash.

These things take years to implement, and they stick to their plans.

Nah, what I just said was they could've addressed that concept art over the years and ruled it out as a basis for what to expect from Viera. That art is close on 5 years old. Also, that interview is worded in pretty non-committal language:

Q38: In terms of new races, what kind of races are you looking into and will mixed races be introduced?

A38: I don’t think we’ll have mixed races for a while. Since it seems like Viera is popular around the world we have been proactively looking into this, but since having a rabbit male might be kind of weird, maybe we’ll look into having a separate race for the male counterpart.