People, especially adults, enjoy sex appeal because sex is great.
Also women are going to be able to criticize any design out there.
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Why women criticise sexualised character designs (READ OP)
- Thread starter Persephone
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People, especially adults, enjoy sex appeal because sex is great.
Also women are going to be able to criticize any design out there.
Bayonetta could be the most virtuous character ever designed and a significant portion of the male audience will still say "I wanna fuck that". There's a lot to be said about intent vs execution but in the case of Bayonetta her execution arguably justifies the intent behind making a sexually empowering lead character due to how the game presents her personality and her actions. Not to mention this argument is kinda disingenuous since it also goes both ways; if they did intend for the character to be exclusively about eye candy for the boys, then the actual result that we got is still an arguably sex empowering character, especially since it's not just men who praise her character.
Is it often that a female protagonist being raped is presented as good? I'd think the problem is not "bad guy does bad thing" but "bad guy does particular bad thing to mainly female characters"
That's cool if some women find her empowering, but the truth is that men design "~~empowered" female characters as a shield so they don't have to face repercussions for designing glorified fuck toys. It's no coincidence that these "sexually empowered" women are always straight and conventionally attractive.
In the context of the game Bayonetta also isn't being raped. The most you could say is that it's invocative of it, which is still pretty bad granted.
To be fair, is NOT a rape scene. It's an incredibly out of touch scene.
Kamiya himself said on twitter it was not supposed to be a rape scene, but that Bayo is naked because she loses all of her powers when Rodin beats the shit out of her.
Story wise makes sense, Rodin and Bayo are friends, so the notion that he rapes would be too fucked up.
But... the scene is incredibly and embarassingly badly done, that it's surprising that no one noticed how it can be implied... or maybe they didn't give a fuck. Both are a bad image for them though.
Yeah you may be right, but wasn't GTA also criticized of sexualizing female? Also, doesn't recruiting JAV girl into cabaret girl be considered unnecessary sexualization, when cabaret girl aren't prostitute in anyway in Japan? Sorry for my poor English.
I mean, my point that it looks like one. Bayonetta lying limp and naked while rodin smokes a cigarette is definitely evocative of something.
I would've understood this criticism more in regards to Bayonetta if the requisite obvious target of being a "love interest" isn't constantly taken the piss out of. Like, the game literally introduces a character just so Bayonetta can kind of shit all over the self insert fantasy trope.
Not to mention, I don't even believe Bayonetta is conventionally "straight". If we assume she is based on how she teases and dishes out sexual punishment on male characters, she does the exact same thing unto female characters. The most intimate relationship she has in the games is with Jeanne, and the only male character she expresses any sort of interest in is Rodin, almost strictly because of them having a "business" relationship, despite them often sparring.
In case of GTA, it was about objectification of story related character, no? Not a availability or absence of hostess clubs tied with criminal underground.
Bad boss archetype? Not only a demon, but a rapist?
This isn't just about Bayonetta, especially since I haven't played the games. This goes for every pornified female character that people defend because she's "empowering and sex-positive!!!!11!1!1!"
...Ehh. Didn't think Xenoblade 2 could top again some of its worse desings. Can't imagine how bad the jiggle will get basing on the others shown off.
Uhm...
Well, at least she doesn't look like a child!
*embarassed laugh*
I didn't say I haven't bought Bayonetta. I bought Bayonetta 1 and 2. I just never bought the reasoning that her character was female empowerment because it came across as an excuse made up on the spot when confronted with problematic things in the game.
And yes, I have a Yakuza avatar and have bought Yakuza games. I've also never defended the worst parts of those games and have spoken out against them.
That's fair, and I can sympathize with the sentiment - it's just that since the discussion revolved around said character, and the notion of being able to point out problematic elements in stuff that one enjoys, it's equally important to recognize things that are done right. Despite not being perfect obviously, the game imo does a lot of things right in regards to sex empowerment, regardless of whatever the intent really was.
It is very empowering to be a tit ninja.
On a serious note, I would never say that someone who finds Bayonetta sexist is wrong, but I think there are empowering elements to her. Mostly because she actually seems to enjoy being sexual, whereas a lot of the time sexualized female characters seem angry and aggressive or shy and passive.
This actually raises something I've often been curious about. It mainly centers around Drakengard 3 and its heroine, Zero. Like, her outfit is fairly sexualised to be sure, but she is also probably the most sexually active main female character I know?
Like the story basically centers around her hunting down her sisters, and for each sister there's a male assistant whom Zero captures once she defeats the sister, and basically turns them into her boy toys. Like the story isn't about her sleeping around, she definitely has a main goal that is not that, but the game really makes no bones that she is in a dominant sexual relationship with those male assistants.
And it's not like her personality is based on her loving sex, if anything her main personality is fairly cold, fairly aggressive.
Basically imagine gender-reversed kratos with better writing.
It's not like Bayonetta where she mostly just does sexy moves. Like sex is an active part of her life.
Where does that fall on the scale of sexualisation to sexual empowerment for those in this thread?
The skirts always seem to mislead people: they're dressed like gymnasts. And, overall, the fanservice is rather tame. The characters aren't all bouncing about like enthusiastic porn stars, for a start.
But you know what's great about Sailor Moon? The characters are actually three-dimensional! They have hobbies and interests, career aspirations, hopes and dreams, flaws and insecurities things that round them out and contrast/compliment the rather flat and predictable action sequences.
Well, unless you're talking about the original manga/Sailor Moon Crystal, that is...
Do you ever just wish women would stop criticizing things?
I have not played the game being described but this sounds like Zero is making the captured males into slaves.
Ah, I'd like to correct some inaccuracies from the last few pages.
I actually got my degree in breast physics, I can confirm that Nintendo is applying real world knowledge to their designs.
Keep in mind that it's intentionally fairly slow paced, especially for the first while.
I actually got my degree in breast physics, I can confirm that Nintendo is applying real world knowledge to their designs.
Yes
Hey, nice! Hope you enjoy it.
Keep in mind that it's intentionally fairly slow paced, especially for the first while.
Xenoblade 2's female character design was already bad enough, but when I saw this gif I at first honestly thought this couldn't possibly be from the game. D: This already crosses into the absurd and looks frankly really terrible.
Cabaret girls are pressured into prostitution. Kabukicho is notorious for this shady stuff.
I don't really play Yakuza but from what I understand, that' the real life setting of the game. Tons of dodgy **** goes on there.
I don't think collecting phones cards to unlock actual gravure videos is a way to show the seedy side of Yakuza business.
Also the fact that the only strong female character in 0 was the beast mode instructor.
Also the fact that the only strong female character in 0 was the beast mode instructor.
The irony is that this Xenoblade character in particular was designed by a woman, Risa Ebata. In an interview the director said that the female artists preferred designing girl blades so they ended up with a lot of them over male blades for XC2.
I love the Yakuza series. Love it. However, it has never given the audience a truly interesting female character that wasn't problematic in some way. Though, it is also fair to mention that Kazuma is endlessly saving everyone, male and female.
I mean caba-jou clearly consider themselves not to be a prostitute, so I feel casually making porn star as a cabaret club girl could be an insult to the cabaret girl.
In realistic term, if Yakuzas were to recruit porn star in the street, I'd imagine she would directly be send to Soap (prostitution), no way to a cabaret club.
Not that you're incorrect, but wasn't Bayo designed by this lady?:
Not that you're incorrect, but wasn't Bayo designed by this lady?:
She didn't create the camera angles or the hair/nude mechanics.
Also I remember Kamiya saying giving his input on her design based on what he liked, like her glasses.
Thing is, when designing a character there can be a lot of input from directors, it's not this "artistic freedom" some people seems to think. Another example is the recent Persona 5 thread, where the director asked to make female characters more cute IIRC.
These things aren't made by any one individual. Yes she may have designed the character, how she looks, but other people will be involved in animation, writing, cinematography, lore etc. reducing the creation of Bayonetta down to a single person is pretty reductionist to the contributions the team made. and it feels like an argument that is only made to dismiss the male gaze that the game contains, because women cant be sexist against women (they can, not saying Shimazaki is one of these people though).
From Wikipedia:
If this is to be believed, multiple people including Mari and Kamiya approved of multiple "sexy" attributes given to Bayo. Kamiya is said to have resisted nudity or at least advocated for keeping it "mysterious". While Mari liked the idea of Bayo's clothes turning more "comfortable". I'm ok with it being a mixed bag, where Kamiya and other male designers had some responsibility for how flagrant Bayo's sexuality is, but Mari absolutely liked the designs and wanted her to be a sexual character.
If this is to be believed, multiple people including Mari and Kamiya approved of multiple "sexy" attributes given to Bayo. Kamiya is said to have resisted nudity or at least advocated for keeping it "mysterious". While Mari liked the idea of Bayo's clothes turning more "comfortable". I'm ok with it being a mixed bag, where Kamiya and other male designers had some responsibility for how flagrant Bayo's sexuality is, but Mari absolutely liked the designs and wanted her to be a sexual character.
I'm not familiar with newer stuff like Sailor Moon Crystal, but the old costumes are fine by me. They're not wearing miniskirts; they're wearing leotards that have skirts attached. It is not highly practical combat wear, but it doesn't feel out of place in that universe. They're not fighting alongside men that wearing practical armor. Tuxedo Mask isn't showing leg, sure, but he's still in formalwear and barely fights at all. None of the Sailor Senshi are heavily sexualized either.
I do remember some iffy bits in the manga -- I think Usagi is forcibly kissed by a few guys -- but that sort of thing is definitely not uncommon in shoujo manga. The live-action show is wonderful and I wish it was easier to watch. As far as I know it isn't on any streaming services.
I would argue that these costumes and out-of-place fanservice break the suspension of disbelief.
I would not describe Zero as empowering -- I don't think that is what she's intended to be -- but it is nice when a sexualized character isn't completely divorced from actual sex. Quiet doesn't pose for Snake in the helicopter because they have a hot sex life and she wants to get in a quickie before the chopper lands. She aims her butt at the camera so that the player can ogle her butt. The bikinis and thongs and boob socks almost never have anything to do with the women that wear them; they're all there for the sake of the player.
Yea, it's my favorite ongoing franchise at the moment.
They could do a lot better with representation though.
Edit: about Drakengard 3. Isn't it supposed to be a critique of the pop idol culture in Japan.
Considering that, is it possible he's presenting Zero's overt sexuality in a negative light, instead of showcasing a liberated or empowered character.
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It's complicated to be sure.
In the world of Drakengard 3, there are a group of women known as Intoners. These women are regarded as Goddesses due to their extreme level of magical powers. There is something about them that makes them different from most female characters in media though, and that is their high sex drive. To satiate this drive, each one possesses a Disciple, who both act as a bodyguard and their main lay. As Zero kills the other Intoners, she takes them as her prize.
Some of the Disciples are into it, while others hate it. But it's an interesting look of gender reversal, as watching men in the submissive roles is something you never see. I'm not saying it's right, but just... interesting, for lack of a better word.
To quote a character: "Disciples cannot disobey their Intoners. That's right... I can't raise so much as a finger against this woman. I am made to act the way she pleases, to say words that delight her. I am a perfect slave."
The part that makes it complicated is that they aren't really humans. They are beings given human forms, and are shaped by the Intoners they serve. If they die or fulfill their purpose as deemed by an Intoned, they transform into white doves, which might indicate that these were their original forms (or is just symbolism). There's a sense of them being brainwashed a bit, especially in the case of Dito, but they all follow Zero almost like they have no other choice. They have a sense of awareness and distinct personalities, but have less free will.
You might be interested in listening to the latest Waypoint Radio, where a queer woman discusses exactly what she loves about Yakuza as a queer woman, and also brings up her sister loving it, too.
https://waypoint.vice.com/en_us/art...hef-brigade-zombiu-and-more-on-waypoint-radio
Also, sometimes people like things with problematic elements. Moreover, Bayonetta is always turned on (no pun intended, but now sort of intended), where the vast majority (not all, but most) of Yakuza's more sexual stuff is entirely optional.
Holy shit @ the dude explaining how boobs work. SMH, and people say mansplaining isn't a real thing huh.
My experience is different. I grew up on Shining Force (1991 for SF1, 1993 for SF2) and Phantasy Star IV (1993), where the female characters were not only powerful and not damselled, but were dressed sensibly (well, Rika was always a bit "sexy" but never in the most ridiculous ways we see today) for what they were meant to do (combat, adventuring). I loved Mae and Anri the most in Shining Force, they looked cool, they kicked ass, and didn't take any shit. And Alys was just... <3 Sure, the main protagonist was the younger male, but Alys was the older veteran and his mentor. Her age was never revealed, so we were spared the "24 year old veteran mentor" trope that you see even in games like Trails in the Sky (Schera being 24 and being the "older hard-ass veteran" made me laugh, the way she was portrayed, she should have been in her mid-thirties at least). Alys was sassy, witty, she was the party leader, she was fully decked out for combat and travelling, and I didn't know it at the time, but the young man w/ older female mentor trope was actually far, far less common than the gender-flipped one (usually it's the young girl with the older male mentor/parent figure). At the time, it didn't occur to me that these characters were so... well, "feminist"? I didn't think about these things at all -- I was 10-13 years old. They were just cool ladies that I enjoyed having in my party, and 11-year-old me liked to pretend that I was Alys or Anri.
Even the female villains were not sexualized; Mishaela in Shining Force is a sneering, sassy witch who loved to taunt the heroes, and she's got normal proportions and wears a full robe (her battle sprite even seems to be wearing some sort of mask). You just know that a sassy, sneering, witch-type of JRPG villainess today would be sporting massive cleavage of her very large bosom, exposed thighs, yadda yadda. How are JRPGs from the early 90's more progressive than today's, I wonder? Especially Sega games, like, holy shit. :\
I don't know when this shift started happening. I played a lot of JRPGs in the 90's, and fanservice was rare; either hidden Easter eggs (and utterly inconsequential, like oh, a secret bikini outfit that gives a swimsuit on the pixellated sprite... yawn), or there was maybe one token character who showed more skin, but that's it. I remember noticing Jeanne in Suikoden being pretty sexualized, but she was one out of dozens of other characters so I didn't care much, even if I thought she looked a bit goofy. It wasn't annoying though, just "lol look at her go", you know?
Then at some point it seemed like every JRPG, or every other game even, featured sexualization and it became really obnoxious. I lost interest in JRPGs sometime during the PS2 era, mostly because I didn't like the overly modernized combat systems, but I think the increasing proliferation of fanservice must have had something to do with it.
Great post, thank you for sharing.
My experience is different. I grew up on Shining Force (1991 for SF1, 1993 for SF2) and Phantasy Star IV (1993), where the female characters were not only powerful and not damselled, but were dressed sensibly (well, Rika was always a bit "sexy" but never in the most ridiculous ways we see today) for what they were meant to do (combat, adventuring). I loved Mae and Anri the most in Shining Force, they looked cool, they kicked ass, and didn't take any shit. And Alys was just... <3 Sure, the main protagonist was the younger male, but Alys was the older veteran and his mentor. Her age was never revealed, so we were spared the "24 year old veteran mentor" trope that you see even in games like Trails in the Sky (Schera being 24 and being the "older hard-ass veteran" made me laugh, the way she was portrayed, she should have been in her mid-thirties at least). Alys was sassy, witty, she was the party leader, she was fully decked out for combat and travelling, and I didn't know it at the time, but the young man w/ older female mentor trope was actually far, far less common than the gender-flipped one (usually it's the young girl with the older male mentor/parent figure). At the time, it didn't occur to me that these characters were so... well, "feminist"? I didn't think about these things at all -- I was 10-13 years old. They were just cool ladies that I enjoyed having in my party, and 11-year-old me liked to pretend that I was Alys or Anri.
Even the female villains were not sexualized; Mishaela in Shining Force is a sneering, sassy witch who loved to taunt the heroes, and she's got normal proportions and wears a full robe (her battle sprite even seems to be wearing some sort of mask). You just know that a sassy, sneering, witch-type of JRPG villainess today would be sporting massive cleavage of her very large bosom, exposed thighs, yadda yadda. How are JRPGs from the early 90's more progressive than today's, I wonder? Especially Sega games, like, holy shit. :\
I don't know when this shift started happening. I played a lot of JRPGs in the 90's, and fanservice was rare; either hidden Easter eggs (and utterly inconsequential, like oh, a secret bikini outfit that gives a swimsuit on the pixellated sprite... yawn), or there was maybe one token character who showed more skin, but that's it. I remember noticing Jeanne in Suikoden being pretty sexualized, but she was one out of dozens of other characters so I didn't care much, even if I thought she looked a bit goofy. It wasn't annoying though, just "lol look at her go", you know?
Then at some point it seemed like every JRPG, or every other game even, featured sexualization and it became really obnoxious. I lost interest in JRPGs sometime during the PS2 era, mostly because I didn't like the overly modernized combat systems, but I think the increasing proliferation of fanservice must have had something to do with it.
Why does the "fun" stuff always happen when I take a night off? Eesh.
ON THAT NOTE,
Forgive me the essay, but this is something I've been ruminating on for a while in regard to Xenoblade 2. I feel like I benefit from something of a slight window into this without the heated reactions that tend to make it difficult to articulate yourself or the need to silence criticism, so I thought maybe I should take a shot at it. Trying to understand how things like this happen is a passion of mine even when I have a pretty entrenched side in the matter (blame the Psych background), so without further ado...
The Current Situation as it Stands
It's really funny to me, in a way, that this is happening with a Nintendo game of all things, because it was going to happen eventually but I genuinely wouldn't have expected it for another five years without a strange series of coincidences happening all at once.
What we're looking at right now, warranted criticism of the designs notwithstanding, is a perfect storm of monolithic proportions. The nucleus of anime otaku culture has been buried just deeply enough with regard to video games and anime that you can't see it from the surface or even one or two layers down for quite a while. Prominent character artists within the niche, both men and women, have been working their way to this aesthetic in their personal and self-published work for years now, and it's nothing new to anyone who's particularly deep into The Anime. Any eyerolls that happened, mine for example, happened a solid half decade ago when things started down this path. Basically, this is nothing new or exciting for some of us. A subset of that "some of us" also doesn't think it's particularly great that this is the direction that things have gone, but even for us it's nothing new. We've made half-derisive and self-deprecating jokes about Peak Anime for a long time, and I'm sure that a lot of people who thought they got the joke in full were picturing something only halfway to the summit. This still isn't the summit because it can appear in a T-rated game without any editing, but it's certainly closer than the vast majority of video games released in the west has ever gotten.
Takahashi, for reasons we can only speculate about (Is he, as an otaku himself, a fan of designers who work within what I'll hereout refer to as the Peak Anime aesthetic? Is it an advertising campaign to get the fanbases of specific artists to buy the game? Probably both?), has gathered a sizeable cross section of prominent designers within the niche together, something that isn't uncommon at all for mobile gacha games that 99.9% of the population of western society has probably never even seen or heard of. Then he took off all the restraints that normally come with "we need to sell this game to a wider audience, please mitigate your personal shit dude," and put their artwork in a JRPG. This alone wouldn't be that notable, there are extremely niche JRPGs that only sell between 30-100,000 copies in the US and most people will never hear about. But, see, his series has the marketing and mindshare behind it to do seven figures globally--that's an entirely different ballgame.
Peak Anime has never been anywhere near that ballpark before, let alone playing in the game.
Now, because the internet gives us access to twitter advertising campaigns aimed at the extreme niche of Japanese JRPG fans who are also fans of these artists and follow them on Twitter and Pixiv (You'll note the XenobladeJP twitter account has 40,000 followers in total, half the amount that many of these artists do while still passing for an extremely low number in the scope of society itself), and we exist on a site at the absolute apex of video game enthiusiasts, we have access to translated information and pictures that weren't even intended for the general audience of Japanese players, who will be sold the game based on TV ads just like our general audience, let alone us.
Not only do we have access to more information than we otherwise would, but that information is directly curated for a demographic that is literally on the complete opposite end of the spectrum from where most of us who are regulars in this thread sit. It's a recipe for some of the most extreme culture shock that you could possibly generate on the internet. When that culture shock is backed by reactions to some pretty dicey design work because, again, hardcore anime otaku, well. Yeah. There's gonna be a response. Anime has been gradually moving in this direction for a long time, but we're looking at people at the tip of the arrowhead here when our culture is normally only directly exposed to its broadest point. It was gonna take years before the kinds of audiences that're being exposed to this kind of stuff because of Xenoblade even got a whiff of it.
Speculation as to How this Got So Heated and We All Wound Up Going in Circles
I noted previously that those of us who are deep into anime are already familiar with some or even a lot of these artists by name. We had our reactions to them a long time ago and regardless of any bones we might have to pick with their aesthetics they're old hat by now, long since buried by other stuff to think and worry about. I think a lot of the "Why is everyone complaining so much?" reactions here are coming from people who are, for better or worse, used to this kind of stuff at this point. They've never seen the type of (sociologically normal, because goddamn) explosion of reactions fueled by culture shock mixed with legitimate distaste for dicey design trends before, because most people in the demographic have never been exposed to what Peak Anime actually is before, and greater western society was never, under any circumstances, going to be ready for Peak Anime. There has never been a time in history where the west and Japan have been moving in the same direction in these trends, and Xenoblade's rare blades are a window into what might happen to the general western audiences for Anime Games a couple years from now if things keep moving in the same direction.
What about the Game Itself?
Impressions from USGamer's Nadia Oxford would lend credence to my hypothesis that a lot of the impression we've been given is skewed heavily by us getting our marketing wires criss-crossed. Blades are pulled using a gacha system, meaning that what you get (and thus see) is heavily randomized and there are an absolute ton of them. Reviewer impressions have implied that there's been a heavy focus on marketing the specific designs that will draw in Otaku, and they don't represent the full breadth of blade designs. Pyra's design will be in your face for most of the game, but it seems likely to me that in context of the full game and its gacha system, the rare blades won't be nearly as punch-in-the-face insane as they appear to be as a result of the XenobladeJP Twitter account.
That doesn't make them any better in a vacuum, or make them not in the game, but maybe that context will make it less jarring--and it'd help to explain why Nintendo hasn't intervened here given their history. We'll see what reviewers have to say about it in a couple days.
Seriously though, folks. This is what people meant when they said Peak Anime. Welcome to full understanding.
Yikes.
Wanted to add into the chorus thanking you for this post. I think personal accounts do a lot of work in helping people to come around on this stuff. :)
It's a really depressing widespread cultural shift in what's permissible to do to female fictional characters, and since Japanese feminists are so busy trying to get themselves to the point of being treated like equal humans with actual full rights in real life, they don't have the luxury of going after it just yet. It'll happen. We'll probably be elderly by then, but it'll happen.
ON THAT NOTE,
Forgive me the essay, but this is something I've been ruminating on for a while in regard to Xenoblade 2. I feel like I benefit from something of a slight window into this without the heated reactions that tend to make it difficult to articulate yourself or the need to silence criticism, so I thought maybe I should take a shot at it. Trying to understand how things like this happen is a passion of mine even when I have a pretty entrenched side in the matter (blame the Psych background), so without further ado...
The Current Situation as it Stands
It's really funny to me, in a way, that this is happening with a Nintendo game of all things, because it was going to happen eventually but I genuinely wouldn't have expected it for another five years without a strange series of coincidences happening all at once.
What we're looking at right now, warranted criticism of the designs notwithstanding, is a perfect storm of monolithic proportions. The nucleus of anime otaku culture has been buried just deeply enough with regard to video games and anime that you can't see it from the surface or even one or two layers down for quite a while. Prominent character artists within the niche, both men and women, have been working their way to this aesthetic in their personal and self-published work for years now, and it's nothing new to anyone who's particularly deep into The Anime. Any eyerolls that happened, mine for example, happened a solid half decade ago when things started down this path. Basically, this is nothing new or exciting for some of us. A subset of that "some of us" also doesn't think it's particularly great that this is the direction that things have gone, but even for us it's nothing new. We've made half-derisive and self-deprecating jokes about Peak Anime for a long time, and I'm sure that a lot of people who thought they got the joke in full were picturing something only halfway to the summit. This still isn't the summit because it can appear in a T-rated game without any editing, but it's certainly closer than the vast majority of video games released in the west has ever gotten.
Takahashi, for reasons we can only speculate about (Is he, as an otaku himself, a fan of designers who work within what I'll hereout refer to as the Peak Anime aesthetic? Is it an advertising campaign to get the fanbases of specific artists to buy the game? Probably both?), has gathered a sizeable cross section of prominent designers within the niche together, something that isn't uncommon at all for mobile gacha games that 99.9% of the population of western society has probably never even seen or heard of. Then he took off all the restraints that normally come with "we need to sell this game to a wider audience, please mitigate your personal shit dude," and put their artwork in a JRPG. This alone wouldn't be that notable, there are extremely niche JRPGs that only sell between 30-100,000 copies in the US and most people will never hear about. But, see, his series has the marketing and mindshare behind it to do seven figures globally--that's an entirely different ballgame.
Peak Anime has never been anywhere near that ballpark before, let alone playing in the game.
Now, because the internet gives us access to twitter advertising campaigns aimed at the extreme niche of Japanese JRPG fans who are also fans of these artists and follow them on Twitter and Pixiv (You'll note the XenobladeJP twitter account has 40,000 followers in total, half the amount that many of these artists do while still passing for an extremely low number in the scope of society itself), and we exist on a site at the absolute apex of video game enthiusiasts, we have access to translated information and pictures that weren't even intended for the general audience of Japanese players, who will be sold the game based on TV ads just like our general audience, let alone us.
Not only do we have access to more information than we otherwise would, but that information is directly curated for a demographic that is literally on the complete opposite end of the spectrum from where most of us who are regulars in this thread sit. It's a recipe for some of the most extreme culture shock that you could possibly generate on the internet. When that culture shock is backed by reactions to some pretty dicey design work because, again, hardcore anime otaku, well. Yeah. There's gonna be a response. Anime has been gradually moving in this direction for a long time, but we're looking at people at the tip of the arrowhead here when our culture is normally only directly exposed to its broadest point. It was gonna take years before the kinds of audiences that're being exposed to this kind of stuff because of Xenoblade even got a whiff of it.
Speculation as to How this Got So Heated and We All Wound Up Going in Circles
I noted previously that those of us who are deep into anime are already familiar with some or even a lot of these artists by name. We had our reactions to them a long time ago and regardless of any bones we might have to pick with their aesthetics they're old hat by now, long since buried by other stuff to think and worry about. I think a lot of the "Why is everyone complaining so much?" reactions here are coming from people who are, for better or worse, used to this kind of stuff at this point. They've never seen the type of (sociologically normal, because goddamn) explosion of reactions fueled by culture shock mixed with legitimate distaste for dicey design trends before, because most people in the demographic have never been exposed to what Peak Anime actually is before, and greater western society was never, under any circumstances, going to be ready for Peak Anime. There has never been a time in history where the west and Japan have been moving in the same direction in these trends, and Xenoblade's rare blades are a window into what might happen to the general western audiences for Anime Games a couple years from now if things keep moving in the same direction.
What about the Game Itself?
Impressions from USGamer's Nadia Oxford would lend credence to my hypothesis that a lot of the impression we've been given is skewed heavily by us getting our marketing wires criss-crossed. Blades are pulled using a gacha system, meaning that what you get (and thus see) is heavily randomized and there are an absolute ton of them. Reviewer impressions have implied that there's been a heavy focus on marketing the specific designs that will draw in Otaku, and they don't represent the full breadth of blade designs. Pyra's design will be in your face for most of the game, but it seems likely to me that in context of the full game and its gacha system, the rare blades won't be nearly as punch-in-the-face insane as they appear to be as a result of the XenobladeJP Twitter account.
That doesn't make them any better in a vacuum, or make them not in the game, but maybe that context will make it less jarring--and it'd help to explain why Nintendo hasn't intervened here given their history. We'll see what reviewers have to say about it in a couple days.
Seriously though, folks. This is what people meant when they said Peak Anime. Welcome to full understanding.
Yikes.
I think a large part of it was that in the 90s everything was pixels. And then as we expanded ever toward more and more fidelity, designers and artists had more space to... fill. And because games were such a male-dominated thing (or at least, perceived to be?), that naturally led to appealing to men (or boys, if we're being honest) with sexualized characters.
Now that I'm done typing that out it's so obvious I don't even know if it's worth posting. But hey maybe it is!
What gets me more than anything, I think, is what you point out: how cool and independent most of the characters were in older JRPGs, including and sometimes especially the women. Many of the most memorable characters from back then for me ARE women. These days you're definitely more likely to see damsels and other similar things. That's the danger of established tropes, I suppose. You draw from the pool of accepted standards. Not to say it didn't happen back then, of course. But, well.
Bleh.
The stuff about already having complained about it for ages is really on point, and it's kind of amazing people don't get it. Hell, even before I realized how problematic it actually was, I was complaining about giant-breasted young girls in anime (and elsewhere), because it was so absurd. And often embarrassing, if I thought about showing anyone the stuff I was watching. My mom certainly never found out... PHEW.
I've spent years and years calling that shit out. I still do, but I also look past it very frequently to the good stuff. Which is, ironically, often enough the very big-breasted young girls themselves.
EDIT: Hah, I just remembered once when I wanted to play Everquest, but my mom wouldn't buy it for me because of the cover art being a sorceress in a bikini, basically.
I thought if i used the words"you women" it would be more condescending than if I used "you girls", the group of women I associate with dont like it when I say "you women" as opposed to "you girls". IS "you guys" better?
Well, ideally you would've stopped before you made the post, as they've all said, explaining breast physics to people with breasts. But hey what do I know I'm just a cis man.
I sure wouldn't expect a woman to explain to me the physics of my unique anatomy.
Worried about blood in the water, in regards to any reviewer who may decide to criticize or drop score due to the sexualisation.
Not a healthy work environment, that they have to worry about threats and harassment for simply doing their job.
Edit: You x, in general is not going to read well in the context of that sentence. You folks, probably wouldn't have caused such a response though.
Not a healthy work environment, that they have to worry about threats and harassment for simply doing their job.
Edit: You x, in general is not going to read well in the context of that sentence. You folks, probably wouldn't have caused such a response though.
I dunno about that. All the characters I listed had full-body concept artworks (usually not showing up in-game, but in game manuals, strategy guides or artbooks), so they could have easily just perv'ed out right there and made the sprites accordingly. I mean, it still happened a bit back in the day; just look at the original concept arts for Rydia or Rosa in FFIV (1991), they're wearing leotards, have cleavage, etc. Though they are drawn classily and tastefully compared to shit like Xenoblade (that's because I'm pretty sure Amano's art style is just inherently that damn classy :D), they're still sexualized, and that translated to some extent on their sprite.
But who knows. Maybe you're right that increasing fidelity lead to more sexualization. No one cared about objectifying tiny sprites because that's just silly and not actually titillating, whereas more detailed 3D models can be. :S
I hate Bayonetta, partially because she seems to be above reproach. Because she's "sex positive" (I have no idea what this is supposed to mean in the context of this game. That she likes sex and participates in her own sexuality, I think? It's pretty fucked up that a woman enjoying sex is abnormal enough in games that it becomes an automatic positive here.) and she's designed by a woman. It's practically Male Gaze: The Video Game.
Thanks for sharing your experience as well. I would like to add that I don't have a problem with playing as a male character. If I did, I probably would've peaced out a long time ago and moved on to some other form of entertainment. It was more that the representation of women in the games I played as I grew up was terrible. So when I finally found games that did a better job or gave me the option to play as a woman, it stood out even more. I hadn't even known how important it was to me until it happened.
That's really interesting. I'm not surprised by the shift, but I came into the genre pretty late and it was already pretty bad by that point. And honestly, not getting any better. It's been, uh, interesting to see some JRPG devs who've clearly been made aware that many Western gamers don't like a lot of the otaku pandering in modern games (Which I'd argue is partially because a lot of it isn't considered sexy by the mainstream here, but seen as creepy. Fewer lolis would probably go over better). I've seen genuine confusion before, and it makes me wonder how insulated game development can be in general. It's not like Western devs aren't ever tone deaf either. Which is obviously one of the reason we need greater diversity in the industry — if you're going to be in a bubble, at least you can expand it.
Thanks for sharing your experience as well. I would like to add that I don't have a problem with playing as a male character. If I did, I probably would've peaced out a long time ago and moved on to some other form of entertainment. It was more that the representation of women in the games I played as I grew up was terrible. So when I finally found games that did a better job or gave me the option to play as a woman, it stood out even more. I hadn't even known how important it was to me until it happened.
That's really interesting. I'm not surprised by the shift, but I came into the genre pretty late and it was already pretty bad by that point. And honestly, not getting any better. It's been, uh, interesting to see some JRPG devs who've clearly been made aware that many Western gamers don't like a lot of the otaku pandering in modern games (Which I'd argue is partially because a lot of it isn't considered sexy by the mainstream here, but seen as creepy. Fewer lolis would probably go over better). I've seen genuine confusion before, and it makes me wonder how insulated game development can be in general. It's not like Western devs aren't ever tone deaf either. Which is obviously one of the reason we need greater diversity in the industry — if you're going to be in a bubble, at least you can expand it.
I think it's a recession thing. Seriously! The entire anime industry is seemingly propped up by otaku these days, spending huge quantities of money on merchandise - and there are no prizes for guessing what, exactly, they're buying...
It's a lot like the mobile gaming industry with its reliance on "whales".
Someone recommended I play the Neptunia games a couple of years back, thinking I might enjoy the satirical take on the game's industry.
I lasted about an hour before I had to quit from discomfort. Christ.
Of those options, "you guys" is the best, but the other two just sound so condensending akin to "You people". I'd prefer "ladies" or even something gender-neutral.
I pray to gods current Sega doesn't put Alys in PSO2. They did enough ruining Alis....
I'm pretty much an ignorant on current anime world, but wasn't that pretty much it? I remember reading how at one point anime slowed selling as much and creators started to cater to otakus, because they spend a lot of money on their shit. Of course that would also leak onto games too.
Honestly, not sure how much true is it but I remember reading it.
I'm pretty much an ignorant on current anime world, but wasn't that pretty much it? I remember reading how at one point anime slowed selling as much and creators started to cater to otakus, because they spend a lot of money on their shit. Of course that would also leak onto games too.
Honestly, not sure how much true is it but I remember reading it.
Yeah, me asking how would they know if they dont have large breasts how they move was very poor of me. But it seems it all came from a misunderstanding of what happened in that gif, I was arguing from the point that Pyra got hit and her breasts and her body moved because of that and they were arguing from the point that Pyra's breasts moved because she moved/turned left.
That said I do apologize to them for being insensitive but I still want to know what words I can use to refer to a group of women.
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