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Why women criticise sexualised character designs (READ OP)
- Thread starter Persephone
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Been reading this topic while commuting places today, now I can finally reply.
On bunny girl:
I really do like her design once her back and proportions are changed, but it's still definitely sexualized all the same so maybe it'd be better to start from scratch? Can't believe I didn't notice her back being all bent in her art or her intro CG, though, blech. Her artist seems like a nice person.
On characters in sexy outfits seemingly being oblivious to how they look:
Oh my god this is something that frustrates me to no fucking end with Kasuga. In the fourth Sengoku Basara she does this a lot. It doesn't help that there are several 'jokes' around men being embarrassed by her attire and her not knowing why, and one particular "joke" that's just guys ogling her and her acting bewildered and embarassed? Like? Fuck that shit? She is a good character, she deserves better than this. I know the series is supposed to almost inherently not take itself seriously but... Please rectify this in the next game, Basara Team. You are capable of doing much better, less creepy humor than this. Either drop those jokes, put her in something less revealing. Or both. Both is good.
I mean it's a 'joke' that bothers me in any case but to do it with her just... upsets me. It really does make it feel like she's just there for T&A fanservice, which isn't the case at all. Or wasn't for the majority of the series... ;_;
On bunny girl:
I really do like her design once her back and proportions are changed, but it's still definitely sexualized all the same so maybe it'd be better to start from scratch? Can't believe I didn't notice her back being all bent in her art or her intro CG, though, blech. Her artist seems like a nice person.
On characters in sexy outfits seemingly being oblivious to how they look:
Oh my god this is something that frustrates me to no fucking end with Kasuga. In the fourth Sengoku Basara she does this a lot. It doesn't help that there are several 'jokes' around men being embarrassed by her attire and her not knowing why, and one particular "joke" that's just guys ogling her and her acting bewildered and embarassed? Like? Fuck that shit? She is a good character, she deserves better than this. I know the series is supposed to almost inherently not take itself seriously but... Please rectify this in the next game, Basara Team. You are capable of doing much better, less creepy humor than this. Either drop those jokes, put her in something less revealing. Or both. Both is good.
I mean it's a 'joke' that bothers me in any case but to do it with her just... upsets me. It really does make it feel like she's just there for T&A fanservice, which isn't the case at all. Or wasn't for the majority of the series... ;_;
Jojo part 6 most of the main crew are women, part 5 the lead female character grows, part 2 Lisa Lisa is still my fav female character in Jojo tho
Mewshuji
I watched the Sengoku Basara anime when I was a teen and of course my mom walked in when Kasuga was in the middle of the screen doing something dumb and my mom gave me the most ಠ_ಠ look.
She was the worst part of the show unfortunately. I throughly enjoyed the cheesiness of the rest. But damn, she almost made me drop the show right there.
I watched the Sengoku Basara anime when I was a teen and of course my mom walked in when Kasuga was in the middle of the screen doing something dumb and my mom gave me the most ಠ_ಠ look.
She was the worst part of the show unfortunately. I throughly enjoyed the cheesiness of the rest. But damn, she almost made me drop the show right there.
That wouldn't be a problem if the majority female designs in the game weren't also hyper sexualized.
That modified design posted earlier combined with the demon talon heels could her a really fun character in a different game IMO.
Here's her heels for people that haven't seen them
Ah, yeah... her little... 'episodes' in the anime sure are something. I could get into how the anime in particular entirely flanderized her (and a lot of the cast really), but it probably isn't relevant to the topic at large. I'm just... so sorry your Mom had to walk in on that, like, oh god, I can only imagine.
Yeah her heels look rather... wicked. I didn't get a good look at them before.That wouldn't be a problem if the majority female designs in the game weren't also hyper sexualized.
That modified design posted earlier combined with the demon talon heels could her a really fun character in a different game IMO.
Here's her heels for people that haven't seen them
I agree the altered design would definitely be great in a different game if it was the height of it, but, just, given what XB2 has in it... yeaaah.
a harmless rabbit
I had thought Mythra would be better than Pyra. Does the fanservice element get that much worse? I love Takahashi games, but i haven't been able to get into this one.
I had thought Mythra would be better than Pyra. Does the fanservice element get that much worse? I love Takahashi games, but i haven't been able to get into this one.
It gets really bad at the start of Chapter Four but continuing on it gets...alright. Like there's a hot spring scene and they surprisingly do not go the standard route but Mythra is pretty much a stereotypical tsundere. That's not even getting to the part involving Poppi which I'll let you know as soon as I finish but I'm guessing I'm not going to be too happy.
Edit: I'll just let my previous post explain what happens at the beginning of Chapter Four (no spoilers):
Ok, i might drop the game and sell my copy. I'm conflicted.
Thanks for taking the time to type that up.
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I have the first Xenoblade on 3DS but this thread is making me side-eye playing it if it's anything like the sequel...
It's a different art style and didn't seem as egregious but I also found that game boring and really ugly on the 3ds.
It isn't, at all, save for a few questionable (optional) outfits for a couple of characters. That's one of the reasons why some are so disappointed by the sequel's direction.
As the others have said, the costume design isn't as blatant as 2 and has the distinct advantage of custom armor so even if there is a bad default outfit (I honestly can't remember what the default outfit is on the characters) you can switch it almost immediately to something a bit more sane.
The camera is not as kind of Mythra for a while as it was to Pyra, but it calms itself back down relatively quickly. They were shooting for levity after a long string of serious plot events and kind of let themselves turn into a trashy comedy anime for a little bit there, but it remembers itself quickly enough and starts actually developing Mythra as a character as soon as the interlude is over. Even the scenes in question have actual character development and narrative foreshadowing purpose, I just take issue with their falling back on rote Anime Joke #X to get there.
If you're not feeling it by the end of Chapter 3 you're probably safe to drop it from what I hear, even if it keeps escalating from there. That's when you'll get an idea of what the game's actually Going to Be, as it were.
The original Xenoblade is just as Anime as 2 is, but it takes itself incredibly seriously by comparison (for better and worse, both), so it doesn't have much of the rote, stock anime humor that the sequel does to serve as extra potential alienation. The default character outfits are significantly less slap-in-the-face anime, and the game isn't so hard that you can't get away with using whatever armor you like visually 99% of the time. Except Dunban, who will probably spend most of his time dodge tanking in his boxer briefs. :^)
I probably sound a LOT more negative on Xenoblade 2 than I actually am, if only because when a game is this close to functionally perfect to my tastes, the few things it does wrong stand out all the more and are a lot more interesting to talk about. The actual plot has my complete attention at this point, and short of a few eyeroll moments in one-off comedy scenes, the cast is the most uniformly likeable I can recall from a Takahashi game. Even Mythra, who's kind of a rote tsundere archetype on the surface, is already hinting at a surprising amount of depth, and has acted as a major destabilizer for the party's existing dynamic for the better of their continuing interaction.
Basically, if you've ever watched any mainstream, non-fanservice-focused anime aimed at male teenagers you've seen everything this does wrong outside of the particularly egregious character designs, and it's because they all pull from the same lazy stock jokes when they need some brief levity and have been since the 90s. Even at its absolute worst it's barely edging into the borders of Love Hina territory, miles and miles away from the kind of insane shit that the same genre of fanservice-focused stuff exhibits today after nearly two decades of attempts at one-upping one another.
Takahashi said he wanted to target the teenage demographic to get some young people into the medium before it stagnates completely (you know, like anime comedy), and the influence of 90s-2000s era mainstream shonen anime (and even American saturday morning cartoons) show pretty heavily in the game's DNA, but it's still a Takahashi-ass Takahashi story underneath the surface.
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It gets Biblical extremely fast, deals heavily in the humanity and human rights of artificial beings, and has some extremely dark underpinnings.
I want to be invested in the story, but I struggle every time Pyra is onscreen. She just looks so ridiculous. If I try to ignore it, there are glowing lights framing her chest and jiggle physics to remind me "this character looks stupid." I love Takahashi stories and I'm curious as to what this one will be. But at the same time, what good is a Takahashi story if it's presented like this? There have been weird elements in his games before and they bothered me then (KOS-MOS' chest cannons in Episode III and the presence of Jiggle physics and pandery outfits in Blade), but never characters I actively thought looked "weird" every scene they're in.
Pyra's body just looks weird to me. I'm not even sure why it looks as weird to me as it does. It took me a while to realize, as stupid as the outfit is, it's not the outfit itself that bothers me so much.
All the while this should be a dream game for me. Finding Paradise is heavily reminiscent of Grandia's "edge of the world." Many of the air ship designs and interiors remind me of both Panzer Dragoon and Skies of Arcadia. I loved Xenoblade when I went and played it - after I had initially written it off post Xenosaga. I thought another Xenoblade along the lines of the original would be a dream, but that XBX meant that the dream was dead. Rex's journey along with Pyra has sort of bizarre in it's presentation and attempt to cater to "kids" (I teach in Japanese ES schools and I think they need to spend actual time with 10-12 year old children), but Pyra is her own character and no matter how much "Oh Rex!" business there is, she is a character with her own priorities and her own agency. It's Rex that's going along with Pyra, not the other way around.
But then I play the game, get to the next cutscene and immediately lose all immersion. It's such a waste.
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I'm not sure I'd go that far strictly speaking, since he operates under a preference for space operas and techno-fantasy, but thematically to a degree, I guess. The Xenosaga trilogy, for instance, featured a cyborg whose body--as an organ donor--was repurposed as proprietary slave labor following his death by exploiting legal loopholes during the rise of the technology. It also had several prominent fully synthetic android characters in the playable and nonplayable cast, and their fight for basic human rights was a running subplot and driving element of certain portions of the plot and numerous character arcs throughout the entire trilogy.
Xenoblade 2's Blades are immortal, unaging, unkillable, eternally regenerating demigods (born from crystals that can be destroyed, but their physical bodies are impervious). They frequently take human form and always have humanlike emotions and minds, but are used with utilitarian purpose for the immensely powerful weapons they can manifest by society at large. How each driver interacts with his or her blade differs from pair to pair, with some treating them like tools, and others acting as partners, family, or even something akin to lovers. Central to the plot is the fact that when a blade's driver dies (the only way the link can be severed) they return to their core crystal and, upon being summoned again, lose all of their memories--dying a philosophical death. Everything else in the world is mortal, but a blade, or at least their tangible physical form, is effectively eternal. The ways that they can and should be seen and treated by societies of the world are constantly questioned and re-framed by the story, both in the foreground and background.
Rex accepts the call to adventure, but because it's Pyra's journey and the only way for him to opt out of their accidental link is suicide, he doesn't ultimately have much of a choice.
Each party member is paired with a blade, forming a single combat unit, and each of them has a drastically different relationship and dynamic. The story focuses heavily from the onset on the driver-blade dynamics, and numerous sidequests center around stories about drivers, blades, and the lives they've lived together.
Straight up, she doesn't carry herself like someone with a bust like that would, only exacerbated by how tightly her outfit conforms to her chest. It makes it seem like she's constantly walking around thrusting her boobs out in her natural posture. The extremely low cut of her shorts combined with the front-only nature of her upper body clothing serves only to further unbalance her design. Basically, modeling, animation, and design mishaps all contribute to making her look like she should be falling over whenever she's depicted from anything close to a side-view. Mythra, for how much worse the camera treats her initially, doesn't have this problem quite so severely because her outfit is less unbalancing and marginally closer to actual, human clothing (that still doesn't have a back).
The content of the game itself is extremely shonen anime/saturday morning cartoon as written by Takahashi with his Takahashi-isms, but Saito's character designs totally run counter to that. Takahashi clearly watched Expelled From Paradise before production kicked off in full and said "I like that guy, get me that guy," without any care for the themes of the story he was telling, how he was going to handle the characters, or the target audience. They wouldn't be out of place in some genres of anime, but Pyra and Mythra are incredibly incongruent with the type of story that Xenoblade 2 is trying to tell, and with the actual characters they're representing.
I've talked at length before about how I'm basically desensitized to your general anime visual design stuff at this point so while I'm observing the camera critically more or less from an academic critique standpoint, I benefit massively in that I can take the story as it is without being hampered or distracted by the ridiculous nature of some of the design work. I'm thankful that it doesn't take me out of things that badly, but it's honestly a massive shame because I want to sing from the rooftops and try to convince anyone who has any love for 90s anime or PS2 era JRPGs to play the hell out of this as soon as humanly possible but it comes with so many necessary caveats due to the design work and rote nature of anime comedy that I ultimately can't outside of a specific subset of people who all already know the game exists and are currently playing it.
Yeah just started it up and pyra is incredibly... distracting. It's like her boobs get in the way constantly, either in the way of the camera by jutting out at impossible angles or through her own physicality.
Alright, that's cool to know, though after automata I was wishing that more sci fi of similar themes would take up its questions of the consequences of humanity instead of the same old examination of what is humanity.
Alright, that's cool to know, though after automata I was wishing that more sci fi of similar themes would take up its questions of the consequences of humanity instead of the same old examination of what is humanity.
So, I just finished Chapter Four...man is that chapter not too good with fetishes. On the plus side, if you have a maid fetish, you're probably going to be happy with this chapter. On the other hand...spoilers
Every time this game tries to do something serious or appropriate or tries to stop sexualizaing or stereotyping a female character, there's a new one that ruins it. From Poppi's maid upgrade (complete with panty shot thanks to an incredibly short skirt) to the new Tonra's woman being a womanchild and having to be picked up by the stomach under the arm because she has a temper tantrum. This keeps on ruining its really interesting story by this scenes that are distracting to me. Zeke's annoying too, but at least he comes and goes in relatively isolated scenes rather than being a part of the drama.
On the plus side, I finally have Morag on my team so I'm switching my lead character now. So far she is still badass and hasn't really had any bad parts. Though there is a heart-to-heart where you can find out that she doesn't know how to cook but eh, at this point I'll take that.
On the plus side, I finally have Morag on my team so I'm switching my lead character now. So far she is still badass and hasn't really had any bad parts. Though there is a heart-to-heart where you can find out that she doesn't know how to cook but eh, at this point I'll take that.
That wouldn't be a problem if the majority female designs in the game weren't also hyper sexualized.
That modified design posted earlier combined with the demon talon heels could her a really fun character in a different game IMO.
Here's her heels for people that haven't seen them
I hate this because I'm incredibly squeamish and that just looks...naaasty and painful....
https://twitter.com/smilehirasaka/status/937173210814038016/photo/1 i saw this tweet appear and it is a good example of the male perspective still dominating way too much. The left image was the original promotional material for Mobius FF which sparked outrage by adult manbabies after which they censored the promotional material like the image on the right side. Funnily enough the game itself still is filled with skimpy outfits for that character, but not in the promotional material.
That wouldn't be a problem if the majority female designs in the game weren't also hyper sexualized.
That modified design posted earlier combined with the demon talon heels could her a really fun character in a different game IMO.
Here's her heels for people that haven't seen them
So I've been watching an LP of Xenoblade 2, (am at the part where Nia is captured), and wow... the game seems so much like a cross between Star Ocean and any of the million different Euro-trash open-world RPGs. Like, better than both of those ideas but still really, really shoddily done. The menus look awful, the character designs are the definition of all over the place (from awful to exceptional, with some fitting the environment and most looking like they're just inserts from an anime... which they are)... I'm also not a huge a fan of the music so far. Like, it's not bad but it's definitely not Mitsuda's best work. The framerate's all over the place, the combat is slow and becomes slower in any area where there's more than one enemy... and the writing's tone is wildly inconsistent (the English VAs make it unintentionally hilarious at pretty much all times though, which, ironically, fits the writing).
Yeesh. What a mess.
Yeesh. What a mess.
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From a tweet about Xenoblade 2, with Pyra and the bunny rare blade pictured. I'm really feeling for people who think bunny blade's broken spine and biological heels represent the "female body" at all.
People really bend over backwards so that the actual point misses them by a mile.
To see Takahashi succumbs to the allure of anime moe to the extent that the Xenoblade 2 does kinda saddens me, especially considering his stories/characters tend to dwell on things that are "mature" and "philosophical" like Xenogears and Xenosaga. I mean when you look upon Xenosaga I guess the fan-service elements were there but they're not at the forefront and not as face-slapping as Xenoblade 2...
That's the annoying part. There's clearly an element of that in the writing and even the camera tries its hardest to hide the more egregious portions of the designs but when your main female character looks like a laundry list of ecchi cliches with no real purpose behind the design it becomes an exercise of futility. Like, if they wanted me to take the story and characters seriously they really should have gotten a better art direction.
Hello everyone. I've been lurking for days and I' m so glad that this discussion is still going. I always appreciate these discussions and those that start and continue to do them. It must be so frustrating. I love that these offensive and awful designs are called out at every damn turn. I'm curious about the developers side of things when it comes to the design. The developer response/comments/excuses to characters like Cindy, Quiet, Cortana etc. designs have been awful. But the discussion seems ends there. Does no one offer a follow up question as to why their response is awful? Has there ever been a discussion between an interviewer and developer regarding the issues of these constant sexist designs at the expense of women?
So... Weird question. I watched DF's video on XB2 and noticed they had Pyra wearing some robes in parts of the footage. Can you have her wear those all the time and are they missable?
SIGH. Poppi is like the one female design I like because she looks adorable and didn't have a single sexual element.
It for a short while in Chapter 2 when Pyra needs to be incognito. She ditches it later and you can't get it back.
Also, spoilers but this is Poppi's second form:
Yeah...it's pretty bad. Supposedly there's another form that looks worse from the shadows but I haven't unlocked it yet (you get it in a sidequest)
I'm starting to regret my purchase lol. But thank you for clearing this up.It for a short while in Chapter 2 when Pyra needs to be incognito. She ditches it later and you can't get it back.
Also, spoilers but this is Poppi's second form:
Yeah...it's pretty bad. Supposedly there's another form that looks worse from the shadows but I haven't unlocked it yet (you get it in a sidequest)
That's actually not the worse thing in that chapter. Spoilers but I'll try to keep it plot free as possible:
Chapter Four gives you like 4 bosses right in a row and one of them is a giant maid mecha that looks like a horrendous chibi version of a maid robot. This one thankfully isn't fanserviced but man is it disturbing as all get out. Fortunately the rest of the main cast also agrees that the robot is stupid.
Chapter Four will be the make it or break it point because it's the worst in the fanservice and cliches but it thankfully does get better afterwards. But man I don't blame anyone who puts the game down after Chapter Four. It's very very bad in this regard.
Edit: Found a picture online:
I think the issue is fear of potentially offending these creators. It would also require the interviewer to give a mini-lesson in objectification and how it effects woman, as a lot of the time when it has been asked in the past without any sort of background, these sorts of creators assume either that the Western people who take issue with it are simply very conservative or are gay men. There's a definite culture gap in having these sorts of discussions outside of an academic setting. So we'll have to hope that Japanese game journos are more willing to be forward in the future in most cases (because like it or not, a LOT of these designs are coming out of Japan these days).
In Cortana's case though, I'm not sure. I guess people have just sort of accepted her as part of Halo now, and back when she was introduced, we just didn't have these sorts of discussions without being silenced.
Yeah remember this? :
Oh I know alot of awful female character designs come from Japan. Especially these days as this discussion shows. People in this thread feel like Japan is getting attacked with all the mentions, but there's a reason for it if we are talking about female characters.
Wow I never saw that.Yeah remember this? :
Oh I know alot of awful female character designs come from Japan. Especially these days as this discussion shows. People in this thread feel like Japan is getting attacked with all the mentions, but there's a reason for it if we are talking about female characters.
Jesus.
I can't imagine a full-on Takahashi game selling all that well in today's environment. Xenogears rode the Evangelion wave, but times and tastes have changed.
Eeeyep, explicitly what I was referring to with the gay bit. Thankfully I seem to recall both of them apologizing to each other (though Schreier had a lot of legit points he was pretty damn rude about it too evidently), but it shouldn't have gotten that bad in the first place. It should be okay to have these sorts of discussions without being unnecessarily mean to each other.Yeah remember this? :
Oh I know alot of awful female character designs come from Japan. Especially these days as this discussion shows. People in this thread feel like Japan is getting attacked with all the mentions, but there's a reason for it if we are talking about female characters.
I forget what interview with a Japanese dev who thought that Westerners must have been more conservative and body-shaming to have disliked their work, but I swear distinctly remember that too. '_';
It for a short while in Chapter 2 when Pyra needs to be incognito. She ditches it later and you can't get it back.
Also, spoilers but this is Poppi's second form:
Yeah...it's pretty bad. Supposedly there's another form that looks worse from the shadows but I haven't unlocked it yet (you get it in a sidequest)
This is actually a pretty good design..
Yeah I see absolutely nothing wrong with that lol. Its a cute dress
Its not particularly sexualized, so I'm not sure how relevant it is to this thread, but its specific maidness is....not a thing I find appealing
It's the sheer fact that it is the same character. So it does kind of run the creepy gambit giving that she has multiple forms that "age up". I guess the design on its own is fine though.
OP
OP
This must be the only decent female character design in that entire game:
But don't worry, you'll eventually unlock art like this:
The most painful part of that art is that the style/technique is so damn gorgeous, and it's wasted on stupid fucking fanservice. Ugh.
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