If there's a second set of DLC, then yea definitely. Otherwise, I highly doubt it.
And hard disagree regarding the manga.
-
Ever wanted an RSS feed of all your favorite gaming news sites? Go check out our new Gaming Headlines feed! Read more about it here.
-
We have made minor adjustments to how the search bar works on ResetEra. You can read about the changes here.
Why women criticise sexualised character designs (READ OP)
- Thread starter Persephone
- Start date
- Status
If there's a second set of DLC, then yea definitely. Otherwise, I highly doubt it.
And hard disagree regarding the manga.
I mean, I'd go as far as to say that pop culture depicts women as how men would prefer them to be, opposed to how they are.
Every meaningful moment of female rebellion, be it fashion, music, film, animation, is often seen as "unsightly", a call to the standard, long black haired motherly woman useful only for sex, cooking and childrearing being demanded shortly after. The only time anything else is saught after is when you need to build a harem or you need fetish material.
The concept of female rebellion is fetish material in Japanese pop culture.
I mean the first season of DLC is what, 9 characters? They're all in.
Jiran has been in one chapter thus far, and he is already a better character than in the entire arc of the anime.
I agree. If that barrier could be broken, this issue could slowly be fixed. But similar to how men in power are depicted in anime/manga, it's unlikely it will happen on a surface level.
Nowadays, it's more of a legacy issue, but the normalization is still ongoing. There's a reason why so many Gamergaters rally around anime-styled art.
The issue has been so normalized that sex appeal is one of the primary reasons for having a female character in the first place. It doesn't matter who does the art work because the design goals would remain the same regardless. In any case, game designers in Japan skew heavily male; perhaps even more so than in the West.
The overly insular nature of otaku culture shows its ugly head here. Games get all of their design cues from anime, manga, and other games and that's about it. It gets to the point where a lot of characters don't really exist outside of their archetypes any more, and where character quirks are often a substitute for personality. It's only going to get worse as light novels become more popular in Japan since these things tend to be even more insular than anime and manga.
I was just thinking about that. Especially with higher ups being mostly older Japanese men, which is actually shown in a lot of anime stories where the older Japanese males control most of what comes in and out of Japan. And women have little to no independence. Hell, even Japanese marriages are a ritual, and it's less of a traditional marriage like in most countries that encourage female independence.
8 characters. And as much as I would like for them to focus on the latest arc, there's the previous arc to consider, as well as characters like Broly and what not, so all 3 Saiyans making it in would be a small miracle imo. Well, unless they truly realize how badly they need more female characters anyways.
I prefer the anime's Jiren, but anyways, he's not the only character. Like one of my favorite characters, Goku Black, is not remotely as interesting in the manga for example. Was actually shocking how dull he was in comparison. Also the manga is just missing a lot of fun moments in general. I can't be too hard since it's a monthly manga, but it made all the more easier to prefer the anime.
So you don't have any new points to make, you're just here to excuse sexualization if women are involved in the process anywhere.
The creators' genders are irrelevant.
Women making one-sided sexualized content is not better than men making one-sided sexualized content.
"Loli" nowadays stands for lolicon, which stands for fetishizing underage-looking characters in anime. So you see, nothing changed, at least not for the better.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lolicon
No, I wasn't. I didn't get the big picture of what's happening behind closed doors in that post. If you looked at my recent post after that one, I changed my argument and made new points.
I do have to wonder if this is why the whole "trope culture" is so pervasive with gaming/anime fans, despite me never once hearing the bloody term when I was researching universal archetypes and recurring narrative motifs for my degree. And it's horribly insular - self-destructive even - with would-be writers drawing up checklists of the "tropes" they want to cover/"subvert"/"deconstruct", never once looking up to the world around them for inspiration. Indeed, I've seen a number of people claim they avoid real life issues/politics because they work is supposed to be "escapism". It's the whole "keep politics out of my games, I just want to have fun!!!" argument all over again...
...okay, I'll stop there before it turns into another OT rant XD (although, pulling it on-topic, you do have to wonder if they rely on these set templates for female characters because - to put it bluntly - they don't have much experience with Actual Real Women...)
Since its being discussed here right now, any modern manga available in America currently with decent story and characters that won't make me wanna retch or make my eyes roll every other page?
Manga is always good, but lately Ive been reading The Promised Neverland, and it is awesome
Since the request is pretty generic, I can't not recommend Kokou no Hito and Innocent (and its sequel) by Shinichi Sakamoto. I'm not sure if they're published in America though.
Manga is always good, but lately Ive been reading The Promised Neverland, and it is awesome
The Promised Neverland and Innocent both sound pretty rad. Kokou no Hito is interesting but maybe not my thing completely. Thank you both!
Seconding the Innocent recommendation(avatar source), it features some of the best art I've seen in manga and makes the history nerd in me go crazy, also Promised Neverland is really solid, great pick!
This discussion reminds me of
Sakurai said:
Last edited:
As someone who DM'd for 14 years straight, Delicious in Dungeon sounds delightful.
And yes, history based fiction makes me giddy.
While tropes are things that actually exist, I think that they're about the worst way to approach fiction. The very idea of using tropes is to copy things that you've seen before and to replicate them in your own work.
I don't think it's really true for video games, manga, and anime; it seems to be more a case of not caring about whether the characters created have anything to do with real people. It doesn't seem to be restricted to women either, as male characters are often also turned into bland archetypes. Still, the creators are mostly adults so they'll have some experience with work environments and the real world.
The lack of experience is much more a problem in Japan's light novel industry. In the past, light novels used to be drawn from aspiring writers who work with editors and win awards and the like, much like in any other creative field. What's changed is that a lot of the more popular light novels started life as amateur web novels, and the writers of these are often teenagers with no life experience and no actual writing background. You can already see these works starting to creep into the manga and anime fields.
I wouldn't say it's that simple. I find that it's helpful to study tropes when you're creating some form of fiction, not necessarily to copy them cut and dry, but to understand them as storytelling and narrative conventions. Why they're used, how they're used, their origins and what they try to convey to the audience, etc.. You can't write a story without tropes, and that's not necessarily a bad thing. You just gotta figure out how to put your own spin on them.
The hypothetical scenario Dary described (tropes for the sake of tropes, basically) is pretty bad though lol
Hayao Miyazaki doesn't like anime for this reason. It's an insular culture that looks towards insular fetishes as a means of escapism. He's remarked about how the people making anime don't watch people or look at how people interact and reflect that properly in their work. Hideaki Anno has also critiqued anime, talking about its simlarities with porn, that its made to provide a quick fix/instant gratification. It's why many of those ideas you see revolve around masturbatory stories with self-insert characters.
I think they're right for the most part, though there are a few exceptions.
There's no such thing as this. Those people were contracted to make their art for the game and you can see the similarities with their other works before their part in the game.
And of course, they'll never talk about their contracts.
Not in video games but in manga/anime it's plenty know in various cases. At the same time, in Comiket you can see plenty of women buying and doing (as doujin groups) stories, designs and things like that.
Miyamoto once said something similar-ish about recruiting game designers, that he's not looking for people who only play games as that limits their influences to the ideas that already exist in the industry. Instead he looked for interests/influences outside that sphere. Understandable considering the widespread anecdote that he wasn't allowed to talk about hobbies anymore after exploring caves led to Zelda and gardening to Pikmin!
Edit, here we are, from Game Informer:
If designers only take influence from what already exists in the media form, it eventually leads to an extreme form of parody and doubling down on the problematic elements, what really leads to change is fresh ideas that aren't chained to referencing yesterday's cliches in one form or another. It was bad enough with 90s edgy animal mascots, let alone this thread's topic.
Last edited:
Omg, I remember rolling my eyes at this so hard. On the other hand, it means that even Japanese devs are becoming aware of the fact that objectification makes many people uncomfortable, so yay, progress?
They are right but they are also part of the industry and share some responsibility. Miyazaki even drew Nausicaa with scant clothing in an art book and Anno directed an episode of the erotic series Cream Lemon.
Very important for him to mention it was a 'female designer', I suppose. Of course she worked in a vacuum. A bit like Samus (sorry!).
None of that trope stuff is very important though. You can analyze stories fine without even looking at tropes. And I honestly think that writers would be better off not thinking in those terms. They can concentrate on characters and themes and tones like writers used to and end up delivering better writing.
Japanese entertainment already has an issue with natural sounding characters to begin with. But when the creators no longer even care about how their works even relate to the real world, the negatives just get amplified.
With manga, there is no age requirement really and there have been cases with high schoolers and middle schoolers entering the harsh field. The lack of skill is evident but what matters is if you have an interested hook. An example of this is a 13 year old girl getting her work publish in Cheese! Shoujo Magazine.
https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/in...-manga-debut-in-saucy-cheese-magazine/.121739
https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/in...-manga-debut-in-saucy-cheese-magazine/.121739
Characters, story themes, tones, etc. are made up of tropes though. Analyzing them in that way is basically what I mean encourage!
That's true, but there's an editorial process, and beginners generally start as assistants to established mangaka. Shounen Jump isn't going to pick you up if you're a nobody, but it's a different story in the light novel industry.
You can analyze them as tropes, but you most certainly don't have to.
So you mean...not analyze them as storytelling conventions, ideas, and practices?
I realize this is venturing off topic at this point and I apologize.
It's fine if it's front and center in a game. I'll just refer to it as porn though because that's what it is. That's the part that irritates me; nerds (often otaku types) want their porn games with light game trappings to be considered next to "real" games.
Hard pass. Those Xenoblade characters earlier in the thread (the weapons that are actually underage prostitutes, apparently) disqualify that game from standing outside of a sex shop in my opinion.
Yeah, but there's a big difference between studying, say, Joseph Campbell or the Seven Basic Plots, and obsessive-compulsive categorisation of the silliest things ("this work provides an example of the 'Redheads Love to Party' trope!"), which is de rigueur in certain circles...
Which I definitely agree on, lol. It's kind of an excessive nerd culture thing. Even tvtropes the wiki is fault of that, despite its administrators doing their best to avoid that.
Reading that wiki is painful sometimes, but in general the categorization and documentation of tropes and idioms is usually interesting I find.
Yes. And the problem in the context that was originally being discussed is that writers, particularly in anime, seem to base all their works on a few tired tropes and cliches without taking inspiration from anywhere else. They are all extremely derivative and stagnant at this point. It's like if your entire wardrobe was just your older sibling's hand-me-downs, all worn and torn, and the older sibling got it from their older sibling...and so on
Exhibit B: Her win pose:
She basically wipes her ass on the camera! :D
I'm actually imagining the sound effect, like streaking on a glass surface, and chuckled. I'd love to see a game/anime that made fun of stuff like this now.
Don't forget the lollipop which is basically "I LOOOOVE sucking on things.. <3"
But yeah even as a hetero, that's EXACTLY how it comes across to me too.
How do you guys feel about Lum?
I think it gave birth to this idea that you can have a woman wearing very little, but okay it with she's an alien and/or have childish innocence about sexuality. I mean wasn't that also the idea behind Starfire, also from the 80s? SNK'S Athena was also directly inspired by Lum (and Saint Seiya)
I think it'd be an interesting theme to explore. Maybe Takahashi wanted to but just...didn't. It bugged me in Xenoblade X is that I think the design for "true" Elma could've at least been explained with a couple of lines about why she looked that way, but it isn't, so it's left as this jarring change.
See now I feel her design isn't as bad as her posing and actions though I guess they are sort of the same thing. There is no defense for this though, pretty much everything I've seen about her is that she is just throwing her ass around. It is almost comical but I imagine it gets pretty old quick in fighting game.
The ass wipe instantly reminded me of the Vanessa ass zoomed in closeup during her special. It is disappointing really, especially since I really like the idea of some flavour animations here. So much potential for cool stuff but instead we get ass time again.
Yea, exactly. It's innovation vs refinement. Splatoon handles competitive multiplayer in an accessible way that is likely the result of fresh ideas from a generation of developers that weren't hardcore gamers.
Absolutely, I agree. Nausicaa is a long time ago though, and while Anno is still active, he's more of a producer now. I like to think that their opinions are the result of reflecting on their careers and lives.
I agree, there's nothing inherently wrong with tropes. It's the overuse of them into cliches that is frustrating. Like, being transported into a videogame...
I'm...not sure what you mean by this, but you can't really avoid using tropes. They are inevitable in fiction.
Yeah, it's impossible to write something without using a trope somewhere, as all they are are a pattern of storytelling short-handers such as a narrative structure or a character type, but one day we will kill the love triangle and it'll be awesome.
Don't say that, because it will be replaced by the love Tesseract and we will all regret it.
The cartoon Miraculous Ladybug is already dealing with a Love Square just between two characters and I don't have a word to describe it lol
NO! NO! That is dumb. I'm have a huge bone to pick with those theories.
It's not dumb, it's a sign that the universe itself is a romantic.
Just think, that one soul mate, of all of time and space, and the connection you will make and the wonder that will enter your life when your eyes or other sensory organs finally meet across a dimension.
- Status