Original thread title "That one time Nintendo whitewashed Zelda and no one said anything (critics/publication wise)"
Was originally going to do a thread over that, but as I did more research. The problem is not exclusive to windwaker, a good chunk of the zeldas are pale as a full moon even though their father is basically black. Doing more research from there lead me to see a trend of racism, colorism, and stereotyping throughout Nintendo's games.
Spoilers for most zelda games.
Ah wind waker, what a fun little game. It was doing so well until the end and then it slaps the negro off zelda like a chinese laundry detergent commercial. It's a double shame because it was giving us one of the least useless zeldas. Then not so diet racism attacks. Unsurprisingly I don't think any review ever mentions this nor did a publication cover it at the time.
For those unfamiliar, Wind Waker has a character named Tetra who you go on quests with throughout the game. Eventually it's revealed that she's actually princess zelda and changes outfits. For some reason during this, her dark skin vanishes.
Now, I know what dumbass and/or racist replies you may come up to justify this and I'd recommend not bothering:
Now, you might be thinking that this is only zelda game where this happens. But you'd be wrong, let's look at minish cap
Here's the princess in this game for reference
Now, let's look at what the king looks like in game (no official art exists for him)
Hmmm, unsurprisingly dark af. In fact, he looks pretty much exactly the same as the king from wind waker. And look, it even provides a reference to what a previous king looked like too.
Who surprise surprise, is equally dark skinned and dressed the same. Yet zelda, could not be any paler. And there's not even an excuse you could come up for this one. Her ass is inside most of the time.
You would be wrong again to think that the newest zelda is any different. Let's look at breath of the wild's princess.
(this zelda has the slightest tan in game but that may actually be due to the game's lighting than actual tanning. It doesn't really matter anyway, not dark enough to mean anything)
Now, let's once again look at her father for the game
Woah, super dark skinned this time (surprising at this point, I know). Though this time (instead of zelda), the king loses a noticeable amount of melanin when "transforming".
Oh man, what in the fuck is going on here. This shit is almost more baffling than what happened in wind waker. How do you lose like 4 shades of melanin taking off a fucking cloak? Besides that bullshit, why is zelda so pale again when her father could not be blacker in this? This reeks of trying to have your cake and eat it too. They wanted diversity but couldn't actually commit due to someone's racist ass views.
Nintendo hasn't gotten any better since these games released either. A good chunk of their games still suffer from heavy colorism. We still got bullshit like this happening (spoilers for hyrule warriors i guess and slightly NSFW)
I'm evil so now I have dark skin
The smash games have this problem in droves where dark skin=evil
dark link/young link
(in general there's also ganondork being dark=bad)
We also have a plethora of offensive/racist stereotypes in smash ultimate (first one removed on release)
This whitewashing has been fairly consistent along with colorism and offensive stereotypes throughout their games. To the point that nintendo is consistently the most racist publisher and I expect some bullshit to be present in each of their releases. There's no excuse for it either, nintendo is an international level publisher whose failing to understand the basics of how not to offend different cultures. If Sony can do this no problem, there's no reason Nintendo shouldn't be able to either.
I mean, is it really so hard not to do things like this
or this
(then we have other suspect things like mario with the sombrero or twintelle being a hyper sexualized black women who uses her hair as a weapon)
And hell, this is without me getting into all the sexist shit they do in general. Or some of the racist stuff that happens in their shows (like the one time Ash did blackface to blend in with the monkey pokemon)
Was originally going to do a thread over that, but as I did more research. The problem is not exclusive to windwaker, a good chunk of the zeldas are pale as a full moon even though their father is basically black. Doing more research from there lead me to see a trend of racism, colorism, and stereotyping throughout Nintendo's games.
Spoilers for most zelda games.
Ah wind waker, what a fun little game. It was doing so well until the end and then it slaps the negro off zelda like a chinese laundry detergent commercial. It's a double shame because it was giving us one of the least useless zeldas. Then not so diet racism attacks. Unsurprisingly I don't think any review ever mentions this nor did a publication cover it at the time.
For those unfamiliar, Wind Waker has a character named Tetra who you go on quests with throughout the game. Eventually it's revealed that she's actually princess zelda and changes outfits. For some reason during this, her dark skin vanishes.
Now, I know what dumbass and/or racist replies you may come up to justify this and I'd recommend not bothering:
- "That's just a tan because she's a pirate and is outside all day"
- Besides a complete failure at the understanding of biology (as no one that pale would have the melanin to get that dark), this argument doesn't work because of how dark her father is. Who you know is a king and thus spends all of his time inside.
-
- I know what you're about to say here "but skittles, that's not her dad. He's just a ghost. True but as i'll demonstrate, nearly every single appearance of the king throughout zelda games has him with dark skin. So there's no reason to assume anything different here, especially with how dark Tetra is.
- "she was just dirt-"
- Starting up with the racism quick I see
- "it was magic"
- Ah yes, the classical anti-negro magic hyrule is known for. Targets melanin exclusively
Now, you might be thinking that this is only zelda game where this happens. But you'd be wrong, let's look at minish cap
Here's the princess in this game for reference
Now, let's look at what the king looks like in game (no official art exists for him)
Hmmm, unsurprisingly dark af. In fact, he looks pretty much exactly the same as the king from wind waker. And look, it even provides a reference to what a previous king looked like too.
Who surprise surprise, is equally dark skinned and dressed the same. Yet zelda, could not be any paler. And there's not even an excuse you could come up for this one. Her ass is inside most of the time.
You would be wrong again to think that the newest zelda is any different. Let's look at breath of the wild's princess.
(this zelda has the slightest tan in game but that may actually be due to the game's lighting than actual tanning. It doesn't really matter anyway, not dark enough to mean anything)
Now, let's once again look at her father for the game
Woah, super dark skinned this time (surprising at this point, I know). Though this time (instead of zelda), the king loses a noticeable amount of melanin when "transforming".
Oh man, what in the fuck is going on here. This shit is almost more baffling than what happened in wind waker. How do you lose like 4 shades of melanin taking off a fucking cloak? Besides that bullshit, why is zelda so pale again when her father could not be blacker in this? This reeks of trying to have your cake and eat it too. They wanted diversity but couldn't actually commit due to someone's racist ass views.
Nintendo hasn't gotten any better since these games released either. A good chunk of their games still suffer from heavy colorism. We still got bullshit like this happening (spoilers for hyrule warriors i guess and slightly NSFW)
I'm evil so now I have dark skin
The smash games have this problem in droves where dark skin=evil
dark link/young link
(in general there's also ganondork being dark=bad)
We also have a plethora of offensive/racist stereotypes in smash ultimate (first one removed on release)
This whitewashing has been fairly consistent along with colorism and offensive stereotypes throughout their games. To the point that nintendo is consistently the most racist publisher and I expect some bullshit to be present in each of their releases. There's no excuse for it either, nintendo is an international level publisher whose failing to understand the basics of how not to offend different cultures. If Sony can do this no problem, there's no reason Nintendo shouldn't be able to either.
I mean, is it really so hard not to do things like this
or this
no it's fucking not
(then we have other suspect things like mario with the sombrero or twintelle being a hyper sexualized black women who uses her hair as a weapon)
And hell, this is without me getting into all the sexist shit they do in general. Or some of the racist stuff that happens in their shows (like the one time Ash did blackface to blend in with the monkey pokemon)
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