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Consistent whitewashing of Princess Zelda is a symptom of wider racial issues at Nintendo
- Thread starter Skittles
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Beyond all the examples in the OP, I was recently thinking of how Zelda has blonde-washed / aryanized their characters too. Link and Zelda used to be brown-red-haired in the NES games; nowadays they're invariably blonder than Marylin Monroe.
This is incidentally one of the reasons why Twilight Princess's designs are still among my favorite; it was the closest we got to reversing the trend in like two decades.
pink hair for link is better
The whole thing with Tetra "transforming" into Zelda never really made much sense to me. Like Sheik being a different "form" of Zelda makes sense cause it was an intentional disguise. Tetra on the other hand is just who Wind Waker's Zelda grew up to be. Like the game makes it seem less like Zelda and Tetra are the same person and more that Zelda's spirit is in Tetra's body and just happens to take over sometimes. Like the king should've just been like "you are actually the next in line to be the princess of Hyrule" and then gave her the dress instead of having Tetra basically just turning into a completely different person.
"Visually representing evil as dark skin has nothing to do with racism".
Sounds legit.
Never seen Yamanba Japanese women?
They go from this:
To this:
Without darkening makeup. Japanese tan exceptionally well and pale exceptionally well (helps that they also use lightening makeup as well as camera filters to look even lighter.)
Yes, a pale person depending on their genetic makeup can darken that much naturally. Especially if they're out on the open seas all day for months.
I think this thread is full of reaches but "thinking something is racist makes you racist" is easily the coldest take.
Where are all these Native Americans that were mad Game And Watch's feather was removed?
I get that and agree with you. I don't think these concepts come from a racist place. I don't think Evil Ryu is supposed to be a different race than Ryu, obviously.
But when you represent your "Darkness and evil" with a skin color that real life people have in real life... I don't particularly like using the word "Problematic" but it fits pretty well here.
OP
OP
The problem arises when her "tan" vanishes and then reappears in the span of about an hour
Never said it was racist, just problematic. That yet another black woman is reduced to a sex object. There's also the problem of black people being reduced to the same 3 hair styles in games, but that's another thread.
Ninjara's first reveal is of his ass too lol. In fact pretty much all the arms fighters reveals start from their backside and work their way up to their face. It's done intentionally
OP sounds more and more like a stereotypical overly-woke Tumblr user with every reply. What good points they have are muddled in a sea of reaching nonsense and their own ignorance.
I'm not really interested in the race of imaginary characters in video games, but one thing that bothers me is when Black characters are "evil" versions of White characters.
Black = dark = evil
White = light = purity
I get it, but we're seeing skin tones based on societal race issues.
edit: ah, someone posted Rugal. yeah, that's what I mean. =p
Black = dark = evil
White = light = purity
I get it, but we're seeing skin tones based on societal race issues.
edit: ah, someone posted Rugal. yeah, that's what I mean. =p
Characters from Japan are usually Asian unless stated otherwise. People calling them 'white' dont understand Japanese culture. Like Sailor Moon is Asian.
There's no way OP expected people to take this thread seriously by starting off with this.
Agree with racial stereotypes in Smash, Donkey Kong, and Pokemon. There are threads discussing these issues already. These examples are really backwards and Nintendo should fix them.
Character getting a tan is not whitewashing though.
Character getting a tan is not whitewashing though.
OP, I don't want you to have a hemorrhage or anything, but what if I told you that women with 'big tits and big ass' are also present in the naturally occurring world?
Wait, I forgot. Cameras are only allowed to pan around skinny figures with no distinguishable features...
Rugal is the main antagonist of the KOF series, his very first appearance he's a regular caucasian dude with a business like get up (See also: Geese Howard), his weird skin tones in later games are due to A) Orochi energy (KOF 95) or B) being brought back to life (KOF 98 and KOF 2002, in these his skin is dark grey), so no, the darker skin is not supposed to make him look "more evil" because if you're playing Capcom vs SNK (which those pictures come from) you already know Rugal is FUCKING EVIL, so yes, there is a problem with darkening the skin to indicate a character is evil, but my dude, Rugal is NOT a good example.
You could easily have gone with Violent Ken since his "evil" pallete is even in Smash ultimate.
Just google tans if you don't know what you are talking about lol
Google, reverse search that image.
Best guess for this image: pale skin spray tan
*dies of laughter*
Pokemon's Jynx was addressed and changed to purple YEARS ago. Like before G/S released outside of Japan. OP probably knew that though
Honestly I would be elated if Mario wanted to don a cultural costume of my country. We get a lot less attention than sombreros and ponchos.
Nope.
Nope, we like it and think it's pretty cool. Doesn't stop people from speaking for us, as you can tell.
That's Photoshop, can't fool me!
"People can't get tans this dark naturally, they don't know how biology works"
Seriously OP, are you trolling at this point?
I can see soooome argument to be made there (just make Link have shades of purple and you're done) but the Twintelle or Mario in a Sombrero part is ridiculous.
OP
OP
Tell me more about the tan you can lose in the span of an hour and regain it the next
"People can't get tans this dark naturally, they don't know how biology works"
Seriously OP, are you trolling at this point?
As others have painstakingly pointing out, none of those examples are even remotely whitewashing. Also white people can tan, and they can tan dark, what a ridiculously bad take.
This feels like a piggy back off of something that legitimately looks like racial insensitivity with the DK and Punch-Out stuff in Smash Ultimate. But then wrapping that around some drug-induced musings that reach way too far.
This feels like a piggy back off of something that legitimately looks like racial insensitivity with the DK and Punch-Out stuff in Smash Ultimate. But then wrapping that around some drug-induced musings that reach way too far.
Can't help but feel like OP is arguing in bad faith. Tetra <-> Zelda is supposed to be a play on Sheik <-> Zelda, nothing else, there's nothing racial there, and bringing Dark Link and things from 20 years ago into the discussion really gives it away.
Also I think they caught on Cia at least because like I said earlier in Hyrule Warriors Legends she turns good again but retains her dark complexion.
Zelda is "supposed" to be Hylian, a fictional race of humans in the Zelda universe.
I'm not going to try to argue that there's absolutely nothing to the OP's case, but I will argue that there's so little to it that when cases of genuine racist intent come up later on this board people will cite topics like this to diminish them.
There is about a 0% chance that any part of the OP's examples were developers and designers specifically basing skin color on black people. The did not go 'Africans are bad so we will make bad Link have their skin color.' The examples are universally examples of the general 'white = light/day/good and black = dark/night/bad' which has existed for as long as we have had colored art. That doesn't make them ok, but it does make it the effect of long term cultural osmosis instead of any particular ill intent. We can have a topic or argument about how we need to kill this trope if we want to.
The exception is the Kirby boss which, even if not maybe knowingly based on a hateful image, is still based on a hateful image.
Also this is giving me serious deja vu. Did we have this exact topic a few months ago? Did I write this exact same post before?
There is about a 0% chance that any part of the OP's examples were developers and designers specifically basing skin color on black people. The did not go 'Africans are bad so we will make bad Link have their skin color.' The examples are universally examples of the general 'white = light/day/good and black = dark/night/bad' which has existed for as long as we have had colored art. That doesn't make them ok, but it does make it the effect of long term cultural osmosis instead of any particular ill intent. We can have a topic or argument about how we need to kill this trope if we want to.
The exception is the Kirby boss which, even if not maybe knowingly based on a hateful image, is still based on a hateful image.
Also this is giving me serious deja vu. Did we have this exact topic a few months ago? Did I write this exact same post before?
That's just how they did the reveals of the first characters, all of the videos start at the back and then go to the front and pan up.
Unless I'm supposed to want to fuck the robot too.
Where are you planting the goalposts this time? How does that dispute that light-skinned people can get dark tans?
"People can't get tans this dark naturally, they don't know how biology works"
Seriously OP, are you trolling at this point?
It was so thoughtful, that when Tetra changes to Zelda, some anti-tan magic was sprinkled in there as well.
Wouldn't want her to stay tanned.
It's sort of like the people freaking out over that girl wearing a traditional Chinese dress to prom, but they asked people from China and they loved that their culture was reaching people outside of their world.
Do you get it though?
This dark=night=evil shit precedes the god damn colonies lol.
That transformation was tanned pirate Tetra magically changing into makeuped royalty sheltered Zelda that rarely left the castle to get any sun. Sure there's definitely issues with how she just becomes a damsel in distress after that but it doesn't really represent something racist to me but more of an actual class thing that makes sense for that world.
OP
OP
I did know that, it's just to show a trend of fuck ups nintendo has done. If they had truly learned from it this episode wouldn't have happened
While a few of those examples are worthwhile to discuss, Dark Link is quite the reach. The original Dark Link is supposed to be a like a shadow, but because Smash is cheap on the alternate costumes, they painted the entire costume of link dark gray instead. Dark Link's skin isn't even a color that happens in actual people.
In a game where you make a castle appear from the sea by activating three switches and a talking boat. Come on.
You may have some good points, but you stick to terrible examples and you are clearly just defending your poor arguments, instead of explaining more about the things you wrote on the OP.
I'm not arguing the Zelda tan reverse was good or anything, I'm arguing against white peoplenot being able to get tans as dark as Tetra.
The same reason every Zelda is blond haired and fair skinned, because Nintendo doesn't like changing more than her hairstyle.
Same. Was bummed we didn't get something like this in Odyssey: https://twitter.com/mariobrothblog/status/966346002822246400
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