This is pretty interesting. The artist was clearly thinking about the design more than just hurr durr big boobs. I think a lot of the blades have pretty interesting design touches if you read their lore or do their side quests. There's a lot of visual communication going on this game, and even though I understand anime at it's core is repulsive to some people (and of course the OTT female bodies and leery camera) but I think there's a lot of interesting design work in this game.
I do wonder how much of Pyra and Mythra's look was based on being "The Holy Grail but an Anime Girl" but I'm no scholar.
Yes, exactly! Another awful character that constantly makes my skin crawl when I see him played off for laughs and never actually addressed as a problem by... anyone, even the girls he harasses. :I
I do agree, some of the guest designs have some issues. I do like all of the story relevant characters and baldes, though. And i love Rex' design. What's not to like? He's a lovable goof with cool gear and i consider him one of my favourite JRPG protagonists. Also his outfit change is dope!
But there were also several questionable designs in XC1 and XCX as well, so i don't really get why some people hold them so dear in that regard (although the guest design element in XC2 certainly elevates issues) :/
Boobs are just a body part like any other to incorporate into a design. The woman who designed her felt like making an exaggerated design, and everything about it is exaggerated. As someone who has breasts, and draws, and has too big of an imagination - I like seeing the crazy, exaggerated, or even simple ways artists use the human body in their designs. I think boobs should be normal/comfortable/funny things to design.
If the artist was incapable of drawing anything other than a bunch big boobed bunny ladies, then that would be a problem.
Literally so much of it exists, not for the fun and wackiness design of it all, but to exploit women's bodies for a specific target audience in mind. You can play coy and say it's out of "creativity" or "artistic choice", and sure some sexiness can be fun and appealing, but the fact remains it's an often one-sided design decision that affects one gender more often and takes advantage of their appearance to the point it affects them on real and personal levels.
And cmon
Can you honestly say boobs are like any other part of the body??? Do we fetishize arms or legs at ALL the way we fetishize breasts? You're just being naive if you really see NO other part to why this bothers some people, it doesn't matter if you have tits or not.
Because it sells, and depending on the artists you manage to land for your game can really drive interest in the product. See Fate: GO and Resetera's continued bewilderment of that game's rabid success.
And considering the amount of fanart that continues to be drawn of Pyra and Mythra to this day, I'd say it succeeded. For the record, Team Pyra.
I don't doubt games have made [lots of] money for flashing fancy sexualized characters, but I'd say it's patently untrue to say its success is determined by it.
I really liked nia's design until a certain point :( but yea a lot the characters in the base game are downright awful and absurd. Still, I loved the game despite that.
Tora is talking about the concept of moe, and since there's hardly a proper translation for the word moe, they went with blushy-crushy, playing off of the nopon's way of speaking through repetition and rhyming certain words.
Malos isn't related to Torna, and other blades and humans from Torna weren't in the Nomura style. So I'm sure they wanted the villain group to have a defined look, but were less concerned about the logic of it.
It got lost on the way to giving Pyra a faux thong in ill-fitting shorts.
Now, touch your girl grail~!!!!
But sarcasm aside, they could have communicated the idea SIGNIFICANTLY better if that was the inspiration for the plot and its character/s. The only 'clever' design choice I heard is Pyra's bare back is meant to represent her "missing half" with Mythra (an outfit choice only represented by the former and not the latter)...
I think the bad design criticism is overblown, but pretty much none of the more questionable designs are really worth using. Risa Ebata designed Dahlia and Ursula and Ursula is one of the best blades for Nia. Dahlia has nothing on Boreas. While I think boobs being toned down a bit would be good overall, the thing that bugs me most about Dahlia are her hands and feet. Same with Ursula's Beary.
XC1 and XCX aren't exactly clean either. Rare blades are optional and so are armors. In XCX like the ultimate armor is a bunnygirl outfit. Sharla's default outfit in XC1 has ass cleavage.
Fiora's most powerful armor is about as bad as anything in XC2, made worse considering she expresses being embarassed by her appearance and never gets to put on clothes.
A gross, sexist character played for laughs as a 'lovable idiot' is not a good or welcome joke. Playing that sort of stuff up as harmless and silly only works to keep normalizing that kind of behavior in real life.
That the player doesn't even have an option to tell him to knock it the fuck off only reinforces the angle that, 'hey it's okay cuz it's just a joke, guyz!!' No, it's not okay.
Eh, I'm not exactly a fan of the scene, but I don't think it really plays it off at harmless. The tone is that Tora, Poppi, and Pyra are all being idiots.
Yeah the light-hearted music, the girl going along with it in both dialogue choices, and the pragmatic character who is against it throwing her hands up and going "Oh well" at the end definitely reads as a condemnation of this sort of thing and not some kind of fetishistic sexualization played for both titillation and laughs. You see this sort of thing in anime all the time. They'll call the character a pervert and then... just have it keep happening, for the characters and the horny audience to see.
If you have an example of this character mending his ways and getting reprimanded in a serious capacity though, I would desperately like to eat some crow because that video was just ghastly. I'm not optimistic though as I'm hearing that the female characters are constantly framed fetishistically by the camera. And that the character who is supposedly meant to demonstrate that this stuff is weird in this clip later on adopts a scantily clad design. And I'm looking at all of the Blade designs, with most of the female ones likewise framed to titillate in their scenes, a conscious decision by the devs that goes beyond the character design being outsourced.
Well, the deal with Tora is that he was raised by a father and grandfather and they were perverts who had a bad a bad influence on him before they were taken from him and he had to take care of himself. His age isn't given, but the way he's written and how he acts he's a child similar in maturity to base Poppi. His perversion comes more from sincerely believing what he's talking about is normal due to his upbringing. He has become somewhat aware that it's not normal, though, and in some cases he does try to hide things out of embarrassment. Poppi is more mature than Tora, and while she loves him and goes along with some things because she basically had the same upbringing, she also likes to throw shade at him at any opportunity and get him in trouble for being a pervert.
Honestly, Tora's more perverted side comes up more in optional dialog scenes like the one above and in story parts involving his family, but the more important aspect of his and Poppi's characters is that they are basically children dressing up and playing hero. They look up to Rex as an example of who they strive to be, which is funny since he's only 15 himself.
The devs didn't give any guidelines aside from element and type of weapon. I think part of the idea they were going for was that the appearances of blades is supposed to be somewhat dictated by the person that resonates with them. Blades reflect the hearts of the people that summon them. So by not giving guidelines they kinda get a more true representation of this by having the artists stand in for people resonating with blades and the blades reflecting their hearts.
Another major theme of the game is that the world is a wicked place and if it is worth saving. Part of the purpose of blades is to reflect the hearts of mankind to demonstrate this
and humanity has basically failed the test and god has given up hope and is fine with the world just ending until Rex comes in and gives him a little hope that the world won't destroy itself.
The way blades look and are treated by humanity outside the player party serve as an indictment of mankind.
If you have an example of this character mending his ways and getting reprimanded in a serious capacity though, I would desperately like to eat some crow because that video was just ghastly. I'm not optimistic though as I'm hearing that the female characters are constantly framed fetishistically by the camera. And that the character who is supposedly meant to demonstrate that this stuff is weird in this clip later on adopts a scantily clad design. And I'm looking at all of the Blade designs, with most of the female ones likewise framed to titillate in their scenes, a conscious decision by the devs that goes beyond the character design being outsourced.
Who said anything about the character mending his ways? I said he was called out for it a few times. This is probably the most serious, when they discover a sexy-bunny outfit he made for Poppi, and a butt-wiggle dance he taught her when wearing it.
Well yeah, it's having its cake and eating it too.
We can have sexed up super women if we talk down to the one character who (sorta actually) notices how these girls are dressed. :/
A lot of games and other media pull this sorta tactic.
Well, the deal with Tora is that he was raised by a father and grandfather and they were perverts who had a bad a bad influence on him before they were taken from him and he had to take care of himself. His age isn't given, but the way he's written and how he acts he's a child similar in maturity to base Poppi. His perversion comes more from sincerely believing what he's talking about is normal due to his upbringing. He has become somewhat aware that it's not normal, though, and in some cases he does try to hide things out of embarrassment. Poppi is more mature than Tora, and while she loves him and goes along with some things because she basically had the same upbringing, she also likes to throw shade at him at any opportunity and get him in trouble for being a pervert.
Honestly, Tora's more perverted side comes up more in optional dialog scenes like the one above and in story parts involving his family, but the more important aspect of his and Poppi's characters is that they are basically children dressing up and playing hero. They look up to Rex as an example of who they strive to be, which is funny since he's only 15 himself.
The devs didn't give any guidelines aside from element and type of weapon. I think part of the idea they were going for was that the appearances of blades is supposed to be somewhat dictated by the person that resonates with them. Blades reflect the hearts of the people that summon them. So by not giving guidelines they kinda get a more true representation of this by having the artists stand in for people resonating with blades and the blades reflecting their hearts.
Another major theme of the game is that the world is a wicked place and if it is worth saving. Part of the purpose of blades is to reflect the hearts of mankind to demonstrate this
and humanity has basically failed the test and god has given up hope and is fine with the world just ending until Rex comes in and gives him a little hope that the world won't destroy itself.
The way blades look and are treated by humanity outside the player party serve as an indictment of mankind.
None of this excuses the exploitative sexuality, and it sounds like there's little to no actual content addressing it or condemning it directly, from your description. These are explanations that allow the devs to do these things while "justifying" them through story, and it always makes fans that go "No look, this is why it's this way!" when the reality is that it's a game that's making money off of really trite depictions of women as the basest sort of sexual exploitation.
None of this explanation justifies the voyeuristic way the camera frames the overly sexualized women in the game, especially when they're often oblivious or depicted as innocent to these sorts of things. Likewise none of this explanation explains why, if Tora's behaviors are meant to be seen as bad or the game is trying to condemn them, the shtick lasts through the whole game and is played for laughs. If I play the game am I going to see the Blades' overly sexualized designs being a symptom of humanity's corruption brought up at all, or is this an extrapolation of a theme that only directly explores less progressive ideas of human corruption directly in the game?
Who said anything about the character mending his ways? I said he was called out for it a few times. This is probably the most serious, when they discover a sexy-bunny outfit he made for Poppi, and a butt-wiggle dance he taught her when wearing it.
So what you're saying is, the sexualization is played up for laughs and always on display, the character is never brought to task or meaningfully reprimanded, and the character doesn't mend his ways and make positive changes away from this sort of behavior.
I don't think these scenes are meant to be uncomfortable, as you claim. Calling him a perv and playing up these scenes is not demonstrating how messed up Tora is, it's doing the old anime trope of the zany perv whose antics exist for the viewer's benefit. Oh gosh, that darn Tora, we can't stop him from sexualizing these girls! Oh gee! What are you gonna do?
Horrible excuse and hardly overblown from a lot of evidence in this thread already. Here's 3 more where fabric does things it never normally does
(I think it's like some sort of bubble-latex getting squeezed by black straps cuz....____????)
Battle underwear and an incomplete magic bra!
No idea how the middle part does that...does it suction to her tits? Is it transparent all (ALL) the way down??? This is such a unique design, it really didnt need the maximum-level of cleavage going on here, nor does it fit the character at all.
Well, the deal with Tora is that he was raised by a father and grandfather and they were perverts who had a bad a bad influence on him before they were taken from him and he had to take care of himself. His age isn't given, but the way he's written and how he acts he's a child similar in maturity to base Poppi. His perversion comes more from sincerely believing what he's talking about is normal due to his upbringing. He has become somewhat aware that it's not normal, though, and in some cases he does try to hide things out of embarrassment. Poppi is more mature than Tora, and while she loves him and goes along with some things because she basically had the same upbringing, she also likes to throw shade at him at any opportunity and get him in trouble for being a pervert.
So what you're saying is, the sexualization is played up for laughs and always on display, the character is never brought to task or meaningfully reprimanded, and the character doesn't mend his ways and make positive changes away from this sort of behavior.
Did you even watch the video I posted? Where he is told his behavior is indefensible, the outfit he made is destroyed, and one character literally burned him over it? You don't think that is being meaningfully reprimanded?
Eh, I'm not exactly a fan of the scene, but I don't think it really plays it off at harmless. The tone is that Tora, Poppi, and Pyra are all being idiots.
Well, the deal with Tora is that he was raised by a father and grandfather and they were perverts who had a bad a bad influence on him before they were taken from him and he had to take care of himself. His age isn't given, but the way he's written and how he acts he's a child similar in maturity to base Poppi. His perversion comes more from sincerely believing what he's talking about is normal due to his upbringing. He has become somewhat aware that it's not normal, though, and in some cases he does try to hide things out of embarrassment. Poppi is more mature than Tora, and while she loves him and goes along with some things because she basically had the same upbringing, she also likes to throw shade at him at any opportunity and get him in trouble for being a pervert.
Honestly, Tora's more perverted side comes up more in optional dialog scenes like the one above and in story parts involving his family, but the more important aspect of his and Poppi's characters is that they are basically children dressing up and playing hero. They look up to Rex as an example of who they strive to be, which is funny since he's only 15 himself.
The devs didn't give any guidelines aside from element and type of weapon. I think part of the idea they were going for was that the appearances of blades is supposed to be somewhat dictated by the person that resonates with them. Blades reflect the hearts of the people that summon them. So by not giving guidelines they kinda get a more true representation of this by having the artists stand in for people resonating with blades and the blades reflecting their hearts.
Another major theme of the game is that the world is a wicked place and if it is worth saving. Part of the purpose of blades is to reflect the hearts of mankind to demonstrate this
and humanity has basically failed the test and god has given up hope and is fine with the world just ending until Rex comes in and gives him a little hope that the world won't destroy itself.
The way blades look and are treated by humanity outside the player party serve as an indictment of mankind.
All that you've just describe is only excusing the behavior. As far I understand, there is never a moment where Tora is actually, seriously taken aside and told that kind of attitude and the comments he make aren't okay, and he needs to stop it and grow into a better, more respectful person. (The closest you probably get is that video Dreamwriter just linked, which is still 100% played for laughs and not treated like a real issue.) When that conversation never happens, and the strongest reaction you get are characters feeling mildly annoyed and otherwise just rolling their eyes at it cuz Tora and whoever else is an idiot, is portraying that sort of behavior as harmless.
Never anywhere in the game do they stop and say, 'hey these kinds of comments/actions can be harmful to girls and women.' And because the game never addresses it all those silly idiot Tora moments are in fact played off as harmless.
I don't doubt games have made [lots of] money for flashing fancy sexualized characters, but I'd say it's patently untrue to say its success is determined by it.
Atelier Ryza is the highest sold Atelier game in years. It's a fun game, but I'd be lying if I said much of the conversation all around the internet about the game isn't about the character designs. I'm not saying I completely disagree with you, but I think it's a case by case basis, because Ryza sure as hell isn't the best Atelier game ever.
Look I liked the 50 hours or so that I put into the game but at the same time I hated a lot of the design choices and also how the camera tends to focus on sexualising come of the characters. You can like the game and yet find problems with it.
Thats a whole other mess of a conversation I don't feel like being dragged into. There absolutely are trash designs in the game, I just think there are more good ones than bad, is all.
You are literally hand-waving the sexualization issue with the "people have different tastes" card.
Yes, people have different tastes, but it doesn't make the heavy objectivication and sexualization of women in XB2 design okay because people have different tastes.
Atelier Ryza is the highest sold Atelier game in years. It's a fun game, but I'd be lying if I said much of the conversation all around the internet about the game isn't about the character designs. I'm not saying I completely disagree with you, but I think it's a case by case basis, because Ryza sure as hell isn't the best Atelier game ever.
Adding sex is not a catch-all solution for more sales and my original post gave leeway that I'm sure it can help (and in which case, a LOT of promo material indeed focused on Ryza and friend's...assets).
A lot of best sellers have hardly feature overt sexualized designs (if at all even featured it), but I understand a niche JRPG series as Atelier is still (mostly) considered to be an exception to that.
Did you even watch the video I posted? Where he is told his behavior is indefensible, the outfit he made is destroyed, and one character literally burned him over it? You don't think that is being meaningfully reprimanded?
It's anime slapstick, dude. It does not come off as a meaningful reprimand, no, and by your own admission it does not change his behavior. It's just the "We peeped on the girls over the hotspring wall and oh no they're pissed!" sort of reprimand, not "Seriously dude you're a fucking creep and this has to stop" sort of reprimand that might actually send a message. The irony of the woman reprimanding him being yet another example of a design in the game with the tits half exposed is nuts, too.
Look, I'm not trying to make any value judgments here, at least not about people. If you like Xenoblade Chronicles 2, that's fine. I really, really enjoy One Piece, and talk about an absolute morass of shit female representation and heinous female design. If you really want to try to spin that stuff as condemning the overt sexualization on display, I don't know that I can say anything to convince you otherwise. Those scenes you linked were terrible and can only be interpreted in one way without handwavey mental gymnastics, to my eyes. As I said, I really enjoy One Piece, but I'll be the first to warn someone that it's got some extremely problematic female representation in every arc and that Oda should re-examine how he depicts women. Just because I love it doesn't mean that everything it does is okay, or that that stuff shouldn't be called out.
Ho it has been long since we had this Nice and civil discussion.
Anyway, what people bothered by the designs should be more afraid of is the fact that XB2 sold so well that the next could totally try the same approach regarding character design... Btw, XB1 character design is far closer to those of XB2 than a lot of people remember. We should have a thread or two when the remake will get more exposure....
Sophie ain't a good example when it has its second main heroine wearing a thong, with it being obviously promoted on its cover box, won't post it here.
I think the character models are great - barring 1 exception which is the massive sexualization of some female characters, which is honestly embarrassing. But others like Rex, Nia etc I love.
Horrible excuse and hardly overblown from a lot of evidence in this thread already. Here's 3 more where fabric does things it never normally does
(I think it's like some sort of bubble-latex getting squeezed by black straps cuz....____????)
Battle underwear and an incomplete magic bra!
No idea how the middle part does that...does it suction to her tits? Is it transparent all (ALL) the way down??? This is such a unique design, it really didnt need the maximum-level of cleavage going on here, nor does it fit the character at all.
Look I liked the 50 hours or so that I put into the game but at the same time I hated a lot of the design choices and also how the camera tends to focus on sexualising come of the characters. You can like the game and yet find problems with it.
I didn't said the designs aren't bullshit and sexualized, I didn't like the designs too much either. But every month we have the same discussion with the same arguments.
I didn't said the designs aren't bullshit and sexualized, I didn't like the designs too much either. But every month we have the same discussion with the same arguments.
Its actually quite alot that are heavily sexualised once you start going through the list, I remember showing my friend Pyra and Rex's designs to complain once and we ended up going through all of the female blade designs and it was actually shocking realising how many of the designs felt the need to make the boobs one of the main focus, as it'd annoyed me in game but I'd assumed it was just a minority at first.
Rex's design is still the worst in the game though, jesus those fucking shorts with the weird gap in the diving suit just to show them off and the unzippable top of the metal diving suit so it can act as a vest? Fucking travesty
I think there can be a reasonable discussion about character design in the game (I don't like loads of design in XC2) but these threads always devolve in
1) Dahlia
2) Pyra's boobs
3) Blushy-crushy scene
Someone was even telling that for a stroke of luck is grandma or something came into the room exactly when the blushy crushy scene played and was flabbergasted. Yeah, like that scene is not a meme that gets used every time a thread like this pops up, good try though.
Oh and now suddenly Xenoblade Chronicles X has the best character design ever when people had no end of complaints for the "ugly faces", there were more discussions about the "ugly faces" than the game itself at the time. Also now Elma is a paragon of perfect design despite 1) her final design being exactly like a Blade in XC2 2) having to dredge though a thousand of scantilly clad dresses in the game's shop to find something that actual humans would wear
It would actually be pretty cool to discuss the actual art design and not the bingo card of meme stuff that people have seen on a dunkey video or something. And I'm not saying it to defend it ("secretly Pyra's dress actually show"...nah, they wanted to show boobs).
What's kinda insane to me about Xenoblade II (notably) is that it feels like it's an All Ages targeted game with it's themes at it's core (which resonates a lot with older children and teenagers in media), but then it has some very arguably questionable designs placed in it. Like, to the point I'm not entirely surprised CERO rated it with a C/15+ in the end. Though, mentioning it does seem for Nintendo, that's still within acceptable advertisement range for Target Demographic, which is a starch difference with how they reacted to Twilight Princess getting a B/12+ in the past, to the point they cancelled the planned manga in Coro Coro. Never mind the magazine has shown worse and continues to arguably show worse things than even what ended up being serialized years later for the game and regularly advertises A (All Ages) to C (15+) rated games in there.
That said, I'd say I'd be completely shocked, but Fairy Tail, which is popular with both Elementary School Boys and Girls and older, also during it's last season aired next to Disney's Pre-School slot on Sunday mornings in Japan, at 7:00AM (and was succeeded by re-runs of, no joke, Paw Partrol) has close to full nudity and questionable outfits, I'm honestly really not in the end...
I still think it's a conversation that needs to be had however, regardless if this no longer surprises me. And it does seem Japan has been talking about this more publicly, notably the incidents with Red Cross that happened recently.
for me the inconsistent designs between artists is actually a plus. i thought it was visually pretty interesting to see all these different designs in the game, but i guess some people favor consistency more.
Rex being actively bad does not help that game. His second costume is a vast improvement. Mytha wearing stockings/leggings improves that design massively.
The game just has a weird disconnect with designs because of all the different artists and artstyles being brought into the game.
I really liked the core cast artwork in XC2 except Zeke and his waifu. I really don't like the blades you can unlock though, but even in XC1 and XCX MonolithSoft had a problem with art inconsistency. There were some really generic aliens in X and people like to point out that the faces in Chronicles 1 were not in fact based on concept work, but just something a couple of 3D artists came up with (which I think is actually good art in itself).
I think MonolithSoft has gotten too famous basically. The future is anime tropes and generic stuff like that. They're really shaping up as the BioWare of Japan. Losing the things that made them cool by trading it off with inferior "popular" trends.
Some designs were awesome though. Two or three I didn't like Daliah for example or what that bunny girl is called, but it's not like you see them all the time so I was fine with it. Pyra and Mythra are top tier imo. Pyra has some obvious bonkers but it's not like I haven't seen such people in real life so I don't really mind.
Also Xenoblade 1 had tons of sexually charged outfits (and Fiora), so miss me with the "Xenoblade 2 ruined my childhood with anime boobs ", the series had that kind of design from the start really
I didn't said the designs aren't bullshit and sexualized, I didn't like the designs too much either. But every month we have the same discussion with the same arguments.
Yes, some of the responses in the thread indicates that people still don't get why some people have issues with the way the characters were designed and how they were sexualised. The fact that you are framing this as some sort of vendetta also shows why this conversation is important.
The conversation should only stopped when Monolith Soft becomes more self aware and drops all this in their next game.
The different art styles are indeed very jarring but the most off-putting thing about the game is the absolutely horrendous English voice acting (and singing, for some of those songs tbh)
