I see lots of sexualized 18 year olds in our media. 14 year olds? Really not so much.
Teen beauty pagents might be the closest thing I can think of.
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Japanese devs' obsession with child/child-like characters trope and how problematic it is
- Thread starter Kaivan
- Start date
I see lots of sexualized 18 year olds in our media. 14 year olds? Really not so much.
Teen beauty pagents might be the closest thing I can think of.
This. I can see Marie Rose and immediately know the bullshit in calling her 18. Its a real problem.
🤣🤣I don't think tagging a child in the party isn't necessarily bad. That's just a plot device; you have to do something to keep the story interesting, and putting a child in the group usually leads to great interaction between characters.
What's not okay is when devs trying to make them potential love interest/fanservice girl for adults by shoehorning some really questionable background ("thousand years old dragon girl" thing for one). C'mon, that's just an excuse. What the hell.
Here's relevant Awkward Zombie comic (image grabbed from here):
I always found it kind of weird and creepy how the FF series (all of FF4-10 and 12-13, plus X-2 and Chrono Trigger) has such a consistent pattern of female character tropes, despite everything else being different in each game. There's always 3 female characters, and with just a few minor exceptions (like FF13 has two "tough" women), of those there's always one who fits a traditional feminine heroine archetype, one who's tougher and more of a warrior, and one underage girl. Even across radically different worlds, styles, development teams and directors, character designers, etc., not to mention total numbers of characters, this pattern seems to persist, which suggests it's based on some kind of top-level company guidelines or culture, which is kind of disturbing IMO ...
People have agency and drawings do not; these are completely different issues with entirely different potential solutions that merit entirely different discussions. Conflating the two to excuse one of them (no matter which one of them) is a textbook whataboutism; you bring nothing to the discussion but your lack of interest on addressing either. Western games, animation and comics does not systematically sexualize children like anime, manga and Japanese games videogames do.
Great, now I have Mario with twintails in my mind lol
That never even crossed my mind!
I presumed it was because she was a ninja crawling in tight spaces and travelling through woods that the button may have been broken. I mean, she has mail mesh on one arm and one leg but not the others so her whole design is of someone living rough who has been on the road for a while.
Let me be clear here, I don't even know what a dragon quest is. The only thing I know about dragon quest is that there's a slime and the guy from one of the joker games looks cool. So i'm not aware of Veronica being more than just that.
However, as an outside guy, this still reads like an overreach.
1 Because RPG characters add weird characters that aren't necessary to the story all the time, that in itself isn't bad even if it is a kid.
2 There are a lot of things in media that are part of something potentially problematic. I feel like the suggestion that the existance of a child in media is somehow that because.... other children by in other stuff are serialized is kind of missing the point entirely. Should kids miss out having protagonists that are like them and they can relate too , because creeps exist? That seems... really silly to me
How about we deal with the systems in place and things in society... causing the creeps
You are extrapolating my post, I never said it was mainstream or that everybody in Japan likes anime let alone loli, I just said it is part of the culture (referring to anime culture, I also never said "Japanese culture") and it is. And the same anime culture more often than not treats LGBT people as a joke or a taboo, so yeah, it's fucked up.
It's irrelevant if it's mainstream in Japan or not, it's something that exists and is strong enough to have spread overseas and needs to be addressed. Even if loli is more popular in the US than Japan, the US addresses child pornography very seriously, what about Japan?
The difference is that the whole world knows about gravure models, while Instagram models are constrained to their own circle. It gives you the illusion that gravure model is "mainstream" or "pop culture" in Japan, while in real life it's actually extremely niche.
The way I see it is like that's Japanese big thing, like how ours is dude bro with guns and a really bloody game. I personally think it's kinda weird seeing a 10 year old but she is 1000 but I know they think what we like is kinda bad so yeah
Fair enough, I agree with everything you said, I just got lost in semantics.
"Children might be sexualized, so let's removal ALL children from games."
Can't we just remove the sexualized ones? Or should we have never had Ellie in TLOU?
Yuffie is fair game compared to that crowd.
I agree, it's off putting. On the otherhand, as a teenager I was interested in teenagers, and games are often made for teens.. On the third hand, sexualizing at all the character of someone not anywhere close to puberty is vile, and no thousand year old dragon is going to choose the body of a child over the peak fitness of someone in their 20s.
I agree, it's off putting. On the otherhand, as a teenager I was interested in teenagers, and games are often made for teens.. On the third hand, sexualizing at all the character of someone not anywhere close to puberty is vile, and no thousand year old dragon is going to choose the body of a child over the peak fitness of someone in their 20s.
Huh what
Those Instagram models definitely have more outreach while those gravure models are super niche and NOT mainstream
Sort of related but there's no way in hell a child character is going to be as mature as like 99% of JRPG protagonists are. I've noticed the characters are always aged down for marketing reasons, which ruins a lot of the immersion in it, now throw in sexualization of characters that didn't need to be sexualized to begin with who are now underage and it is kind of creepy to say the least.
The thread is literally about that pop culture.
By which you mean it should be called out nowhere, except to defend one using the other. Great job.
Not saying she shouldn't exist, but there are clear elements to her character that play into the same kinds of tropes that more problematic stuff uses, which isn't just some coincidence. Again I'm mostly just advocating for people to be more aware of how this stuff works and what it means than to say Veronica should not exist at all. Maybe in the long run more characters like her are good, but there's nothing wrong with acknowledging the potential normalization that comes with it, which would be very much not good. These are complicated issues and it's often not clear cut.
Yup, and you could probably get a petite adult woman in real life look just as young. Her body is quite clearly way past puberty. Doesn't mean her design isn't pandering to some quite questionable tastes, especially given the child-like behavior they wrote her to have. A lot of what makes people give her the side eye isn't her raw age, but how she's portrayed. Look at how much your impression of her changes when she's given a more tame & normal outfit compared to the Gothic Twintail Loli one:
Not sure what your issue is but glad for ignore feature have a good one.
There are definitely issues here, but I think some of the examples OP gives are just bad. I'm not sure how Nia qualifies under any definition here for example since she neither looks, acts, nor is a child
It's not strong enough to spread oversea, it's not even strong enough to spread in its own country. Oversea want that content, that's the only reason it got spread. Yeah the US has stricter law on child pornography, but it also has looser law on child marriage.
That's exactly what I'm talking about.
I think most people are on board with your initial argument about the sexualization of under age girls, that's obviously a problem. But then you kind of under mind your own thread by showing examples of non-sexualized characters just because you'd prefer they be older, which is a totally different thing.
I imagine that a lot of Japanese developers miss their youth and this is a way to relive it in a small way. I heard Japanese people really really really hate getting old.
I mean, you've made very clear you don't give a shit about the topic, might as well put the whole thread on ignore as well.
This is a big part of why the conversation here is so difficult, because "including kids in these games at all even if they're not sexualized is bad because it helps normalize the ones that are" is an outrageously unworkable approach here. People forget sometimes when they're adults that most games are not made for 30-year-olds. I agree that the creepy perv games that exist for the sole purpose of sexualizing incredibly young-looking characters are bad, and Sony is taking a decent approach for dealing with those specifically I suppose, it's just that you can't suddenly nuke kids in media as a general concept because kids need media made for them too.
Like, as a kid I grew up watching teen dramas like Degrassi or Dawson's Creek or what-have-you, almost all of which eventually feature at some point sexual situations between characters who are ostensibly 15-16 years old. It's made for kids because kids live that in their lives too and they want something authentic and relatable - it becomes creepier to imagine a 40 year old watching stuff like that religiously, but it's one of those irritating lines where you kind of can't do anything about it - there's no way to be like "if you're above 30 you can't watch Degrassi anymore." You just have to get rid of the most extreme stuff and hope that other content creators at least use some common sense.
Games with predominantly adolescent casts are so, so common because they're also predominantly made for kids and young adults. Same reason YA literature exists along with teen dramas on television.
Because then their only other option is to actually admit that they're ok with sexualized kids.
Given the amount of times we've been through this topic on here before I fully believe they know exactly what they're doing with their "But she's 18!" bullshit.
User Banned (1 Month): Inflammatory rhetoric, false equivalencies, dismissing concerns surrounding sexualization over a series of posts
This and I hope the SJW won't ever make JP games try to change like MK now changed their models because lol more realistic
It's the same with all kinds of diversity in games. You want to have representation of women, people of colour etc. so that everyone feels represented.
Kids is just the demographic games usually go for, and thus, children in games is quite important.
I mean shit like Nowi is indefensible, there's really not much to say there. Where things become murkier is where a lot of these characters are designed to appeal to a teenage demographic in the first place and it's not weird for a teen to be attracted to other teens
It's a large reason why I despise lalafells in FF14. They were specifically designed to look like children, more so than the FF11 short race, and what people dress them up in disgusts me.
How the fuck did you get to 1000+ posts while using "SJW ruined MK" arguments unironically?
I don't think it's undermined. I took it that OP's core point was the Japanese fascination with youth that sometimes manifests as something tropey and silly and sometimes as something sexualised and harmful.
Also I'm not sure whether to laugh or cry at the "people can't put children in media without sexualizing them, let's just ban all children" argument.
I like it when you simply have a bunch of kids as protagonists and that's about it. Romance doesn't tend to go beyond "one of them has a crush on the main character".
Mother 1-2, Mana series, Magical Starsign, FFCC Ring of Fate, etc...
I think these kind of games might be dying, though? This niche was usually covered by S-E but games like Bravely Default and Octopath Traveller now go for older characters.
I wish they had kept Daisy with her darker skin tone from the N64 art, or updated Wendy Koopa to give her a trait beyond "spoiled girl". It would make me more interested in the characters if they showed more personality from game to game.
https://undeadghosty.tumblr.com/post/183123129491/the-super-maria-sisters-because-the-last-time-we
Mother 1-2, Mana series, Magical Starsign, FFCC Ring of Fate, etc...
I think these kind of games might be dying, though? This niche was usually covered by S-E but games like Bravely Default and Octopath Traveller now go for older characters.
Off-Topic and I don't think it will ever happen, but if Nintendo were to do a gender swap for Mario I know they would keep the proportions they have in order to avoid controversy. This would do great for body diversity actually.
I wish they had kept Daisy with her darker skin tone from the N64 art, or updated Wendy Koopa to give her a trait beyond "spoiled girl". It would make me more interested in the characters if they showed more personality from game to game.
https://undeadghosty.tumblr.com/post/183123129491/the-super-maria-sisters-because-the-last-time-we
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OP i get the intention but, honestly, you'd need to bring a better write up on why did you choose these characters, why is it a problem and sustain your point better overall. There are just too many tropes involved in the group you posted and you've reduced them to fit in one group that not everyone really fits in...
One thing is having a 1000 year old elemental on a loli dress that acts like an 1000 year old elemental, other one is aging up a character that was clearly designed to be/feel underaged just for the looking young fetish(like marie rose), then you have minors that look older(rikku), then games that let you date teenagers while playing as a teenager which i feel gets into a whole other field of discussion... You can't just pick a bunch of characters and realistically hope people will connect the dots and understand the issues
I appreciate the effort but you need to let the idea in the oven a little bit more xD
One thing is having a 1000 year old elemental on a loli dress that acts like an 1000 year old elemental, other one is aging up a character that was clearly designed to be/feel underaged just for the looking young fetish(like marie rose), then you have minors that look older(rikku), then games that let you date teenagers while playing as a teenager which i feel gets into a whole other field of discussion... You can't just pick a bunch of characters and realistically hope people will connect the dots and understand the issues
I appreciate the effort but you need to let the idea in the oven a little bit more xD
I'm a grown ass man and I just like playing with youthful characters male or female, but I can appreciate some serious determined adult like characters as well. I don't have a problem with japanese devs obsession with it because japan is known to be very youthful driven, it's the creepyness that comes with it within the culture which I find very unsettling. I sometimes can't believe how we cover it with the word fanservice sometimes.
This is why I've come to love the Yakuza series so damn much.
It's still extremely Japanese but with adults!
And what? Because suddenly after a decades people shout out loud on the internet trying to change everything ? No one has given a damn about stuff like this that much in the past?
But hey we westerners are all cool and this shouldn't be allowed because some pedos have strange thoughts... I have none of them. See nothing sexualized in them as I see nothing sexualized in a teenage girl wearing a bikini on the beach... Which is totally NORMAL... Or should we start a petition that lables shouldn't be allowed to make such girl clothes cuz it MAY be sexualized?
I have far more problems with games like Fortnite and others were violence and gore is showed as all cool and maybe even funny. And people can say herp derp that's why we have rules to play games at certain age even if people know that we "elders" had no problem playing games like this in the past and the younger ones have even less problems doing so now
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First you use SJW and now you're asking "what about all the violence?!?"
When are you guys gonna get a new playbook?