I mean I don't think "an image of Mario hosing the only black character featured in the entire game" is that much of a stretch to draw a negative conclusion. It exists in the same space as those spirits of black characters that used Diddy and Donkey Kong.
Why in the fuck do you give a fuck about what nazi's think. Let alone with a black person is lodging a complaint.
What? I don't care what they think. I'm just saying that this "argument" is aggressively ill-founded, especially considering the implication behind some of the language used against Sakurai. It's just a goofy screenshot of a mascot brawler. There's nothing more to it than that.
Reminds me of the Diddy Kong Deejay spirit. That one was pretty sus
Maybe if it was just a random screenshot of Mario actually spraying Rodin, but Rodin and Peach are both humorously dodging the stream, and I think that's pretty clearly the intent behind the picture.
Japan has black people.
I'm not claiming that Japan doesn't have anti-Black racism, but the image that Neoxon used was from US history specifically. It would be good if he learned, but it's probably not equally likely to be covered in school everywhere.
Oh, there's absolutely nothing wrong with being upset by it -- you can't control what imagery something might evoke -- but to call it intentional (which someone did) is something else entirely.
There are 80-some odd playable characters in this game, nary a one of them black outside of alyernate costumes.
Yeah, that's about where I'm at on it. He's very much "typical" in terms of what you might expect to be the norm for an older dude in a relatively high position at a company like Nintendo. I don't think he's out here using his PR account to intentionally send out racist messages by way of oblique references to American civil rights imagery, but I also don't think circumstances afford him the ability to dodge criticism when something like this is posted and does happen to be such a parallel. That people read into it is a direct consequence of his failings elsewhere, regardless his actual intent in posting this specific image.
These sound about right to me.
There are a bunch of playable characters who do. And you wouldn't have to use developer mode to make them playable to do it either.
Sakurai might have just wanted to show an assist trophy dodging and liked how dynamic Rodin's pose looked, maybe he wanted to reference Delfino Plaza being revealed in a Rodin screenshot, or maybe he didn't even care which AT randomly spawned. There are several possibilities that I believe are far more plausible than "Sakurai wanted to publicly and intentionally make light of the American civil rights movement by using Nintendo's billion dollar mascot as a stand-in for a racist firefighter."
I don't think Bowser could get his leg up above the stream
That's if this matter ever even reaches his eyes/ears, unfortunately. I don't think he generally reads Twitter replies, so we mostly just have to hope someone at Nintendo bothers to bring it to his attention. I mean, hopefully the response is significant enough that such a thing happens, but if it's not, I can see Nintendo JP just deciding it's best for PR purposes to ignore it.
I have to work, so Friday sucks.
My sinuses are messed up thanks to still being sick and it's making my teeth ache, but on the other hand I'm making a nice cup of coffee and I've got a nice new album to listen to, so it all balances out.
