[Tales of Arise Spoilers] It's 2021 and we're still be subjected to terrible hot springs scenes.
- Thread starter Garrod Ran
- Start date
I think western press has limited interaction with these big studio Japanese developers. I think it's going to be up to Japan to make a fuss.
Keep in mind Resetera is extremely progressive relatively to the general gaming audience and a lot of folks here love that stuff. Most honestly do not care unfortunately.
Last edited:
You can't really expect people here to care about the cultural background behind hot spring/bathhouse comedy scenes when the only examples they're exposed to are the generally poorly written and/or sexist scenes in your average game or anime. To be honest, considering the makeup of the board comparing it to black culture being decried won't have much of an effect either.
Yeah that's bad.
The lack of creativity on these is so suffocating, it'd be cool if there were some examples of being not completely tasteless and having some unique and funny spin. I don't know how one manages to fill nine minutes with this shit and not feel compelled to scrap it completely.
The lack of creativity on these is so suffocating, it'd be cool if there were some examples of being not completely tasteless and having some unique and funny spin. I don't know how one manages to fill nine minutes with this shit and not feel compelled to scrap it completely.
Ghost of Jhoto
I do think there are valid concerns here over the potential of criticism to be generalized into racist outlooks, like losing sight of the fact that we don't have a view of Japanese culture as a whole, and instead have a view distorted through the lens of what is most popular for export. Anime and manga made for young men are vastly more popular and so disseminated more commonly than anime and manga made for adult women, so we're going to have more exposure to tropes that are designed for young men rather than adult women.
But coming from another culture does not mean that the media is incapable of causing harm, and does not mean that the media itself cannot target people who are more vulnerable than who it most represents. These hot spring scenes are generally exploiting women, but they're generally made by and for men and boys. The power dynamic at play is visible even outside of Japanese culture.
Bluntly, using criticism of the culture around hip hop as a comparison ignores how much of that criticism is similarly about Black men targeting vulnerable groups, including Black women and LGBT Black people. That's not to say that all criticism is valid, but for example, it's readily apparently that when A Tribe Called Quest created "Georgie Porgie", they were contributing to the marginalization of homosexual men, enough so that their record label label refused to include it - there is no context that undoes that fact.
I do think there are valid concerns here over the potential of criticism to be generalized into racist outlooks, like losing sight of the fact that we don't have a view of Japanese culture as a whole, and instead have a view distorted through the lens of what is most popular for export. Anime and manga made for young men are vastly more popular and so disseminated more commonly than anime and manga made for adult women, so we're going to have more exposure to tropes that are designed for young men rather than adult women.
But coming from another culture does not mean that the media is incapable of causing harm, and does not mean that the media itself cannot target people who are more vulnerable than who it most represents. These hot spring scenes are generally exploiting women, but they're generally made by and for men and boys. The power dynamic at play is visible even outside of Japanese culture.
Bluntly, using criticism of the culture around hip hop as a comparison ignores how much of that criticism is similarly about Black men targeting vulnerable groups, including Black women and LGBT Black people. That's not to say that all criticism is valid, but for example, it's readily apparently that when A Tribe Called Quest created "Georgie Porgie", they were contributing to the marginalization of homosexual men, enough so that their record label label refused to include it - there is no context that undoes that fact.
Last edited:
There's also the notices on the escalators that yes, it is indeed not permitted to stick a camera under someone's skirt so please don't do that.
Japan is super safe and has very low crime rates in most respects, but in this case I think there's definitely a lack of reporting.
Word. Milk your wiener or whatever you gotta do outside of the game. This scene just looks awfully tacked on for no reason whatsoever.
Disappointing, but expected. This happens with such regularity in some franchises, you'd expect it to be part of their union contracts or something.
If you insist on having horny comedy scenes though, can you at the very least not make it so they're at the expense of someone? If the intention is that these scenes are supposed to be fun and flirty, you're not accomplishing that by turning your characters into predators and victims. I do wonder if the people who like these scenes aren't tired of them yet, given how they're almost always the fucking same.
If you insist on having horny comedy scenes though, can you at the very least not make it so they're at the expense of someone? If the intention is that these scenes are supposed to be fun and flirty, you're not accomplishing that by turning your characters into predators and victims. I do wonder if the people who like these scenes aren't tired of them yet, given how they're almost always the fucking same.
I don't think Japanese bathhouse culture needs to be excluded. But surely writers can write onsen scenes around the culture of relaxing and enjoying, of friends and family having a nice good time, without going into sexual harassment territory isn't it?
They don't need to care, Era is not representative of the larger gaming population and it's one of the few places where things like this will get called out. I doubt the presence of hot spring/beach scenes negatively affect their bottom line, if at all.
I wonder if you could have a JRPG that starts this way, where the women immediately end their friendships with all the men and the rest of the story follows the women who remain heroines.
It would bomb. JRPGs are mostly aimed at the male audience and they enjoy it. Refer to SephiZack (#112) post above, it's obvious.
This won't happen any time soon. I don't know anyone over here that sees it as a problem.
Worth pointing out that this shit has been going on for decades, spanning generations.
jRPGs are doing better than ever with many series having their peak sales this gen. I suspect arise will be the best selling tales of game.
As far as anime fanservice goes this is as tame as it gets and it still sucks. At least if you're going to include a hot springs scene make something unique with it. Why is it always the same tired joke? The only trope that would've made this shit even more tired is if a guy tripped into one of the girls' boobs and ended up being slapped in the face despite his fall being clearly accidental. Said trope was included, word for word, in one of the Trails of Cold Steel games.
It better be. Namco clearly invested the highest budget the series has ever seen and it's not even close when compared to previous entries. Anything less than the best sales the franchise has ever seen should be seen as a disappointment at best and a failure at worst.
"It's [insert year] and we still..." is kind of a meme for some reason. It's to imply a lack of progress on a topic, but I'm not sure what year it was okay either. It doesn't really matter since the op really doesn't go into the trope at large, more so the issues of the scene in and of itself.
Are there any anime inspired games that don't do this? Persona 5 Royal Strikers and all the preceding games have this as some sort of tradition and rarely gets called out. Not surprised one bit.
Personally I have grown out of anime games because I can't ignore the sexism and homophobia. Perhaps western reviewers can shine light on this in their reviews.
Personally I have grown out of anime games because I can't ignore the sexism and homophobia. Perhaps western reviewers can shine light on this in their reviews.
Last edited:
*Criticizes thing that happens in a small pool of fiction in one kind of media made in a country of 120 million people*
I cannot BELIEVE you are being HATEFUL towards ALL OF JAPANESE CULTURE
I cannot BELIEVE you are being HATEFUL towards ALL OF JAPANESE CULTURE
Why is "sexual harassment, including sexual harassment of minors, is not funny" a progressive stance instead of a universally accepted standard of basic decency.
I don't think FF does this? But that's maybe not anime enough.
Ironically I don't think Persona 5 Royal has a hot spring scene, you might be thinking of the spinoff game. Only other current "anime" game without I can think of is FFXV, but that is for obvious reasons.
I think X-2 had one, depends on which FF on how anime it gets lol
My bad, made the correction, it was Strikers. Haven't played any recent persona games so got it mixed up. But I did see a thread here calling out Strikers for bringing back the hot springs scene due to popular fan demand which is gross.
Okay so here's the thing.
Tales is junk food lowest common denominator anime for teenagers. It's there as an expression of all of its most basic tropes, but that's because it's made for a basic audience. So's Xenoblade 2, as an example. A game that looks like that, with character designed like that, written like that, it's made for otaku first.
Like you can watch Odd Taxi and it's a show for older audiences (and also it's about cartoon animals) and the main character is 41. You don't get scenes like this, the most you get is two characters in bed with each other post-coitus.
Anime's a whole big that we kind of exclusively get fed through Shonen, the most bottom of the barrel kind of anime, and most of our JRPGs are Shonen so it filters into our cool RPGs that we're having a ball with and then WHOOPS creepy anime bullshit time.
I feel like japanese animation/manga/games are perpetually stuck in the 90s when it's about stuff like this.
This would probably change if they tried to reach the outside Japan mainstream but i feel like the average joe wouldn't play Jrpgs either way. It's frustrating but we are kind of hostages of otaku people (Including the western ones) to make these games sell enough to stay afloat.
I just never understood why people seriously looks for fap material in a videogame when there's so many easily accessed free stuff on the internet already.
This would probably change if they tried to reach the outside Japan mainstream but i feel like the average joe wouldn't play Jrpgs either way. It's frustrating but we are kind of hostages of otaku people (Including the western ones) to make these games sell enough to stay afloat.
I just never understood why people seriously looks for fap material in a videogame when there's so many easily accessed free stuff on the internet already.
"Hot spring's accident" was like part of their comedic tradition and sadly, they're still in bound with Japanese's media.
And i'm sorry to hear about your friend. It must be awful traumatized.
And i'm sorry to hear about your friend. It must be awful traumatized.
Spot-on.
Seriously.
These fucking otaku think they're so clever going "oh but if you hate anime that means you hate Japan :))))" as if they aren't boiling down an entire country to some fucking trashy otaku wish fulfillment.
I'm surprised they still include this when iirc that women make up most of the player base (and merch buying base) of the Tales of series. Christ I thought this shit would have left once Baba was out. Then again i don't know if this was in ToB or ToZ as I skipped those 2 titles.
I was a bit surprised, but that's more a result of me overestimating just how Westernized I had thought Arise was relative to other Tales games in respect to general sensibilities and overall presentation toward the end of appealing to a more global audience.
Two Cold Steel games (the first, and the third).
Last edited:
I wouldn't be surprised if they eat watermelon in a beach in swimsuit and bikini
it's barely westernized at all if at all. It's mostly just bigger budget though there are some really muddy textures in places especially on characters.
Yeah makes sense considering I am 30 and this kind of humor or characters don't interest me one bit. I mean just looking at the gameplay of this game, the male protag has proper armor, medieval themed and the female wears a pony tail, skimpy gown and high heels during combat.Lol.
Yakuza-Like a Dragon was a fun JRPG with a 40 year old protag that did have some sexist/pervy hang ups from previous games but the cringe was largely tolerable.
I can't argue about the peeping being wrong, because it is.
But i can't wrap my head around how seeing a naked man in a non dangerous situation could ever be traumatizing for a 14 year old girl. If it was some perverted guy flashing you randomly at night on the street than it is understandable but the traumatizin part would be the danger you are posssibly in at that moment and still not the being naked part. But just seeing a naked man without danger, i can't believe that that could be traumatizing, especially if there was no perverted intent at all.
But i can't wrap my head around how seeing a naked man in a non dangerous situation could ever be traumatizing for a 14 year old girl. If it was some perverted guy flashing you randomly at night on the street than it is understandable but the traumatizin part would be the danger you are posssibly in at that moment and still not the being naked part. But just seeing a naked man without danger, i can't believe that that could be traumatizing, especially if there was no perverted intent at all.
I don't think it's a good look to try and decide what should or shouldn't be traumatizing for other people.
It seems like it could go in a direction you might not intend.
Well, there are also porn games. Although we're opening up a whole other can of worms when it comes to porn, both in terms of the tropes that would be common there and the "easily accessed free stuff" bit.
That said, I don't think this particular trope would commonly play out the same way in actual porn because they can display sexuality more straightforwardly.
Some events that are innocuous for one person can be deeply affecting for another. It's best to accommodate some public decency so that we don't accidentally hurt people.
excuse ME, but I do believe you're being RACIST towards the INNATE horniness that defines Japan's culture as evident in my never-ending consumption of power fantasy video games and you're just advocating for COLONIALISM
I know most people here hate Xenoblade 2 for its Blade designs and its excessive anime tropes but the Hotspring scene there is something like this. Just Poppi playing around, Nia and Mythra relaxing and getting to know each other. Plus 2 other nopons. The worst thing is a panning shot of Nia looking at Mythra and saying "Nice bod". It also establishes a mystery with Nia.
I watched the Arise video and it's the hundreds of hotspring scenes I've scene in anime.
User banned (1 month): Dismissing commentary about scenes of sexual harassment
Eh, I don't mind too much. A little juvenile, yes, but whatever. I admittedly haven't seen the scenes (playing game right now and don't want spoilers)... As long as it doesn't play out into the gals comparing boob sizes and one proceeding to grope another quite un-willingly (the Trails series- which I otherwise adore- actually goes here a few times , and yeah, its pretty messed up), then I'm fine.
Usually these scenes amounts to horny dude wants to sneak a peak, or gets "dared" to do so, does a bad job being sneaky, is caught, and gets his ass kicked by the girls- which yes, juvenile and tropey, and not really all that funny, but is mostly harmless.
Tales games traditionally are probably only a 1 or 2 out of 10 in my personal "fan-service meter" (I have played/seen a lot of anime products, with a whole lot of lewd happenings of various degrees of wackiness) so they really don't push much buttons there comparatively to a lot of other stuff, so I doubt Arise has anything all that outrageously bad that will just send the masses away in disgust.
Usually these scenes amounts to horny dude wants to sneak a peak, or gets "dared" to do so, does a bad job being sneaky, is caught, and gets his ass kicked by the girls- which yes, juvenile and tropey, and not really all that funny, but is mostly harmless.
Tales games traditionally are probably only a 1 or 2 out of 10 in my personal "fan-service meter" (I have played/seen a lot of anime products, with a whole lot of lewd happenings of various degrees of wackiness) so they really don't push much buttons there comparatively to a lot of other stuff, so I doubt Arise has anything all that outrageously bad that will just send the masses away in disgust.
Last edited:
This happens except the dude doing it is going "it'll make me a real man" and one of his victims is 14.
It's not harmless, it normalizes the idea that men can be sex pests and still be funny, likeable and good-hearted.