They don't.
But you can pet the dog now, that's the most important thing!
This is a daft thing to say.
It's funny, I'm a guy but I don't think I'd put Mai in my top five SNK women either.
The haters and critics are louder than all the people who like the game but they have a ton of good points.
Maybe you just don't want to marry her? ;)
Agreed. Hilde was pretty much ruined designwise. As someone said in the reveal thread, the armour design would essentially direct a thrust with a sword to the center of her chest, which is not very clever. And if they wanted to show off her bust size they could've done so in an alternative costume.
If you think about it in the context that the people you're talking to are basically manchildren, it is pretty difficult. Not because it's actually difficult, but because they are that stunted in their ability to process creativity outside a very narrow window.
That's actually the issue when it comes to Atlus. At this point, it's quite obvious that the company only cares about the Japanese market. The global audience is just an irrelevant afterthought to them.
Aside from the skirt part all of these could be said about western games as well. Every female character is at least attractive, body types never change, and having badas women over 40 years old is a very recent thing. Idk why y'all make it look like it's a japanese only thing. It's not like Ellie and new lara croft aren't mase to be cute, or the uncharted ladies aren't meant to look attractive, the key difference is looking their age but that's mostly abou aesthetics than anything.
I think it's more about the aesthetic being more pleasing to our audience in western games since folks go to that hollywood movie aesthetic...
My fault for making assumptions. I thought 'interact with' might mean more than handing out the rubbish you find on the ground. I swear, my Byleth dragged a bag of trash around like the world's worst Santa.
For some reason, in manga these days (which spills over to anime bc of adaptations) noses are only reserved for the very serious ones like Vinland Saga or Attack on Titan, all the others that still got noses are legacy franchises from the 80-90s when noses were still normal like JoJo or Baki
Come to think of it From Software's aesthetic in general lean way more towards "western" style than the stuff native to Japan, for example the mechs in Armored Core lean more towards Battletech/MechWarrior than Gundam, there's nary a Japanese design trope in sight in Soulsborne games, and even Sekiro avoided delving too deeply into Japanese mythology refrences (a problem Magic the Gathering learned the hard way)
Nah, sekiro is full on japanese aesthetics, problem is people think japan is all about moe and forget they had a whole artistic portfolio before anime was a thing. The temples, the kimono, the landscapes, sekiro is japanese af.
That's not the entirety of Japan mind you, just the anime industry
Even in other Japanese streets (like Shibuya) they won't be able to get away with this shit, it's just that Akihabara at this point is so inebriaded with the anime industry pretty much gets to do whatever they want.
Claire was a fucking superhero in re2remake. When she just jumps down to deal with birkin. That was awesome.
The thing is that kids don't usually go to that district (Akihabara), bc it's technically an electronic district that's really known for its anime stores (trust me I've been there once, and on one of the store's basements I saw a 12-year old's vagina 🤢 )
Yuta is as neutral as neutral gets, he only translates commentaries from both sides and barely comments on stuff, his goal is promoting japanese classes, so it's all about translating commentaries.
Ultimately I think this just proves my point even more. Saying, "well they can be, but caveat X and Y have to be met" is effectively saying they can't be. They aren't allowed to be what male characters are allowed to be. They're continually reconditioned and redefined until they forcibly fit into an extremely narrow viewpoint of women. These arbitrary, exogenous rules created by a male-dominated culture about beauty has led to a point where people are hurting themselves - if not mentally, then often physically, to meet standards that are intended to be unrealistic and force a group into submission through shaming when they're unable to meet them (and they could never meet them - that's the point). It's oppression, and oppression is deeply cultural.
You are absolutely right, but the culture of Japan has also not adopted a progressive cultural shift that is at least trying to push that needle. I agree that generalizing is bad, but it is sometimes necessary to point out larger problems that are, in the case of Japan, not just ones of a specific industry, but of a culture whose goal is the oppression of certain groups they find different (LGBTQ and women being targeted particularly). And I am not stating that it's unique to Japan (it happens in the west too, though often to other media minority groups - racism in the US in particular). South Korea has a lot of these problems too, and most other nations in the APJ region could be considered outright fascist on women's rights (similar to Bolsonaro in Brazil). That said, when we import culture we give it tacit approval (regardless of whether people are paying for the media or not), and the danger of not speaking up means there's little chance of an interpretation by those companies and cultures as anything other than approval for what they're creating. Even if we endanger the validity of our arguments when generalizing, that level of extremity may be the only way to push back against wider cultural issues (women not being admitted to colleges because of rampant misogyny in Japan is connected to culture). Even if a generalization doesn't apply to everything, if it applies to a wide margin or majority, it's worth consideration as a bigger problem. And Japan is definitely having issues with this, whether you're looking at women's treatment in the workforce or in their culture more widely.
Generalizing is never necessary, it's just a shortcut to avoid analizing the real issues. All generalization does is spreading hate over a culture we can barely know anything about how it really works because of language barriers... There's a lot of gross stuff in anime, but how many people actually buy it? Is it everyone? Is it only the needy gross otaku? How do the women in japan feel about that? Are there movements trying to change it? We don't know the answer for most of these questions but they are important to know if there are signs of change or if the industry doesn't care.
I strongly disagree with this. Generalizations are necessary for people to survive (we have to compartmentalize somehow), and just like everything else they serve a purpose in discourse, one that is only as negative as the presentation (though I will apologize for presenting as very "punching bag"-y to the culture). Research organizations, while they will admit that many of their generalizations are not necessarily the whole picture, still understand that they serve a purpose for promoting change. Statistical research, if nothing else, does show the power of generalization in behavioral psychology and its usefulness as a method of getting a better idea of how populaces at large will think, feel, and react to stimuli. And over time, the same work has also found that this is applicable to most research that is based in observation. Generalizations, unto themselves, do not undermine people's ability to affect change. If anything, they often strengthen them because they can become banners for problems larger and smaller than the generalizations themselves. They become a nexus of discourse - whether that discourse is negative or positive is up to the people in the discussion.
That's dumb, Persona 5 was voted one of the top games of 2017 here and Fire Emblem 3 Houses will likely rank highly in GOTY polls here. There is a big Fire Emblem and Persona community here.
It's working as a tool of erasure in your discourse though. I'm sorry but growing up and being bombarded with animated shows in my youth, i could count in my hand the number of western characters that helped me realize that womanhood wasn't about just looking cute and doing girl things. While our generation grew up with disney princesses doing their passive nothings, gals in japan had mononoke hime and nausicaa to draw inspiration from. While samus had been heavily sexualized even in her first appearance as a reward to players, she was a female lead in a game, how long did it take for the west to catch up with that? Or even to the level of final fantasy leads?
