I noticed the fandom around Nisekoi died pretty quickly once it became a generic harem anime. People seemed excited for a inverted Romeo and Juliet romcom as it seemed like a promising premise. Then it devolved into cliches and tropes right down to a little sister love interest.
Yeah, it's my favorite PSX game.
Again, it's quite ironic that an immortal goddess feels and reads as being more human than 99% of female characters in video games. And yeah, I was similar and loved the game as a kid because it's got a really different combat system from... well, again, basically every other jRPG. Once I played it again when I was older I became much more aware of the game's much darker, non-idealized past, where characters are frequently prominent because they're pieces of shit. Part of becoming an Einherjar is basically fighting for the goddess as penance to cleanse the sins of your past by fighting actual, literal demons. And what's more, there are a variety of situations and considerations for each story. Some die for an ignoble cause, some find death an escape because of a feeling of hopelessness... one of the most interesting things about all the characters is that picking any single one presents a different story that is also relatable. The fact that there's also politics and a real feeling of how the Asgardian war progresses and how you contribute to it makes it even better.Suikoden 2 is probably my favourite PSX RPG but VP isn't far behind. I think if anything I appreciate it more later while Suikoden 2 is powered far more by nostalgia as well. When I think back to the first time I played through VP I realise now that much of the story and themes washed over me. Chooser of the Slain was more or less a title without meaning to me, it didn't have much weight. The story to me at the time was about playing as a bad ass God doing bad ass things. Divine Assault that, Nibelung Valesti this, etc. It was just a lot of fun running around the dungeon with the platforming and the combo combat to unleash the awesome special moves. Years later I was playing VP2 on PS2 but I must have had a bad disc because at a certain point the game would freeze. Didn't have the money to buy a new one and ended up replaying VP1. At this time I also had access to some guides for the secret stuff and I was blown away by the game again. I actually followed the story and I realised how dark it was. How creepy some of the characters are etc.
Images from the game has been engraved upon my soul. The intro with the walk towards Odin, you lose your mortal clothing and the valkyrie armor materialises on you along with a brief moment of your wings and Freya says there is no need for you to knee like a mere mortal. I also really like the way you fly over the world and listen for to the voice of those on the verge on death. It really reinforces the point that she is not human but some kind of being with higher powers. I was blown away. So good. I wish they would release the PSP version on PSN already.
Any way, that's enough random words on VP. Back to Lenneth's design. I think what caught me was that her design and character fit so naturally. Rarely an instance where it felt out of place. No random blushing or shoe horned trope for cute blushing scene or anything like that. It was, surprisingly believable. Add on top that Lenneth was confident, powerful yet not really striving to over reach her status as Valkyrie until things get complicated with Loki but even then, her growth didn't mean she abandonned her role as one of the Valkyries.
If the game was to be released this year I can see so much going wrong. Her armor would have all kinds of weird gaps to show cleavage, midriff, boobs. Her skirt would be incredibly short. Her personality will probably be aggressive and tsundere for her love interest who is secretly the main character of the game any way. The only thing engraved into the enemy's soul in her PWS attack is probably jiggle breast plate physics and panty shots. I think my blood pressure is rising from thinking of more ways this game can be ruined so I'll stop now. >_>
TBF, in a medieval world like FF4's, 20 would be considered a full-blown adult. The concept of adolescence and young adulthood is unique to our modernised society - in the past fifty years alone the threshold for adulthood has risen from 16 to 18 to 21 and now hovers around the 25 mark.
I think there's some more recent VP images posted in this thread, you aren't wrong.
As a corollary to this post,...
I just wanted to say that as a woman, it really doesn't bother me when women are sexy or show lots of skin in a video game. I don't even mind the fanservice-laden Dead or Alives of the world all that much. I'm not a prude...I dress in skimpy outfits all the time, especially when it's hot out...and I try to be as sex-positive as much as I possibly can.
But when I play games or read or watch shows / movies, the character's personality or the narrative has to reflect it. If she's a brash, bold seductress who runs a whorehouse and traps a wealthy monarch with her sexual prowess, a sexualized design makes sense. If she's an elven dancer performing on a stage at the capital city, a sexualized design makes sense. If she's on a sultry beach on a tropical island, a sexualized design makes sense.
This only really bothers me when you have characters like Pyra from Xenoblade Chronicles 2 (shown in the quote from my earlier post) where she's shy and kind and gentle and gets flustered easily...but she's dressed and designed like she's a hyper-sexual being everywhere she goes. There is nothing about her personality or the situations she's in which would compel her to dress like that. I shy away from that sort of dissonance in my entertainment because it's a hallmark of low-effort and low-quality design and writing.
I put myself in the character's shoes. If I personally wouldn't dress like that in that type of situation, I don't want to see it being represented because it breaks my immersion. The exact same goes with male characters. Form has to follow function. If the character doesn't make sense, don't include them. I've been an author for 13 years and that's one of my cardinal rules.
The tragedy behind Japanese entertainment is so many times form does NOT follow function. It seems like you have otaku designers (or designers influenced by otaku sensibilities) who create characters first, AND THEN the world comes later. So instead of thinking something like: "Would this make sense in this fantasy world? Does this fit in with the culture? Would her role in this society allow for this?"....they just think "Kawaii desu ne!" and it gets created because she's either cute (moe) or excessively sexualized. For me, that doesn't make them a character in a world. It makes them nothing more than an archetype...and I've read too many books to bother with one-dimensional archetypes who exist solely to fulfill a niche without any thought to their placement. It's a fatal flaw in writing which destroys a book 99 times out of 100...and if you look at Japanese media through the same critical lens you'll see it abound.
That's why I have a love-hate relationship with Japan. When Japanese art is good, it's SUBLIME (like Kino no Tabi, Satoshi Kon movies, Makoto Shinkai movies, or Falcom games). But you have to sift through mountains of trash to get to those gems, and it's unfortunate that so many fans both domestically and internationally willingly champion this narrative laziness.
Ironically, if you ever play some of the fan-translated Super Famicom JRPGs, you'll find that Japanese designers used to be much more vibrant and thoughtful with their character designs despite their incredible simplicity...back when teams were very small and intimate, and the otaku fandom was in its infancy. You know, something like Chrono Trigger or Final Fantasy VI. It was peak creativity for Japan, in my opinion. Back then there wasn't even any stigma about Japanese games being "weird" or "for otakus"....they sold JRPGs in the West as regular RPGs and no one cared. I wonder why that's why I love my old SNES games so much today?
Western RPGs---especially modern Western RPGs---tend to be better about this (although they certainly have their moments). They'll design the world first, and then think what characters would live and thrive in that world. They'll unabashedly design a character super-sexy, but they'll give sufficient context behind it. It's a more mature level of story-telling and I've found I crave it more as I age.
Old noctis is def sexier.
Alas, she's only a supporting character, but The Last Remnant had Emma Honeywell, aged 41.
And then she died and was replaced by her daughter. Oh, I'm sorry, did you think the old, battle-scarred woman would have a happy ending? No, she dies for her punk 19 year old king. Welcome to JRPGs.
Yeah... I'd almost say it's probably best to not search... what Square turned Lenneth into is... ugh.
Eyup. This is fundamental, Creative Writing 101-type stuff, and the fact that so many designers are so divorced from anything resembling reality that they don't even consider these things says a lot about where they stand as creators. It's not surprising that such a significant amount of Japan's output lately has been completely impossible to relate to when the otaku have taken the reins and no one seems to be around to drag them back in.
I get the impression some of the more...ardent defenders are, much like the people behind the designs in question, not big fans of the real world outside of their media-infused comfort zones...
Chrono Trigger is an interesting example because it's Akira Toriyama. Toriyama is a self professed pervert and loves perverted jokes, but generally he's pretty tame with his female designs, especially if they're a main character.
Just recently with Dragon Ball Super we had Android 18 in a big fighting role and the outfit Toriyama chose for her was a track suit.
I find Toriyama's female designs very interesting considering that he's perverted and how many other modern Japanese artists go for titillation over function.
I don't mind porn and fetish stuff so much, but the child and loli stuff is super creepy, and the disparaging remarks just makes them sounds like jerks (probably sexist jerks). I don't think I'd be able to hang out with people who were into child stuff, nor people who cannot respect my remarks if I find something offensive.
I find that sort of labeling of videos to be awful, and it's never appropriate. The "separation" is the issue I'm talking about though. You're not going to see a person state to a cosplayer in real life, "Where is the chest?" Doing it online may make it more anonymous, but it doesn't make that person any less of a jerk. And I mean, I'm sorry, but those people are assholes, and it doesn't really matter if it's a "separate personality" or whatever.
Suikoden 2 is probably my favourite PSX RPG but VP isn't far behind. I think if anything I appreciate it more later while Suikoden 2 is powered far more by nostalgia as well. When I think back to the first time I played through VP I realise now that much of the story and themes washed over me. Chooser of the Slain was more or less a title without meaning to me, it didn't have much weight. The story to me at the time was about playing as a bad ass God doing bad ass things. Divine Assault that, Nibelung Valesti this, etc. It was just a lot of fun running around the dungeon with the platforming and the combo combat to unleash the awesome special moves. Years later I was playing VP2 on PS2 but I must have had a bad disc because at a certain point the game would freeze. Didn't have the money to buy a new one and ended up replaying VP1. At this time I also had access to some guides for the secret stuff and I was blown away by the game again. I actually followed the story and I realised how dark it was. How creepy some of the characters are etc.
Images from the game has been engraved upon my soul. The intro with the walk towards Odin, you lose your mortal clothing and the valkyrie armor materialises on you along with a brief moment of your wings and Freya says there is no need for you to knee like a mere mortal. I also really like the way you fly over the world and listen for to the voice of those on the verge on death. It really reinforces the point that she is not human but some kind of being with higher powers. I was blown away. So good. I wish they would release the PSP version on PSN already.
Any way, that's enough random words on VP. Back to Lenneth's design. I think what caught me was that her design and character fit so naturally. Rarely an instance where it felt out of place. No random blushing or shoe horned trope for cute blushing scene or anything like that. It was, surprisingly believable. Add on top that Lenneth was confident, powerful yet not really striving to over reach her status as Valkyrie until things get complicated with Loki but even then, her growth didn't mean she abandonned her role as one of the Valkyries.
If the game was to be released this year I can see so much going wrong. Her armor would have all kinds of weird gaps to show cleavage, midriff, boobs. Her skirt would be incredibly short. Her personality will probably be aggressive and tsundere for her love interest who is secretly the main character of the game any way. The only thing engraved into the enemy's soul in her PWS attack is probably jiggle breast plate physics and panty shots. I think my blood pressure is rising from thinking of more ways this game can be ruined so I'll stop now. >_>
This is one of those behavior things that just always seems like an excuse to me, because while I agree there might be a time and place, a guild in an MMO isn't it. And frankly, I still don't see how one can deride women in any context and not have that be somehow indicative of them as a person at a larger scale. It might be acceptable in private if there's a woman or man who wants to pursue that, but it's not something I'd even do in a place where porn is "regular", so to speak (i.e., a porn forum or a porn discord channel). I just tend to find that behavior indicative of problems that individual isn't addressing, and is using the, "it's porn so it's ok", much like the, "it's just video games" excuse, taken to a different extreme.
Yeah it's... Squenix just ruins everything of late (I'd argue Nomura ruined everything, but that opinion might be even less popular).
I really shouldn't expect anything less out of these assholes. -_-
That's more depressing, for a variety of reasons.
That's fucking awful. How's the latest Lenneth in comparison to this new Hrist?Yeah... I'd almost say it's probably best to not search... what Square turned Lenneth into is... ugh.
Below is Hrist in the latest VP game.
And this is why we can't have nice things.
I think it's important to highlight one of the reasons why there hasn't been a backlash: because the mainstream market in Japan has dried up thanks to the country's non-stop recession it's been dealing with since the 90s (and by a lot of accounts, is well on it's way to becoming a lost three decades at that). As pointed out in part 2 of The Great Shift:
Like it seems insane that Japanese entertainment companies are focusing so much on the niche that is the otaku segment without some sort of mainstream economic backlash - unless the only way to profitability in the market is through the otaku because said mainstream can no longer afford to buy entertainment media. Of course, now you have to question why Japanese companies are still so laser focused on appealing to the their home country and not even considering outside markets when designing their products...
I'm not a business analyst but I'd say to the question of, "who is it for", the answer is the industry. Under the banner of "sex sells" new "artistic productions" are made, which spins the wheels for CD releases, Blu-ray releases, artbook releases, Television deals, book signings, events big and small, marketing, merchandising...it almost doesn't matter if it sells as long as the wheels keep moving. It feels like there's this fantasy, and this is with all Japanese pop culture, not just seedy anime works made for 2:30am audiences, that as long as everyone keeps working and no one looks at the books that hard, the machine will live and everyone can keep their jobs. That doesn't always work, which is why things like the trash piles of AKB47 CD's exist, it's feels like in Japanese entertainment, there's this air of "Breakeven. It doesn't have to be a global success, just break even. Break-even and we'll move to the next one. Don't stop for anything, don't get discouraged, just break even because if we do, then this gigantic quagmire of an industry can keep spinning."
Yup. The attaching of poor behavior to things that are culturally considered to be "dirty" is a major problem that a lot of people have problems dealing with. I can't remember if it was this thread or a different one but I think I brought up the subject of camgirl streams and how you still have to behave in those things if you want any sort of actual meaningful interaction. If you spam, if you're abusive, if you disrespectful, you get kicked out, and I don't understand why people would think they can get away with those things in something not considered seedy by society when their own definition of a dirty underbelly wouldn't accept their behavior at face value. If you act like a jerk in a bar, you get kicked out. If you act like a jerk in a strip club, you get kicked out. THAT should be the normalization and the fact that there are people arguing, at face value, "Why can't I be racist/sexist/abusive in public anymore" is fucking alarming.
