They just yanked him off their rotation? Based plainly on the performance feedback?
I mean as far as names like Perfect God Legend Beast Motherfucker go, its one of the least dumb ones.
Im just giving you a possible explanation, whether you think its plausible or not is up to you and of course I don't know whats in the mans head. He shouldnt do it, full stop.
I get what you're trying to convey here, but at least as far as SFIII is concerned it probably doesn't make sense to say that these characters are "white":
As for SFIV, while the stylisation of Hakan is a bit much for an ostensibly non-mythical character, Hakan is very decidedly also not white:
Well right, ethnically we assume that Necro was originally white, as he has a kind of Australian (?) accent in-game and fights in Russia, but he's a bit like Blanka in that he's a "monster". He certainly doesn't resemble that anymore, though.
Q I made an assumption, but Necro's just a Russian guy who has had experiments done on him.
Q I made an assumption based on G, so I'll give you that one. Necro's explicitly just a Russian guy who has had experiments on him. Urien's dark skin is a result of his superpowers - you actually can see him transforming from paler skin before a fight in 3 - and both he and Gill are based on ancient Greek wrestlers. Hakan's just a caricatured Turkish guy; Turkey's a bit weird to discuss in terms of the nebulous idea of whiteness since it's both in Europe and the Middle East and has influence on and in both, but I went with white here since it's a country that's long been in consideration to join the European Union and Turkish people are often considered to be white from a US or European perspective.I get what you're trying to convey here, but at least as far as SFIII is concerned it probably doesn't make sense to say that these characters are "white":
As for SFIV, while the stylisation of Hakan is a bit much for an ostensibly non-mythical character, Hakan is very decidedly also not white:
That appearance of Urien as light-skinned is only in this sprite animation, and is notably absent from Street Fighter V; if anything the implication is that his dark-skinned appearance is the "true" one. His arcade mode ending shows that he was dark-skinned as a kid as well, in the distant past with Gill, where Gill is light-skinned (though re: Gill this has never been depicted until SFV):Q I made an assumption, but Necro's just a Russian guy who has had experiments done on him.
Q I made an assumption based on G, so I'll give you that one. Necro's explicitly just a Russian guy who has had experiments on him. Urien's dark skin is a result of his superpowers - you actually can see him transforming from paler skin before a fight in 3 - and both he and Gill are based on ancient Greek wrestlers. Hakan's just a caricatured Turkish guy; Turkey's a bit weird to discuss in terms of the nebulous idea of whiteness since it's both in Europe and the Middle East and has influence on and in both, but I went with white here since it's a country that's long been in consideration to join the European Union and Turkish people are often considered to be white from a US or European perspective.
Even if you're going purely by skin colour, I'm not sure if I'd give Street Fighter diversity points for this:
The thing is that there are no real-world mystical people to represent, so I'm not really concerned for the purpose of this discussion that a character is mystical if they're otherwise pointing towards a real world place.That appearance of Urien as light-skinned is only in this sprite animation, and is notably absent from Street Fighter V; if anything the implication is that his dark-skinned appearance is the "true" one. His arcade mode ending shows that he was dark-skinned as a kid as well, in the distant past with Gill, where Gill is light-skinned (though re: Gill this has never been depicted until SFV):
Now, again, if you're just defining everything from Ireland to Turkey as "white" regardless of how the character looks, then by that definition characters from the mediterranean and near east are "white", yes. For the purposes of representation, I just don't think it's worthwhile to try to adjudicate the background of characters who are "mystic" or otherwise unknown, like Q. If you take G and Q to be different characters, G is definitely white, however (he's basically blond Abraham Lincoln and speaks with a southern drawl).
As others in this thread have mentioned, while there are many in the Japanese gaming industry who are as culturally insensitive as Bengus, there are plenty who are not. This is particularly made clear when others artists working on SFV can render the same character in a completely unoffensive way while Bengus makes them into a sambo.
Most notably Balrog, who looks like this in game
Dope!
And like this when Bengus draws him for promo art
seriously what the fuck
Whiteness is definitely a nebulous label, but I don't think you can lump Turkey indiscriminately into that. Like, Turkic peoples in general - of which the Turks are, unsurprisingly, the best known - have been conceived of as the fundamental Other to Europe for literal millennia. Just by virtue of being a Muslim-majority country it's going to hit against some fundamental assumptions about what whiteness is.
As others in this thread have mentioned, while there are many in the Japanese gaming industry who are as culturally insensitive as Bengus, there are plenty who are not. This is particularly made clear when others artists working on SFV can render the same character in a completely unoffensive way while Bengus makes them into a sambo.
Most notably Balrog, who looks like this in game
Dope!
And like this when Bengus draws him for promo art
I'd buy that people thought Dudley was white before birdie. But no one is confused about that in here for some reason.
I can sort of buy this due to the Freddie Mercury references and England's history of colonialism in the subcontinent. I figure Capcom would've said something about it by now if this was the case though.
youtu.be
Chris Eubank Sr said:
Thank you for sharing the Tweet.
Think it was just SFV they owned the rights too. But that was only for a few years and it's back to being owned by Capcom now.
to be fair he did have to do like over 100 story illustrations probably under intense deadlines, its kind of a wonder that theyre coherent at all lolBack in the day:
Bengus' art in general really feels like it's regressed.
