Pretty sure I made a thread like this not too long ago, but most of us are stuck at home and I don't want to look at anymore FFVII Remake videos or commercials (heard the latest one had some big spoilers). Gotta debate something to pass the time.
I'm sure most of you have long gotten tired of this discussion.....but it keeps coming up anyway. The other day in my FC in FFXIV, someone went and brought this up, crying "I don't like censorship" and the usual rhetoric in regards to Tifa's redesign.
Because, let's get things straight, that's what it is: it's not censorship, it's not a nerf, it's not a demand from Sony or the Ethics committee. It's Square making the absolutely correct decision to make sure their most popular, most recognizable game of all time reach as much of a worldwide audience as possible, and that giving their primary heroine juggs like a Scoreland model would have been an aesthetic nightmare as well as making all the billboard, subway and packaged food advertisements reach a much more undesirable response.
But this discussion isn't about how you feel about the new design or Tifa as a character, because I'm certain the large majority are on the same page regarding both topics. Instead, it's to look into the character's "legacy" as fap fuel for over 20 years courtesy of fan-art, fanfics, doujins, and cosplays that continue to be made with increasing abundance to this very day. Nay, this very second.
(*cough so I"m told cough*)
And hey, none of that is even an issue. The more popular the character, the more porn they get. It's a fact of life, and I'm sure there are videogame characters who have a bigger pile of fan-spunk credited to their name. I won't judge....except the Pokemon stuff, because I'm pretty sure most of those girls are super underage, but anyway.
Here's the thing, though: I don't see Pokemon fans constantly posting outrage if a character like May shows up in a new game and doesn't match the proportions of their folder of saved DA pics. I see more Street Fighter fans wanting Cammy to have more outfits with actual fucking pants than to have her huge ass out 24/7.
Even Lara Croft, one of the most heavily and OFFICIALLY sexualized characters in videogame history (from magazine pinups to advertisements making puns about how "packed full of content" her games have, to commercials with married men creeping on a 90's CG rendering of the character) got an even more drastic makeover with the recently rebooted series and....people seemed largely okay with it. In fact, they went and continued to build porn around the new look without tweaking her chest to its more "iconic" size.
Seems there was some verbal backlash regarding Jill's redesign for the RE3 Remake, which was honestly surprising: I always thought her RE1 look was the most popular, but that topic was the main reason I decided to make this thread.
People getting angry that a character shows less T&A with a new design isn't new, and it isn't going to go away. But with Tifa, it seems to be the most frequent and obsessive "outrage" out of any other. And as one of my favorite FF characters, that really sucks.
It's not out of prudishness or failing to acknowledge the hormone-culturing design of the original. It's obvious the character was designed with sex appeal in mind. But unlike Lara Croft, Mai Shiranui or Morrigan, the sex appeal never felt like the character's primary trait, or even secondary. It was an addition if anything else, and it wasn't done out of a subversion of the actual character or anything....Tifa is just like most other JRPG/Anime creation....create an appealing character design first, think up a story for them later.
Again, the thread is less about the character (because outside of a couple "mid 90's" fanservice moments coupled with really out-of-date CG, Tifa is not portrayed in a sexualized manner. The character is treated 100% seriously, even moreso than some of the other heroines preceding her) and more about how the gaming culture (both fans and outside observers) seems particularly obsessive about her physical appearance over any other character. Heck, more people stood up for Mai Shiranui, who was literally told on stream that she was far too titacular to show up in Smash Bros.
And yet with almost every reply in the official FFVII Twitter to the fan-art where someone "fixed" the proportions to people actually posting photos of women in sports bras to the defense of "don't worry guys, she's still massive under there!", it's all....sad.
And funny, oh it's been quite amusing to see how low these degenerates will sink.
But still a bit sad, in the sense that I don't think any videogame character has gotten this much attention about their design in a purely masturbatory sense (because that's all it is, don't ever believe for a second it's because of "big boob rep" or whatever).
Again, maybe I'm just more privy to this because I happen to be a big FF fan who actively follows a lot of community focused around it. I honestly want to know if it's ever gotten this bad for other highly popular characters. Again, I've seen similar backlash to recent changes like the toning down of the MK ladies or Samus getting more muscular and less busty blonde, but I feel that all brushed over as quickly as it began. Whereas this could be something that follows Tifa throughout the entirety of the Remake releases and onward.
And yeah, that sucks.
