Yeah some of their animations and poses made me think I was playing Cold Steel 3 suddenly.
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Why women criticise sexualised character designs |OT2| I have no pants and I must scream (READ OP)
- Thread starter Persephone
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I'm sort of hoping they'll explain that later. Cause
my understanding is that she's drawn to Cloud because of his connection to Zack, who was her first boyfriend and entered her life in the same way (crashing through the roof. Yeah I know.)
Granted, I haven't finished the Remake yet, so maybe they do clear some of that up for all I know. If not, then my guess is it'll be addressed in one of the future installments in one way or another.
Not playing remake, but Square doing dumb anime stuff to their characters definitely tracks. It really does suck that the worst parts of idol culture have infected video games from Japan pretty heavily. It's gross and lazy, but I suppose that's AAA video game design in 2020.
I haven't played it yet but as long Tifa and Aerith don't enter Vanille territory, I can probably live with it.
Honestly, from what I've played so far (CH9), they're both faithful to their original versions, with Tifa actually being majorly improved, considering how poorly characterized she originally was.
Tifa can have some dumb anime mannerisms, but that's about it. Nothing remotely approaching Vanille.
To be ho est I really don't like the remake much generally. Feels like the worst aspects of FFXIII's corridors with Advent Children and KH cringe mixed with anime waifu elements.
It's a weird beast and I'm not having that much fun with it. I also found the honey bee Inn scene kind of offensively stereotyping though for Japan at least it wasn't homophobic. Also props to the squat representation there.
It's a weird beast and I'm not having that much fun with it. I also found the honey bee Inn scene kind of offensively stereotyping though for Japan at least it wasn't homophobic. Also props to the squat representation there.
lol that's unfair, as much as I dislike some stuff they did with them, nothing is worse than Vanille.
They changed her design, but they were only small changes. Her skirt is pleated now with shorts and she wears a sports bra and stockings.
Yeah, I'm at ch 8 and I don't have any problems with them. I was dreading how they would be characterized after seeing how awful Jessie was, but they're thankfully fine.
People seem to like the Anime Waifu elements though; like Jessie. If you wade into any of the Reamke threads: Be careful. They're simply respond by saying they liked the improved characterization.
They do improve in the second half when the story gets real. In fact, all the main characters does. You can see how they drop a lot of the anime bullshit animations.
Never knew this thread existed, but after getting annoyed at how many sexualized fighting characters exist (read: almost all of them), it's nice to see this thread now. Will follow.
I mean, I like nu-Jessie. I also recognize the problems with her characterization (and the boob armor...fucking christ the boob armor). Basically, I feel guilty about it (doubly so when I see posts like yours) but I still like her.
Ugh, fighting games. I just got BlazBlue Tag Battle and I still can't get over what they did to Noel over the course of the franchise. Like, her character portrait is completely out of character and ridiculous.
After watching more of FF7R, I think Jessie and Tifa are fine as far as JRPG women go. Yeah they still do the whole cutesy anime girl routine which deserves it's own separate topic but as far as sexualization goes, it's almost non-existent. Certainly better than Cindy.
You see this a lot in Japanese games and media where women and girl characters bend forward and back slightly when they're talking. I'm sure many of you have noticed it before. It's very noticeable in Iris from Final Fantasy 15. Is this something Japanese girls actually do? I legit don't know which why I'm wondering.
No.
Have you seen their outfits? lol
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Reminds me how in Fire Emblem Heroes when the women have the "girl pose"
Reminds me how in Fire Emblem Heroes when the women have the "girl pose"
Just out of control in that game.
Meanwhile though, Titania continues to be fabulous and wonderfully designed.
Just out of control in that game.
Meanwhile though, Titania continues to be fabulous and wonderfully designed.
I don't know which game she's from, but I really like the design. She looks like a great lead character.
Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance and Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn. She's basically the main character's mentor/adviser.
She's a playable character in both Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn.
Her design is still one of my favorites in the the FE collection.
She's a playable character in both Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn.
Her design is still one of my favorites in the the FE collection.
Thanks. Sucks those games aren't available for 3ds, would totally play them while I'm stuck at home. Also we need a lot more awesome female knights wielding Halberds.
Despite being a series with some terrible female character design, Hilde from Soul Calibur IV looks good.
Not to change the subject but I've always found that art style jarring. You have this painterly subtle detail for the armor and then you have this flat cartoony head sticking out of it......Anyway, I see boob plate, but at least it's very subtle boob plate.Despite being a series with some terrible female character design, Hilde from Soul Calibur IV looks good.
I have nothing but pure disdain for Soul Calibur VI. Hilde's redesign is definitely a large part of that. The individual responsible for that shit is absolutely pathetic.
I went in to the game knowing they were never going to alter Jessie and Tifa's outfits. So my expectations were low and I didn't think much of them.
The Anime Girl™ mannerisms do make me cringe like hell though. Now that's something they didn't have to include.
It's like some J-pop idols got recruited into a ecoterrorist group.
I still feel like this is one of the most relevant videos for how influential the framing of women in video games is. This has been one of the more pervasive problems even in games with ostensibly "well-designed" women. There still tends to be this super obnoxious tendency to evoke or code women in a manner that others or objectifies them, and so much of it frequently happens by means of using film language to code them as such. Video games, especially cinematic video games, use film language A LOT to code characters. From cliches to character arcs, a huge proportion of it is lifted directly from film. And I think that's unfortunate for a variety of reasons, framing being one of them. The medium had a real chance to be a driving progressive force as a new medium and instead it lifted film language and just... never really evolved beyond it, and all the problems that came with it.
Compared to the rest of Soul Calibur's art direction (especially the more recent SC games) and what I've seen of florid 16th century European armor -- the kind specially made for rulers and aristocrats, this doesn't actually seem THAT outlandish.
This is one of, if not my favorite, of her videos and it really does work with video games as well.
I agree. While it's easy to concentrate on character design alone, it's actually a holistic problem where things like character posing and how characters are framed narratively are more important.
There are a lot of characters designed over a very long period of time. Some of them are good and some of them are terrible. Usually the newer characters are better than older ones but there's a lot of variability there. But there's enough variability that generalizations are going to be overly broad to make.
Most of the older designs are straight up terrible, both design wise and the way they are framed in their art pieces.
Tifa is kind of weird because they actually do a pretty decent job with her animations and even framing in more serious moments (like, they don't go out of their way to have her boobs in the frame, they can focus on her from the ~shoulders up and have her speak normally!). It's just the more light-hearted/casual moments when they bring out the Animu Girl mannerisms. Her behaviour is almost natural when shit gets real and they don't feel the need to have her bend forward and/or move her upper body all the time, with peppy arm/hand movements constantly to make her extra cheerful.
Mannerisms in some moments aside, my favorite moments in FF7R so far have just been wandering through some of the chapter openings (like 9) with Aerith as she talks about the world with some music playing.
I wish her character in those moments was more present throughout the experience.
I wish her character in those moments was more present throughout the experience.
I remember they actually used the "but how will they know it's a girl" argument at one point.
One of the things I think Lindsay also brings up is the importance of separating the language and the practice. I actually wonder if there's ever been any real discussion about, for lack of a better term, "game language". And I'm not talking about game design. Game design is about the rules and structures inherent to the creation of a play state (e.g., the difference between an FPS and an RPG relates to the systems). Game language would be more related to what the aesthetics and interactions tell you from an emotional standpoint. How does one elicit sadness through interaction? Because I don't think that's specific to a game's design (it, in the same way cinematography has an effect on film, is more tertiary to it).
It's obvious when games present language cinematically (e.g., how they sexualize a character using framing), because they're just using film language in that context. But how a video game actually uses the language of interactivity, seems utterly foreign in almost every game I've played, or at the very least it's incidental (or accidental) to everything else that's going on. I think Valkyrie Profile actually uses what I might say is something akin to proto game language when it uses mechanics to replicate the passage of time and how that passage of time is connected to power structures and decisions within the interactivity of characters (e.g., the connection of the player and characters to the interactions). But that's hard to describe in a way that's easy to replicate or explain to somebody (at least, right now, anyway). Indivisible copies the DESIGN of Valkyrie Profile (e.g., combat system, platforming), but it doesn't copy that's game's language. And even so, Valkyrie Profile's language only replicates that marching of time, but it still uses a more book-like language for its emotional beats. The sadness I feel at the death of a character in the game is not a result of my interactions with them, but a result of my investment in them from a perspective of reading about them (e.g., reading the text boxes associated with their arc). Games are the medium of interactivity, but the emotional praxis within games is, at present, largely outside of interactivity. Games like Papers Please or Getting Over It or Journey seem to have a stronger idea of what game language might look like - or a game like Demon's Souls, where your interactions are directly impacting the rest of the world and the core of the emotions you feel has more to do with the consequences of what you as an interactive being in that world bring to that world. That said though, I think the first game that I would say is genuinely aware of game language, is actually Kind Words. Because it uses interactivity in a way that provokes and even necessitates an emotional response.
It's obvious when games present language cinematically (e.g., how they sexualize a character using framing), because they're just using film language in that context. But how a video game actually uses the language of interactivity, seems utterly foreign in almost every game I've played, or at the very least it's incidental (or accidental) to everything else that's going on. I think Valkyrie Profile actually uses what I might say is something akin to proto game language when it uses mechanics to replicate the passage of time and how that passage of time is connected to power structures and decisions within the interactivity of characters (e.g., the connection of the player and characters to the interactions). But that's hard to describe in a way that's easy to replicate or explain to somebody (at least, right now, anyway). Indivisible copies the DESIGN of Valkyrie Profile (e.g., combat system, platforming), but it doesn't copy that's game's language. And even so, Valkyrie Profile's language only replicates that marching of time, but it still uses a more book-like language for its emotional beats. The sadness I feel at the death of a character in the game is not a result of my interactions with them, but a result of my investment in them from a perspective of reading about them (e.g., reading the text boxes associated with their arc). Games are the medium of interactivity, but the emotional praxis within games is, at present, largely outside of interactivity. Games like Papers Please or Getting Over It or Journey seem to have a stronger idea of what game language might look like - or a game like Demon's Souls, where your interactions are directly impacting the rest of the world and the core of the emotions you feel has more to do with the consequences of what you as an interactive being in that world bring to that world. That said though, I think the first game that I would say is genuinely aware of game language, is actually Kind Words. Because it uses interactivity in a way that provokes and even necessitates an emotional response.
On the subject of anime girl mannerisms, I recently reach the point in FFVII-R where Tifa and Aerith meet for the first time.
No spoilers, but the game wastes no time depicting them as instant BFFs, and proceeds to include lots of cute interactions with the two.
As a fan, I'm all about that. Love every second of it. I still think it's such a refreshing take to have two characters interested in the same guy in a love triangle but still care about each other a great deal that they don't devolve into cat fights or staring daggers from a distance.
Thing is, I also can't help but feel this is a common Anime thing too. I don't quite know the right word for it: it isn't "yuri-bait" (though there's definitely a few moments that the shippers can digest from), but I guess it's more "friendship-bait"? I feel when it comes to party-based games or anime, it's usually a thing to have the girls have more cute bonding moments than there are with guys being bros.
I dunno, I don't think it's problematic, but it is a type of fanservice that's pretty common.
No spoilers, but the game wastes no time depicting them as instant BFFs, and proceeds to include lots of cute interactions with the two.
As a fan, I'm all about that. Love every second of it. I still think it's such a refreshing take to have two characters interested in the same guy in a love triangle but still care about each other a great deal that they don't devolve into cat fights or staring daggers from a distance.
Thing is, I also can't help but feel this is a common Anime thing too. I don't quite know the right word for it: it isn't "yuri-bait" (though there's definitely a few moments that the shippers can digest from), but I guess it's more "friendship-bait"? I feel when it comes to party-based games or anime, it's usually a thing to have the girls have more cute bonding moments than there are with guys being bros.
I dunno, I don't think it's problematic, but it is a type of fanservice that's pretty common.
The infantilization of female characters in most modern Japanese games is certainly a problem, and one that is not often discussed outside of threads like this. It is not sufficient to re-design your character, devs should stop making every female character act as a child. I was particularly taken aback by the contrast between Cloud's no-nonsense attitude and Tifa childish demeanour. It's like women are not allowed to age (besides, I'd argue that not even children have such exagerated mannerism)
I found it awful and cingey personally. That scene and a few others where Tifa suddenly does anime animations for a lack of description are so out of place that it extra stands out to me.
I hated the whole game though so.....XD
I like to believe that at least it isn't on the level of Iris movements in XV
Or be self sufficient. Tifa's often relegated to being pretty meek and frequently in need of Cloud's rescue. It's jarring and some fans will defend it as being part of a lame characterization gimmick to contrast her fighting style. 😩
She doesn't have a lot of dimension in general. Maybe the most disappointing aspect of the game for me(aside from the execution of that ending).
This is kind of it. The weird mannerisms and "idol"-ness of Tifa just yanks me out of whatever else is accomplished by the translation and performance. Britt Baron is great and the overdone cutesy animations take away from what she's bringing to the role. Listen to the most recent 8-4 Play podcast to get a thorough thrashing of this by people who actually do a lot of video game localization between Japanese and English.
Re: FF7R, aside from some gratuitous character design (though to be somewhat fair they also have rediculous male character design too, so not as bad), I actually feel that female characters were handled pretty well all in all. I love that Jessie is so straightforward in her thirst (which may or may not be partially a power play to make Cloud uncomfortable), and I think Tifa lays a great foundation for an interesting character arc in later installments. Aerith is lovely - there's more to her than meets the eye and I find her super intriguing and layered.
Honestly my biggest problem with a character is actually Barrett, who I really wish - as the only black character -- wasn't so loud and abbrasive.
Also it's nice that when characters are depicted as minors, they REALLY look like minors - i.e. devoid of creepy sexual overtones like in a lot of other Japanese media.
But that's just my take.
Honestly my biggest problem with a character is actually Barrett, who I really wish - as the only black character -- wasn't so loud and abbrasive.
Also it's nice that when characters are depicted as minors, they REALLY look like minors - i.e. devoid of creepy sexual overtones like in a lot of other Japanese media.
But that's just my take.
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