Yes, it's hard to think in a worse villain from any game. She has less motivations than Hancock from One Piece because at least she's funny while Junko is annoying lmao
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Why women criticise sexualised character designs | OT3 | "make her look more...corpulent, more stuffed where the eyes can't escape."
- Thread starter Persephone
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They aren't necessary a bad thing per se, but they are bad when they promote bad stereotypes, which is the case of FF7R IMO.
Anime and Japanese games are full of problematic stuff. To be honest there´s so little good representation in that field for any individual. The genre has become a parody of itself at this point.
Even disregarding the portrayal of women (which is a huge problem), there´s rarely any good portrayals of men. The writers has doubled down on the same 1-note characters and themes that they wrote 30 years ago.
The post you replied to is a good example. That scene in ToV is completely unnecessary and feels incredibly forced and uninteresting. It´s only there because the devs simply had to include that trope to tick of a box on their "how-to-make-anime" sheet.
Take Banner of the Maid. I love SRPGs. I find history interesting. Someone recommended me an rpg based on the period of the french revolution. Wow, that´s something at least relatively new and fresh. But oh well, the translation and script is abysmal. Game-breakingly bad writing.
Guess where the devs had a surplus of passion and inspiration? In the painstakingly detailed imagery of sexualized females.
It´s downright insulting.
Hah, this is so true.
I've just started my new playthrough of DAII yesterday, and there's something I noticed. Female Hawke's animation is the epitome of everything that's been discussed in the previous page. I looked up for a mod to fix it, and voila, I found one that switches female Hawke's animation with its male counterpart. Here's the 2nd (inverted) version that to show how ridiculous it is.
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do you all realize that "anime" is a medium not a ganre? it's just short for animation
also I thought we were done generalizing, sexism comes in many forms and is present in all types of media, even games that are celebrated here like "the last of us 2" are rooted in misogyny
from having both main female leads motivation being their fathers, and complete absence of motherhood
to the fact that the creator said that the original idea was a virus that affected women primarily and made them crazy and braindead
the dead wife / daughter trope then Mr. gritty man dude takes revenge is everywhere in AAA games and the amount of male leads to female lead ratio is still highly unbalanced
are there bad tropes in anime style games? yeah but this generalization is tiresome and shallow, since every medium and place have a set of sexist tropes that comes with it, games like Duke nukem didn't come out that long ago and neither did GTA, yet these are not representative of anything but their own.
can we go back to crituqing games as represetitive of themselves instead of doing this genralizing stuff again? it's not constructive at all
also I thought we were done generalizing, sexism comes in many forms and is present in all types of media, even games that are celebrated here like "the last of us 2" are rooted in misogyny
from having both main female leads motivation being their fathers, and complete absence of motherhood
to the fact that the creator said that the original idea was a virus that affected women primarily and made them crazy and braindead
the dead wife / daughter trope then Mr. gritty man dude takes revenge is everywhere in AAA games and the amount of male leads to female lead ratio is still highly unbalanced
are there bad tropes in anime style games? yeah but this generalization is tiresome and shallow, since every medium and place have a set of sexist tropes that comes with it, games like Duke nukem didn't come out that long ago and neither did GTA, yet these are not representative of anything but their own.
can we go back to crituqing games as represetitive of themselves instead of doing this genralizing stuff again? it's not constructive at all
I would agree with this - and it's bit ironic that in the last two pages we went from criticising select issues which are sexist and worthy of critique to generalising both final fantasy and BioWare games as "bad" when these are both franchises that yes, have sexism in them, but also have notable female audiences to them in size which are a loud voice of the fan base. The overgeneralisation of anime games is rooted in the idea that we can lump all Japanese games as one which is racist. There are plenty of Western games that have severe sexism in them. I would also say we should be careful on overgeneralising franchises that are noted as having a known large female fan base, as it is a known phenomenon that when a piece of media gets a larger and louder female audience, the media themselves gets more criticism and is seen as negative. And this does happen in this thread. Probably the biggest one is actually final fantasy tbh.
And the worst part is that Morrigan did actually make very specific and useful criticism to begin with and there was no need for generalisation from this thread. In all honesty there are so few games that don't have some degree of sexism in them (if there are any at all) and women generally will play and love games that have sexism in some parts as otherwise they would be pushed completely out of the media. We can criticise the bad without completely writing out the good parts that are done well.
Anime has very specific types of mannerisms that are extremely widespread and aren't present or anywhere near as common in Western games/media. Western games/media have their own types of issues that are common to Western stuff and less prevalent in Japanese/anime stuff
Was just checking out the characters for the new Trails game as the new trailer got posted in a different thread—honestly, mostly just because I was curious because a lot of people have mentioned questionable stuff in those games before.
Besides the fact that of course, the two main male characters get to be 24 and 19 years old, while the two main female characters are both underaged at 16 and 13, I'm mostly disappointed by the fact that it's the 13-year-old that's the most sexualized. You can even see her underwear when she runs...
Like do we really need this for a 13-year-old?!? :|
Besides the fact that of course, the two main male characters get to be 24 and 19 years old, while the two main female characters are both underaged at 16 and 13, I'm mostly disappointed by the fact that it's the 13-year-old that's the most sexualized. You can even see her underwear when she runs...
Like do we really need this for a 13-year-old?!? :|
Not that it makes it much better but I think those might be spats based on that picture? Or I'm being too generous/hopeful.
yeah duh, different kinds of sexism exists, and they differ depending on culture and history
but even then they differ, inside anime there are different kinds of inequality
Naruto has a different kind of sexism than one piece
one makes women's lives revolve around men and end up as housewives
while the other makes every woman look like a copy of the other and is filled sexual fanservice
to lump these two issues together as " anime " is not constructive
I can compare comic books' sexualization with Hollywood's sexism
or the treatment of women in "GTA" to a game like "the last of us 2" and say misogyny but they are different thus the critiques fall short
a JRPG like earthbound can't be compared to final fantsay and neither have a stereotypical anime design to them
That's true—I guess it's hard to tell. My immediate thought was underwear because you can actually see the curve of her butt there and there's still some uncovered thigh beyond the curved edge of it. (Though god, I feel terrible even saying something like that about a character so young...) The whole thing could be fixed by simply making her dress long enough that you don't get upskirts from an action as simple as running.
I never saw her in-game model until now. All I knew was her portrait which looks fine to me.
But gosh...
But gosh...
So I have been playing a bit of Gnosia, which just came out on Switch a few days ago. Apparently its like a year old Vita game though? Anyway, its a new release to me.
The game kind of presents itself similarly to a visual novel but is almost entirely gameplay with little bits of story in between. The game borrows the framework of a game of Mafia/Werewolf, though in practice it plays pretty differently, being a completely non social single player game with AI.
Anyway, I just wanted to post some character art from the game and talk about fashion for super out there sci fi designs.
These were the designs I liked. Almost Everyone in the game is dressed over the top weird fashions, but I still really liked these ones.
Fun (mostly)over the top fashion designs that still look reasonable and aren't super pandering/exploitative. Hell, I would straight up wear Kukrushka's outfit in real life.
There's also two characters who identify as non binary:
Raqio looks a lot better in the standard upper half dialogue portrait that you see most of the game, but these profile shots were easier to quickly screen grab. (Actually most of the characters look better in dialogue too, but Raqio is done the most dirty by their full body profile picture I think.)
Bonus Dolphin:
Tentatively I don't like that they put Otome in a pink suit because I wonder if that was a way of gender coding her as an animal person, but maybe I'm reading too much into that, maybe they designers just thought the pink looked good for that design.
The above were what I considered the good. But the bad is really something:
SQ comes across a bit better in her waste up dialogue shot because you can't see that ridiculous thigh cutaway in her pants, and she isn't leaning forward like that.
But comet, Comet's dialogue portrait is so bad that its the only one I took the time to get into a round and get a good screen grab of. Its really something.
Imagine first choosing to wear that outfit.
And then imagine, having made that choice, choosing to spend your entire day with your arms up in the air at all times (as she is in every dialogue portrait she has).
What the hell happened when they were designing Comet. Holy shit.
The game kind of presents itself similarly to a visual novel but is almost entirely gameplay with little bits of story in between. The game borrows the framework of a game of Mafia/Werewolf, though in practice it plays pretty differently, being a completely non social single player game with AI.
Anyway, I just wanted to post some character art from the game and talk about fashion for super out there sci fi designs.
These were the designs I liked. Almost Everyone in the game is dressed over the top weird fashions, but I still really liked these ones.
Fun (mostly)over the top fashion designs that still look reasonable and aren't super pandering/exploitative. Hell, I would straight up wear Kukrushka's outfit in real life.
There's also two characters who identify as non binary:
Raqio looks a lot better in the standard upper half dialogue portrait that you see most of the game, but these profile shots were easier to quickly screen grab. (Actually most of the characters look better in dialogue too, but Raqio is done the most dirty by their full body profile picture I think.)
Bonus Dolphin:
Tentatively I don't like that they put Otome in a pink suit because I wonder if that was a way of gender coding her as an animal person, but maybe I'm reading too much into that, maybe they designers just thought the pink looked good for that design.
The above were what I considered the good. But the bad is really something:
SQ comes across a bit better in her waste up dialogue shot because you can't see that ridiculous thigh cutaway in her pants, and she isn't leaning forward like that.
But comet, Comet's dialogue portrait is so bad that its the only one I took the time to get into a round and get a good screen grab of. Its really something.
Imagine first choosing to wear that outfit.
And then imagine, having made that choice, choosing to spend your entire day with your arms up in the air at all times (as she is in every dialogue portrait she has).
What the hell happened when they were designing Comet. Holy shit.
Yes, overall I really like the female character designs in Gnosia, but Comet's is just awful. The game also has three (maybe more but these are the ones I remember at the moment)
shower scenes where you walk in on Comet, Raqio, and Shigemichi individually taking showers. Both the Comet and Raqio shower scenes make use of the "use steam to keep certain things hidden" trope.
I think Trucy brings up a good point. Using a video featuring American women who have internalized American misogyny to highlight problems with "anime" characteristics should show that this is a problem with no cultural bounds. You can't put it in a neat little anime box.
I have no love for anime but I think it is worthwhile to re-examine how much of the spotlight is put on anime problems or the framing around it as being an anime exclusive problem. Though I guess part of that is going to depend on the types of games people in this thread play, which at a glance, would seem to be more Japanese-centric.
As an aside, have people here already discussed Aphrodite from Hades? Curious how people feel about her design.
I have no love for anime but I think it is worthwhile to re-examine how much of the spotlight is put on anime problems or the framing around it as being an anime exclusive problem. Though I guess part of that is going to depend on the types of games people in this thread play, which at a glance, would seem to be more Japanese-centric.
As an aside, have people here already discussed Aphrodite from Hades? Curious how people feel about her design.
We are talking about MANNERISMS, not other issues of sexism like fridging that is more of a worldwide trope. Anime has certain male-pandering ways they make women move that are very commonplace in anime but absent or nearly absent elsewhere. These are the kinds of things that are or can be shared by Naruto, One Piece and Bleach, as well as everything outside of shonen. It isn't even style dependent. More grounded type can have the same kind of sexist mannerisms as some chibi anime.
Anime is good shorthand for the specific problems people are having with FF7R's character animations though. I have never seen a game that was not anime or heavily anime inspired do the kind of character animations people are complaining about. Giving women special, insulting, differences in their movement that aren't even true is hurtful as shown by that video. And Anime games have a specific unique way in which they often give women special insulting differences in their movement that aren't based on any reality.
When someone shorthand says "I hate all the anime/waifu movements they gave this character", you immediately know what they mean. That doesn't mean that person thinks every single anime has people do those movements, but it is an endemic problem in the medium.
That's a shame to hear. Though in Comet's case I'm not sure such a scene could be much more revealing than she already is.
When someone shorthand says "I hate all the anime/waifu movements they gave this character", you immediately know what they mean. That doesn't mean that person thinks every single anime has people do those movements, but it is an endemic problem in the medium.
That's a shame to hear. Though in Comet's case I'm not sure such a scene could be much more revealing than she already is.
Well it's Trails.Was just checking out the characters for the new Trails game as the new trailer got posted in a different thread—honestly, mostly just because I was curious because a lot of people have mentioned questionable stuff in those games before.
Besides the fact that of course, the two main male characters get to be 24 and 19 years old, while the two main female characters are both underaged at 16 and 13, I'm mostly disappointed by the fact that it's the 13-year-old that's the most sexualized. You can even see her underwear when she runs...
Like do we really need this for a 13-year-old?!? :|
It's the series where a recurring female antagonist sexually assaults other women for a laugh.
There's a character (Millium) who is in the body of a 12 year old. who has a romance subplot with a classmate (Jusis) who is about 21.
Also an artificial human also born with accelerated ageing to get her that old so mentally younger. But Trails does that thing where there's a bunch of child characters that act like adults.
One of the reasons that Trails is popular is that it has a continuous storyline over 10 games.
Where the story spans about 5 years. With the sub series having different protagonists and parties, but with other characters being part of the story.
In the Sky Trilogy there's a 12 year old girl (Tita) that has a crush on a character that rescues her 24 years old (Agate)
It's played for laughs to embarass him in the beginning. But by the time you get to Hajimari the other characters think their relationship is cute.
But of course with both of these, they try and sit on the line. Where a fan can say "no they're just good friends"
Personally I played the Trails in the Sky trilogy a long time ago and really enjoyed it. So last summer I played through all of the others. In a kind of "I want to know what happens next" kind of mindset.
I don't think there's another series that has done this level of continuity over about 15 years worth of game.
But after I started playing Hajimari, I had to check out. The series just keeps getting worse in some way.
Aha another thing. The main character of Cold Steel (Rean) becomes a teacher. And like in the first couple of games where all the girls are attracted to him, same with his students.
It means that if you use your free time in the game to hang out with them it's just gonna revolve around how they're attracted to Rean.
Whilst the male characters have an arc to their stories because they can have a life. Whilst the girls have to keep the possibility of a relationship open with Rean.
In Cold Steel IV near the end of the game and before the final dungeon, you spend the day at a theme park.
So you can hang out with your classmates and students. For the girls if you hung out with them during the game to see all the cutscenes for their stories.
They'll say something on the lines of "Hey Rean, I'm like in love with you, if you wanna meet up after this just give me a call, but I'll understand if you're busy"
It's just wow. Characterisation in the dustbin.
So of course there's another 12 year old body child character (Altina). She's in Rean's class and it's possible to romance her. Of course, it's all "we'll wait till you're older". But seriously why is this in the game =|
Also if you think that screenshot outfit is bad: https://kiseki.fandom.com/wiki/Altina_Orion
Have a look at the CS2 picture here. =/
Ah that reminds me. There's a character (Renne) in the original Sky trilogy who is 11 years old.
Her backstory is that when she was even younger she was kidnapped by a cult, who loaned her to a brothel.
So this in the 3rd game in the series in 2007. Personally I thought it was a bit much only for the series to get more cartoonish.
Fast forward to 2020 and their latest game Hajimari no Kiseki and she's 15 so there's a pinup style picture of her sitting on the floor as a pre-order bonus: https://www.falcom.co.jp/hajimari/p...i9vEtH694Sspk4h-2bqlFGvShG98P_kzTo__OlsCfLBkg
So yeah, par for the course when it comes to Trails really.
Yuuuup
Exactly why I checked out after part 3, I couldn't stomach it anymore, and apparently 4 and Hajimaru are even worse for the reasons you said, so, noooope 🤮
Me, someone who's never played any of the series besides the first few hours of the first game, reading all this:
How is the series not banned yet on Era? It's like pedophilia simulator.
whenever someone talks about how they don't like "anime sexism" it's blatantly obvious, they are talking about the stereotypical, lowest common denominator pandering stuff and not the medium as a whole. that's why things like pokemon doesn't get lumped into that
you don't need to respond to the "anime" part and explain how anime is a medium
you don't need to respond to the "anime" part and explain how anime is a medium
I would say it's gender coding. It's not egregious, and the idea of colors coding gender is slowly being eroded as time passes. However, her face does look more feminine I suppose compared to...normal, realistic dolphins...I thinkBonus Dolphin:
Tentatively I don't like that they put Otome in a pink suit because I wonder if that was a way of gender coding her as an animal person, but maybe I'm reading too much into that, maybe they designers just thought the pink looked good for that design.
Anyway, Xenogears goes out of its way to color Hans's wife pinkish purple, so this is definitely not without precedent as far as gendered dolphins are concerned
That being said, I don't know the gender of the other dolphin kid (the one in beige). The orange one is a boy.
Nah. It's bad, but it's not nearly in the same ballpark as the banned stuff. Trust me.
#notallanime or something
Sure, but people don't talk about "movie sexism" or "television sexism" the same way they are so eager to throw the entirety of anime under the bus after watching a couple of Shonen series on Netflix.
What's annoying about Trails is that some of those character relationships would be endearing if they just stuck at being friendships. I really like Altina's and Juna's character arcs in CS3, but then they pander to the worst possible audience in a way that totally breaks the narrative flow for no reason other than to get that Otaku dollar (yen?). I don't think dating sim elements are inherently wrong in games, but they sure are when they involve such significant power dynamic imbalances and age gaps, woof.
It's also just plain badly designed considering you can't really import your save, so every single female character is basically reset to fawning over Rean once the next game rolls around. At best you'll get like 5 lines that reference it at all.
I love the worldbuilding of the games, several of the characters are fantastic, and the English VO is great, but yeah I've yet to play CS4 and Hajimari and part of me is dreading them. I've said it before but it genuinely feels like the games are patchworked together from two entirely different teams, but that doesn't absolve them of anything.
At least I haven't heard anything too bad about Ys IX??
It's also just plain badly designed considering you can't really import your save, so every single female character is basically reset to fawning over Rean once the next game rolls around. At best you'll get like 5 lines that reference it at all.
I love the worldbuilding of the games, several of the characters are fantastic, and the English VO is great, but yeah I've yet to play CS4 and Hajimari and part of me is dreading them. I've said it before but it genuinely feels like the games are patchworked together from two entirely different teams, but that doesn't absolve them of anything.
At least I haven't heard anything too bad about Ys IX??
Hmm I see. I guess it's not explicit and so on your face, at least. Just problematic writings.
Yeah. If we banned all games with problematic elements we'd have nothing to talk about lol
Yeah, I know. I consume anime and JRPG stuff on a regular basis, and I'm fully aware of most of the problematic stuff that I may encounter. But still, child objectification and relationship is where I usually draw the line. I'm fine with child characters in JRPGs, even if they're annoying, like in Tales of games (the ones in latest games were great though). But when they're objectified and your character can flirt with them, I'm out.
I'm very tired of talking about this, so I'll just say a few more things before retreating in the shadows.
I think the #notallanime and "what about the other media??" crowd is missing the point. There's a reason why anime are lumped together when talking about these things. It's because the medium has general characteristics that are very identifiable. And I'm sorry, but one of these characteristics is a generally sexist and often misogynistic portrayal of women. It's rampant in the shonen category aimed at young boys, but it's often also present in the other types, especially in modern stuff.
Is sexism and misogyny also present in other media? Is it in movies and television? Oh yes it is! Of course!! The difference with anime is that the sexism is so ingrained into the medium that it is seen as an important defining characteristic celebrated by many people. You want proof of that? In addition to countless other threads in this forum, just look at the recent FF7R thread by Morrigan. There is a huge crowd of people absolutely refusing to understand how women running, talking, and acting all cutesy like if they were weak children might be sexist. They've seen this kind of behavior from girls and women in anime and anime-style media so much that it's completely normal to them. "It's anime-inspired stuff, what do you expect?" And look at how defensive they all get when talking about it. It's important to them, it's part of the experience.
Yes, sexism and misogyny take many forms and are present in all types of media. But when it's so visible and accepted – celebrated even – to the point of taking the form of widely recognizable and defining characteristics inside a specific medium, it needs to be called out.
I think the #notallanime and "what about the other media??" crowd is missing the point. There's a reason why anime are lumped together when talking about these things. It's because the medium has general characteristics that are very identifiable. And I'm sorry, but one of these characteristics is a generally sexist and often misogynistic portrayal of women. It's rampant in the shonen category aimed at young boys, but it's often also present in the other types, especially in modern stuff.
Is sexism and misogyny also present in other media? Is it in movies and television? Oh yes it is! Of course!! The difference with anime is that the sexism is so ingrained into the medium that it is seen as an important defining characteristic celebrated by many people. You want proof of that? In addition to countless other threads in this forum, just look at the recent FF7R thread by Morrigan. There is a huge crowd of people absolutely refusing to understand how women running, talking, and acting all cutesy like if they were weak children might be sexist. They've seen this kind of behavior from girls and women in anime and anime-style media so much that it's completely normal to them. "It's anime-inspired stuff, what do you expect?" And look at how defensive they all get when talking about it. It's important to them, it's part of the experience.
Yes, sexism and misogyny take many forms and are present in all types of media. But when it's so visible and accepted – celebrated even – to the point of taking the form of widely recognizable and defining characteristics inside a specific medium, it needs to be called out.
I've appreciated your recent posts on this topic.
Sounds like the same whataboutism that's been happening since the beginning of video games. Always an excuse for exploiting and objectifying characters for profit. If it's not this, it's the, "it's not real", "you're taking it too seriously!", "well, I know someone who...".
Every.
Fucking.
Time.
Thank you Conditional-Pancakes
We live in a world where both #notallanime and "of course it has those tropes, it's anime" are simultaneously a defense of the same thing (not necessarily by the same people, but still). Like, which is it, lol.
And yeah not a fan of the whataboutisms either. Duke Nukem and other dudebro macho games get plenty of shit in these threads too. 🤷♀️
We live in a world where both #notallanime and "of course it has those tropes, it's anime" are simultaneously a defense of the same thing (not necessarily by the same people, but still). Like, which is it, lol.
As for #notallanime stuff, I just don't get the defensiveness really. Nausicaä is my favourite movie of all time and it's an anime, but I don't feel the need to go "but what about Ghibli"? every time someone quips about "anime tropes" or whatnot. It's clear what everyone means.
And yeah not a fan of the whataboutisms either. Duke Nukem and other dudebro macho games get plenty of shit in these threads too. 🤷♀️
Anime as a whole probably didn't have widespread association with infantilisation until maybe the mid to late 00s. I would need to look through the offerings of the time to verify that out-my-ass statement. But from my memory, character designs weren't infantilised as much. As the aggregate art style evolved I think it shifted towards more obvious pandering.
While I'm super happy to see non-binary rep in Gnosia, it does bring to mind an issue I have where most non-binary folks in media are still heavily femme-coded. Sure, some may be androgynous but even then they still *feel* more femme than not. Us masc-presenting enbies exist and I would love to see more representation in media.
I'd also like to thank RecLib and Conditional-Pancakes for their posts throughout the thread. Insightful and pointed posts that are both revealing and historical in their reporting and discussion of the many issues that have permeated through game media, whether a result of the medium itself or fed through a lens of other media which promotes a similarly toxic worldview. It's important to continue these conversations and dissections, as getting to the heart of the matter is often the only way forward for those who would rather not look at the problems perpetuated in entertainment.
Thanks, and looking forward to seeing more!
Thanks, and looking forward to seeing more!
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I agree with everything you said and more people should take note of this as well. The more we call it out the more change there can be.
Anime has been pandering forever, Cutey Honey, Bubblegum Crisis, Knights of Ramune, Elhazard, Tenchi, ect. All the otaku aimed products around the girls from eva since basically forever helped cement the teenage fanservice stuff a good bit too.
As for the infantilization stuff it's kind of a mix of the idol industry and the anime industry bouncing back and forth and leading to this huge ass feedback loop it's always kinda been there it just got a lot worse. It's pretty fucked until there is something that pushes things in a new direction. Anime and games are basically in the tail end of years of that feed back loop that got amplified in the time around when Haruhi , idol master, ko-on and such pushed things into overdrive of everyone trying to one up each other.
I'd imagine we'll see another shift slowly away from where we are currently over the next 10 years and not for the worst. Yeah it doesn't effect the now and that can be frustrating for some but things have been slowly shifting.
As for the infantilization stuff it's kind of a mix of the idol industry and the anime industry bouncing back and forth and leading to this huge ass feedback loop it's always kinda been there it just got a lot worse. It's pretty fucked until there is something that pushes things in a new direction. Anime and games are basically in the tail end of years of that feed back loop that got amplified in the time around when Haruhi , idol master, ko-on and such pushed things into overdrive of everyone trying to one up each other.
I'd imagine we'll see another shift slowly away from where we are currently over the next 10 years and not for the worst. Yeah it doesn't effect the now and that can be frustrating for some but things have been slowly shifting.
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if the next mainline AssCreed game doesn't have a single, dedicated female protagonist, I'm gonna. idk. write an angry post on ResetEra dot com
Meh. There's a reason why anime are lumped together but they are not necessary good or valid reasons and often come from a lack of experience or knowledge (or just not caring about anime in general.) Even saying anime is generally sexist and often misogynistic is something I wouldn't consider remotely true, and that's the kind of attack on the medium as a whole that is going to make people including me defensive in a way that specific criticisms about specific works wouldn't. It is clear what people usually mean tho when they talk about anime as a whole in terms of the more popular and male focused stuff, it is just kind of annoying to see.
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s*rge h*scoet is gone from Ubisoft though and he's the one who forced the Odyssey team to make Alexios playable bc wimmin don't sell, so......... hope?
I think it's established at this point that AC is an RPG-lite. I don't see them ditching the gender choice aspect
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that would be spectacularly shitty. then again it's Ubisoft so I wouldn't be surprised.
I feel that's an issue with Pokémon itself as well, it's weird to me that Bidoof of all Pokémon is one of few times the women version is the main version used in official art, feels like the only time women versions of Pokémon get official Ken Sugimori is when their are significant difference (then again, so many of woman variants of Pokémon are just silly changes that just make some details smaller, like what's the point?).
Also why do so many Pokémon species now have be 100% one gender? Like Alcremie or Grimmsnarl, what was wrong with 50% of Machamps being women of 50% of Gardevoirs being men?
Also it annoys me how how when Pokémon does slightly more adult stuff, the women PC get sidelined like what Pokémon Origins and Generations did. Can't have Dawn or May being considered the canon player character, the teens won't like that!
It wasn't that long a go that we did have a poster in this thread ask us to be careful round generalising asian games or japanese games as sexist and anime games in this forum is often used just to mean japanese games. Specifically as it does often go into a racist area with the generalisation. And I'll be honest most of the generalisation posts are often like one sentence posts that aren't that deep and aren't really going that deep into the issues. No one's saying not to say stuff about the sexualisation in those games. And quite frankly those defending the sexualisation as part of anime games and somethiung to be expected are also engaging in generalisation and quite frankly being kinda racist themselves as they treat it like those japanese devs just can't help but be sexist. We should call them out too.
I can understand why some in this thread get exasperated about being called out for generalisations regarding anime games as there are many posters using those same generalisations as a defence like "that's just something to be expected" , but I would say that maybe we shouldn't accept that lazy comments and not do the same thing as them. I wouldn't be opposed to harsher moderation on those excuses either but I don't know how feasible it would be.
And btw, I say this fully knowing I have very likely engaged in those generalisations myself in the past. I just don't think I necessarily added much to the convo when I did, and I think I can do better.
I can understand why some in this thread get exasperated about being called out for generalisations regarding anime games as there are many posters using those same generalisations as a defence like "that's just something to be expected" , but I would say that maybe we shouldn't accept that lazy comments and not do the same thing as them. I wouldn't be opposed to harsher moderation on those excuses either but I don't know how feasible it would be.
And btw, I say this fully knowing I have very likely engaged in those generalisations myself in the past. I just don't think I necessarily added much to the convo when I did, and I think I can do better.
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That's something that gets to me, too, but I think it's driven by the whole "default=male" idea. If you don't make an effort to integrate some (ugh) "feminine coding", people will just assume "male". Does my head in tbh.