I've sorta always associated Fire Emblem characters as Japanese tbh. Yeah plenty of the games take place in a more European setting, but I dunno, them being Japanese-like was just stuck in my head.
It's hard not to see them as white (European). I guess the fact that they are anime stylized is Japanese-like but the setting, how they look and dress always screamed European to me.
It's even more apparent when actual Asian/Japanese coded characters show up. Like Say'ri who appears in Awakening and is very distinctly foreign compared to the other characters. Her support conversations highlight how her culture is basically just Japanese culture. Fire Emblem Fates is even more obvious with the whole Hoshido/Nohr thing.
I'm black and I don't understand it either, so it's not just him.
In all the time I was playing games growing up I literally never gave any thought to the fact that the fictional characters in the games I was playing were a different race as me. If a black character was available I'd be likely to pick them, like in Streets of Rage for example. But I've never actually cared beyond that.
I identify far more with Michael than Franklin in GTAV, because Franklin is a street gangster and is nothing like me as a person. His skin colour is one small part of his character, just like it is for me. I have no affinity with a character just because they're a similar colour to me; they don't represent me and they have nothing to do with me. And someone doesn't not represent the kind of person I am just because they're white. This idea of race-based "representation" in fictional media is just so bizarre to me.
I'm black and I do understand.
Growing up, I always wondered why the characters in the games and shows I loved didn't look like me. I liked to draw a lot as a kid and all the characters I made up were white. I just assumed that black people couldn't be heroes. When I got a little older, I used to draw Gold from Pokemon G/S/C but with brown skin because Crystal was when they finally let you choose a girl trainer but you couldn't be black. I remember seeing the Boondocks in the newspaper comic strips page and being completely amazed that the characters were black kids like me. It felt surreal.
I don't know, I guess when you grow up in a society where you're told you don't matter/you're not important and the media you consume just reinforces that, it makes it feel like these games aren't for you. And I mean that on the whole - not any specific game. Just as a whole, there's such a lack of prominent PoC characters that I got the message as a kid that these games weren't necessarily for me. I could enjoy them but the creators didn't care about me or rather they didn't notice I existed.
I think Franklin is just a bad example too. I hated seeing black characters thrown into roles like that. I know you can't avoid it in GTA because that's the kind of game it is but I didn't want to associate with black characters that were stereotypes. I just wanted to see that a person like me could be a hero too. I love Link and I can associate with him as I play but that's something completely different. It doesn't solve the problem. Maybe it doesn't bother you personally but maybe now you sort of get why it's important to others?
