I would argue that while anime is a huge factor and component in causing the skewed perceptions of unrealistic beauty standards for women inside video games, there's also the core issue that this happened long before anime became mainstream to them. Anime is not the first place where we had stylized, buxom beauties, and plenty of Western cartoons like Looney Tunes, Roger Rabbit, etc had portrayals of exaggerated waistlines on women with large chests that jut out. And, we can see this same style in many older games as well such as Dragon's Lair & Space Ace with Princess Daphne. This all started long before they were exposed to mainstream anime and hentai. There's also that awful movie Cool World with the heavily sexualized Holli Would and Brad Pitt.
Society has indoctrinated men into only accepting women in media as these types for a long, long time, and accepting anything else goes against their programming. It was also helpful that this was all done during eras when women were stereotyped and stigmatized by media and enforced societal norms that we had no value or could be considered "attractive" unless we wore certain types and brands of clothing, we were expected to behave a certain way on and off cameras, and most of all to be submissive and provide for the home and children. That our main "job" and "goal" was to be the perfect housewife and that our "greatest joy" or "assets" came from our ability to use the newest *gasps* dishwasher while wearing heels. Thanks, 1950s.
If I had to clean the house in heels now, I'd die.
Yeah, at the end of the day this is an extension of the ingrained sexism and misogyny within our society. Certainly throughout much of North America and Europe, women are an oppressed class, often in ways that are fundamentally baked into society, going back far, far before the 1950s. Let's remember that in much of the Western world, women weren't even legally people for many hundreds of years and didn't have basic freedoms. We couldn't
own property. We couldn't
vote. We couldn't
go outside without being accompanied by a man.
But obviously many less obvious forms of oppression remain. Whether that's being expected to be passive and subservient to men in their lives, being responsible for childcare for "free" in addition to other employment, assumed to know how to cook, clean, and do clerical work for others, expectations around taking on others' emotional labour and support, having qualities ascribed to their gender rather than them as individuals, and of course having their value tied to often unrealistic beauty standards... there are obligations and expectations for women that are often unfair and impose significant consequences on their lives. It's also one of those things where they are often invisible until they are pushed against a little too hard, at which point it becomes all too clear just how far society still has to go.
Many women have internalized these expectations, and of course so have men, often to degrees that they aren't even aware they're doing it. And unfortunately many men do
not like being reminded that this is a thing. The best way to counter this is to have more and more women in positive roles and positions of power and control... and now that this has begun to happen in games, as well as other popular media like movies and comic books, we're seeing the worst people out there show their true colours and whine like children whose toys are being taken away.
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