Bromanship and homosexuality is in general quite widespread around part of the anime fanbase in both Japan and the West. Series like Naruto and Attack on Titan have huge amounts of male romance fan fiction. A friend of mine wrote some stuff about that when she was into her early twenties lol.
Don't worry, I wasn't trying to counter your argument or anything, just expanding your point showing what I feel is the most usual approach for creating attractive males.
I mean, Yuri is one of the favorite characters in the series, period. Both for man and woman. I'm sure there is a way to use the same design principles for female characters. You need to put it some thought of course.
Yuna from FFX could be a good example, I think. It was one of my first crushes when I was like 12 years old and she is a well developed, fairly attractive character that young women can look up. She was a fantastic character all around IMO.
Do people really see breast sliders as a sexualized thing? If you're a woman and creating a character and want to adjust your character's breasts to be like yours is that so wrong? b:
Liking sex as a species doesn't mean we have to shoehorn it into everything we produce, that's juvenile. We (supposedly...) can tell when is the right time and place for sex, we're people after all, not animals.
Do people really see breast sliders as a sexualized thing? If you're a woman and creating a character and want to adjust your character's breasts to be like yours is that so wrong? b:
Do people really see breast sliders as a sexualized thing? If you're a woman and creating a character and want to adjust your character's breasts to be like yours is that so wrong? b:
By itself it is mostly innocent enough and I suspect most would say the option is fine. But too often it is coupled with a lot of other things that just make me roll my eyes.
By itself it is mostly innocent enough and I suspect most would say the option is fine. But too often it is coupled with a lot of other things that just make me roll my eyes.
By itself it is mostly innocent enough and I suspect most would say the option is fine. But too often it is coupled with a lot of other things that just make me roll my eyes.
That reminds me of the one thing that's super distracting in elex. There's some physics bug with all female characters. The ones I met are generally modestly dressed, but something causes their boobs to jiggle constantly (in very tiny motions). Makes it look like they are vibrating or something. Hilarious but distracting.
You are equating penis with boobs, and they are not the same. There's a reason why the Barbie doll has breasts, but Ken doesn't have a penis.
Based on conversations I've heard about the idea on The Sims forums, people would be against any genital manipulation. Not only that, but EA had to prove once that the Sims characters don't have genitalia to avoid scandals.
Breast manipulation in character creation tools is the same as manipulation of any other body part, simple as that.
Yes! One of the best aspects of Black Desert Online's character creator (the armor in the pic I posted is from that game). More games should feature muscle sliders going forward.
That reminds me of the one thing that's super distracting in elex. There's some physics bug with all female characters. The ones I met are generally modestly dressed, but something causes their boobs to jiggle constantly (in very tiny motions). Makes it look like they are vibrating or something. Hilarious but distracting.
This reminds me of something I've been thinking. I was wondering when was the first time I started rejecting cheap tiltillation in games, because while I remember finding some examples weird growing up like when I first played Soul Calibur II, I still ignored it at worst, but nowadays is an ever present problem when playing stuff filled with fanservice (like XB2, which btw I can't play because it was sold out everywhere!). And while I can't remember when it was, I can remember why I got fed up... Something clicked with me and I realized these games were essentially treating me like an animal. It sounds simplistic, but it's true, they try to lure us men with the oldest trick in the book, good ol' titties, and some are so blatant about it that it feels genuinely insulting, and of course we're so used to being sold women's bodies as entertaintment that as a society we don't find it weird at all unless it's some very extreme case.
I think this is the reason I gave up on Soul Calibur after III and became more selective with what I bought during a period of my life. I remember being interested in Xenosaga due to the pedigree behind it but immediately dismissing it after seeing KOS-MOS for example. With the time I've gotten more "tolerant" of this garbage and I'm capable of enjoying more games with it but it's still so annoying to see, and none of this is even related to how it affects women of course, which makes it all the more gross and disturbing.
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Oh and by the way, thank you guys for explaining the "PS2" thing about XB2, the game sounds straight up incredible, I'm so jealous... Maybe next week!
3D games, voice acting, FMV animation took fanservice to the next level. Prior to that it was just some " provocative" 8bit-16bit sprites and pixels and images or text date sims.
Now it wouls be inconceivable, yet even then they were titillating,leaving everything to the players imagination. Now they force you to like a specific figure or breast size
I'd be ashamed to admit I was roused by nothing but simple text and CGA graphics back then
How is that remotely similar? Are you saying muscles are a sexual characteristic, that women don't have muscles? Also, would a bulge slider perhaps make you unconfortable?
My guess would be less "mind" and more "assume it's some sort of softcore porn game and skip it". Which kind of says a lot about how people don't bat an eyelid at female sexualization, but male sexualization is shocking and alien.
Pyra being a good cook is probably the biggest thing I've gotten about her character so far. She also got very embarassed when Rex exclaims how heavy she is. So:
- Enormous breasts
- Good cook
- Body conscious
Just an all round fantastic female character. Real trailblazer.
Pyra being a good cook is probably the biggest thing I've gotten about her character so far. She also got very embarassed when Rex exclaims how heavy she is. So:
- Enormous breasts
- Good cook
- Body conscious
Just an all round fantastic female character. Real trailblazer.
Xenoblade 1 is my favorite JRPG of all time and one of my favorite games, period, but I'm on the edge about whether to skip 2 entirely because of shit like this. Which in turn makes me so fucking angry at the whole situation. Japan, for fuck's sake, get a grip on yourself.
Pyra being a good cook is probably the biggest thing I've gotten about her character so far. She also got very embarassed when Rex exclaims how heavy she is. So:
- Enormous breasts
- Good cook
- Body conscious
Just an all round fantastic female character. Real trailblazer.
This is a somewhat minor point, but just as inconsequential details go, why do JRPGs care so much about whether a character is a terrible cook or a fantastic one? It's a detail that has popped up several times in games I've played and it just seems like the most basic possible way to flesh out a character. The sheer incompetence required to make routinely terrible, inedible food out of stupid combinations always seems at odds with the character being reasonably smart in other ways. It isn't just that the character can't cook well- loads of people aren't great at feeding half a dozen of their friends out of what they have in their backpack. It's that it's usually 'this person, despite being reasonably smart, will create nothing but poison in this particular basic adult skill'. When I was a teenager I might have struggled with anything more complex than a pasta bake or whatnot for feeding a group, but I wouldn't have gone something like 'yeah, anchovy Ice cream with chunks of raw chicken in it!' :D
Do people really see breast sliders as a sexualized thing? If you're a woman and creating a character and want to adjust your character's breasts to be like yours is that so wrong? b:
This is a somewhat minor point, but just as inconsequential details go, why do JRPGs care so much about whether a character is a terrible cook or a fantastic one? It's a detail that has popped up several times in games I've played and it just seems like the most basic possible way to flesh out a character. The sheer incompetence required to make routinely terrible, inedible food out of stupid combinations always seems at odds with the character being reasonably smart in other ways. It isn't just that the character can't cook well- loads of people aren't great at feeding half a dozen of their friends out of what they have in their backpack. It's that it's usually 'this person, despite being reasonably smart, will create nothing but poison in this particular basic adult skill'. When I was a teenager I might have struggled with anything more complex than a pasta bake or whatnot for feeding a group, but I wouldn't have gone something like 'yeah, anchovy Ice cream with chunks of raw chicken in it!' :D
Indeed, given its relative prominence, I guess it is another staple of Japanese (pop) culture. Would be curious to know the history behind it, though, if someone knows it.
My guess would be less "mind" and more "assume it's some sort of softcore porn game and skip it". Which kind of says a lot about how people don't bat an eyelid at female sexualization, but male sexualization is shocking and alien.
To be fair I suspect that it's not intended at all, and is a result of whatever physics they added reacting to wind. The characters that I've seen didn't show cleavage and the movement is veryh buggy and tiny. The only reason I realised it was due to boobs and not cloth is there was one character later on with a skin tight "future" dress thingy that also did it. I do agree it gets very distracting but the entire game is janky so I wouldn't be surprised if it's just a glitch.
Now the aformationed latter design could be another matter.
Sure, and I know a lot of women that find them exceedingly sexist. Let's ask the women in this thread.
How is that remotely similar? Are you saying muscles are a sexual characteristic, that women don't have muscles? Also, would a bulge slider perhaps make you unconfortable?
I'm just saying, not every woman sees these sliders as detestable and actually appreciates the added customization. Sure, there are games that don't have the best intentions when adding them but there are some good examples. The character creation in the Comrades expansion for FFXV had all the sliders I mentioned (for both male and female characters) and they were used well and clearly weren't meant for any kind of pandering.
Obviously women can have muscles, but they're not commonly depicted with them. I do find muscles on men attractive and sexy and when creating a male character I'd love to have sliders for muscle tone and such. I'm a bisexual guy so a bulge slider wouldn't make me uncomfortable.
As a man, I don't think chest size slider is inherently bad. When you have a game that has pretty detailed character creator to begin with, I think it's very understandable and even welcomed to have a slider for that too. And I'm sure not everyone uses it to have characters with ridiculous and unnatural body proportions to fit their wildest fantasies, but the opposite. Now let's say that the breast slider is only one of the few customization options or even the only one, then I'll roll my eyes. When talking about character creators overall, I'm often left disappointed that I can't create more heavy set character. Without it being some roided out monster. But I think that goes bit offtopic. Unless there are games out there that let you create an overweight/out of shape male but not female characters. I wouldn't be surprised if there were.
Indeed, given its relative prominence, I guess it is another staple of Japanese (pop) culture. Would be curious to know the history behind it, though, if someone knows it.
The British edition: (BRPG?). In chapter two the party splits in half after someone puts marmite on everyone's sandwiches. This can never be forgiven :D
Makes me wonder how many references/oddities are Japanese pop culture that have flown over my head or been lost in translation, and how many of them are genuine bad writing/stereotypes. Not that pop culture references can't be problematic in their own right.
In games with a lot of other character customization sliders, I do appreciate chest (and butt) sliders. Especially if male characters have those sliders, too. If I there are neck size and gut size and arm size sliders, there should be boob and butt ones, too. (Partially because without, I'm sure the defaults would always be on the larger size.)
However, in games that have little or no character customization otherwise or ones that don't give male characters a pec/moob slider, I find it rather distasteful.
The British edition: (BRPG?). In chapter two the party splits in half after someone puts marmite on everyone's sandwiches. This can never be forgiven :D
Makes me wonder how many references/oddities are Japanese pop culture that have flown over my head or been lost in translation, and how many of them are genuine bad writing/stereotypes. Not that pop culture references can't be problematic in their own right.
It's interesting how often people associate fantasy with British accents, when our primary fantasy export is based primarily on North European folklore.
Then again, it we did start incorporating stuff from the British Isles, we'd have to deal with everyone mispronouncing everything. I mean, what the fuck is a fucking "Kate Siff"?
Thinking about it, we have a tendency to depict female characters as much more competent and mature than their male counterparts, who are, more often than not, pathetic losers. I...cant imagine that translating well to other countries - just look at the mess that results whenever America tries to remake a British sitcom...
Pyra being a good cook is probably the biggest thing I've gotten about her character so far. She also got very embarassed when Rex exclaims how heavy she is. So:
- Enormous breasts
- Good cook
- Body conscious
Just an all round fantastic female character. Real trailblazer.
Oh come on now, all of this is true but that's a super, super reductive read of her even by the exact moment you hit the shitty weight gag. One of those things is a facet of her character design, one is a game mechanic, and one an instance of shitty anime comedy. It'd be like saying Nia, at the same point, is defined exclusively by the traits "Cat ears, angry, doesn't like it when people say drawings that don't look like her look like her." She's already got it bad enough, you don't need to make it sound worse. :P
Pyra, like any other character in the main cast, has had extensive characterization through subtle voice performance, her different affect during interaction with diverse members of the cast, and visual storytelling/body language by that point. Characters who are explicitly depicted as withholding elements of themselves from the party that they don't want people to know about (while exhibiting those things to the audience through shifted POV exposition, implication and foreshadowing, and in-the-know use of body language and camera focus on things the rest of the present cast doesn't notice) are extremely common things in both western and eastern storytelling, and just because someone hasn't given their entire life story by mid chapter 2 doesn't mean the story has told us nothing about them.
She's a grown-ass adult symbiotically bound by necessity to a very well intentioned 14 year old who has a puppy dog crush on her. She needs his help to do a thing but wants to shield him from the horrific side of the world he's so naive to, including parts of that horror she's complicit in. She's trying to protect his innocence and guide his hand even as she knows she needs to exploit him to go where she has to. The emotional and knowledge inequality in their partnership is one of the driving dramatic conflicts of both their character arcs and the plot.
This is a somewhat minor point, but just as inconsequential details go, why do JRPGs care so much about whether a character is a terrible cook or a fantastic one? It's a detail that has popped up several times in games I've played and it just seems like the most basic possible way to flesh out a character. The sheer incompetence required to make routinely terrible, inedible food out of stupid combinations always seems at odds with the character being reasonably smart in other ways. It isn't just that the character can't cook well- loads of people aren't great at feeding half a dozen of their friends out of what they have in their backpack. It's that it's usually 'this person, despite being reasonably smart, will create nothing but poison in this particular basic adult skill'. When I was a teenager I might have struggled with anything more complex than a pasta bake or whatnot for feeding a group, but I wouldn't have gone something like 'yeah, anchovy Ice cream with chunks of raw chicken in it!' :D
Anime comedy is, well, bad, by the traditional mechanics of comedy. It follows a set of extremely rigid rules from a List of Things That Are Funny and just slots them in, often with few changes. There's an extremely heavy focus on a mix of misunderstandings and something absurd happening and someone present pointing out the absurd or stupid thing. Imagine a cultural understanding of comedy born exclusively from a group of people watching "Who's on First?" and then saying "Ah, yes, so doing exactly this in structure while substituting the topic for another will make people laugh. That is what jokes are." The "female character who not only can't cook but creates absurd, ungodly monstrosities" is one of those "Who's on First?" routines that someone tried once and it made the audience laugh, so now everyone just copies it. Jokes are created by slotting things into the exact, rigid formula, and then once they work the rest of the industry copies them ad nauseum with no nuance. It gets better when they get into escalating farces that spiral into completely unfathomable absurdity, but even that's built on taking the same formula to eleven.
Seriously, pay attention to the structure of jokes in anime and JRPGs--it's almost the exact same thing every single time. The rules of both concept and delivery are so rigid that it might as well be generated by a web randomizer.
In games with a lot of other character customization sliders, I do appreciate chest (and butt) sliders. Especially if male characters have those sliders, too. If I there are neck size and gut size and arm size sliders, there should be boob and butt ones, too. (Partially because without, I'm sure the defaults would always be on the larger size.)
However, in games that have little or no character customization otherwise or ones that don't give male characters a pec/moob slider, I find it rather distasteful.
Yeah, this. I don't think boob sliders are inherently bad; it's the execution that can be bad about them.
Personally, as a woman I don't feel like I need boob sliders, but I understand why other women might want them.
Sometimes people like to just talk about things. Sometimes people feel the need to vent. Sometimes it's not about finding a "solution". Sometimes it's about working out your own thoughts. Sometimes it's about working to improve yourself and each other.
And then sometimes people like you say shit with the goal of making people feel bad about themselves.
Anime comedy is, well, bad, by the traditional mechanics of comedy. It follows a set of extremely rigid rules from a List of Things That Are Funny and just slots them in, often with few changes. There's an extremely heavy focus on a mix of misunderstandings and something absurd happening and someone present pointing out the absurd or stupid thing. Imagine a cultural understanding of comedy born exclusively from a group of people watching "Who's on First?" and then saying "Ah, yes, so doing exactly this in structure while substituting the topic for another will make people laugh. That is what jokes are." The "female character who not only can't cook but creates absurd, ungodly monstrosities" is one of those "Who's on First?" routines that someone tried once and it made the audience laugh, so now everyone just copies it. Jokes are created by slotting things into the exact, rigid formula, and then once they work the rest of the industry copies them ad nauseum with no nuance. It gets better when they get into escalating farces that spiral into completely unfathomable absurdity, but even that's built on taking the
No wonder there's such a massive crossover between anime fans and TVTropes! I've already seen a few examples of people excusing some of the game's design choices by linking to that bloody site...
No wonder there's such a massive crossover between anime fans and TVTropes! I've already seen a few examples of people excusing some of the game's design choices by linking to that bloody site...
It's worth noting that "It's an American joke" is a Japanese quip often used when a joke lands badly, because cultural humor doesn't translate. I'm an outsider look--okay no I actually find anime humor funny after all this time, but I started as an outsider looking in, so that's the perspective I was taking here.
On the topic of characterisation in Japanese games, it's worth bearing in mind this snippet from an interview with Alexander O. Smith earlier in the year, regarding FF12's localisation:
"[Yasumi Matson] has a very good sense of characters - they have individual personalities and their intent is very clear. This is actually something that's somewhat rare in Japanese writing - it tends to favour the big moment, and the big scene, and they don't really care about how you got there. From a western perspective, lots of times Japanese dramatic writing will seem lacking in areas like motivation and the intent of the characters won't be entirely clear. They're putting the pieces together so they can get to the big scene.
"Matsuno is much more of the classic western style writer in the sense that all of his characters have very clear motives and objectives, so that when they're in a room together instead of everyone just participating in putting together the building blocks to get to the big moment, you have individual characters that want different things butting off each other, there's the back and forth that makes for great dialogue."
I think I personally have always enjoyed Japanese comedy to a degree, although it's certainly grown on me more over time.
My favorite anime comedies - Nichijou, Osomatsu-san, Gintama, Sayonara Zetsubou-sesnsei, to name a few - all resort very frequently to escalating the situation as a vehicle for absurd comedy. Some more subtly than others, like the last one in that list. That's my jam.
There's also a LOT of word play in Japanese humor, which doesn't translate nearly as well. I get some of it sometimes, but it's rare.
Then there's referential humor. The equivalent of the West making a Batman parody character and making his gloom way more exaggerated than it is even in the darkest interpretations.
I don't know if I'd say it's bad, but it's definitely got a different structure and focus. The cultural barrier is real in many ways, and this is definitely one of them.
Also re: cooking specifically, Japan loves its food. Even in shows not about food, there's so much emphasis on food being this wonderful thing that brings back memories or brings people together or is just so gosh darned delicious oh my give me some more I need it all. Stuff like that. Which I think is probably also a cultural thing, and a part of where these kinds of jokes come from.
EDIT: I think for me, execution of humor has always been key, more than originality, and that might be why I forgive the more structured style of Japanese humor.
It's interesting how often people associate fantasy with British accents, when our primary fantasy export is based primarily on North European folklore.
Then again, it we did start incorporating stuff from the British Isles, we'd have to deal with everyone mispronouncing everything. I mean, what the fuck is a fucking "Kate Siff"?
Thinking about it, we have a tendency to depict female characters as much more competent and mature than their male counterparts, who are, more often than not, pathetic losers. I...cant imagine that translating well to other countries - just look at the mess that results whenever America tries to remake a British sitcom...
My favorite anime comedies - Nichijou, Osomatsu-san, Gintama, Sayonara Zetsubou-sesnsei, to name a few - all resort very frequently to escalating the situation as a vehicle for absurd comedy. Some more subtly than others, like the last one in that list. That's my jam.
Japanese shows are an absolute master of the escalating farce when they lean in hard enough. Last season the first five and three quarters episodes of Gamers were, while they had jokes on their own, built specifically to function as an extremely gradual, rising buildup to what may have been one of the funniest five or six minute sequences I've seen in a TV show in recent years. You don't see that level of dedication to building up to a joke for a month and a half of episodes very often.
On the topic of characterisation in Japanese games, it's worth bearing in mind this snippet from an interview with Alexander O. Smith earlier in the year, regarding FF12's localisation:
Yeah. I think this is actually a component of the willingness to slot characters in for humor like that. Pyra has an extremely consistent character in serious moments (and her English voice actress is putting in work with the subtle nuances), but Japanese writing is more than willing to give characters a couple of quirks that're used entirely for one-off (or god help us recurring) gags exclusively for the purpose of levity. As long as it all the pieces that are being laid down come together and coalesce at the dramatic (or humorous) climax, anything goes. Xenoblade 2 is extremely, extremely indicative of this method despite the usual meticulous Takahashi plotting being overwhelmingly present, because while the internals of a given chapter might have serious drama, political intrigue, comedy literally on level with a children's show, weird anime faces and gags, and complete nonsense farcical humor spread across it, it always coalesces in an extremely potent capstone series of setpiece cutscenes, both action and dramatic, that close out the chapter and move the story forward. It's in those Big Moments where the writing and direction most heavily shine.
This structure is also a large part of why the game feels so much like it's from the PS2 era, lost in a time capsule.
Japanese shows are an absolute master of the escalating farce when they lean in hard enough. Last season the first five and three quarters episodes of Gamers were, while they had jokes on their own, built specifically to function as an extremely gradual, rising buildup to what may have been one of the funniest five or six minute sequences I've seen in a TV show in recent years. You don't see that level of dedication to building up to a joke for a month and a half of episodes very often.
