Indeed. It's almost assuredly an argument intended to distract from actual discussion. Just one of many logical fallacies that is often used by trolls. This happens a lot to artists, both male and female. It is apparently not uncommon for directors to tell their artists to "sex up" the characters because they believe it will sell better. It is not infrequently the case where many of those artists (particularly some of the greats like Amano) are rumored to have largely left the industry as a result of such demands.
I guess my mistake was thinking that how this discussion started, and the context of this thread, meant that you were talking at least partly about sexualization. My... My bad? At any rate, you clearly aren't interested in discussing the actual state of the industry, only that fact that anime is funded by... people with money, so I guess that's that! Peace.
Right. People love to throw up the fact Bayonetta was designed by a woman as a shield to deflect criticism from the obvious fetish-pandering elements of her design, but the fact of the matter is that she was designing the character to Kamiya's specifications and to suit his personal wants and desires. Which is why she is pretty much a straight-up example of Kamiya's own particular fetishes given form. This happens so damn often. And then sometimes there are female artists who design problematic characters themselves because they know it'll get their work more attention. Women are certainly more aware of the issues facing female characters and female consumption of media, but that doesn't necessarily mean that they are interested in solving those problems.
And realistically, they shouldn't have to. A male artist doesn't have to worry about whether or not their art will be interpreted as making a statement for their entire gender.
You are a hundred percent right. The onus is not on women to solve men's problems, and it's not women's job to fix institutional sexism.
Kamiya actually told her to keep the design relatively tame, but Shimazaki completely ignored it and did what she wanted. I think we can keep the criticism of female designers at "women can objectify women too" rather than always assume it's at the behest of a male superior. Just what that means can also be discussed (designing it for a male audience and knowing that, doing it 100% for money, doing it because they legitimately like the design, etc) but it's ultimately irrelevant because we're still largely talking about a passion industry here. Ebata Risa for example (responsible for the most egregious design in XB2) has the clout to do whatever she wants and that's exactly what she did with Dahlia.
So this morning a new character for God Eater 3 was revealed, a one Claire Victorious. Spoiler It's a pretty predictable design given the series and modern design appeal in general, but it gave me pause as it reminded me that the original version of the first God Eater in 2010 was probably the first time I really found myself taking notice of how obnoxious and unfitting designs can really detract from an experience. Granted I was really late to the 7th gen and only played a small handful of games back then, but God Eater having a composer I was a huge fan of at the time and an interesting premise/art style really ended up at odds with some of the designs in that game undermining the drama and weight that every other aspect of the game emphasized. Even playing the remaster God Eater Resurrection last year with a friend we both found ourselves interrupting cutscenes to comment on how distractingly unnecessary most of the ladies' designs were in the general context of the game. As a guy I suppose it's fortunate that being embarrassed for or by something is the most I could be concerning such depictions and I could leave it at that, but it's frustrating knowing how damaging this design philosophy can be despite its current attachment rate. Anyway, I'm not sure there's really much to extrapolate from this post, I just found myself kinda hung up on these thoughts before heading out the door today.
God Eater has some awful NPC designs for sure. None of the outfits fit the setting at all and are completely impractical. Its saving grace is at least there are plenty of options for your own character that aren't skimpy and thankfully you can wear what you want at all times unlike Monster Hunter which can make you feel forced into wearing a revealing outfit for good skills. My characters always were in full covering military gear. I wish they would just give NPC outfit selection as a base option you didn't have to unlock and would affect cutscenes.
Well, more SCVI grossness. NSFW. Spoiler Can't wait to see the mental gymnastics to manipulate this into being "tasteful".
I'm ok with some of the tank tops and shirts too. Hoodies and jackets were sometimes ok but yeah, most of the NPC characters were awful in design. Ehh... Female ones that is. The males tend to look casual which is fine. I quite liked Soma and Lindow's outfits. Also. Didn't GE 1 have a little girl in virtually nothing but rags? I think my favourite characters in hunting games are from Toukiden series. They dress in mostly Japanese clothes and while they are typical anime trope characterized I find that more tolerable than the nonsense in GE. Then again... I don't really remember any of the characters in Freedom Wars at all so maybe they were ok. And speaking of uniforms. I love that all the characters are wearing the same uniform in Attack on Titan 2 game most of the time by default.
I didn't really know where else to post this. So I'm playing Rise of the Tomb Raider and something I sort of realized early on - this super-woman with inhuman strength has zero muscle-tone. She's soft all over. Is the idea that women with visible muscle tone is somehow unattractive? Because other games have no problem jacking dudes up. It just seems comical given the whole point of her redesign. Lara should have Nadine's body. She looks great! And I believe her strength more.
This has been a problem with She Hulk in the past. There was one particular artist, can't remember who at the top of my head who drew her with more realistic musculature and there was a backlash with fans wanting her to be more "sexy" Also unrelated, but while I agree with you that women like Nadine showing muscle is great, that gif creeps me out. Something about those eyes..
Yes definitely need more muscle tone. I'd also say that modern character creators are seriously lacking in this area and one of the reasons I still praise Dragons Dogma and Black Desert's character creators. I think usually the eyeball/pupil will move over to try and see whatever she is looking for first then centres when the head finishes turning or not if you don't fully facing the object of interest... Reminds me of a Terminator scanning for humans.
Agree with predictable, it's a bit of a checklist really. Stockings, suspenders, short skirt to have thighs and arsecheeks on show. Heels, massive cleavage with no support, awkward thigh pouches that look like the organisation has it's webbing supplied by Rob Liefield. All while looking back at the viewer like they are perverts who have caught her in a compromising pose. While equipped with a huge drill lance for fighting off massive, apocalyptic beasts. I I really liked God Eater's gameplay too, I played the first two games on the Vita and loved the way they differentiated themselves from Monster Hunter, but the outfits are ridiculous. At this point it's not just the problems with sexualisation/objectification in general, I'm also tired of them turning sexualised designs into something so templated and predictable. It stops more creative female character design because the checklist requires their arse, thighs and tits to take precedence over anything that might actually display characterful detail of their background or personality. If they are a capable athelete/soldier on a dangerous crumbled battlefield carrying a weapon bigger than them, you'd think good boots and support would be top of the list before leaving the bunker. It's bizarre, it's like a whole creative industry admitting that they can't make an athletic young woman look sexy without her being partially in her lingerie and dressing the same as all the other young women in their underwear too. When most of the female cast in a portion of japanese games is outfitted using that template by default, it stops having any meaning for 'sexy/confident' and just becomes a uniform, an easy shortcut for the desired player response to it. This is why I don't understand why some people can't see that moving away from this crap as a default leads to better characters in general rather than yet another generic outfit designed to titillate the presumed male audience in the exact same way as the last one off the production line. Even if you didn't give a shit about sexism, and just wanted endless sexy young female characters (which is an argument I've seen before), I don't see why you'd just want the same thing over and over again unless it's closer to returning to their favourite porn stash rather than having any interest in the characters, their personality, the background and the setting at all.
Reminds me of the way they depict the Synths in Humans. They use only the most efficent actions, and so eyes move, followed by head to the specfic angle required, then they move. It's quite well done across the cast in the series, especially once some of the older synths are able to pass more easily as human and others can't.
Hah, fair point. It does put the lie to claims that objecting to criticism of sexualised design is really ‘all about creative freedom, honest!’ when what they are really concerned about is the creative freedom to churn out the same shit over and over again while free of criticism.
The thread that ended up closed about Shadow of the Tomb Raider's Lara model had people effectively calling the unnamed women in The Last of Part Two mannish/manly because of her muscle tone.
I was looking at this image in the ‘what is a JRPG' thread, and it’s funny that what didn’t jump out at me was the general difference between action horror and survival horror games. It was if a game is a power fantasy about killing thousands of the undead with a creative selection of weaponry, the protagonist is almost certainly a bloke, but if the game involves fleeing for your life on a regular basis, scrounging for bullets in single-digit numbers if you can even defend yourself at all, the protagonist has a far better chance of being female. I don’t see any of the guys legging it through a creepy old mansion wearing little more than their y-fronts :D
Yeah this was a big point in the "survival horror has lots of awesome women" thread we had some time ago
Yes, that has been a big annoyance of mine for a while now, especially with Lara. We need more women like Vanasha! (Aloy is fine too)
So, in horror, you know you've got the trope of 'young woman running away from peril trips over', do you think it's more due to impractical footwear use or that they just do more running away and thus more opportunities of escape being impeded by convenient ankle-twisting roots occur? We need bar charts! :D Modern survival horror seems to have a lot of DLC of skimpy underwear too. Just so they can look both a bit more vulnerable AND sexy, I suppose. Because clearly there's nothing sexier than a terrified, vulnerable young woman.
Yeah, this was a huge turn-off every time I played a GE game. The second game has this awful looking girl with cat ears and her boobs being held by what looks like bandage XD Many Japanese games have this casual style in terms of fashion and the way the characters behave like children (men and women). The clothes are colourful or there is some cute bear hat on the head etc. I always found that a bit jarring when a game is trying to be serious when set in apocalypse for instance. Having to deal with that crap is bad enough. Sometimes you can try to ignore the tone or get used to it. Sometimes it can be enjoyable. But having objectified women for no reason makes it worse. I really don’t understand those high profile Japanese directors/designers/etc who try to be super serious about their work but then pull shit like that.
They can be. They just have to be wearing a skin tight bikini, because less clothes means they're tough™
More like Horror media in general. There only horror media that I can think of depicting a vulnerable male protagonist are ones with young boys like IT or Let The Right One In.
Have to admit, I saw this and was like Just one of those things I never really noticed but seems so obvious now. To be fair though, I'm not really into horror or blood+gore. Also, today in wtfanimeareyoukiddingme!?!? From the upcoming manga-turned-anime: How NOT to Summon a Demon Lord. Spoiler: creepiness The fact that the synopsis is practically a carbon copy of Overlord was bad enough, but this is so much worse.
Jesus H Christ on a bike. That is so very far from OK. What I find particularly creepy (apart from the whole, well, everything about sexualised depictions of children) is that all the detail, whether it’s dips in the cloth, scraps of armour or metal trim, all basically points to the crotch. It’s not like the designs are subtle in who they are appealing to so I don’t get the need for subconscious landing strips.
Yeah, this trend is pretty annoying. That comparison image is a pretty good & unbiased showcase of the trope too, as I don't think the creator was intending to comment on gender when they put this compilation together. But yeah, we could always use more vulnerable male representation as well as more empowered women, especially in horror.
I remember the original Disgaea being a bit...yeah. How far we've fallen! It really is just unashamedly diving straight into paedo territory now. I guess they have plenty of disposable income...
"Trying to one up Disgaea 1, I see" was my first thought too, but holy shit that's terrible. Yikes. How much you wanna bet at least one of those will end up as someone's avatar here though.
Yeah, it's just the Japanese culture as consumption pathology (via neojaponisme): Problem is, the culture itself is horrendously toxic because it's a niche feeding into a niche, and is now an ouroboric monstrosity. Yeah, exactly. It's now the reality of particular Japanese subcultures.
Imo Heather Mason and Aya Brea (in Parasite Eve 1 at least) are quite strong, independent characters, so are the Fatal Frame protagonists. Vulnerability makes a character feel human and in my eyes these kind of characters are way more empowering to me than say, a buff dude slaying thousands of monsters/people. People like to shit on Japanese designs but anime and game series like Atelier empower femininity a lot.
I think the reason why some anime/game designs and their ‘empowerment of femininity’ get a lot of flak is pretty evident a few posts up.
It's less a discussion on whether vulnerability is a positive trait, as I would definitely say it is one. But more so, why do developers pick female protagonists when they are trying to make the player feel vulnerable. Why do they more often create male protagonists when the game calls for direct action instead of flight. But yeah, by no means is it exclusive, there are a bunch of empowered female horror protagonists, it's just a larger trend in the other direction. I can't comment on Atelier, I haven't played or watched any of that series.
This is a case where the few bad apples didn't just spoil the bunch, but somehow spread seeds and are now rotten trees. And I think Miyazaki is right, that a huge problem is creators are not looking outside their medium for inspiration and creativity. They're just continually looking inward, with expectations and creations becoming ever more ridiculous as a result. Were the situation more balanced the discussion wouldn't be as lopsided as it has become. Whether it's a major or minor franchise, rampant objectification is spilling into a ton of games. One that makes me angrier than all the others is what happened to Valkyrie Profile. Spoiler She went from this (Valkyrie Profile 1): To this (Valkyrie Anatomia - bottom is the "Pale Valkyrie" form):
The problem is, of course, when you start giving vulnerable or emotive traits to male characters, they become the subject of ridicule and scorn. The toxicity in gaming is, ultimately, a reflection of the toxicity in society itself. Changing that, however, is going to take decades - perhaps even centuries.
Shounen manga such as One Piece doesn't really have the "it's by otaku for otaku" excuse; a lot of the designs for the female characters are more ridiculous than those on late-night anime and it's still a mainstream cartoon broadcasted on Sunday mornings. This IS mainstream in Japan.
