Score
0.85
Total
2
Published
Sea lion (26680548)
Japanese games take a lot of inspiration from other cultures, from myths, to history and clothing and armour design. The problem is most of their characters look Asian, which wouldn't be a big deal to me personally, but they fail to represent the actual people they're taking these influences from. For example Final Fantasy is steeped in Western mythos, the characters even have Western names, yet the majority of the characters are Asian and look like J-pop stars. Take Tifa for example, her name isn't Japanese, and she's from a town called Niflheim, yet is clearly Asian. Same with Cloud, and even Barret has a certain look to his face and lighter skin in the new remake. Aerith was stated to be made more Western but still looks Eastern in the face. And in FFXII they stated they were told to make Ashe distinctly not Japanese but still did in the end to appease the Japanese audience. However with her I'm not expecting her to look White, but Indian. The team took a trip there for cultural influence yet there seems to be no representation of their people. It extends to a lot of their games. I know a vast majority have anime artsyles, but even then, despite their brightly coloured hair, anime character have more Asian facial features with sharper eyes and smaller noses and chins. I just find it disingenuous when games like Fire Emblem have all these European inspired aesthetics and names yet everybody again looks like a pretty j-pop star. It's ok for characters to have bigger noses and differenr facial structures, Japan, as in the end most of the world and people your taking from do. I know Japan is xenophobic, but when looking through Bulbapedia at the new Pokemon, and seeing that NPCs on the routes you battle in the original Japanese version ALL have Japanese names despite the country being based on England I just laugh at their need to self insert into everything. Obivously this goes beyond games too. Stuff like the manga Magi with its Arabic influence yet features very little people with dark skin gets to me too. I just wanted to know if there's a reason for this and what your guys thoughts are? Obviously I'm not against Asian characters, in fact we need more of them from Western developed games, I just don't like the lack of representation of the people they take influences from. If the West developed a game, based on Japanese culture, myth, and geography yet all the characters, despite having Japanese names, were distinctly western there'd be massive uproar.