I was going to say Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance did it pretty well, most characters, male or female, more or less dress appropriately for their role in combat. But then I remembered Ilyana who wears a miniskirt into battle as a Mage. She trades up to a slitted dress when she promotes to Sage, so there's an improvement, but... Also Largo in the interest of equal opportunity undress is a hulk of a man running around with no shirt on. For no particular reason other than he's the Beserker class.
Many of the Fire Emblem games have had female characters dressed like Ilyana there, so that's a common series theme (as is "actually hundreds of years old" dragon girls that look like human children most of the time, among other things), but Path of Radiance was the first game in the series ever, as far as I know, with pantyshots (Ilyana, almost every time she attacks with her first costume), so I'd say that that game has the most visual fanservice for sure, of Fire Emblem games. Radiant Dawn gets rid of the pantyshots again; you won't see many in that game. But PoR's another story.
As for script stuff I'm not sure, because PoR doesn't really have the creepy incest-bait elements that FE7 (Priscilla) and FE8 (Eirika/Ephraim) have, but that's a different story.
But, what about The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword? I can't think of any inappropriately dressed or over-sexualized females in that game. But there is the Ghirahim issue, though. Slim build, wears tights with diamond cutouts, and his behavior towards Link is... interesting. Still, I can't think of anyone other than Ghirahim and he's more murderous-creepy than sexualized-creepy. It's a thin line, though, could see it go either way. Zelda herself is not really sexualized in the game. She is cute, but that's about as far as that goes.
Does Skyward Sword pass the test (if only barely due to Ghirahim...) or am I missing something?
Well, Skyward Sword does have a lot less visual fanservice than usual for an anime-style game (as that really is), but the game's got a "rescue the princess" core component, so because of that Zelda is sexualized as a "you need to rescue her" thing, for sure...
Also yeah Ghirahim... I don't know. And Zelda in SS is considered "cute" in an anime sense by a lot, which may or may not be sexualization on its own depending on your definition.
I think that you could argue that some JRPGs do sort of do that, with characters like Vaan, but yeah, Western games don't, and even in the Japanese games the stereotypes aren't as bad as those used on the female characters.
Well, Skyward Sword does have a lot less visual fanservice than usual for an anime-style game (as that really is), but the game's got a "rescue the princess" core component, so because of that Zelda is sexualized as a "you need to rescue her" thing, for sure...
No...just no. I'm sorry but now you're just twisting the meaning of the word "sexualized" into whatever way you see fit. A person that has to be rescued is NOT automatically sexualized. The very idea that because you rescue her she becomes sexualized is ridiculous
No...just no. I'm sorry but now you're just twisting the meaning of the word "sexualized" into whatever way you see fit. A person that has to be rescued is NOT automatically sexualized. The very idea that because you rescue her she becomes sexualized is ridiculous
Well, it's certainly sexism, anyway. Sexualization versus sexism? I'm not sure where you draw the line. But really, a female character who only exists to be rescued... how is that not a sexualized character design? If she did something after getting rescued, and joined your party or whatever (as with, say, Fina in Skies of Arcadia; you rescue her like three times in the first 6-8 hours, but after that she joins you and becomes a good member of the main party) it can help some, but when it's really just "she's there to give the player motivation"... it's not the same as drawing her in a sexual way, sure, it's something I would say is worse than that.
I think that you could argue that some JRPGs do sort of do that, with characters like Vaan, but yeah, Western games don't, and even in the Japanese games the stereotypes aren't as bad as those used on the female characters.
Vaan is just "blegh" but for the most part, FF leads (and JRPG leads in general) prioritize on the traits I mentioned earlier, and are rarely overtly "sexy," especially in comparison to female charactters
Yeah, that's my stance, more or less, articulated.
Take this for example:
Very guilty of flamboyant character design solely for the sake of sex appeal, but no one bats an eye at it. However, if you took a girl and opened her shirt to expose her cleavage, you can bet someone would raise hell.
Many of the Fire Emblem games have had female characters dressed like Ilyana there, so that's a common series theme (as is "actually hundreds of years old" dragon girls that look like human children most of the time, among other things), but Path of Radiance was the first game in the series ever, as far as I know, with pantyshots (Ilyana, almost every time she attacks with her first costume), so I'd say that that game has the most visual fanservice for sure, of Fire Emblem games. Radiant Dawn gets rid of the pantyshots again; you won't see many in that game. But PoR's another story.
As for script stuff I'm not sure, because PoR doesn't really have the creepy incest-bait elements that FE7 (Priscilla) and FE8 (Eirika/Ephraim) have, but that's a different story.
Also Mia is sporting a Zettai Ryuoki, come to think of it. I wasn't going to say Awakening, obviously. Because, you know, Nowi. She's um... a bit much. Haven't played it, it's not out here yet, so I can't say much about the story or characterization. For Path of Radiance, the story has no major sexualization going on. Ike is practically chaste, the one proposition he does get from the storekeeper is pretty much shut down cold. Princess Elincia starts out as a weak stereotypical princess type, but ends up earning her country back to the point where she's up there with Ike leading by example.
(And has the ingame stats to prove it.)
Path of Radiance pretty much is in the clear when it comes to story, it decides to fumble around with racism rather than sexism. On that count... Why do the ravens have to be the untrustworthy thieves, again? Also a racially charged genocide is a key element in the plot. But we're talking sexism, not racism. That would be a whole other thread... full of clumsy examples.
Well, Skyward Sword does have a lot less visual fanservice than usual for an anime-style game (as that really is), but the game's got a "rescue the princess" core component, so because of that Zelda is sexualized as a "you need to rescue her" thing, for sure...
Also yeah Ghirahim... I don't know. And Zelda in SS is considered "cute" in an anime sense by a lot, which may or may not be sexualization on its own depending on your definition.
I think "I don't know..." is the best description for Ghirahim. There is, though, that scene near the end where
Demise pulls a sword out of Ghirahim's stomach, essentially killing Ghirahim.
Ghirahim looks to enjoy that a little too much. Still don't know if that's murder-creepy or sexual-creepy, but creepy it is.
As for rescuing Zelda, it's kind of interesting how the game goes back and forth on that. Ultimately, yes, you save Zelda but who's saving who kind of switches several times up until that point. Link gets saved as much as he saves. But in the end
Zelda turns out to be a goddess, in the literal sense
. Also points to Impa for telling Link off on this trope in the game. Until the game just plays it straight anyway.
So... um... I don't really know. It's surprisingly nuanced for a Zelda game. Not progressive, but nuanced. I mean Skyward Sword could fit the question, but if it passes it's by a thin, thin margin. Mostly due to story themes and... Ghirahim. At least Fi isn't sexualized, having a female sword-spirit could have turned out much, much worse.
Also Mia is sporting a Zettai Ryuoki, come to think of it. I wasn't going to say Awakening, obviously. Because, you know, Nowi. She's um... a bit much. Haven't played it, it's not out here yet, so I can't say much about the story or characterization. For Path of Radiance, the story has no major sexualization going on. Ike is practically chaste, the one proposition he does get from the storekeeper is pretty much shut down cold. Princess Elincia starts out as a weak stereotypical princess type, but ends up earning her country back to the point where she's up there with Ike leading by example.
Good point. Even though PoR had more visual fanservice than past games, I do like that they toned it down in the plot and writing. And yeah, Elincia ended up a pretty good character by the end.
On the other hand though, even if Eirika is kind of an idiot at times and has a quasi-incest option, it IS an optional female lead, something PoR doesn't have...
Or there's always Radiant Dawn, of course. That has a female lead as well.
Path of Radiance pretty much is in the clear when it comes to story, it decides to fumble around with racism rather than sexism. On that count... Why do the ravens have to be the untrustworthy thieves, again? Also a racially charged genocide is a key element in the plot. But we're talking sexism, not racism. That would be a whole other thread... full of clumsy examples.
I'm sure they were trying to make him creepy, but... it's kind of overboard in some ways, yeah.
As for rescuing Zelda, it's kind of interesting how the game goes back and forth on that. Ultimately, yes, you save Zelda but who's saving who kind of switches several times up until that point. Link gets saved as much as he saves. But in the end
Zelda turns out to be a goddess, in the literal sense
. Also points to Impa for telling Link off on this trope in the game. Until the game just plays it straight anyway.
So... um... I don't really know. It's surprisingly nuanced for a Zelda game. Not progressive, but nuanced. I mean Skyward Sword could fit the question, but if it passes it's by a thin, thin margin. Mostly due to story themes and... Ghirahim. At least Fi isn't sexualized, having a female sword-spirit could have turned out much, much worse.
Surprisingly so? I wouldn't say that. I mean, most of the 3d Zelda games (OoT, WW, TP, and SS) have significant female characters who have relevant roles in the plot. Zelda does stuff in all four games, she's never a helpless captive 100% of the time. And TP has Midna too, who is pretty great.
But, by the end, it always comes down to rescuing Zelda. I hope that someday Nintendo can get past the sexism that leads them to always have "and then Link rescues the princess" tacked in at some point, because those four Zeldas all have some good moments, until their kidnappings... or in TP's case, in the scenes where you go see her and at the end. I think the decent Zelda roles in OoT and WW are fairly well known, up until their kidnappings after they are revealed.
As for TP though,
Basically, my problem with TP Zelda is that she should have done like OoT Zelda, and actually DONE SOMETHING after the kingdom was taken over by eevil. But instead, she just sits there in a cell doing nothing most of the game. It's pretty stupid, particularly when she's supposed to be the "leader". Huge contrast to the much better Zelda of OoT, or to Midna in TP as well.
Seriously, I think that TP Zelda should have been a playable character. She showed magic and archery powers, and it's not like Link has much of any character in that game. There's no real reason other than sexism and, I presume, Miyamoto for that to not have happened.
And as you say, the same is true in SS, pretty much. And heck, what about OoT or WW...
Returning to TP though, adult Midna is probably a sexualized character (I mean, think about what her costume is...), but I don't know if I'd say it's actually a problem or not. And her character does have some gender sterotypes -- I mean, she needs the male hero to help her in order to succeed at saving her kingdom -- but she is a whole lot better off than any Zelda, and helps out more than any of them (the one bit of controllable Zelda, in Spirit Tracks, is limited to just the tower...).
Because that's a very naive viewpoint. One is an example of a manufactured male sex symbol targeted at the female demographic. The other one is uncannily similar, yet you write it off as just "cool" or "badass" or "whatever".
This is exactly what QisTopTier is talking about. The way men and women "sexualize" their preferred gender varies from person to person and culture to culture, so it's narrowminded to turn a blind eye to a very obvious connection just because it doesn't fit your idea of "sexualization".
Dragon Age is a good example of the differences between male sexualization and female sexualization. Alistair and Zevran are obviously meant to be sexualized, that's the whole point, and one of the major selling points of the game. How does that affect their character design? Not very much at all. They're still "cool", and "badass" and well muscled men with chiseled jawlines. What makes them sexualized, but not cool badass male protagonist #28? Is it because Bioware actually includes male romances in their game?
No. At least, not solely because of that.
It's because male sexualization and female sexualization work along different lines.
Although since the topic is "anime style," perhaps things like this are more appropriate:
Obviously there's a whole world of pretty men in romance/otome/BL games, but this thread wasn't really talking about strictly male-targeted games I don't think (beyond a brief mention of Neptunia) so the female equivalent probably isn't on-topic.
Now, the particular subtopic I responded to was about the topic of male characters designed to appeal to women, not the topic of sexualized male characters. That's a trickier topic, since Japanese women don't seem to be demanding a whole lot of skinservice from their non-romance games at this point.
From my point of view, characters like Cloud(original FF7), Zidane or the main character Persona 4(or hell, all of the MCs from the SMT games) don't appear to be sexualized at all. At least not the same extent and as someone like Tifa or any JRPG character with big boobs/scanty clothing that escapes me atm (i have a poor memory). To me, they definitely fit under the cool young male archetype that the target audience typically enjoys.
I guess I was looking at it the wrong way??? Though, if you ask me male sexualization is nowhere near as bad as female sexualization.
Leo is a woman who was specifically designed to look androgynous.
(And your quote was near impossible to edit on the mobile site, wow!)
Edit: here's what the Tekken wiki says about her.
The Bandai-Namco development team had stated that they wanted to create a character that would be loved by fans regardless of gender so they made the gender of Leo ambiguous on purpose.
As common or as blatant? No, definitely not. Male sexualization is more subtle, and most people don't notice at all. There is also the problem of defining what male sexualization includes. At the extreme end of "male sexualization", you have a buff guy walking around naked except for thong. That would be the closest analogy (in a vacuum) to, say, Ivy from Soul Calibur.
But that's not what appeals to females in Japan, and I don't think that's universally appealing to females in the West either. If you look at clothing models and movie actors, women seem to be satisfied with a strong face and a nice upper body, and sometimes not even that. Clothes and accessories play a big part too. I don't think anyone can argue that there isn't a lot of these kinds of fashionable well built men in Japanese games, as well as many Western ones.
The point is you don't need a male character to be walking around with a huge crotch bulge to consider him "sexualized", because male sexualization places less emphasis on obvious (such as boobs) sex characteristics than female sexualization.
Haha, I figured I'd probably get duped by at least one like that trying to grab a bunch quickly (mostly just pulled images from womens' blogs with the word "ikemen" on them).
If that's the only one I guess that's not too bad. Thanks.
As common or as blatant? No, definitely not. Male sexualization is more subtle, and most people don't notice at all. There is also the problem of defining what male sexualization includes. At the extreme end of "male sexualization", you have a buff guy walking around naked except for thong. That would be the closest analogy (in a vacuum) to, say, Ivy from Soul Calibur.
But that's not what appeals to females in Japan, and I don't think that's universally appealing to females in the West either. If you look at clothing models and movie actors, women seem to be satisfied with a strong face and a nice upper body, and sometimes not even that. Clothes and accessories play a big part too. I don't think anyone can argue that there isn't a lot of these kinds of fashionable well built men in Japanese games, as well as many Western ones.
The point is you don't need a male character to be walking around with a huge crotch bulge to consider him "sexualized", because male sexualization places a lot less emphasis on sex characteristics than female sexualization.
As common or as blatant? No, definitely not. Male sexualization is more subtle, and most people don't notice at all. There is also the problem of defining what male sexualization includes. At the extreme end of "male sexualization", you have a buff guy walking around naked except for thong. That would be the closest analogy (in a vacuum) to, say, Ivy from Soul Calibur.
But that's not what appeals to females in Japan, and I don't think that's universally appealing to females in the West either. If you look at clothing models and movie actors, women seem to be satisfied with a strong face and a nice upper body, and sometimes not even that. Clothes and accessories play a big part too. I don't think anyone can argue that there isn't a lot of these kinds of fashionable well built men in Japanese games, as well as many Western ones.
The point is you don't need a male character to be walking around with a huge crotch bulge to consider him "sexualized", because male sexualization places a lot less emphasis on sex characteristics than female sexualization.
You're absolutely right, I was being myopic and applying my narrow world view on subjects I clearly don't know enough about. I should have known that women don't necessarily like excessive fanservice, and I feel stupid for not picking up on that when you responded to my previous post.
Thanks for actually taking the time to clear it up for me though. (this is genuine; i really do hate look liking an ass).
As common or as blatant? No, definitely not. Male sexualization is more subtle, and most people don't notice at all. There is also the problem of defining what male sexualization includes. At the extreme end of "male sexualization", you have a buff guy walking around naked except for thong. That would be the closest analogy (in a vacuum) to, say, Ivy from Soul Calibur.
But that's not what appeals to females in Japan, and I don't think that's universally appealing to females in the West either. If you look at clothing models and movie actors, women seem to be satisfied with a strong face and a nice upper body, and sometimes not even that. Clothes and accessories play a big part too. I don't think anyone can argue that there isn't a lot of these kinds of fashionable well built men in Japanese games, as well as many Western ones.
The point is you don't need a male character to be walking around with a huge crotch bulge to consider him "sexualized", because male sexualization places a lot less emphasis on sex characteristics than female sexualization.
Hmm, I don't quite agree with that. The physical characteristics you described would fall under secondary sex characteristics. Obviously not clothing, but they can and do emphasis them just like with women.
Hmm, I don't quite agree with that. The physical characteristics you described would fall under secondary sex characteristics. Obviously not clothing, but they can and do emphasis them just like with women.
Indeed, came here to post this. The original Wild ARMs has a decent amount of female characters, and not a single one of them is sexualized. They're also all strong women, not love interests, and not damsels in distress. Amazing.
I don't know if you mean under-dressed or attractive characters in general. I think you would be hard pressed to find any game not aimed towards kids that doesn't have any attractive characters at all.
If there is something good to be said about Japanese character designs, is that they actually try hard to feature attractive male characters as well. In contrast Western game companies seem to be deathly afraid of having a main character "too pretty," evoking awkward feelings in insecure teenage boys.
It seems that a male action hero in a Western game always has to have ridiculous muscles to be believable, but it's completely OK for female soldiers/adventurers to have stick figures with no muscle tone (Chloe from Uncharted 2, the women from the Batman games, for example).
Maybe it's partly because there are so many female character designers working in Japanese games and anime...
The point is you don't need a male character to be walking around with a huge crotch bulge to consider him "sexualized", because male sexualization places less emphasis on obvious (such as boobs) sex characteristics than female sexualization.
I'd like to add that a man walking around with a huge bulge would most likely just be amusing to most women, not arousing. I can't even remember a scene in a mainstream film where a male character is sexualised like this for women, unless there was a comedic element to it. (in a film aimed at gay men sure, but that' s a different topic entirely.)
Is this a sign that women are less aroused by visual imagery? Or are they just not used to being catered in this way? Who knows, but that's not really the issue here.
