@the-midnight-doe submitted:
Here we go again… Kojima posted a new concept art on his Twitter (left), which is apparently a female version of Ludens, the character featured in the Kojima Productions logo (right.) Can’t wait to hear about her tragic skin condition that requires her to wear literally half the armor of her male counterpart
Point and Clickbait totally called it two years ago, and none of us are surprised.
Given that he’s already over-used (which is to say, he used) the “she breathes through her skin” excuse, and, well, how most of Death Stranding’s promotion has gone thusfar: I’m pretty confident the explanation will 1. make no sense and 2. ensure we receive contradictory responses from his fans trying to defend it.
Of course, the first thing they always tell me is I don’t know enough about Kojima’s work so let’s look at some some of his fans are saying about the deep textual values of this complex piece:
– wincenworks
And let’s not forget that the experience of starting to understand Kojima’s genius ideas, including gratuitous definitely justified and not contrived female sexualization, takes only playing the whole game at least two times, preferably with complete familiarity of all his other work.
Two years later, @pointandclickbait still on point.
~Ozzie
edit: Since it caused some confusion: we don’t know for sure whether female Ludens is just a “fun” variation on Kojima Productions mascot or a future character concept for Death Standing.
It’s alleged she might be the latter, but either way both her design and the commentary about Kojima belong among topics we discuss on the blog.
Battlerite is a recent addition to the growing popular genre of “just fight people in multiplayer” games that continue to come forth with no end in sight. Given the starter line up in this game, I’m sure you’ll be shocked to discover a large portion of their tag on Tumblr is Rule34.
What’s interesting about Battlerite, though, is that it only released on 8 November 2017, it already has two characters added (both female).
The first was Destiny.
She was released with the first patch seemingly as some sort of afterthought that there may actually be people out there who wanted to play a female character who did not look like a child, was clearly recognizable as human, wasn’t in a hyper sexualized costume and appeared to turning up to the fight because was a warrior.
In December, they released Alysia… who looks kind of presentable from the waist up but has weird thigh highs. In her video she spends her time prancing and talking about being an artist. I guess they’re trying to find a magic mix of objectification and actual good design.
It kind of makes you wonder whether someone in particular told them that hardly anyone wants actual badass warrior women or whether they just worried a certain demographic wouldn’t check out the game on opening day unless they were being pandered to.
tl;dr: Not only do they appear to be copying Smite’s core gameplay, they’re also copying their strategy regarding attempting to have their feminist cookie and gratuitous cheesecake too.
– wincenworks
This game seems to go through some sort of visual identity crisis regarding female characters. A reader actually noted us that the white-haired lady, Jade, went through a “sexy” redesign some time ago:
@emissaryofwind submitted:
You already talked a bit about Battlerite’s Freya before, but I was looking at this character named Jade, and noticed this. On the left is her old design, notice how apart from her hairstyle everything is very practical. Low, chunky heels (I’ve been told 1" heels are better for your back than flat heels), a full-coverage coat and shirt, a mask to protect her from inhaling dust, etc.
On the right is her current design, complete with useless-to-dangerous mini armor plates, stiletto heels, boob window, shoulder windows, and a big hole in the back of the coat making it essentially useless.
It’s sad to see that such a good design has been replaced with a generic “sexy” design.
What a waste of a design that was both practical AND much more interesting visually (just compare the silhouette!). The new one could easily just come from some random shovelware web ad. She sticks out like a sore thumb, even next to other sexualized ladies, due to a slightly different (generic and overly detailed) art style.
Battlerite is in a desperate need of rehashing its art direction to something more consistent and not at all dependent on the creepy marketing guy.
~Ozzie
edit: Fixed link to Alysia’s video.
cantankerouskaputnik submitted:
Can’t believe nobody has submitted this guy yet – meet Warrior of the Rabbit from Juuni Taisen (official design). It’s a fun currently running anime, too bad they didn’t spice things up further by adding some reasonably-dressed women.
(Anyone looking up Juuni Taisen keep in mind that it’s a brutal battle royale-type series that should come with content warning for violence and gore)
Now THAT, unlike the monstrosity from Xenoblade Chronicles 2, is a sexy rabbit everyone was waiting for! Just an unironic male equivalent of the Playboy Bunny outfit and muscular masculine body (those thunder thighs!).
Indeed, too bad the creators just couldn’t stop but generically sexualize female characters :-/ Because pairing up violent subject matter with objectification is such a good and creative idea, right?
[left to right: Tiger, Monkey, Rooster, Boar]
I’m most disappointed by Monkey’s pantlessness and the shameless emphasis on Boar’s breasts. So close to decent designs, yet so far.
~Ozzie
At least one other character in the anime, the Warrior of the Rat, dons a lovely classic Battle Thong!
He also seems to have been designed through this method.
Though he would have been better off without all that bothersome black underclothing. Truly, a missed opportunity.
-Icy
ridingthewavesofstorms submitted:
From Xenoblade Chronicles 2 the character Tsuki, sadly designed by a woman: Risa Ebata. (Source.)
Judging by that last picture… is she related to Haydee?
Seriously though, a couple readers let us know about problems with female designs in Xenoblade Chronicles 2, especially this character, Dahlia/Tsuki.
And in all frankness, what i saw of her already made me legitimately fear doing any further research.
Her feet alone make me feel like retracting all the things I said about Fran’s stupid, stupid “I totally need high heels because bunny-person” feet… things I still stand by!
I recommend filtering the experience by reading this Dorkly article, which quotes quite a few good jokes and/or comments about the game’s problems with women characters.
~Ozzie
She has rabbit high heels??
-Icy
I’ve seen a few members of a key demographic claiming the image is PhotoShopped… strangely none of them can provide an image that disproves it… just other terrible images of her in different poses.
– wincenworks
(Source: https://www.youtube.com/)