We are also do not live in a world in which we see all kind of men represented in video games or media in general. But also you make one HUGE error. Because in Japanese media except porn of course you will find for each strong or great male character a strong and great female character. Men are getting as much objectified and sexualized in Japanese media as women do. And if you do not see this in games you will see in in TV and movies or music for example. In Anime as well it is very even in this regard. Every form of media is focused on the people who buy the most so if JRPGs have a strong male lead instead of a strong female lead than it is because these are the people who buy them. Japanese players are also way less problematic in terms of playing a female character as a male.

Also another difference. Japanese people love cliche and tropes. They try not to fight against them like western people more and more do but instead they focus on it. Video games and Anime for example are mostly for young people and teens and for these they will include morals and rolemodels. For example no matter how sexualized a shounen anime/manga is they will always include morals and respect towards women or better all people.

Japanese media is much more liberal in these aspects and mostly because people are not getting easily offended by anything. They either like or hate a character but they will almost never be offended by one no matter how they are represented. And that leads to way more freedom in the stuff they are doing.

As always, I can't help but wonder how many of the people most vocally against this game:

• Are women
• Are Japanese
• Have a background in art history
• Have gone beyond Sociology 101 in college

@starvinggamer: Objectification of women is so desirable! Granted it pretty much exists anywhere and everywhere along with straight up misogyny and inequality, but decrying it isn't exactly the worst thing.

Eh, I honestly don't see what's so "wrong" about this game. I loved Muramasa, and I'm getting this one on day 1 for sure. As for the huge boobs thing, some of us have big sweater puppies, so what? It's not sexist at all. People just need to find something to bitch about to feel better about themselves. It's sad.

This game looks ridiculous.

@megasheep: Ridiculously fun and awesome, you mean.

And somehow that is the fault of the the people making this game, or the people designing Street Fighter characters, or the artists on a thousand other games that would meet with your disapproval? It seems to me that people have fallen into burning in effigy games with artstyles that they don't like because it's so much more difficult to identify a figurehead for "those developers who aren't making games which depict their female characters in a manner I'd be comfortable with." There is no obvious culprit on that side of the argument so people have to bitch and bitch and bitch about things that they don't like and have no interest in.

I'm not a women or Japanese. But I do have background in art history, and I have zero problems with this game. In fact it's blowing my mind, how weird the game industry is becoming about focusing on the most random elements of games these days and calling them sexist. I mean Lara Crofts painful moans from the most recent Tomb Raider game were misconstrued as sexist.

I mean even just within a decade ago, Odin Sphere and Muramasa, both containing female characters with big breasts were not even looked at as being strange. There were characters in those games with big breasts that were balanced out with characters with regular sized breasts, just as you can see in Dragon's Crown. Yet now, we've entered some weird age where people (mostly men) feel the need to white night on the internet and make a big deal out of nothing.

@liquidprince: That's the one thing thatst really disturbed me is people trying to sexualize Lara's moans. Never once did that thought ever thought cross my mind. The woman is hurt she is going to moan and yell Im not sure why we need to attach sex to that?

@liquidprince: It's really not the game industry that's doing these things, it's more all these "feminist" groups that do nothing but complain about a hobby in which they have no part, except only to bitch about trivial things in said games. Apparently, they bitch loud enough for game companies to listen and bend over backwards for them, when all of us that have been loyal to them for many years, many of us since the NES-Master System days, are put on the back burner and ignored, just to please this tiny group of people that may or may not even play video games.

@demoskinos: they tried to sexualize Lara's death scenes. Because men obviously love when women are suffering.

I don't really understand how getting bloodily impaled in the gut lends itself to any type of sexualization.

@liquidprince: yu are watching the wrong movies then. Or better the right ones^^

I was at a showing of this game in Europe. Heard exactly 0 complain about "sexualise" character design. Went to E3 Dragon Crown booth, heard no less than a five minutes rant of some guy complaining about the design, meanwhile I was talking to this nice lady playing in front of me. She loved it because she was an art major and she love "moving painting".

Go figure.

This so completely misses the point, I'm not even going to bother. Sweet zombie jesus.

@scotto: Hey, if crying about the artwork in budget 2D brawlers is "on point" then it's pretty much over for the "sexism in the games industry" argument. It's unfortunate that women in the videogames industry have been consigned to their fate by their loudest supporters, who would rather spend their energy decrying game assets and ridiculous plastic tchotchkes than making any sort of effort to address concerns about the work environment and industry culture which allows for the debasement of female staff and the dismissal of their opinions and efforts - but carry on fighting the good fight, I guess.

#1reasonwhy was about oppressive cartoon tits, right? It must have been, it must have been.

Even as I typed it, I knew you were gonna make a comment like that XD

At the end of the day, regardless of what sexist or misogynistic or whatever claims people may have about this game, the most important thing is how the art style looks to you. I just think it looks dumb. If you think it's awesome, that's great.

I think people need to stop being prudes.

What the hell is even going on in this thread anymore.

@hailinel: Whats even going on inside your MIND maaaaaaan?

@jakob187: I like to think it isn't people being total prudes, it's more that they just want attention, which is why they're making a huge deal about such a non-issue. At least, that's how I see it. Games with half-naked and sometimes completely naked women have been around forever, and just now people are complaining about it? It seems a bit suspicious to me.

@liquidprince: If you search there is also a lot of pron with women "suffering" but even that is not really misogynistic since also women having rape and torture sex fantasies. That is why this topic is so complicated. You can not put any person into a certain role. People like and hate different things there should be no norm. You can be offended sure but that does not mean you have the right to abolish it. Be offended do not buy or support it and move on.

As long people do not forcefully suffering everything should be fair game.

I like the little reductio ad absurdum two-step you try to pull here, despite not having the faintest clue as to whether I've ever also spoken out about the problems women in the games industry face (I have). Just another cathartic screed of baseless assertions, that still continues to miss the point.

I'd rather not search for women suffering and judging misogynistic tendencies in porn is a whole other discussion. But the idea of the rape fantasy in porn is still different from seeing Lara clear impaled through the throat or gut. There is no sexualization in that scene. At least there shouldn't be in a healthy persons mind. It's just a gruesome death.

Woah, dude, like... woooahhhh... Are you all seeing what I'm seeeeing right now? ԅ(⊙_☉)ゞ

@liquidprince: I agree but these people made it to be They called it together with the Hitman Trailer back than torture porn which is stuff like Cannibal Holocaust and other exploitation movies which combine sex and violence like Hardgore for example.

These claims are just ridiculous in my opinion.

Only it is, at least on the enthusiast press side of the industry. It's gotten to the point where you can't swing a stick without hitting an article on a major gaming site decrying the mistreatment of women. These aren't fringe feminist groups, they're popular games writers latching on to the slightest hint of sexism and misogyny, often times without making the slightest effort to understand the context or even the facts.

It doesn't matter if it's click-bait or if they like basking in the illusion of moral supremacy. These articles invariably get read and go on to inform the opinions of thousands, if not millions, of young gamers, which in turn leads to clusterfucks like this thread.

It's fucking fustrating.

People tried to literally sexualize everything about that game. Complaints such as "well how come she didn't take a jacket off one of the dead bodies before climbing the radio tower in the snow!" especially highlighted how grasping the arguments for sexism were - because remember how in the beginning of Uncharted 2, Drake puts on a jacket as he gets off the train into the waist high snow?

As been said many times before - if you want to fight sexism then do so but understand that it is happening on the office level where certain women might be denied higher wages despite their qualifications. The fight is not about how large someones breasts are in a video game.

@starvinggamer: That is why people are getting so annoyed about it. These people kill a worthwhile discussion with stupid bait articles and attacks.

Many clicks will be had by all the Schreiers of the internet for long after release. Blog posts about how someone's ashamed to play it in public and scrying all sorts of meanings from the initial sales numbers. Hopefully Vanillaware gets their share of the dough so they don't go under just yet.

I would likely buy it on Vita.

It's not sexist, just a bit perverted.

Eh, sex sells. I'm sure plenty of dudes (and a few women) are buying it solely for the tits, and there's no problem with that, Vanillaware is one of the very few devs that deserve the sales. I myself am getting it, mostly because I loved Muramasa, but there's also that curiosity about those bazooms.

Who's sexist the person who drew the art or you for suggesting that the "ladies" are the only ones with hyper-extreme proportions?

@killdeer: Come on now! There's no sustained nontraversy for this type of opinion and for Kotaku articles if we don't ignore reality and only push forward this ignorant crap. :D