279: Wussy RPG Girls

[ManInRed]

It certainly Eileen's prerogative to point out sexism in Japanese culture, and I do not intend to argue that. But to accuse JRPG's, the genre of games most aim towards female gamers as being the primary example of this, makes me think she has no idea what she is talking about.

The examples Eilleen gave were certainly the best matches to her arguments. Other than the idea that things have gotten better since the year 2000, since half the examples are to games made after that year. (Shadow Hearts came out in 2001, Tales of Symphonia came out in 2003, Wild Arms 4 came out in 2005.)

But the archetype Kabuki or Princess is not the norm for girl characters in JRPG's, and this is an unfair set of examples that are the acceptations. The common archetypes in JRPG's for the main female protagonist to be are either the Childhood Friend of the male protagonist or the secret Supreme Being. So let me offer some counter examples wider diversity of JRPG ladies that fail to meet Eileen's description.

Of course, any female character regardless of her characteristics can be view as sexist depending on what version of feminism you choose to judge them by. So I'll only aim to show examples lacking the traits Eileen claim were common place, which follow three rules:
1. Cannot be a princess.
2. Cannot act weak/submissive, especially compared to men.
3. Cannot get kidnapped.

Now, how to give a random series of counter examples? How about alphabetically by game or series title? Sounds fun. Okay, let's go:

Arc of the Lad - Delma, Lieza, Camellia
Breath of Fire - Deis, Momo
Chrono Trigger - Lucca, Ayla
Dragon Quest - Jessica
EarthBound - Hinawa
Final Fantasy - Faris, Tifa, Agrias, Meliadoul, Lulu, Rikku, etc.
Grandia - Millenia, Miranda
.Hack - BlackRose
Illusion of Gaia - Gaia, Lily
Jade Cacoon - Garai
Kingdom of Hearts - Mulan
Lunar - Ruby, Jean, Lemina
Mario RPG - Valentina
Persona - Maya, Ulala, Mitsuru, Chie
Quest 64 - Shannon
Rouge Galaxy - Kisala, Lilika, Johanna
Star Ocean - Remini, Nel, Opera, Precis, Chisato
Tales of Symphonia - Sheena
Unlimited Saga - Laura, Judy, Ruby
Valkyrie Profile - Jayle, Lenneth
Wild Arms - Cecilia, Virginia
Xenosaga - Shion, KOS-MOS, Myzuki

I certainly haven't named all of them, but I think that's enough to make my point. I admit I cannot think of any examples in "Other Life: Azure Dreams" and the "Y's" series. Obviously, "Zelda II: The Adventure of Link" fails with its leading lady. And there is no RPG beginning with 'N' that really counts as a JRPG.

Now, if you still believe JRPG's are proof of Japanese sexism despite the number of women who make and play these games, I challenge you to go make an even longer list of examples of female characters who don't fall into Kabuki archetype in WRPG or any other game genre. Because I'm pretty sure we'd have no problem finding a few dozen weak princesses in any type of American game.

And would it be any less sexist if we saw that no female characters were allowed to be royalty, act weak, or get kidnapped? Happens to males in JRPG's often enough.

 

[Sgt Pepper]

Let's see...

We have:
Selphie and Quistis (FF8)
Freya (FF9)
Lulu, Rikku and Paine (and arguably Yuna) from FF10/10-2
Aya Brea (Parasite Eve)
Feena (Grandia)
Millenia (Grandia II)

None of these fit the princess stereotype and are just some that come to mind.

 

[Siegreich]

the persona series has always had some very strong female leads, just look at Aigis or Mitsuru

 

[Tomo Stryker]

Great article Eileen, couldn't agree more. If there is anything that annoys me more than hypocrisy its wimpy characters sent on quests that wouldn't be given to Chuck Norris.

 

[Meeryn]

Retyping for clarity.

 

[Illyasviel]

Sigh, yet another journalist writing yet another article about feminism in games, as if they had just newly discovered The Disturbing Trend(tm).

Look, I hate to bash you since I don't know who you are, but you're behind the curve. This whole deal has been done to death, and quite honestly, I'm sick and tired of it. What's more, I'm sure I'm not the only one. Look, I get it. We get it. I don't need another article to remind me of this every other month.

For every single wussy JRPG girl you list almost anybody who has been gaming for the last five years can list a counterpart who is the exact opposite. Often times in the very same game ( Marle was kinda wussy, but Ayla kicked ass ). This is something you yourself seem aware of in the first place, which begs the question of "why write this article in the first place?" Reading further reveals a "history" of Japan, leading to the conclusion that you used the topic as a segue into an attack on Japan.

Briefly putting all this aside, why is this even so bad in the first place? Almost every single "journalist" who decides to "contribute" to this discourse, when asked this question, will say something like, "well, young people are impressionable and if they see female characters in a game being 'girly,' they might try to emulate these characters and be 'girly' themselves. But why is this so inherently evil to deserve this kind of relentless persecution? Nothing bad really comes of girls, for lack of better word, being "girly." I don't even particularly care if men are "girly." People are who they are, and seeing as they aren't evil or pitiful as you'd have me believe, what right do you have to judge them? I have a friend who likes pink, likes to cook, likes clothes and shoes, cries easily, the whole shebang. I remember her friends telling me that she once went to a club and not once the entire night, realized that guys were hitting on her! How's that for blithe innocence? What are you going to tell her? The person she is sucks? That she annoys you? Because going by this article, that's exactly what I would expect. By the way, she's not "emotionally stunted" and has a degree in computer science and engineering from a Tier 1 university. Oh, and right out of university, she moved far, far away from her home for her new job to a place where her ethnicity went from commonplace to nonexistent. She's a tough cookie.

If you want to argue the semantics of why certain things are "girly" and certain things "manly," that's a whole different story, and quite frankly, a better article. Than you'd be attacking the root of the problem, and I wouldn't have a problem. Instead, you cherry pick on an industry that is actually fairly progressive, and give an extremely one-sided, poorly researched "look" ( more like attack ) on a culture you don't entirely understand.

One, the Japanese do it to boys too. Look up shota. Sure you don't see shota in games so much but its in manga, anime, etc., and besides, given the controversy loli already creates, can you imagine the hell that would break loose if shota reached western shores?

Two, the west has its own long history of damsels in distress. Kabuki, on the other hand, is, as you have said, about tragedy and telling incredible stories. Which is more sexist?

Three, JRPGs have tons of awesome female heorines.

Four, and this is a big one, in nearly all situations where a female heroine is wussy, it contextually makes sense! Honestly, I don't expect people who are very young and / or generally brought up in very pampered conditions to know how to defend themselves. A hardened soldier ( that the rescuer often is )? A bit more.

Five, what about the possibility that gaming as a whole commanded a primarily male audience while in its infancy, and therefore had stories tailored to males?

Six, JRPG writers used tropes, archetypes and stereotypes. News flash! So does everybody else. Your very website even hosts for fun personality quizzes that divide people into these groupings. Maybe we should just stop using these archetypes. Than you'd be happy and everything would be marvelous again. Oh wait... archetypes are, and often arise from, shared characteristics of similar character types... Hmm...

One of my most favourite game characters of all time, Selvaria, is emotionally fragile and messed up. GOD, JRPGS SUCK!! Oh wait, except she was abducted by a fascist government and experimented on like an animal. I guess that would make a person emotionally fragile and messed up. It contextually makes sense!

Would it really make you that much more happy to have to rescue shota types all the time? Should we just entirely "rescuing people" from games to avoid offending anybody at all? Why this misguided attack on Japan? I don't know, you tell me. You sure offered a lot of complaints without any solutions. Or hey, maybe instead, let's write another article to incense anti-Japanese sentiment.

 

[theultimateend]

Where would you put Aeris and Tifa from Final Fantasy VII on the scale?

Yeah I was thinking about that.

Lulu was wise and had control of highly destructive magics, she provided great insights alongside other strong characters like...oh crap..what's the name of the guy with the gimped arm and the awesome glasses? Well those two.

Yuna had control of super powerful demigod like things that could rip the shit out of anything in her path. Tidus by contrast was a winy child whose only redeeming quality is that his father was at least interesting. (I so wished the game would surprise me and just murder him in the first half hour).

Then you have Tifa who was overwhelmingly powerful in physical combat, seemed to be strong willed and intelligent.

Aeris whose connection with the planet around her was unparalleled by basically anyone that wasn't a fallen god or powerful enough to drop an entire meteor on the planet. Her sacrifice no more "weak" than that of Jesus, who I don't quite relate with, but if that was a sign of weakness in her then there is an entire faith that probably has a bone to pick with the idea.

Garnet was quite literally a princess who had to come to terms with how she was sheltered and with the essence of who she was, of the importance of the things that comprise her. She was given a task that leaves most people historically in her position to live utterly bland and shallow lives.

Ashe came across to me as another literal princess who had grand dreams for her people and wished to make sweeping (and positive) changes. She constantly risks certain death, largely with strangers for whom she trusts (a trait missed by many in the modern world), and assuming you complete the game she succeeds.

Fran is an intelligent, agile female who has great insight (as far as any insight in Final Fantasy games goes) and again a strong connection to the world around her. She is a source of much of my favorite quotes in 12, alongside Balthier.

Are many of the women in these games drawn dainty and feminine? Yes. I imagine this is more to tap into the inherent good feelings of seeing attractive people that most people get. It's easy and it is cheap. You could make every character in every game look like the Queen from Final Fantasy 9 and that wouldn't add any artistic merit, well perhaps it would, but it wouldn't change the stories any. It would merely remove an easy good feeling factory.

The men of many JRPG's are fairly cliche, their characters are no less riddled with issues of impossible form and emotional frailty that any of the above females at times show. The Japanese, as far as games and anime is concerned (and as far as I've experienced) are very good at creating the illusion of deep philosophical meaning but under scrutiny it falls to tatters.

Am I any better? Oh good god no, but I'm also a terrible surgeon (trust me) but I can still criticize one that leaves their watch inside of a patient.

The issue I have with barbie syndrome, the nitpicking of all the social expectations riddled within female characters is that it is harmonized (rather nastily) with the ken syndrome.

I can think of few titles that do not feature an impossible figure, male or female, with very strong and obvious socially expected gender rolling. It's not, I think, that people are singling out women. It is not that all game designers are just masturbating (perhaps both literally and metaphorically) as they make their way through the story.

I think it's a matter moreso of people expecting too much from people who are at their core amateurs at what they do. Just a quick digression, WoW makes 100 million dollars a month but has bugs in it that are easily replicated and exist for years. They are a massive company but they suffer from the same quality issues of many small indie orders.

The thing is we look at indie productions as if they are young and fresh, and the AAA titles as if they are old and educated. But the teams working on these projects are not decendents of great writers, there are no disciples of Stephen King or Tolkein or Dickens working feverishly within the buildings that pump out these titles. They are writers, and their writing is entertaining, but it is overall not nearly good enough to make deep underlying points with.

The women can many times be crappy characters because the people writing the stories are poor at what they do (not forever, just at the time they made that game at the least). The >men< in those stories were equally shitty, but we were not looking for evidence of terribly written male stereotypes, that doesn't get website views and that doesn't fit well with the western fetish for confirmation bias.

I do think that women get targeted in some forms of entertainment, and when they do get targeted it is horrible and relentless. But I'm not so sure that JRPG's (or at least final fantasy) are the major proponents of anti-women movements. Instead I think they just suffer from the same issue I've seen in about three dozen anime's I've watched along side friends (by being there, not actively searching for them myself).

You get great lines like "Women are the clouds, Men are the Sea." For about 10 seconds you think it is a profound statement because of the sincerity of the character and the background music meant to support that thought, then after it settles and you think about it for 10 seconds in silence you realize they are using mad libs for philosophy.

Crap...I lost myself. The TL;DR to this nonsense is that I think it's more that many people hire poor writers for their games and not that games are out to make women look like pansies (moreover I've played tons of games, even JRPGS, where the women are no more nor less ridiculous than the men).

Selphie and Quistis (FF8)
Freya (FF9)

I fail hard for forgetting those three. (Quistis especially).

 

[Illyasviel]

Obviously, the majority of people who buy RPGs and such are men and throughout history men seem to have accomplished the most. Why would you expect Japanese games to portray women as equal or superior to men when they're not treated as such in the Japanese society?

Bad argument mang.

Counter argument is as follows: the history of humankind is pretty much, up until perhaps fifty years ago, the history of gender inequality. In many places it still is. Even among first world nations, there are still those who would contend that gender inequalities still exist. If women had the same freedoms back then as they do now or if there were total gender equality now, who knows what women could've accomplished compared to men.

Also, moar Japan bashing please. If this was the intent of your article Eileen Stahl, congratulations. Mission accomplished.

 

[Illyasviel]

Oops, second part wasn't directed particularly at you. Was reading some of the earlier comments in this thread and there's a lot of Japan bashing going about. My bad, I should've been more clear.

Its relevant because the only reason why things have turned out as they have is precisely because of the systems of gender inequality that were in place. That said, if you had said something like, those systems were probably put in place for good reason ( e.g. maybe male cavemen were way better hunters or something ) and are now outdated, I would've been like "fair enough."

 

[tobyornottoby]

Another problem to this argument that keeps coming up is Alyx Vance. I admit I am not a fan of Half-Life, but I fail to see what is so great about her.

She's neither a Peach or a Lara. She's a balanced person. She shouldn't be all that great or special, the problem is there's so little of that in gaming.

 

[vanthebaron]

thats their culture, but you also have to look at the tomboys (tifa from FF7 and fang from FF13 to name 2) the mold is cracked but will song break.

 

[MelasZepheos_v1legacy]

An FFVII where Cloud spent the whole game suckerpunching Barret would be the most awesome thing devised by man. (or woman)

Now that that's out of the way, I do think it's funny that the Final Fantasy series, perhaps the 'go-to' series for pointing out the flaws in jRPGs, hasn't really featured completely helpless love interests in a while. A case could be made for Rinoa but really, Squall's the whiny ***** in that game, and Garnett's temporary descent into mutism is caused by the death of her mother and, oh yeah, the total annihilation of her entire kingdom. I really don't blame the girl her moment of weakness.

But of course, wussy heroines are a problem of the jRPG genre, but then again, it's not like Western games can boast superiority of gaming because of that one factor.

Every genre has its foibles I guess, and the extent to which you can stand them will determine your liking for certain genres.

 

[Fearzone]

Um... so don't buy games that you don't like?

 

[Buchichu]

fortunately to counter this issue, most of the male "heroes" of JRPGs are wussy little girly-boys more feminine than their female counterparts in regular RPG games, so...

 

[WarpCode]

I will take the wussy heroine girls over the feminine male heroes any day.