Do many Westerners really dislike Japanese games for such shallow reasons as "anime"?

[Tony2077]

Wow 10 pages and the best people can come up with is "if you dislike jrpgs you're a RACIST".

Ladies and gentlemen of this reality......

I present to you.....

human beings.

Truly remarkable specimens.

the only species where survival of the fittest no longer applies.

 

[Dogstile]

Are we not allowed to have preferences in visual aesthetics?

To the point of refusing them outright? Does gameplay not matter?

If I can't stand to look at the game for more than 10 minutes at a time, how in the hell can I be expected to play it?

 

[Hattingston]

But I certainly play a lot of non-anime games, and I think it should be considered pretty normal to play games if they have anime characters. If I only played games with anime characters, which I don't, you'd think me pretty closed minded and superficial, right? Then there's no reason to consider someone who refuses to play games based upon anime designs any less superficial, is there?\

The main difference is that it's one aesthetic vs every other aesthetic. Let's say I eat exclusively apples. That makes me have a pretty limited diet, yes? But what if I don't like apples? I can like literally every other type of food, steak, (non-apple) pie, fish, vegetables, etc.
Basically, anime exclusivity or exclusively non-anime is like a domain of x=1 vs x!=1, in the former, there is only one correct value for x, whereas in the latter, there is an infinite amount of values that are included.
So no, it is not as close minded or shallow to not play games with anime aesthetics as it is to only play games with anime aesthetics.

 

[Hagi]

But I certainly play a lot of non-anime games, and I think it should be considered pretty normal to play games if they have anime characters. If I only played games with anime characters, which I don't, you'd think me pretty closed minded and superficial, right? Then there's no reason to consider someone who refuses to play games based upon anime designs any less superficial, is there?

Hi,

one of the primary reasons I play games is immersion. I enjoy forgetting the outside world for a while and just letting this amazing fantasy universe I see on my screen capture me. Escapism basically, which is incidentally how I found this website.

A major component of that immersion is aesthetics. The way things look is a major component of that immersion. And different people have vastly different preferences in what makes or breaks their immersion, it's a fragile thing.

A dark and gritty aesthetic for me personally is ideal for immersion. It's not better than any other aesthetic, but it just works for me. A more stylised aesthetic is less than ideal, but I can work with it. An anime aesthetic however I have trouble with. It's not a bad aesthetic by any means, it's just one I find myself unable to achieve a good sense of immersion in.

You may not play games for a sense of immersion. Or you may be able to achieve that immersion no matter what the aesthetic. But certainly you're not going to call someone shallow for not playing games they have trouble immersing themselves in?

 

[Cridhe]

I'm just not really a fan of the anime/Japanese art of story-telling. I love fighting games, Zelda and Metroid games and such. Save the JRPGs though... I don't understand how anyone can take the Tales or Persona games seriously. The somber and almost text-book method of the writing and characterization just got old for me about 10 years ago.

Except Final Fantasy 6, I love me some Final Fantasy 6.

 

[370999]

Wow 10 pages and the best people can come up with is "if you dislike jrpgs you're a RACIST".

Ladies and gentlemen of this reality......

I present to you.....

human beings.

Truly remarkable specimens.

What's funny is that JRPGs are not the sole output of japan, cough mario/Zelda/Resident evil/etc cough

 

[Jesse Billingsley]

I'm indifferent, I typically think people who say "It's to anime" just don't want to put in the time and effort into understanding the learning curve that some of those games require. For me, the only JRPG I have ever really played was Mabinogi which was fun for awhile, but the controls were confusing and there wasn't a whole lot of interaction with your environment.

 

[wiggler]

I've played Japanese games I've liked...Zelda, Mario games...I think Okami was Japanese?

But yeah, generally I steer clear. I'm sorry but anime astetics do effect the game for me a great deal, and I dont think it's at all shallow to stay away from something you dont like the look of. I find the style difficult to relate to, the characters vapid and uninteresting, the colours garish. I dont mind other people liking JRPGS and there are some good Japanese games of course, but most of the time I prefer to get Western made games, I just like the look and style of them more, sorry. Generall, if it has an anmie style I'm instantly uninterested in a game, unless its doing something really special, or has some awesome new feature, but none of them do.

 

[Doopliss64]

I personally don't like that art style. And yes, gameplay trumps graphics, but it doesn't help that most Japanese games are either JRPGs (which I find to be one of the most stagnant and unispired genres), fighting games (same applies) or ridiculous action games (Asura's Wrath/Bayonnetta, for example, which feature the anime aesthetic so strongly as to make it somewhat unnapealing for the average "western" gamer).

So no, not liking "anime" games does not make you shallow. However, I can understand your frustration with people totally disregarding games because of the art style. Though I will never enjoy them, I still accept many Japanese games as good and fully understand why people play them. Just last year I played and loved Vanquish despite its aesthetic, so there's that.

 

[witness51]

It's the voices that get to me. And the phrases. Tales of Vesperia was hard to finish.

 

[kinapuffar]

So what you're saying is that you're a racist?

So his preference for Western Developers over Japanese Developers makes him racist?

What if you had a preference for cars made in Germany over cars made in Italy? Are you now racist against Italians, or are you allowed to have a preference in style?

Do please go on.

No, his refusal to look at anything made by Japanese Developers, and assuming that Westerners can take anything Japanese and make it better than they can, is racist.
Preferring western games is not the same as claiming any Japanese game, remade by a western developer will be substantially better than the original.
Saying something like that, is saying that Japanese developers are worse at developing games by the virtue of them being Japanese. And diminishing someone for their ethnicity is racist.

It's a well established fact that Western developers are doing significantly better than Japanese developers. While claiming ANY Western developer can make superior games is a generalization, it is not entirely inaccurate.

Now to the real issue at hand. I'm sorry, claiming a preference for Western games over Japanese games is racist? LOLWUT? This is pulling the race card at its finest. Because Japanese people are of a different ethnicity, than anyone who doesn't like their products is a racist? This falsity flies in the face of reason and logical thinking. People like you only serve to diminish actual racism by using the word to describe anyone with a different opinion. I've only read about the worst of this kind of weaboo scum from second-hand sources, but to see one in action is just disgusting and offensive.

Now go away and only come back when you have thoroughly rethought your worldview.

What a load of bullshit.
It's a well established fact that Japanese developers (read: Nintendo) are doing significantly better than anyone else.
And NOWHERE did he state that he simply PREFERRED western games. He stated outright that Japanese developers aren't as good as Western developers.

And no, you're not racist because you dislike a product. You're racist if you dislike it BECAUSE it's Japanese, and NOT simply because you think it's a shitty game.
To put it simply: If you take two games, one by a Japanese developer, and one by a Western developer, which are otherwise identical, and you claim the Japanese one is inferior, then you are a fucking racist. It's just that simple.
Personally I am more fond of western games myself, but unlike him, and what I can only assume includes you too. I don't judge games based on where they're from, or who made them. I judge them based on their gameplay.
It's a simple concept: You do not judge the worth, or capability of any human being based on where they were born.

There are a lot of bad Japanese games, but there are a shit-ton of bad Western games as well. You can't label something as bad just because it's Japanese. If a Japanese game is shit. then the game is shit because it had a shit developer, it has absolutely nothing to do with whether or not it's from Japan.
I'll ignore the weeaboo comment, and assume you're at least a somewhat intelligent human being, who was just overreacting, and doesn't actually go straight to namecalling and pulling opinions out of your ass and posing them as fact whenever you read something you disagree with.
Because as we both know, trying to label me as a weeaboo and disregarding my opinions simply because they don't conform to your own, is the same as the Republicans labeling anyone disagreeing with them as Anti-American, or someone claiming someone else is gay because they support gay people's right to get married.
You have no idea what my opinions of Japan are, so you are in no position to be making such baseless accusations.

 

[LilithSlave]

Maybe I shouldn't be reviving this thread, since the last it was posted in was the 25th. But I had to give this thread a break for a few days. And I wasn't intending to never post in it again. Though I must say, it'll only be if this thread actually gets revived that I'll actually go about quoting every little poster. Not a lot of it would be relevant, and believe me, you wouldn't want that huge wall of text.

What I can summarize so far about this thread is that I was RIGHT to begin with. Right in what has gotten me kicked out and banned. I always try to learn from my experiences, and what I felt from that was exactly what the called me. Shallow, bigoted, and stupid. And I tried to change, at least keep up appearances differently.

But now that opinion I internalized isn't hold up. Apparently this community holds the exact opposite opinion. And I'm unlearning an opinion, twice. And now I'm trying to learn from both of these two conflicting opinions put together, and it's not easy and a bit confusing. Best I can take out of it, is that said anime site has bad mods with holier than though attitude towards taste, and are hurting an otherwise good anime site. And that I should not try to be more "open minded" for the sake of it, and I have every right to vocalize my tastes. And I probably should not hold back on acting on or vocalizing my true feelings in the future. I worry that the consequences for my actions will continue to rise, though.

But if it's normal and not shallow and okay to avoid games altogether because of "cutesy" or "anime" aesthetics, it SURE AS HELL is not shallow and stupid and bigoted for me to prefer such games with anime, cute, or Asian/Japanese aesthetics. And I never should have been ashamed or made to feel ashamed for my tastes and preferences.

That still leaves the fact of the thread that I'm challenging whether Japanese developers should cater to people who hate anime or Japan or Asia or aesthetics from those countries. Whether the majority of Westerners feel that way, or whatever. You can hate anime if you like, I'll think your taste is utterly horrible and gross and have very little in common with you as a human being. Considering cute stuff is so much a part of my life it's almost religious, it's a big hobby of mine, and a big part of why I like media, secretly or not. You should not be telling people to stop making games like that, just because they don't cater to your tastes. But that will stop games from being made that cater to mine. And the number that would be ignored, I believe would be millions.

Whether it's shallow to like or dislike what or whatever, I will not stand for my tastes being marginalized.