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

[Kahunaburger]

Remember for example that the Japanese pretty much slaughtered the entire Samurai aristocricy for being a bunch of oppressive douchebags, all of thise "we worship our honorable Samurai forefathers" stuff is kind of insane when you look at the actual facts.

See also: most fantasies in a pseudo medieval setting anywhere. Hardly unique to Japan.

I was reading some stuff through the years about how Western pop culture pretty much defined Japan, and how for example Westerns the westerns of John Ford pretty much birthed inspired the entire Samurai film genere Yojimbo and even changed perceptions of the Samurai and how they were presented in history. which in turn was highly influential in the Western and Samurai genres, alongside Akira Kurosawa's other films.

Fixed.

Not really fixed, I stand behind the original statements as I wrote them.

I like how nothing in the rambling wall of text below actually does anything to back up your original statements.

]

Because I wasn't trying to. My statement stand on their own to the point where I feel no need to back them up any further.

Other than the fact that one is factually incorrect and the other is non-unique, you mean?

I've gotten to the point where I feel no real need to jump through hoops every time someone doesn't like something I point out. It was more of an expansion for those who were interested, rather than a justification. I'm not even really trying to engage in an arguement .

You can either accept the voice of decades of experience, or not. It's no skin off my back either way. In some threads people don't actually want the answers to the questions posed, and nothing I say is going to change that.

Haha, I wasn't aware that I was in the presence of the Voice of Decades of Experience. Tell me, o Voice of Decades of Experience, do you have any factual data to back your assertions up, or did you pull them out of the Behind of Decades of Experience?

 

[SuperSuperSuperGuy]

To me Japanese games are lifeless with no energy or spark. they are just way too organised in dialog with monotone voices and homogenized game play. There is also the fact there is no variation or variety in Japanese design looks.

You know, that's funny. That's pretty much what I would say about western games. Not that they're bad or that anyone's wrong for liking them. I just prefer wackier, brighter-coloured character design.

You know what? This whole thing is a matter of aesthetic preference. Not liking something because of it's art style is alright. However, saying that something that has a certain style has no redeeming qualities and that no one should like it because of said art style is very shallow. I, personally, happen to favour highly stylized, cartoony, creative and consistent designs. Tales games, Okami, Wind Waker, Disgaea, Touhou... All quite nice. Well, the portraits in Touhou aren't very good on account of the fact that the guy who makes 'em has poor drawing skills, but the designs are good. Final Fantasy X, on the other hand, was a disaster. Outfits were unnecessarily complicated and abso-frickin'-lutely ridiculous. The art design was rather schizophrenic, as well; look at Lulu, then look at Tidus, then look at Yuna, Auron, Kimahri, and so on, then tell me that they belong together based on design alone. Hell, even The World Ends With You had consistency with art direction and the clothes in it were based off of real-life Shibuya fashions.

I'm not biased against western games, just the whole gritty, brown, western aesthetic. I love Team Fortress 2 because of how stylized it is, while I hate the graphics games like CoD, Gears of War and Dragon Age. Mass Effect is a peculiar case, though; I don't like it so much as I like the idea of it, with all of the alien races and such. There's little vibrancy to it, though.

Also:

Why do I feel like people keep missing the point of this scene? Not that I LIKE it or anything, in fact I found the dialogue for most of the game really awful, but I always get the feeling that the laughing here is intentionally bad.

 

[Coldster]

In fact, yes. I do. The art style does not appeal to me at all and it makes the game very hard to be immersed into. As we all know, many Japanese games are known for their good story telling and techniques specifically designed to make people immersed. I can't get into Persona 3 or 4, Katawa Shoujo, and a few other highly rated Japanese games with the anime art style. However, there are a few exceptions (as with everything):

Harvest Moon: Its a Wonderful Life was a game I saw my friend playing right around the time I started not to like anime such as Inyuasha and Naruto which I had previously watched. So it was interesting for me to actually love watching my friend show me how the game is played etc. I bought it for myself, played it for a whole summer, and loved every second of it.

Kingdom Hearts 2 is one of my favourite games of all time. Ironically, one of the reasons for this is the artstyle which is so familiar to the games I mentioned above that I did not enjoy. I really don't know how to explain it, but I was easily able to look past it to see how great the game was.

I don't know what to make of this, but I'm fairly sure its just because I don't enjoy all the characters looking like they belong in a hentai comic.

P.S. I got a feeling I'm going to get quoted by someone with no empathy and they will say something along the lines of: "Well I bet its only because you play FPSs and western RPGs!".

That is not the case, I grew up on Nintendo with the Gameboy Colour, Advance, SP, DS, Gamecube, and even the Wii. It is true that I own a PS2 as well as a Xbox 360, but that's not the only thing that's ever influenced what I play.

 

[I-Protest-I]

Sickeningly overpowered teenager who is stick thin with a ridiculous hair cut, too many cut-scenes, poor controls and terrible voice acting. These are my reasons for not liking SOME of the games they put out. There are always exceptions and any good game is still a good game, not because of which country it originated from but just from how good a game is.

 

[OrpheusTelos]

IF that is their reasoning, then they are idiots. Simple.

 

[BathorysGraveland]

Games generally take up a large amount of time, anywhere from 15-60 or so hours. That is a long time to look at something that visually disgusts you. It would be like watching a 20 hour-long movie loaded with absolutely terrible CGI - the story might be great, but who the fuck would sit through the CGI to witness it?

 

[tzimize]

So to sum this up if we don't like the same art style as you...

People can like whatever the heck they like.

I'm not as fond of the dark and gritty art style, but it hasn't prevented me from playing a long list of video games that look like that.

If someone said they didn't want to play a game because it was wasn't very Japanese aesthetically and cultural, most people would call them shallow, bigoted, and with a retarded prejudice against non-Japanese games. Who cares about stupid crap completely unrelated to gameplay. But that's exactly the sort of thing I'm starting to hear argued towards Japanese developers over and over.

That "Westerners don't want to play that anime crap, so stop making it." If Westerners don't want to play that, then I don't think that Japan should worry about the Western audience anymore.

Well...the art style is starting to bother me. It didnt before, but it does now. Afaik japanese rpg games are tailor made towards the big cosplay scene, and as such their characters look...well...silly. Imo.

Ignoring that, its been a long time since I've enjoyed anything japanese. I've played Breath of fire, chrono trigger, chrono cross, final fantasies, and enjoyed the hell out of most of them. But the latest FF was the last nail in the coffin for me (FF13). Ignoring the fact that the characters looks like people teared straight from a d-rank top model rip off, the story is uninteresting, the gameplay is MEH and the characters themselves make me want to murder someone.

Seriously, there was not ONE single character I liked in FF13. Not one. I had a brief fling with that dark haired wossname, mostly because she treated the rest of the boneheads like shit for a little while, but then I started hating her too. It is QUITE a feat for a game to make me hate EVERYONE in it. It took the game around 10 minutes to make me start wishing for the immediate and violent death of any character I controlled.

Its quite a feat, its just in the wrong end of the scale.

 

[GartarkMusik]

Different people have different tastes, it's really as simple as that. But to give some perspective, the main reason that JRPGs aren't my cup of tea is that they tend to have a very large number of plot points all interacting with each other at seemingly the same time. It's not that I can't keep track of all of it, it's mainly the fact that to me, it just doesn't feel focused. Plus, as far as characters go, it isn't the art design that gets me, (anime art can be incredibly beautiful, in my opinion) it's the personalities. They seem so shallow and one-dimensional, whereas I prefer more 'human' characters with realistic flaws. (if there are JRPGs out there with well-developed characters, please name me some!) Again, this is only (ONLY) me, and there are certainly others out there who will disagree and take offense to what I'm saying here, but this is what I think, honest and true. I'll sign off here, and I do hope I've shed some light as to why some do not find the JRPG genre pleasing.

 

[Pegghead]

I think it's less about disliking the aesthetics of anime (as well as the androgny and such) and more just passing off characters from Japanese games whose designs are so stereotypical and over the top that (rather ironically) they become as samey as characters from any standard Western space-marines game.

Obviously not all characters in Japanese games with anime aesthetics have this problem of being over-designed and stereotypical (an example being the unreadable robo-clowns of Lost Oddysey), with characters like Cloud Strife being instantly recognisable and the designs of the characters in Valkyria Chronicles being an instantly readable mix of medieval knight and world war 2 soldier (with nery a flamboyant haircut in sight).

 

[Kahunaburger]

I like how nothing in the rambling wall of text below actually does anything to back up your original statements.

Then may I call you out on the fact that

1: Nothing you wrote in this thread is backed up by any source or argument or statenment of yours and
2: You fail to adress people calling out on your mistakes.

You may, as long as you're a bit more specific. May I inquire which of my posts is making you mad?

 

[DeMorquist]

Im pretty sure its far deeper then "looks like anime"...

Seems like a jump to conclusion IMO...when I can think of several reasons why Westerners (why does this word feel off?) dont enjoy Japanese games...

 

[Kahunaburger]

You may, as long as you're a bit more specific. May I inquire which of my posts is making you mad?

Well, mostly the one I and several others adressed. The character design thing and that you bring up one design that was also called out for its... "idiocy" from people who prefer western games (Gears of War Fridges) when there is a lot more realistic designs in popular games (and even abstract) than those.

Yes, there are in fact realistic body types in western games. The point is more that people compaining about male characters looking effeminate in Japanese games seem to (at least as far as bodies are concerned - faces and clothes are a different, subjective, and culturally-based story) be unclear re: with what an athletic male human body looks like. In terms of build, your average male Olympian is much more likely to resemble Cloud than he is Marcus Fenix.

"IMO, the "anime faces" (and faces based on 2-D animation in general) are still probably ahead of most 3-D face modelling as a system for conveying character expression in a way that is feasible for significant use in a game with a large amount of character expressions."

For example. One could argue how "anime faces" convey more emotion / expression if in most cases they lack any details and the only thing capable of doing so are lips and eyes. In gaming (western ones) I remember first and quite good examples of that being represent in HL 2, since then 3d modeling went a long way. And may I remind you of L.A. Noire? I have yet to see a game where facial expression goes into that amount of detail.

I don't recall characters exhibiting much depth in terms of facial expressions in HL2, and it hasn't seemed to have improved much since then. Take Mass Effect games, or Witcher games. Posture has, on the other hand, improved, and has taken up much of the slack for faces. L.A. Noire was better, although several players complained of uncanny valley-ness and faces not fitting bodies. Also, I doubt your average game development team has time or money to mo-cap an actor's face for every line of dialogue in the game to the extent that was done in L.A. Noire.

So in other words, photorealism is still a long way off. Stylized faces, on the other hand, are as human as the animators have time and effort to make them. And much cheaper.

 

[SomeBrianDude]

I don't see that reason as shallow, not even in the slightest. What they're essentially saying is that they don't like the aesthetic of the game. I can't remember the last time I spent 30+ hours willingly staring at something that wasn't aesthetically pleasing to me.

 

[Samsont]

Seems like a jump to conclusion IMO...when I can think of several reasons why Westerners (why does this word feel off?)

It's because it seems unnatural for you since (Now this is just a guess) you are a "Westerner" yourself, you would most likely, to put it straight, NEVER actually hear this word used when in your daily life. And it's a term that you wouldn't use on yourself, you would probably use a word like American (Or Canadian in my case). And because of this, it seems wrong, unnatural. Hopefully that clears it up for you.

I dislike japanese games in general, I said general so that means most of the mainstream ones. But not for their design choices, I like the anime style, but only when it's used well to make the characters stylized or emphasize their qualities while not being cartoonish. What I dislike is that the majority of Japanese games use this style for no real reason. I'd go on about the other reasons I don't like them (In general, there are Japanese games that I enjoy).

 

[Gigano]

Well, if you don't like the art style, character design, or just overall visuals of a game, that's a pretty hefty downside. Just as objections to gameplay aren't automatically relevant, objections to art design and visual presentation aren't necessarily shallow.

The visual experience can be a huge part of the overall experience for some, and if everyone having blue hair and 30 foot swords ruin immersion for them that's not really shallow, so much as it is personal preference. It's no different from other people being tired of FPS's being full of character designs of big military men fighting through one lifeless brownish-gray setting after another.