Japanese games and race

[ManOwaRrior]

That's one thing I actually like about this art style: That it doesn't look like any particular, existing ethnicity.
To me it helps to sell the world of the game as something self-contained. The less references to something that exists in the real world the better. Not every game has to be like this, but if a game does it, I appreciate it.

 

[burymagnets]

Just as a note its worth remembering that alot of early manga and anime, starting with Tezuka's Astro Boy, portrayed white characters because they took influence from Western animation. They've evolved into the anime faces we have now, but they're still white, so alot of it is tradition.

As for stuff like Resident Evil, zombies have always been a western movie thing, so I reckon thats the thinking. Also, the Japanese m8ight think to go with white characters when making anything cinematic as they get alot more American imports than Americans get Japanese imports.

Still, mainly tradition. Japanese animation has been going on for half a century, I doubt anyone wants to change now.

 

[The_Echo]

This same thing happened in a different thread, but with anime. And since you're very clearly picking up on games using the anime style, the answer is the same.

How so? The games I had in mind were Final Fantasy and Resident Evil series. Those aren't anime, are they?

Final Fantasy, yes. Resident Evil, no. Resi's art is a stylized realism. However, in its case, the characters are actually supposed to be American, so they look that way on purpose. The main ones, at least. And the ones who aren't American, are very obviously so (Sheva, Luis, etc.). So that doesn't really fit in with the point you're trying to make about Japanese games.

And in Final Fantasy, there is racial diversity (especially if you count non-humanoid races, like Moogles and whatever Red XIII is), though since they aren't based on Earth, the races may look similar, but are in fact completely separate from our own.

 

[Glademaster_v1legacy]

How many of these games take place on Planet Earth? Just because certain features are grounded in what we know does not mean that in videos we have to have a White person that looks American/Whatever. Neither does it mean that we must have all countries in games that exactly correspond to ones on Earth same as races as there is a certain poetic licence at work here aside from trying to emulate a stick man type effect.

This is relevant how? No one is saying games need to have anything, least of all me.

With regard to your question, I don't think there's much difference between western and eastern games in terms of being on or off Earth. Regardless, you have to admit there's a clear difference in displaying race.

It is relevant because the races in these games as you seem to know them do not exist. There are no Europeans or Asians in Final Fantasy 13 there is just people some pasty and some Blacker than black. There is a difference because that is the style the choose to display these race of similar looking people that are not as comparable to Earth's real races as you would like.

So where are the western games which do the same thing when a game is set off-world? There aren't any. Let's not dismiss the question as a matter of "art style" and "taste". That's too easy (and incorrect).

And also, Resident Evil and Silent Hill don't seem to be set off-world.

There is nothing remotely ambiguous about the races in Silent Hill and Resident Evil.

Spoiler

You don't really get much more male and Caucasian than that.

As to Western games not doing it what race is this character(made by Ubisoft) to you?

Spoiler

EDIT: Generally speaking yes this why this is done. Japanese games sometimes stylize game like they do their anime so they get this effect.

 

[Blood Brain Barrier]

As to Western games not doing it what race is this character(made by Ubisoft) to you?

Spoiler

Egyptian/Tibetan/French/Spanish

 

[Glademaster_v1legacy]

As to Western games not doing it what race is this character(made by Ubisoft) to you?

Spoiler

Egyptian/Tibetan/French/Spanish

So yeah she is no race in particular an shed is just a human that is on another planet. She was designed by a Western studio and as the same aracial design characteristics as some Japaneses games. There [http://www.brainygamer.com/the_brainy_gamer/2009/01/heres-jade.html] is an article on it regarding Jade that links to another article that talks about the same effect of racial ambiguity. You can give a read if you want they are there if you're interested.

Some characters are designed this way to create certain effects and Jade is a good example of this. The effect being people should(obviously doesn't always work) more easily project themselves on to a racial ambiguous character rather than a rigidly defined one.

 

[maxben]

I don't see why this matters.
If a game is good, its good whether the character are black, mixed race, or blue.
Pikmin was not a worse game because I did not know of a race analogue to captain olimar on Earth.

 

[Legion]

Because people in general are idiots and would refuse to play a game due to race/sex of a character. Yes PEOPLE ARE PETTY . Ever wonder why most ( "most " being the key word )action games feature white males between 20-30 with brown hair and brown eyes? Because that's what the general population identifies to.

Making characters raceless is an easy way to avoid people not playing your games because of the protagonists race.

Don't you think it's more of a misguided idea by developers of what they think gamers want, rather than what people actually want?

The stereotypical white male with brown hair is commonly used, but I don't think it's so much that people prefer it as it is developers playing it safe in order to try and appeal to the larger demographic, even if that demographic doesn't actually care.

The Walking Dead features a black protagonist. Assassins Creed almost all players seem to despise Desmond despite him being the stereotypical white male. Lara Croft games have hardly lacked in sales. Portal you play as a female character based upon a woman of mixed Brazlian and Japanese descent and so on.

I am not using these games as examples of where you are simply not a white male. I am using them as examples of games that are very popular and yet don't fit into the cliché's we often see in games.

I have personally never seen anybody complain when a game hasn't featured a white male protagonist. If anything most people are happy for a bit of damn variety.

 

[Lilani]

-snip-

It's...sort of complicated really, the longer you look at it. The way I understand they are making their characters Asian, it's just a bit idealized and anyone who isn't Asian can easily read it as caucasian.

Because what exemplifies the stereotypical "Asian" or "Japanese" features? Small eyes, black hair, and the skin tone. However, modern anime was initially inspired by the Walt Disney style big eyes on cartoon characters, so that's one feature gone. Anime also has bright hair colors--even when the characters are supposed to be human--but that's more for character identification/characterization than anything else. Because if you think about it, a bunch of cartoon characters with the same hair color would all start to look the same. I remember one series where a character's hair was green, however at one point he dyed his hair blonde, and when they dyed him back to black his hair turned green again.

And as for the skin tone, it is very close to caucasian anyway, and when isolated from all those other features it can be very hard to tell.

This video will help explain a bit more on the difference they portray Asian characters and caucasian ones:


There is a whole other thing about Japan/Japanese media being on the xenophobic side, but that's another topic for another day.

 

[Raddra]

I knew that video would come up. It always does when this subject comes up.

The author of the video has a clear bias to 'defend their anime' from what they percieve as.. omg, criticism. And has trolled the internet to fish up only the pictures that suit their biased argument. A 5 second google image search shows very very few normal [http://en.minghui.org/emh/article_images/2009-2-9-japanshenyun631.jpg] actual [http://www4.pictures.zimbio.com/gi/Japan+Marks+67th+Anniversary+Hiroshima+Atomic+Zge8w9e6qBRl.jpg] japanese [http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_TVp8SFFE900/SNY5vFkzWUI/AAAAAAAAALw/rTfOUEvxUBg/s400/IMG_1029.JPG] people [http://great-controversy-movie.com/blog/dannys-pics/japan-korea/happy-japanese-family.jpg] who look like the makeup ridden japanese celebrities and poster girls they showcase as 'evidence'.

 

[Terminal Blue]

Okay.. why don't we look at what happens when Japanese games do try to deal with ethnicity.

I pity the foo who can't come up with his own character design!

Solid!

No seriously, guys.. You don't want Japanese people to give characters an ethnicity. Japanese people don't understand ethnicity, they don't live in a multi-racial or multi-ethnic society so they have no point of contact or reference for dealing with ethnicity. Their only likely source of exposure to people of a different ethnicity is through bad media stereotypes and product advertising.

Seriously, don't question. It's easier this way.

 

[The White Hunter]

Hmm. Interesting point.

But I don't really care too much either way unfortuneately, if the games fun it's fun.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

This topic is easily covered in TvTropes. Something about "mukokuseki", the "use of ambiguous racial features". Apparently it serves either/both of two purposes:

1) "...to make characters look distinct so that the audience, and the artists don't get confused. In works set in the largely homogeneous Japan, it can be hard for an animator to make unique designs in a such a simple art style for several dozen straight black haired, brown eyed people."

2) "...the artists are appropriating features from the exotic 'other' (in this case Causcasians) into their character designs either for their own interests or for marketing purposes. To that point, the pervasiveness in Japanese pop-culture of physical features such as fair hair, blue or green eyes, pinkish skin and chiseled facial features which are not found amongst the homogenous population of Japan arguably suggests such features are considered fashionable, desirable and interesting."

[link]http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Mukokuseki[/link]

 

[Eclipse Dragon]

Why are most of the newer Japanese games afraid of giving characters a race?

It's by no means a recent thing.

Spoiler: Characters from the first Fire Emblem game.

Spoiler: Characters from Blazing Sword, a middle series Fire Emblem game.

Spoiler: Characters from Awakening, the most recent Fire Emblem game.

At least in this series, the closest thing to another race is the Laguz in Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn.

Except these characters do exist in more recent games (Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn, Awakening)

Danved (Who isn't Devdan)

and in Awakening, this dude

So actually (at least as far as Fire Emblem goes) they are making more progress in recent games, not less.

Also compare that to the characters in Rogue Galaxy, a single game.

Spoiler

They're all fantasy based races, but are clearly separate races from each other.

 

[Casual Shinji]

No seriously, guys.. You don't want Japanese people to give characters an ethnicity. Japanese people don't understand ethnicity, they don't live in a multi-racial or multi-ethnic society so they have no point of contact or reference for dealing with ethnicity. Their only likely source of exposure to people of a different ethnicity is through bad media stereotypes and product advertising.

Seriously, don't question. It's easier this way.

This is sort of where it all stems from.

As a character designer you tend to base your designs off the people you see around you. And seeing as the large majority of Japan's inhabitants are japanese, those will be the character tropes you'll see in 90% of japanese games/anime.

When you do see a black guy in anime it's usually a bald guy with sunglasses.

I pity the foo who can't come up with his own character design!

Solid!

You think that's bad... Check this shit out!

 

[dimensional]

Ah one of my favourite character designs always reminds me of B.A Baracus even the first two letters of his name are the same and of course he acts pretty similar too, if it wasnt intentional it was a happy accident.

I can honestly say that this issue of ethnicity in games has never even entered my head until now I just take it for what it is, if it is supposed to be someone like in a lot of sports games then yes I can see the value in nailing everything about them visually but for made up characters I couldnt give a crap if they are ambiguous ethnically they could all be blue for all I care.

There would be times when there would be exceptions but those would be few and far between a drawing or a character model does not have an ethnicity even if you make it look like it does its best just to create a character that fits the game and style of what you want and not worry about the small stuff especially if the game is not set in the same universe as ours.

 

[MeChaNiZ3D]

Maybe it's because when they make Western characters they're still designed in an eastern fashion. Or because Japan is practically a monoculture. Or because most anime characters are only American out of convenience. Or because the game characters in question aren't part of our race system. Besides which, I have little doubt that Japanese people doubt the authenticity of many Western Japanese characters.

 

[Therumancer]

Anime uses a highly stylized form of art, it is what it is, I don't think they are trying to make their characters ethnic-neutral intentionally. Not to mention in most games or anime series the ethnicity of the protaganists is apparently due to their enviroment if nothing else.

That said, using highly stylized art this way means that they generally don't have to deal with complaints about being insensitive to one group or another.

The only time I generally see a problem with anime is when they deal with blacks, due to the skin tone and features being differant enough to stand out. To be honest I haven't found much of this all that offensive, it just seems to me that it's not politically correct. Someone mentions Barret above for example, and really I didn't think there was any big deal with that character, sure he seemed like he was ripped off from Mr. T, but then again Mr. T is fun which is why that character has endured in the public consciousness for so long.

 

[Smooth Operator]

It's anime, they don't do facial features or race, it's all in the hair and clothes, perhaps some skin color if you get lucky.

 

[VeryOddGamer]

Because people in general are idiots and would refuse to play a game due to race/sex of a character. Yes PEOPLE ARE PETTY . Ever wonder why most ( "most " being the key word )action games feature white males between 20-30 with brown hair and brown eyes? Because that's what the general population identifies to.

Making characters raceless is an easy way to avoid people not playing your games because of the protagonists race.

Don't you think it's more of a misguided idea by developers of what they think gamers want, rather than what people actually want?

(and some other stuff I won't include here for space issues)

Thank you, I was just about to say that very same thing. What the consumers want isn't always the same thing that the creators of the product think the consumers want.