When is a game too ''Japanese'' for you?

[sageoftruth]

Mostly JRPG stuff.

1) When it has far too many cutscenes. I'll give that a pass if it is a visual novel.

2) When it forces dumbly-named made-up terminology into the setting, leading to lines like "We must collect more sethir to power the Orbz for the Hears organization."

3) When it decides to rank stuff. This is more of a shonen anime problem for me rather than a gaming one, since levels and ranks often have a place in gaming. Mentioning power levels or rankings in an anime just comes across as a horrendous example of telling when they should be showing. Oh wow! He's a level 600-class warrior? Then he'd better show it, or you just set me up for disappointment. On a similar note...

4) Telling instead of showing. Even if the game or the anime will eventually show off characters in action, it bothers me when they try to build hype by having people go, "Legend has it, he managed to wrestle a bear one-handed and then used the bear as a weapon to take out an entire army." I'd much rather be surprised by the actual encounter than go into battle expecting something legendary, only to be disappointed.

5) Fanservice, sometimes. I don't mind it when I'm playing a game that's geared towards it, like Senran Kagura, but if the game is currently trying to move me with a gripping story, I'd prefer to keep the unnecessary boobage out of the picture.

 

[Here Comes Tomorrow]

@Loonyyy that seems like an issue with weeaboos (remember when they were called wapanese? Funny how 4chan's word filter changed it) than Japanese games themselves. I don't know of any games made that fetishize Japan as a glorious land of otaku where you can go be a manga-ka and have a Japanese girlfriend.

Wait, thought of one! Maybe Akiba's Trip. Probably some VNs as well but I don't play them.

 

[Dragonpit]

Again, you are drastically, drastically missing the point. Fanservice doesn't have to have a 'reason'. It doesn't have to directly push the plot forward or develop relationships or whatever. It doesn't have to be "what want to see". Its part of setting the tone of the media; it needs no other 'reason' to exist.

Lets go completely the other way. Take...lets say Sunless Sea. Why do you transport things like crates of human souls in that? That's horrible. Why would you put that in when it could be any type of cargo, anything else other than that? Why do the monsters in it have to look so nasty/grotesque? It doesn't actually add anything to the gameplay or drive the story forward because all you do is shoot at them. What about the undead in Venderbight? Mechanically and story-wise they don't have much, if any, impact on the gameplay or story aside from a few minor details, they could just be normal people really.

All of those are simply things that add to the tone of the game. They add to the horrific, fearful atmosphere that permeates the entire thing. They don't HAVE to be in there. But they do. For their own reason. They're no more pointless than fanservice is. You just happen to not like fanservice, maybe it makes you uncomfortable or whatever, but that ISN'T the same thing as it being 'pointless'.

At risk of banging the drum overly much here you're still falling into the 'violence good, naughtiness bad' thing. Except you're framing it as "if a game has naughtiness in it then that is all it must be good for so they should drop the pretext, but a game can have violence in it and be about more than just that". Its not just you, several people in here are doing the same.

Not willfully, but its what you're doing. Think about Alien Isolation, what's it about? Surviving in a terrible, scary environment whilst being hunted. What happens? You fight your way past android opponents and try to avoid getting ripped apart by the Alien. Few people would say that Alien Isolation is about violence, but it is really. How about the Total War games? You raise armies and lead them to victory...which happens to involve slaughtering thousands on the battlefield. Its about violence...but no it isn't because its really a game about historical strategy and tactics. And yet you're all too willing to dismiss games which have fanservice as being nothing but the fanservice; because the fact that its in there at ALL means the game MUST be entirely about panty shots.

That's what you say, but there have GOT to be other ways to set the tone. Are we as people so bloody vapid that we need to rely on barely covered breasts and panty shots to set the tone of the story? Because if we are, then I can only say there is no longer any reason to indulge in media any longer, because that's just as one-note as...well...as the Deadly Six from Sonic Lost World.

Also, your Sunless Sea example is lost on me. I have no connection with that...series? Game? Anime? Help me out here.

But here's the thing, and you seem to have glossed over all the many times I've said this: I know that fanservice does have a place in media, as much as anything else. I know that it can work, and not just in hentai. My issue is how prolific it is in anime, to the point where I have to wade through 99 different, some strong, some weak, plot lines coupled with scantily-clad women, either meant to distract me from what is wrong with the show, or to draw viewers in on that fanservice instead of on anything else that could be substantial and interesting about the show, because the producers, animators, or writers can't bring themselves to have enough faith in whatever they're working with to stand on its own.

And you can bang that drum about how "fanservice doesn't need any other reason to exist but to be" as loud and as often as you want, but in the end, it doesn't make a load of difference because this is the god-honest truth: fanservice, at its core, is shallow. Hollow. Empty. It's that new coat of paint on your car. It makes thing more visually appealing, but it only lasts so long until you need another coat, and if your car is having issues, another coat of paint isn't going to make things right.

And before you go saying that, as you said, I am all 'violence good, naughtiness bad', here's a wake-up call: violence is *equally* as shallow as fanservice. Mortal Kombat, for example, is praised as one of the most brutal, and at times, gory game series out there. And yeah, it can be entertaining for that reason alone. But that doesn't mean I'm going to find games like Pokemon, Phoenix Wright, Professor Layton, Persona 4 Golden less enjoyable because they don't measure up in the violence department. They don't need to. They can and do stand up on their own merits. That level of violence may work for Mortal Kombat, and if it chooses to continue pursuing that level of violence, then by all means. But I don't need that much violence in every game or show. It's the same way with sexual fanservice.

 

[Joccaren]

Honestly, I don't care about any of the tropes and such, so long as a good game I'll enjoy comes out of it at the end. Bring on the moe and lolis and fanservice, the highschool, the hotsprings or the beach. I don't really care whether they're in your game or not. If the story is good, and the gameplay is interesting, I'll like the game. If the story is trash, and the gameplay is boring and grindy like a number of Final Fantasy games I've played, then I'm not going to like your game.

Much like Western audiences.
When are we going to get over Tolkeinesque settings, or the goddamn medieval ages?
When will all the gun porn stop in games?
When will we stop killing the Middle East or Russia?
When will zombies finally get left behind?
When will the college setting end for teenage TV shows?

We've got our own share of tropes that are overused to hell. A lot of people probably don't mind or actually like them, so long as the game itself is good, and that's the way I am with Japanese tropes. So long as the game is still fun, I don't really care. Its the quality of the game that matters more to me than how many tropes from each country it has.

 

[Erttheking]

Snip

You bring up a good point but one problem I tend to have with fanservice is that it often doesn't fit. The souls in Sunless Sea fit the tone of the game. In quite a bit of my experience, there's a fair chunk of fanservice that just doesn't fit. For example, any major time there's supposed to be a serious battle and they give me gianaxing, it takes me out of the story. For example, when I was watching Gundam SEED and that happened with the main captain all of the freaking time, even in the battle where the "good guys" decide to use a kill sat to wipe out the enemy army and don't care that it causes a massive friendly fire incident in a show that almost always takes itself super seriously. The fanservice that they give to us there REALLY doesn't fit, clashes with the tone. There were a couple of instances in the show where there was fanservice that actually fit the tone of the story (like when one character sleeps with another to manipulate him) but aside from that, a rather grim series that presents itself as rather hard and depressing doesn't feel like the place for fanservice

Kill la Kill on the other hand, that's a show where the fanservice actually makes sense. It fits the tone of the show goofy as hell, off the rails and in a world of absolute insanity. It has its serious moments too, but unlike SEED its positioned itself to be in a place where the serious moments and the fanservice can actually blend together well. Ironically in my experience with fanservice is that it's rather...soulless. They try and tell a regular story and they just cram it in without any rhyme or reason. It almost feels like a tacked on multiplayer mode. Nothing is really DONE with it. Fanservice can actually ADD to the story if it just does one of the following

-Fit a character's personality

-Fit a world's tone

-Be used to set a mood

And probably other ways I can't think of at the moment. Just throwing it in there where it doesn't fit just clashes with the tone. To go back to Sunless Sea, it'd be like if you had to sell souls in a game that isn't as delightfully bleak as Sunless Sea, like Kirby. (What do we do with those souls again? I know the Devils like them but that's the only reason hinted at)

 

[EternallyBored]

And before you go saying that, as you said, I am all 'violence good, naughtiness bad', here's a wake-up call: violence is *equally* as shallow as fanservice. Mortal Kombat, for example, is praised as one of the most brutal, and at times, gory game series out there. And yeah, it can be entertaining for that reason alone. But that doesn't mean I'm going to find games like Pokemon, Phoenix Wright, Professor Layton, Persona 4 Golden less enjoyable because they don't measure up in the violence department. They don't need to. They can and do stand up on their own merits. That level of violence may work for Mortal Kombat, and if it chooses to continue pursuing that level of violence, then by all means. But I don't need that much violence in every game or show. It's the same way with sexual fanservice.

I can give some of my personal examples of places where violence or gore are used in a way that can detract from the game.

The blood effects from the Dragon Age games. After a brutal battle having your characters drenched in blood and gore is an interesting touch, having them drenched in blood after a bar brawl in the middle of town or trying to have touching silly or romantic scenes covered in blood just looks dumb and detracts from those scenes.

The obligatory combat and violence in games like Uncharted and Tomb Raider. I can accept a necessary amount of violence in each game, with a fun combat system I can even accept most of it, but the amount of combat and enemies the games throw at you sometimes just comes across as excessive. It feels like the developers thought we would stop playing if we spent too long exploring tombs or solving ancient puzzles without putting a bullet into something's head every 10 minutes.

Combat as a crutch in RPGs: I dunno about other people, but it annoys me when games, especially open world RPGs turn violence into the only solution for every problem, especially when the game goes through the trouble of giving me charisma or speech skills and then makes the final boss, or even final third of the game basically just a giant combat gauntlet. I'm looking at you Vampire: the Masquerade, there's a reason I just cheat my way past the sewers on any character that isn't a pure combat build.

Violence really is a tool that is often used just like fanservice, as a lazy shallow way to engage the player. Neither is inherently bad, and they can both be used for incredible results, but it's a double-edged sword. Of course, some of that effectiveness comes down to personal preference as well.

 

[Dragonpit]

And before you go saying that, as you said, I am all 'violence good, naughtiness bad', here's a wake-up call: violence is *equally* as shallow as fanservice. Mortal Kombat, for example, is praised as one of the most brutal, and at times, gory game series out there. And yeah, it can be entertaining for that reason alone. But that doesn't mean I'm going to find games like Pokemon, Phoenix Wright, Professor Layton, Persona 4 Golden less enjoyable because they don't measure up in the violence department. They don't need to. They can and do stand up on their own merits. That level of violence may work for Mortal Kombat, and if it chooses to continue pursuing that level of violence, then by all means. But I don't need that much violence in every game or show. It's the same way with sexual fanservice.

I can give some of my personal examples of places where violence or gore are used in a way that can detract from the game.

The blood effects from the Dragon Age games. After a brutal battle having your characters drenched in blood and gore is an interesting touch, having them drenched in blood after a bar brawl in the middle of town or trying to have touching silly or romantic scenes covered in blood just looks dumb and detracts from those scenes.

The obligatory combat and violence in games like Uncharted and Tomb Raider. I can accept a necessary amount of violence in each game, with a fun combat system I can even accept most of it, but the amount of combat and enemies the games throw at you sometimes just comes across as excessive. It feels like the developers thought we would stop playing if we spent too long exploring tombs or solving ancient puzzles without putting a bullet into something's head every 10 minutes.

Combat as a crutch in RPGs: I dunno about other people, but it annoys me when games, especially open world RPGs turn violence into the only solution for every problem, especially when the game goes through the trouble of giving me charisma or speech skills and then makes the final boss, or even final third of the game basically just a giant combat gauntlet. I'm looking at you Vampire: the Masquerade, there's a reason I just cheat my way past the sewers on any character that isn't a pure combat build.

Violence really is a tool that is often used just like fanservice, as a lazy shallow way to engage the player. Neither is inherently bad, and they can both be used for incredible results, but it's a double-edged sword. Of course, some of that effectiveness comes down to personal preference as well.

Yeah, there is an element to personal preference to this, I agree. That's why I'll never chew someone out for appreciating and enjoying the fanservice. But just because you can enjoy it and do, that doesn't necessarily means it belongs in the show you're watching or the game you're playing. I can think a few examples in games where the directors thought up ideas for those games that they thought was cool, and that the audience agrees with, that in turn had the unfortunate effect of bringing down the game's said quality. The Kingdom Hearts series comes to mind, because you gotta admit, the only reason why Nomura is bringing up time travel in Dream Drop Distance is so that he could have the excuse to revive characters that should be dead for his own special Ultimate Battle of Ultimate Destiny. And it's a cool idea on paper, as a culmination of the series thus far, but considering that the time travel in question has confused the continuity beyond recognition, such as how his preferred method of time travel, which according to his rules cannot meddle in with the past, does not actually mess with the past since going back, even without a body, automatically does just that: mess with the past, because there's already something there that by all rights shouldn't be. This was something that should've been saved for another project, or at least for time where it could've been executed with more grace.

Bringing it back to the point, when anime throws in fanservice or violence for the sake of it (and you can't tell me it sets the tone; compare Infinite Stratos' fanservice to when we first meet Melfina in Outlaw Star, because it's not the fanservice alone setting the tone there), I can't help but be taken out of the experience because beyond proving the main character or someone else is a pervert, you do have to wonder if it is there for some other reason that just being there.

And you are right about the violence aspect. I'm recalling Xenoblade Chronicles, with the Telethea. You spend a good portion of the game killing some, until late game, when a side quest opens up, where upon learning there could be a way of restoring them to their originals forms, and you only get this quest after learning what their original forms are. Yet, for whatever reason, Telethea are still standard enemies, despite the fact that we know know they could be cured. It almost feels like your efforts regarding them are somewhat undercut somehow. That may not be the appropriate phrase to use to describe the situation, but at the time of writing this, I am also sleep-deprived, so I hope I did at least get my point across and you will cut me some slack.

I am not the biggest connoisseur of sexual fanservice, but I do understand that it has a place, that it can work. Bayonetta comes very strongly to mind as an example. I also think sexual fanservice has become far too commonplace in anime and manga today, which is why it has become something of a turn-off for me as of late. Like when a dog who loves lapping up alcohol suddenly drinks too much and acquires anything between a distaste to an out-and-out hatred for it. While a quality anime doesn't necessarily *not* have it, I also don't think they have to rely on it to grab and hold on to its viewers.

 

[aozgolo]

TBH 80% of the time, voice acting makes it too Japanese for me. I used to love JRPGs growing up, I played tons of them, Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, Suikoden, Seiken Denetsu, Earthbound, Chrono Trigger... I was in love with them, but most modern ones can't hold my interest at all and it took me awhile to figure out it's because the damned voice acting takes me out of my immersion into the game. It's hard to explain but I love subtitled anime, yet when I hear this highly polished 3D cel-shaded magical girl trying to use her 12 year old voice to carry the emotional heft of the storyline, I just can't... I simply can't.

It's a shame because there's so many JRPGs that look fantastic but with the few exceptions like Dragon Quest, I've pretty much slipped away from the genre.

 

[lionsprey]

its to "Japanese" for me when i can't understand the text. however as i am currently learning Japanese soon (hopefully) not even that won't stop me from all the animu!

 

[EMWISE94]

I think its down to a variety of things, that include, but are not limited to:

- Character Design
- Dialogue Dumps
- Repetitive audio design (this is mostly a fighting game thing but having characters just spout the name of their attack everytime they do it, in the same exact way just grates me)
- Trope-based Characters (yes every character ever is based on some trope, but sometimes it gets to the point where its almost like the writers gave said characters a trope rather than traits)
- Art Styles/Direction

there's more, but I feel that if I were to truly break down what I don't like about certain recurring Japanese media triats it'd be paragraphs long and I'm not one for creating walls of texts in forums. Also some of this applies to Western media too but again, paragraphs.

 

[Loonyyy]

When it's that obnoxious "Japanese" stuff. Like, Japan isn't a monoculture, and it's kind of creepy how specific and razor focussed the stuff that a lot of geeky and nerdy people are on a very specific idea of what Japan is.

I'm especially partial to the claim that goes along the lines of "Thing X is popular in Japan because the samurai come from there!"
What, is every fucking Japanese man a descendant of the samurai?! Are they all attending iajutsu schools after school or something?

@Loonyyy that seems like an issue with weeaboos (remember when they were called wapanese? Funny how 4chan's word filter changed it) than Japanese games themselves. I don't know of any games made that fetishize Japan as a glorious land of otaku where you can go be a manga-ka and have a Japanese girlfriend.

Wait, thought of one! Maybe Akiba's Trip. Probably some VNs as well but I don't play them.

Yeah, like Japan isn't all ninjas, Samurai, honor culture, anime, kawaii, manga. Hell, some of the stuff that westerners go nuts over is actually looked down on in Japan. A lot of Japanese folk would have a serious problem with the lifestyle of weaboos. Hell, there's apparently a bit of a culture clash there between younger folk who're into that stuff and the older generation, although I'm not going to presume to speak on it, because I'm not going to presume I know a culture from watching a fucking cartoon with ambulatory tits and talking teddy bears.

This isn't "When is a game to (sic) Japanese for you?". This is "When is this game too weaboo anime for you?". Don't hide your appreciation for cringe inducing bad anime behind Japan.

And seriously guys, harem anime, incestual children, and noseblood? Reeeeeaaaaalllllyyyyyy. Tsundere's and cockteases? Come on, watch end of eva again and don't pretend it's not a little aimed at anime fans. Like seriously, bare minimum you're always going to be arguing about fanservice and trying to justify it. Why it's necessary to have glaring poses and titillation that even the west finds offputting. Anyone who wants to call me a prude-go to fucking Japan. You'll discover it's a lot more prudish. It's not sexually enlightened, it's just shitty porn for people who can't get better, spliced into your show with the grace of a collision between a soccer mom's SUV and a freight train. Least my porn doesn't need to blur out the dicks.

The last two Japanese games I played were Dark Souls and Super Mario 3D World. They're not less Japanese just because they don't look like anime.

 

[LostCrusader]

When the story is about teenagers using the power of friendship to kill god.

 

[pearcinator]

I couldn't get into Okami because it was too Japanese. I thought the art style was blurry too.

 

[TomWiley]

For me, it's when any and all female characters suddenly have eyes larger than lakes and look like they're 12 despite the fact that they're supposed to be adults. These seems to be a oddly persistent trope in many Japanese games.

I had this experience with a horror game on Wii-U which I tried with a friend a few days back (the name escapes me). The game had some major issues but the character design alone made it practically unplayable.

 

[NPC009]

With what money? Good VAs are expensive. And the japanese games tend to not sell enough for the localization team to afford Nolan North or Troy Baker.

As for your last point, stop watching shit anime and playing shit JRPGs

Fun fact: Troy Baker break-through roles were in JRPG's. Before you heard him in games like the Last of Us, he was Yuri (Tales of Vesperia) and Kanji (Persona 4) to me. Heck, he's been in games much less mainstream than that, such as Mana Khemia 2! Same with Laura Bailey

Companies like Atlus, NISA and Bandai Namco are indeed working with much more limited budgets, but they do have an idea for voice talent. If something does go wrong, it usually has something to do with the material (some games just don't give voice actors all that much to work with), lack of proper direction (do not underestimate the role of the director) or time constraints (meaning lines can only be read a handful of times at most).

 

[Lady Larunai]

Probably at the point its developed in japan... when its "too" japanese for me is when it contains Kanji as I am unable to read japanese

 

[ccggenius12]

32 year old people who are classed as 'old men/women' (I sometimes think Japan has a very warped and crazy idea of age in general.)

I like to think it's because 32 is where Asian people stop physically aging. I mean, after around 65 they look 100, but in that window in between, absolutely no change.

I have the perfect example of a TOO-MUCH NIPPON! game for you, OP.
Sounds like a neat concept, right? Now comes the kicker: In each generation, the protagonist (who is always male because his father is apparently incapable of siring daughters) is tasked with seeking a bride and procreating with her to produce the next generation's hero. Said bride is usually one of the party members of that generation and the manner in which the protagonist (and by extension, the player) chooses the (un)lucky girl is as follows: All potential mates will quite literally line up in front of the protagonist and ask a series of bizarrely pointed questions ('How do you feel about a strong woman?', 'Would you trust a woman who doesn't know how to cook?') and the answers one picks informs which one of them becomes the bride.

This is a failing on the part of the developers that I think I can remedy with a little something from yesteryear.

Spoiler

OT: Much like art, I have no clue, but I'll know it when I see it (I hope).

 

[gyrobot_v1legacy]

On seven year old generals remember one of the greatest strategists was a 14 year old who would along with his advisor joined forces with the Oda who united Japan, his name is Taketaka Shiegharu. It's not a stretch to celebrate such a figure by having a young general, although it does stretch the sensibilities of westerners

But what is too Japanese for me is Chuunibyou (Grade 10 student) inspired plots. Neptunia and a lot of anime that the western anime audience think its crap has some elements of a Chuuni inspired imagination like SAO and whatever drek coming from a LN plot. Think Eragon without any form of editing supervision and unnecessary descriptive scenes of girls taking a bath.