| the_dengle said: Make up your mind. At once you argue that outfits and poses alone can be sexual in nature, while noting the obvious difference between simple nudity and pornography. How can you reconcile this disparity? If nudity can be non-sexual, can't lingerie? The outfit in Bravely Default is presented in a sexual nature. That's the whole point. The villain of that subplot seduces and exploits women with essentially a date rape drug. One of the main characters uses a sexy outfit to seduce him (or pretend to be seduced by him) and lure him into a trap. That's the plot. As for "why sexualize a child in the first place," as this is a single subplot of many in the game, I doubt this character's age was determined for that purpose. Naturally the outfit could be altered slightly and still be 'sexy', the character could have her age increased a bit without changing anything significant in this or any other part of the story -- in fact, for the localization this may have actually maintained the meaning better than keeping her original age. At some point I remember him saying that children don't interest him. In Japan, the age of consent is younger than in America, so I think the seduction of a 15-year-old might provoke different responses from different cultures... I'm no expert in world cultures though so this is just a thought. Anyway, regarding the way the character's age was decided independently from her sexualization in this subplot, I think the same holds true for the outfit in Xenoblade X. They wrote a story involving a teenaged party member. All party members can wear the same outfits just like in Xenoblade, and it seems like this time rather than changing the outfit's appearance completely depending on which party member is wearing it, the outfits will have the same appearance across all party members of the same sex. This way each outfit only needs two different designs rather than one for each party member. They could have changed some of the outfits just for this one character, but it's really unnecessary. The first game also had a teenage (17) party member who could be stripped to her undies. I don't remember people getting mad about that? I think the absurd jiggle physics on the adults in Xenoblade were much more worthy of negative attention. I hope they fixed that shit in X, it was dumb watching them flop all over the place every time a woman turned to face a different character. Back on-topic, developers can do whatever they want to try to limit the player's ability to sexualize characters, but I think it's kind of like trying to prevent people from pirating your game. A wasted effort that won't really stop anybody and only inconveniences the player. After all, perhaps the best way to prevent the sexualization of any of the characters would be to remove camera controls entirely from the game. Obviously the developer wants the player to be able to equip their characters with 'sexy' outfits, and whatever you think about that, at least they're equal-opportunity about it. The dudes can run around in boxers and stuff. Please explain the phrase "it looks like a 10 year old with an adult body." If she has an adult body, in what way does she look like a 10 year old? If you feel the sexualization of people or characters should be determined by how old they look and not how old they actually are, aren't you edging somewhat close to the ridiculous Australian censorship laws? |
Make up my mind about what? What do you think I'm being inconsistent about exactly? Outfits and poses can be sexual in nature if they are designed with the purpose of invoking sexual thoughts. Nudity can be non-sexual. Take National Geographic for instance. It has pictures of naked tribal women, but the magazine is not created to turn people on. It would be sexual if you put lingerie on those same women and had them posing, even though they are no longer nude. This is why I think your Bart Simpson analogy fails. It wasn't created to be sexual, regardless of the brief nudity.
The outfit in Bravely Default is sexual in nature - and it's on a CHILD. That's is exactly the point. It's disturbing. It turns a child into a sexual object. I understand that there are cultural differences between the US and Japan. I also understand they have a different age of consent, but it is actually higher than most US states. All Japanese districts have laws that make the age of consent 18 without parental approval.
The phrase she 'looks like a 10 year old with an adult body' means exactly that. It looks like they took a 10 year old, give her hips and boobs, and then stuffed her into lingerie. It's typical for anime to make the characters look as young as possible which is why I find the art style that much more disturbing when it's sexualized.
To be clear, I'm not some sexual prude . I'm fine with sex and even nudity in all forms of media - including games. I do have an issue with any form of media promoting children as sexual objects. This could be as simple as sexing up what looks like a young child (no matter what age they decide to give it).
