personally I find the female leads a lot better than the male ones, they tend to be deeper more well developed characters imo.

now this is a generalisation so there are exceptions but It tends to be that the male chars are the more one dimensional powerful, irresponsible, arrogant and brutal whereas female ones tend to be more emotive and give reasons for what they are doing, Even the more tongue in cheek characters like bayonetta have more emotion to their character and depth to their personality than a similar male character, say for example kratos

and don't get me started on cloud strife, the guy's pesonality is as thin as a piece of paper, lightning is a million times better developed and her motives are more well reasoned than his, cloud is not even a person whereas lightning is so vivid it feels like she could be an old friend. to be fair to square though cloud is their only bad male protagonist, most of them are great characters, though I am aware they fall well in the 'emo' bracket by western perceptions.

the thing is based on the fact that most leads in games have exceptional superpowers/training/abities, it makes no sense why gender would make any difference when looking at the suspension of disbelief between chars. A female with massive superpowers could easily be feasibly as strong as a male with similar powers (as the powers give the attributes normally, not the gender), especially if the majority of enemies do not have the same level of powers/training/ability (as is normally the case)

sorry If I sound sexist, I am a girl and I tend to stick mainly to rpg's due to the lack of depth of characters in male dominated genres like shooters (I also despise action movies on the same principle), I know I should let it be because most gaming genres are not supposed to have developed stories/characters (thats why I read Books, though to gamings credit some RPG stories are on par with book level stories) so sorry if i overstepped the mark. this is just my opinion, don't mean to sound like a horrible elitist/feminist or anything.

The "emo" portray is a stereotype. To isolate it and portray it as a male-exclusive stereotype, that's sexist, because the characteristics defining an "emo", does not discern genres. 

Just like trying to isolate and portray a low self-esteem characterization as being a female-exclusive stereotype it's sexist.

There are always exceptions to the rules. In FF13, you had Hope, which was probably one of the most vulnerable and unprotected male character created as of late, which constantly fell in the "whinny kid" label. In contrast, you had Vanille and Fang, which were both very independent women, with their own strong convictions and ideals, even though Vanille supposedly portrayed the "innocent damsel" role. 

And, if you see from my interchange with Khuutra, there are also quite some cases where the female protagonist is also a very strong willed female character. 

I'm not able to speak on behalf of FE, since I'm not particularly into the story of the latest FE games (i've forgotten quite a large deal of the GBA FE's stories), but to generalize that an entire gender is portrayed like "weak and dependent" based on few examples is not the correct thing to do. 

It's true that some developers do portray females (and males) with sexists characteristics, but from what I could grasp from your conversation with Khuutra, you were pinpointing japanese developers exclusively for this fault, which is far from the truth.

Sexism exists everywhere in the world, and those same kind of attitudes are found in the western world in the same frequency (if not more) than in occidental cultures.

Yikes, what happened to this thread?

Itagaki and I were frustated because they are more strong guy than girl in FE and that inteligent systeme keep making gender diference in fire emblem and it's sexist. Two guy was saying that it's normal and not sexist because in real life, it's like this. But Itagaki and I was saying that in a Fictional world with MAGIC , we must forget about real life laws and the developper must create the more equal game possible.

How are you ?

Itagaki and I were frustated because they are more strong guy than girl in FE and that inteligent systeme keep making gender diference in fire emblem and it's sexist. Two guy was saying that it's normal and not sexist because in real life, it's like this. But Itagaki and I was saying that in a Fictional world with MAGIC , we must forget about real life laws and the developper must create the more equal game possible.

How are you ?

Looks like I'm bad at staying away.

Differences and discrimination are not the same thing. Fire Emblem is chalk full of perfectly strong, fully realized, sexually confident men and women and has some of the most even-handed representations of all genders. Your original point was that women were weaker, which is to say they were worse in a fight and have less utility. That's verifiably false. You've tried to claim that women in Fire Emblem are all stereotyped in the Japanese way (which is to say weak and dependent) and that's both wrong and mildly racist.

Demanding perfect gender equality is not how you fight sexism. Trying to deny certain inherent differences between the sexes is its own special kind of sexism because it implies that there is a certain default mindset that should be portrayed for everyone - and it's predominantly male.

And for the record, yes, there is at least one case off the top of my head where a woman protects a man in Fire Emblem: Louise is the one who guards her husband Pent, in spite of him being an extremely powerful mage.

@Mr Khan:

I agree with point 3 in principle, but there are (very large) schools of critical analysis that reject authorial intent altogether and look at a work in a vacuum.

It is 12:55 in the morning, and i have spent the last 25 minutes wading through this mess, so i feel compelled to say something.

1. Fire Emblem is not sexist, period. To put this level of depth of analysis into characters statistics reading for signs of sexism is a pointless venture, as these statistics could be skewed to say anything, and analysis is pointless without *intent,* being the root of sexism in the first place.

2. The argument for sexism reminds me of the episode of the SImpsons when Principal Skinner gets lambasted for certain sexist comments, where the women boo him when he declares women and men to be perfectly equal, and boo him when he acknowledges differences between the genders.

3. There is a level of analysis here that i would call too wooly even for literature. I seriously doubt that very many artists even bother to think on that level, and certainly not in the cases presented here.