But these people are talking about masculinity and femininity as a whole. They are outright saying that "men should be masculine". 

People judging people based on their appearance is not "an irrelivent thing". It's a serious issue that affects many people. This kind of thinking, that men should be masculine and women should be feminine, is archaic and can limit the ability for a story teller to tell the story that they want, like the afforementioned Raiden, who was lampooned just for being a feminine man in a video game. It's childish and pathetic.

I covered this in my post earlier. I argued that the over-muscled space marine is just as tired a character trope as the androgynous male in JRPGs. However, the former is more accepted because the story and characters aren't as important in shooters and the genres where you normally associate those tropes. If the gameplay is good then you won't care about those characters' boring designs and a large percentage of players won't even bother with single-player story mode and just go straight into multiplayer where the character designs are practically irrelevant.

JRPGs and the genres associated with androgynous male characters are often more dependent on the characters and story. In these cases, the character design then becomes essential to the players enjoyment. If you have difficulty relating to a character that's one thing. But having a boring, overused design and character trope is enough to ruin a JRPG experience

That's a pretty damn good point! I'll accept that :D Even though I think there are other tropes in JRPGs that don't get nearly as much hate.

Yeah, you sound so mature whining about other peoples views. :) Is it allowed to call other users childish and pathetic? You should try to behave, we are after all civilized people.

Look. People don't like same things as you, get over it. It is not your problem.

My point was that Japanese devs are just as bad for meddling in a developers artistry in order to conform to some ideal (be it political correctness, "market research", PR etc.). Publishers will meddle if they think they'll lose customers.

The PC thing can get a bit over the top though. I read an article a couple of months ago about horrible/sexist female characters... unfortunately half of the characters on the list were actually well-written characters with depth and perfectly normal physical design (as in normal clothes, not too revealing etc.).

I can think of few things that require more bravery than a grown man putting on a dress and going out in public.

Espically when they are hairy and have a breard.

Ae you still talking about Japanese games?

If people are insulting and harassing you when you walk through the streets because you dress or act like a women, I think those people are stupid and shouldn't do that.

In gaming, a man with eye shadow wearing a purple thong like Kuja in FF9 just isn't what I like.

And I think it's fine to think that! Not liking the look of feminine men is fine. The wider view that all men should be masculine is not fine in my book.

Double post

I'd like to point out that I'm not saying that everyone should STFU and enjoy androgynous characters. If you don't like the appearance of Kuja, Raiden, etc then that's fine. Variety is always a good thing when it comes to character design, and just like with overly muscled characters, androgynous characters can be a cliche.

What I'm thoroughly against is the view that there should be no androgynous characters, or that all men should be masculine.