Team Ninja's Representation of Women Not Changing Anytime Soon

Gahars

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No developer is more closely associated to the term "breast physics" than Team Ninja. The team behind Ninja Gaiden, Dead or Alive, and Metroid: Other M, is somewhat infamous for their portrayal of women. Some say it's just fanservice, others argue it's blatant objectification, but either way, both sides can agree that it's not very realistic.

Well, according to Yosuke Hayashi, they have no intention of changing this anytime soon. What's more, he argues that this sort of representation is "common sense", with a basis in Japanese culture. Um...

"With the representation of female characters in the Dead or Alive franchise, we've always wanted to make the girls look as attractive as possible, and that's something that's not going to change for us at all," Hayashi says. "We are a Japanese developer, and we're making the female characters with our common sense and our creative sense. When you take that to countries outside of Japan, it tends to be very misinterpreted in some cases, people considering it sexist or derogatory, etc."

..."For us, within our culture, we're showing women like that, and we're trying to make them look attractive," he says. "We can't help if other cultures in other countries around the globe think that it's a bad representation. Within our nationality and within our national borders, we obviously have morals that we create our female characters from, but within our Japanese sensibilities, we've made those characters the way they are and we're not going to stop doing that."
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Joystiq

So, kids, remember...
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In the words of Dr. Evil, "Riiiiiight."
 
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Foxi4

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I don't see why every single developer has to agree to follow a certain guideline on how to portray male or female characters. You could just as well argue that games like Gears of War portray men as brainless lumps of muscle or that Mass Effect portrays the human race as a race of beings that will bed anything that has orifices or protruding limbs. We have to remember that games, just as much as movies and books, are works of fiction and it's up to the author to portray the characters. If Team Ninja feels like portraying females in an over-sexualized way, they're entitled to do so and if given gamers don't like this way of portraying characters then they're free not to buy said games.

There's a market for big-breasted damsels and Team Ninja uses that to their advantage, can't say I see anything wrong with it.
 
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Guild McCommunist

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I don't see why every single developer has to agree to follow a certain guideline on how to portray male or female characters. You could just as well argue that games like Gears of War portray men as brainless lumps of muscle or that Mass Effect portrays the human race as a race of beings that will bed anything that has orifices for protruding limbs. We have to remember that games, just as much as movies and books, are works of fiction and it's up to the author to portray the characters. If Team Ninja feels like portraying females in an over-sexualized way, they're entitled to do so and if given gamers don't like this way of portraying characters then they're free not to buy said games.

There's a market for big-breasted damsels and Team Ninja uses that to their advantage, can't say I see anything wrong with it.

For Mass Effect at least the romance wasn't that humans enjoying sticking their penis into anything or enjoying getting anything stuck into them but that love has no bounds regardless of race. You don't just say "SUP LIARA/GARRUS/TALI LET'S FUCK", it's developed over time. You develop the same relationship with an alien race as you do with a human race.

I think the issue here is that it's not just them saying they enjoy portraying women as sexual objects, it's them saying it's a part of Japanese culture. I don't exactly care if a single developer wants to portray women as boobs and vaginas or men as dicks and muscles but to say that its a cultural thing is just wrong.
 

Gahars

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I don't see why every single developer has to agree to follow a certain guideline on how to portray male or female characters. You could just as well argue that games like Gears of War portray men as brainless lumps of muscle or that Mass Effect portrays the human race as a race of beings that will bed anything that has orifices for protruding limbs. We have to remember that games, just as much as movies and books, are works of fiction and it's up to the author to portray the characters. If Team Ninja feels like portraying females in an over-sexualized way, they're entitled to do so and if given gamers don't like this way of portraying characters then they're free not to buy said games.

There's a market for big-breasted damsels and Team Ninja uses that to their advantage, can't say I see anything wrong with it.

It's up to the creator to decide how to portray their characters... but that doesn't make their portrayal free from criticism. Neither does success in the market.

Plus, this whole thing reeks of, "Our characters aren't blatantly sexualized to an unrealistic and unhealthy extent, you're just culturally ignorant!"
 

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I'll never buy a Team Ninja game again, after all they RUINED Samus.
IMHO, they really inteded to SCREW that franchise, at least that's some thing they are good at.
THEY ARE NOT GOOD AT DEEP GAMES. Horrible piece of work, part from the cgi.
 

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I'll never buy a Team Ninja game again, after all they RUINED Samus.
IMHO, they really inteded to SCREW that franchise, at least that's some thing they are good at.
THEY ARE NOT GOOD AT DEEP GAMES. Horrible piece of work, part from the cgi.

I mean the studio hasn't exactly been doing well recently anyway. Other M was pretty bad and Ninja Gaiden 3 seems to be a major flop.
 

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I mean the studio hasn't exactly been doing well recently anyway. Other M was pretty bad and Ninja Gaiden 3 seems to be a major flop.
Dead or Alive 5 might have great sales. The problem with Ninja Gaiden 3 was all the things it removed and made worse. Also lets be honest it pretty much only does DOA and NG besides Metroid which wasn't to good.

Plus with Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball selling better then DOA4 it shows their stance is quite possibly the only thing keeping the studio afloat but then again DOA 3 did sell very well. I don't think DOA5 will do any better since the amount of fighters released this and last year.
 

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I think the issue here is that it's not just them saying they enjoy portraying women as sexual objects, it's them saying it's a part of Japanese culture. I don't exactly care if a single developer wants to portray women as boobs and vaginas or men as dicks and muscles but to say that its a cultural thing is just wrong.
Plus, this whole thing reeks of, "Our characters aren't blatantly sexualized to an unrealistic and unhealthy extent, you're just culturally ignorant!"
You may be right, and for some people this may be the deal breaker as far as their games are concerned, but remember that we're talking about the Hentai Central here - Japanese male audiences *do* enjoy portraying females that way, and they're the audience these games are tailored for. I wouldn't go as far as to call it an element of their culture, but the image of a big-breasted, skimply clad female is cultivated there, both in video games and outside of them.

This is simply Team Ninja's style and I don't think anyone should ostracize the studio for it. Critique is fine and dandy and I do agree that their portray of women is over-sexualized and objectifying, but they're not the only ones doing it and it's an integral part of their style of making games. The only real answer to this is not buying their games if you don't like them.

Everybody's tossing around Other M as an example and to be perfectly honest, for a Team Ninja game, Other M was incredibly mild. Moreover, it's not as bad of a game as people tend to say - in fact, I thoroughly enjoyed their take on the franchise. Perhaps Samus was overly-dependant on Adam in the game, but at least she had human features, which is not something I can easily say about many other Metroid games. They attempted to show her as a person rather than as an extension of her shoulder cannon and it was pretty cool to see her from that perspective.
 
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Hyro-Sama

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What bullshit.

Many various forms of entertainment in Japan do not degrade women or use sex as a selling point. This guy just watches too much anime/porn.
 

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I think the issue here is that it's not just them saying they enjoy portraying women as sexual objects, it's them saying it's a part of Japanese culture. I don't exactly care if a single developer wants to portray women as boobs and vaginas or men as dicks and muscles but to say that its a cultural thing is just wrong.
Plus, this whole thing reeks of, "Our characters aren't blatantly sexualized to an unrealistic and unhealthy extent, you're just culturally ignorant!"
You may be right, and for some people this may be the deal breaker as far as their games are concerned, but remember that we're talking about the Hentai Central here - Japanese male audiences *do* enjoy portraying females that way, and they're the audience these games are tailored for. I wouldn't go as far as to call it an element of their culture, but the image of a big-breasted, skimply clad female is cultivated there, both in video games and outside of them.

This is simply Team Ninja's style and I don't think anyone should ostracize the studio for it. Critique is fine and dandy and I do agree that their portray of women is over-sexualized and objectifying, but they're not the only ones doing it and it's an integral part of their style of making games. The only real answer to this is not buying their games if you don't like them.

Everybody's tossing around Other M as an example and to be perfectly honest, for a Team Ninja game, Other M was incredibly mild. Moreover, it's not as bad of a game as people tend to say - in fact, I thoroughly enjoyed their take on the franchise. Perhaps Samus was overly-dependant on Adam in the game, but at least she had human features, which is not something I can easily say about many other Metroid games. They attempted to show her as a person rather than as an extension of her shoulder cannon and it was pretty cool to see her from that perspective.

Well first off its things like this that make me not revere Japanese culture like everyone else. It's just terribly sad that games like this sell on their disgusting sex appeal. I'm not saying all Japanese culture is like that but the fact that this persists is just sickening.

I mean I'm criticizing it because it does feel like it goes past the culture barrier in terms of being offensive. Some things can be passed off as "culture bias" and some things cannot. Objectification of women in this manner does feel like it goes past culture bias.

As for Other M, it was sexist in its own way. Not because it objectified Samus as some large breasted sexual object, but it was the way she was portrayed. Admittedly though this isn't Team Ninja's fault as the story was written on Nintendo's side though. But it made her fall into a lot of negative stereotypes on women. That she's fragile, codependent, and submissive to male authority. I mean she doesn't have to be an ice queen like the other Metroid games and maybe showing some submission to Adam as her former commanding officer would be fine but it goes too far. There's scenes such as her confrontation with Ridley in which she breaks down and is just a "weak little girl" and needs a stronger male character to defend her. Or that she's willing to literally run through fire for Adam and actively take damage because he didn't authorize the use of something as basic and harmless as an envirosuit. Like respecting her commander's decision to deactive her more devastating weapons (such as the super bomb or whatever she uses at the end of the game) is fine but shutting down even basic parts simply to submit to the will of Adam isn't just respect, it's submission.
 
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Just Another Gamer

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I don't see a problem with Team Ninja's attitude at all and is it just me or are we forgetting that this is in a game and is fiction so why are we suddenly expecting fiction/fantasy etc = real life when its made to not be real in the first place.
 

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I don't see a problem with Team Ninja's attitude at all and is it just me or are we forgetting that this is in a game and is fiction so why are we suddenly expecting fiction/fantasy etc = real life when its made to not be real in the first place.

Fiction doesn't make things unoffensive. Just because it isn't real doesn't mean it gets a pass. If there was a work of fiction that glorified rape, pedophilia, or genocide (for a few examples) as the best thing since sliced bread I don't think people would say "Oh it's just fiction so it doesn't matter". Fiction or not, it endorses a negative image of women.

EDIT: In all honesty I see a lot of arguments on the banning of certain explicit manga and such that portrays children in sexual situations as "it's just fiction" but it still doesn't stop it from endorsing pedophilia. It's like saying that Birth of a Nation isn't offensive because it's still a work of fiction.

EDIT 2: And yes Birth of a Nation is technically "historical fiction" so it does make it a bit more "real" but fiction is fiction.
 
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Gahars

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I don't see a problem with Team Ninja's attitude at all and is it just me or are we forgetting that this is in a game and is fiction so why are we suddenly expecting fiction/fantasy etc = real life when its made to not be real in the first place.

When that fiction is demeaning or objectifying, then yeah, that warrants criticism and discussion.
 
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I don't see a problem with Team Ninja's attitude at all and is it just me or are we forgetting that this is in a game and is fiction so why are we suddenly expecting fiction/fantasy etc = real life when its made to not be real in the first place.

Fiction doesn't make things unoffensive. Just because it isn't real doesn't mean it gets a pass. If there was a work of fiction that glorified [censored], pedophilia, or genocide (for a few examples) as the best thing since sliced bread I don't think people would say "Oh it's just fiction so it doesn't matter". Fiction or not, it endorses a negative image of women.
But that logic is faulty because the same argument can be applied to everything but that point aside you have western games portray males as nothing more then steroid infused idoits that like to smash and bash things and do you see guys screaming "thats endorsing a negative image of men" no they really couldn't give a shit but also the difference between the examples you have are those are against the law while showing women with big boobs isn't.
 

Guild McCommunist

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But that logic is faulty because the same argument can be applied to everything but that point aside you have western games portray males as nothing more then steroid infused idoits that like to smash and bash things and do you see guys screaming "thats endorsing a negative image of men" no they really couldn't give a shit but also the difference between the examples you have are those are against the law while showing women with big boobs isn't.

But that isn't exactly it. It may show some men as gruff and built but that's not nearly as offensive as portraying women as ditzy, helpless, slutty, submissive, or as sexual objects. Like when you play Gears of War, the size of the men or how they act is hardly a focus. If they wanted to be offensive towards men, they'd make them stupid, braindead, brutish, or savage. And not savage like "They shoot people" savage, I'm talking like cavemen. A game like Dead or Alive (especially beach volleyball and such) is completely focused around the women being sexual objects.

EDIT: As a man I can say that these "Gears of War" images of men don't offend me. Don't get me wrong, I'll get offended from a gender standpoint if someone says that "All men are pigs" or "all men do is think with their dicks" since those are both misconceptions about my gender. Having some men being muscular and in combat situations is hardly offensive. If they made all the men do nothing but talk about how much they fuck babes and have them act like braindead assholes then yeah, I'd be offended. But I can't think of a game that does that.

I'm not saying western culture isn't guilty of portraying gender roles in the wrong light but it's just highlighted for Japanese culture in cases like this.
 

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It's not the breast physics or anything that offend me, it's the way that Samus' character was butchered in Other M.
And that probably had nothing to do with Team Ninja.

I suppose it's Japan being Japan, do the Japanese women object to this representation?
 

Gahars

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I don't see a problem with Team Ninja's attitude at all and is it just me or are we forgetting that this is in a game and is fiction so why are we suddenly expecting fiction/fantasy etc = real life when its made to not be real in the first place.

Fiction doesn't make things unoffensive. Just because it isn't real doesn't mean it gets a pass. If there was a work of fiction that glorified [censored], pedophilia, or genocide (for a few examples) as the best thing since sliced bread I don't think people would say "Oh it's just fiction so it doesn't matter". Fiction or not, it endorses a negative image of women.
But that logic is faulty because the same argument can be applied to everything

Of course it can!

but that point aside you have western games portray males as nothing more then steroid infused idoits that like to smash and bash things and do you see guys screaming "thats endorsing a negative image of men" no they really couldn't give a shit but also the difference between the examples you have are those are against the law while showing women with big boobs isn't.

Those depictions aren't that much better, but there's also a crucial difference. Those hulking stereotypes are made for males (escapist characters full of machismo and strength). These scantily clad, unrealistically proportioned women aren't made for females; they're also designed around appealing to a male audience.
 
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