This is an editorial piece. The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views and opinions of, and should not be attributed to, Niche Gamer as an organization.
As a protector, you know that you have to install Grathnode crystals into your Reyvateil to increase her combat prowess. Much to your disappointment, your Reyvateil is emotionally closed and after much diving into her cosmosphere to gain her trust and learn how to better communicate with her, she has finally allowed you to install a Grathnode crystal inside of her. “Don’t put it in too fast” she whispers to you, “It’s my first time.” So you insert the crystal gently into her back, hoping not to give her any more trauma than what she has already experienced. As she winces in discomfort, she looks down to you and smiles. You feel relieved, since her distrust of humans was due to her previous protector having physically assaulted her, and you wanted to show her that you meant her no ill will. Perhaps you can, if you care for her, help her recover from years of abuse.
When it comes to marginalized sub cultures, few are looked upon as negatively as video gamers. While a lot of the negative stereotypes foisted upon gamers can be proven false if one takes the time to explore the hobby, there is a group even deeper within the pastime that hasn’t enjoyed that same level of respect. A frowned-upon sub culture within the already negatively viewed culture of video gaming that is ridiculed even by other gamers. A group of people frequently chided and singled out in the hobby’s forums to the point where many, including myself, have had to hide our allegiance to this disrespected area of gaming culture for fear of what our devotion to it will do to our standing within the peer group at large. This group is the Japanese game fan.
To be clear, I’m not speaking about mainstream Japanese-made games such as Super Mario Brothers or Metal Gear Solid. The games I speak of are rooted in the deepest part of Japanese culture and are as far from the mainstream as one can get. Games like Hyperdimension Neptunia, Senran Kagura, the Atelier series, Mugen Souls, Disgaea, and Fairy Fencer F. Games that often star young, high-voiced characters in colorful environments making off-color jokes while melodic music hums in the background. These titles are the polar opposite of the fire-and-lead shooters that dominate the market, and for that reason, they are often seen as childish.
For many, these kinds of Japanese video games are seen as puerile, unsophisticated and exploitative. Many criticize Neptunia’s large-breasted young female leads, or bring attention to the innuendo-laced dialog of Disgaea, or write hit pieces on gaming websites about the exploitative nature of Senran Kagura’s scantily clad protagonists. While I’ll admit a lot of these Japanese games tend to be a bit over-the-top in their art design, the reasons we play them have nothing to do with a desire for titillation or a tendency towards perversion. Instead, we play them to get away from the violent, drab, destructive world we see portrayed in the rest of the hobby.
I like a good game of Halo or Call of Duty just as much as anyone else but for me that’s just a very small part of my gaming experience. Most of my time is spent trying to escape reality, not relive the nightly newscast on my Playstation. When I want to relax and leave the darkness of reality behind, I look for the colorful and positive worlds that I find in Japanese games, most of which celebrate life instead of finding ways to destroy it.
Hyperdimension Neptunia, a Japanese roleplaying game that anthropomorphizes gaming consoles into young girls, is often used as an example when people try to prove that Japanese games are immature trash. The heavy innuendo, the scantily clad young women, and the over-the-top art design have been a lightning rod for the witch hunt in gaming lately, and the people criticizing these games don’t realize that isn’t why they are played. Sure, the cute girls are fun to look at and pleasing to the eye of both genders of gamers, but that’s only a very small part of the experience. With Neptunia, a lot of the allure comes from the adorable interactions between the characters and how they navigate their highly stylized, cartoony world. Where someone sees the large-breasted Compa wrapping a half-naked Neptunia in bandages after she gets hurt and thinks it’s perverted, fans of the game see a funny and cute moment that endears both characters to the player. I know of no one who uses the scene as an arousal aid, as some seem to imply, yet it doesn’t stop that lie from being circulated online by the genre’s detractors.
There are other famous examples of supposed Japanese gaming debauchery, such as the infamous “Horse penis” joke in Disgaea and the act of “inserting” crystals into your female party members to help them gain new powers in Ar Tonelico. All can be easily written into a hit piece and pointed at as being crude and sexist. At least, they can be if you refuse to talk to those who play them and find out what we think of it. If you did, you’d find out that to us, these are funny little in-jokes that are meant to make you laugh, not to make you aroused. Yet outsiders frequently misconstrue the context of these scenes and damn the whole game for their inclusion.
For a fan of Japanese games, it’s all about being made to laugh and enjoying a positive, colorful world. Take the Atelier series, for instance. Here you have a story surrounding a different young girl in each game who rises up from poverty or strife and becomes a powerful alchemist. Usually, the female protagonist finds love as well, meeting a man whom she slowly begins to trust more and more as the game goes on. Yes, there is a fair amount of innuendo in some of them, but it doesn’t change the fact that the stories always revolve around love and empowerment. Yet the Atelier games have had their very cute female leads censored out of the front cover box art in America for undisclosed reasons. There is no nudity, no sex scene, and nothing but purely innocent instances of teenage love, yet fans of the series are made to feel ashamed for liking them. Other gamers frequently refer to those who enjoy them as “sickos” or “fairies” or worse, yet they feel it’s perfectly fine to maul a few thousand people in a shooter like Call of Duty.
Which brings us to why Japanese games are so markedly different than American games. In America, violence is seen as acceptable, but anything even remotely sexual is frowned upon. In Japan, this is flip-flopped, and it is sex that is seen as acceptable and violence that is frowned upon. In Japanese culture, youth and vitality is valued above all, so their media often tells its stories through the eyes of young characters. With such a focus on youth and sexuality, it’s easy to see why so many people get the idea that Japanese games are sick and those who enjoy them are deviants. It’s untrue, but nonetheless easy to understand. For devotees of the Japanese game subgenre, the vivacity, openness, and humorous stories are what draws us in and keeps us coming back. At a time when death is celebrated in our culture and the true beauty of life and love are ignored, many very exhausted folks are turning to the colorfully designed and refreshingly positive worlds of Japanese games to soothe them. Calling these fans sexual deviants, perverted goons or fairies isn’t fair … and more than that, it’s flat out wrong.
Many of these games even address issues that American games refuse to. Look at the fourth Persona game for the Playstation, where sexual identity is explored in a very mature fashion. Not only do we see a sexually ambiguous young woman who chooses to live as a man to gain more respect, but we see a male character who is secretly homosexual and struggles to hide it through an overly macho attitude. Although the former isn’t addressed much in the main game, the latter is slowly examined throughout the entire course of the story. Kanji, the man in question, has his masculine façade slowly peeled away until he is forced to finally come face to face with who he is. Show me one western game that does the same.
There are other instances of such delicate topics being handled by these games, such as Digital Devil Saga dealing with God and the concept of sin, Tales of Vesperia addressing the negative repercussions of combating violence with violence, and Lunar exploring the idea that love trumps all other things. Though they may come packaged with a fair amount of innuendo and a vivacious young girl or two, the overall theme of many of these games is one of positivity and cheerfulness. Though some may tackle sensitive issues, they all do so without being the dark and gloomy, violence-filled gore fests many western games have now become.
My only wish is that before people write hit pieces on these games, or criticize those who enjoy them, that they first play a few and learn why they are more than just simple “titillation” fantasy. In truth, they are an escape for gamers tired of the darkness that reality chokes us with. Japanese games are our escape.
