This comes to no surprise to anyone who has played their Persona series or Catherine. I’m just bringing it up again because I went back to play Persona 3 Portable because of all the remake news and while P3P might have the least overall issues it does still have a transwomen being portrayed as a predator. They also having the character have stubble as their not so subtle way of point out this character is trans.
Like I said there are way worse examples in their games. Persona 4 has a FTM character where the main character can active force to basically detransition.
Then there is Erica from Catherine. I love Erica and they way the character make back handed comments and even make fun of a character for dating her really irritates me.
Anyways rant over. What are your thoughts on this?
I feel like the world is starting to point out the grossness of those jokes/situations, but there are still areas of the world that are behind. As I’m not trans, I won’t notice the more subtle pokes that aren’t appropriate, but as a human the blatant jabs don’t make me feel comfortable.
A lot of the media we consume is morally grey, so unless things don’t go too far I’ll just take it as distasteful influence. But if something continues to bother me I’ll look for something else to fill my time.
The fact that Persona isn’t really getting better, and also has such a poor stance on female protagonists does leave me feeling a little icky. I really like the overall bonding of friends in the games, but it’s awkward when they include inappropriate jokes that just kind of ruin the tone (they aren’t even funny so idk what the point is in having them).
Also it’s annoying the way they think they have to redesign a whole game to have a female character. Just open up the romance prospects and switch the pronouns when needed, maybe add extra lines depending on the gender’s involved. They say it’s too much work to add a female protag in a basically self insert game, yet we have so many examples of it working out (Fire Emblem, Genshin, Honkai Star Rail, etc.).
Overall I think it’s really gross, but experiencing the poor examples of women have me a bit jaded and has effected my tolerance for what I dislike. So I endure a bit until I say it’s time to focus on something else.
The excuse they give for not adding female protagonist is just the fact they don’t see the value of having one. I was playing Catherine last weekend and the way some of the people at the bar talk about women and how they basically are being ruined by women was kind of a eye opener for a lot of issues in Atlus games. I don’t know how I missed it when I was teenager.
More than anything I’m tired of the men vs women approach. I’ve had men make me feel shitty, and other women. Being a bad person is not exclusive to gender and it’s ridiculous to think that gender works like a hivemind.
I suppose I grew up being interested in neutral interests (or didn’t care about the stereotypes of an interest) so I felt like people were more individual than the gender they have.
Persona 4 was difficult for me to play. There’s Naoto like you mentioned, but Kanji realizing he isn’t actually queer at the end of his social link felt like a huge bait and switch.
I know a lot of people love Persona 4 and will say that Naoto was never meant to be trans (and instead plays with masculinity to be taken seriously as a woman in her professional field) and Kanji was never meant to be gay (and instead has a feminine side and that’s okay), but I don’t think we’re “just reading into things,” right? If Kanji was never meant to be gay, I’m not sure why the writers felt the need to make his dungeon a gay bathhouse. Write something more relevant to his journey about being a gender-nonconforming man instead?
But I do think the arcs we got with Naoto and Kanji related to gender nonconformity are worthwhile, and it’s great if people find that meaningful. I just wish they could have written that without the queerbaiting.
From what I understand these homophobic events were the product of the director of Persona 3,4,5,Catherine
He’s gone for Persona 6, so there is a chance that game won’t be problematic as someone else will be in charge. Now, will that new person also be problematic, that remains to be seen, but I only hope they are not.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katsura_Hashino
https://www.polygon.com/2017/5/4/15545254/persona-5-director-leaves-katsura-hashinoThough I see he’s in charge of the newly announced, Metaphor: ReFantazio, so we are not entirely free of his influence.
This is good to know. Hopefully there will be a change in these games.
