Catherine- from the creators of Persona

Even if it's not explicit, they have a history of poor portrayals of queer characters, and every game that deals with them has been less than flattering far more often than not.

I'm not going to give them the benefit of the doubt in any circumstance where the intent is unclear.

It doesn't even matter what their intent is, frankly. Even if it is simple ignorance they haven't shown any inclination of listening to people's complaints or wanting to do better. Lala in P5 was alright but that was a "two steps forward, one step back" situation at best since that game still made homophobic jokes just like P3 and P4. Moreover, nobody here has said this but I'm kind of tired of people trying to explain or justify all their fuck-ups because "they're japanese". It's almost like there are LGBT+ people in Japan too who have their own issues with media portrayals and how they're treated by society at large. Granted, I have no idea what the japanese LGBT+ community's general stance is on Atlus stuff, but I can't imagine it's that much better than ours'.

Edited by Draghinazzo on Feb 16th 2019 at 9:24:35 AM

From what I read while browsing discussion on this topic, the LGBT+ community in Japan is just as sick of this bullshit.

Yeah I'm sick of all the "Japan just isn't as progressive" deflecting. If you want a Japanese game that treats queer issues with genuine respect I highly recommend The Missing: J.J. Macfield and the Island of Memories.

What a huge fiasco this is. Definitely prime Internet Backdraft material.

It does have the younger generation to make things better, but the older generation is still pretty conservative. Not helped by theRight having strong ties with the Yakuza on top of it.

Edited by OmegaRadiance on Feb 16th 2019 at 8:58:29 AM

It definitely varies company by company. Compare the LGBT rep in any given Cygames game to any given Atlus game, and it's not even funny how bad Atlus looks.

Hasn't Fire Emblem started to include LGBT+ characters too?

Yeah. It's definitely a mixed bag as to the quality of representation, but they're taking baby steps and consistently improving at least.

Cy Games still plays it safe to an extent, but they're definitely willing to expand and try out more things.

IE Granblue had that entire Event where a fujoshi making her first manga with her friends and they did drugs that made everyone look like Handsome Gorillas, and one of the board overseeing the doujin event was staunchly against the yaoi, and its like that in most part of the Skydoms art community.

Meanwhile Dragalia Lost definitely gets more diverse, having playable characters who are Black, including civillian NPCS, in its setting.

After some stumbling with some Fates characters, yeah. Leon from Echoes is the best one so far.

Edited by BZL8 on Feb 16th 2019 at 11:08:17 AM

Dragalia gets all my props for having a pansexual Middle Eastern guy as one of the highest rarity adventurers.

x5 In Fates, yeah, but there are only characters with same-sex options, both for the player character only, and they're...questionable (and the localization removed their sweeter scenes).

There's also a female character who unashamedly flirts with women, but she cannot pair up with any female units, and her support with the male Avatar had...problematic implications (which the localization actually did attempt to make better).

Edit: Oh yeah, there's also Leon from Echoes. A bit stereotypical, but still a cool and sympathetic character, so he's pretty alright, I think.

Edited by KarkatTheDalek on Feb 16th 2019 at 12:11:35 PM

x4 Not to mention several of their characters (especially Anne and Grea) are basically canon gay, and a major character in an anime they funded is a transgirl.

Edited by Rynnec on Feb 16th 2019 at 11:17:57 AM

Leon is who I was thinking of, yeah. I got the impression there were more gay characters in Echoes but apparently not I guess.

Python is Ambiguously Bi, but whether you think he is an LGBT character is a case of YMMV.

Edited by BZL8 on Feb 16th 2019 at 11:25:38 AM

Many people miss it because it's from the DLC, but Lukas is aro-ace.

As I said in the Persona thread this definitely casts a... darker shade on Hashino's prior fumblings of LGBT characters. I'm wondering if perhaps I was too lenient in assuming ignorance over malice now...

Edited by HamburgerTime on Feb 16th 2019 at 11:29:47 AM

It could still be ignorance, it's just that past a certain point it doesn't really matter. You could easily write this kind of thing if you're not well-informed on trans issues without being consciously bigoted. But if the result is still transphobic, then well, it's transphobic. I'm not really interested in what's in his heart or whatever.

You're very right it doesn't make it better.

This really seems to be brewing into quite the flood. There are even people encouraging others to not buy Joker for Smash due to being a Hashino character.

Can’t account for all of them, but some of the tweets are from people deliberately trolling to rile up the fanbase, with almost no likes. Just a heads up.

I mean I'm certainly not going to buy him but I won't tell others what they should or shouldn't do.

The late '10s really do seem to be the age of celebrities committing reputation suicide. Even outside the Weinstein Effect cases there've been plenty of others (Kanye West, Butch Hartman, Billy Mitchell, etc.).

I’m calling HanlonsRazor on all of this: not outright malice, just stupidity. The devs basically tried to use trans trope (not just with Erica, but with Rin) as a way to make the game seem “exotic” and “special”, but fell short because they are just too ignorant on the subject (and couldn’t be bothered to do their homework). This isn’t to excuse them, of course, as they have used trans and gay people as the butts of their jokes looooong before this. At this point, I’m just patiently waiting to see if they’ll dig themselves deeper (and maybe get some schadenfreude laughs).
“Have dreams, not heroes” - something I tell myself more frequently than I’d hope.

Edited by HottoKenai on Feb 17th 2019 at 1:32:24 AM

I beat the original Catherine and gained a strong dislike for it, despite having a positive first impression of it. And I couldn't really put my finger on why.

I see that Catherine is even shittier now than it was when it was new.