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Anyway, this is a very funny way for the thread to evolve because you know who is very open about his love for attractive women? Kotaro Uchikoshi. His games always have at least one woman with massive mommy milkers and his protagonists make horny jokes constantly. Date, the protagonist of the first AI: The Somnium Files, is addicted to porn to the point that he powers up when he sees it. You can't say that he's pandering to westerners and also that western lefties hate attractive women in the same breath. It just doesn't make sense.

I think it’s incredibly funny that people seriously think Uchikoshi is not only desperately “pandering to the West” or something here, but also that these incredibly brief (unadvertised, late-game) moments are specifically why anyone bought these games. As opposed to, you know, buying them due to having liked the Zero Escape series? Which also didn’t sell as well in Japan and only had the final game get made due to the Western fanbase, so you don’t really need to make up any ridiculous conspiracies to explain why these games might sell better here.

(Like damn, I sure wish the amount of people who buy these games in the West could be taken as being indicative of at least that level of directly showing support for queer people here…)

all-tsun-and-no-dere wrote:

Anyway, this is a very funny way for the thread to evolve because you know who is very open about his love for attractive women? Kotaro Uchikoshi. His games always have at least one woman with massive mommy milkers and his protagonists make horny jokes constantly. Date, the protagonist of the first AI: The Somnium Files, is addicted to porn to the point that he powers up when he sees it. You can't say that he's pandering to westerners and also that western lefties hate attractive women in the same breath. It just doesn't make sense.

There’s also this aspect, yes. The sheer amount of eyeroll-inducing perverted innuendo is enough that it’s tiring to read at some points (and that’s even with it being toned down from the first game!), yet this game is totally exclusively pandering to the woke American left or whatever.

all-tsun-and-no-dere wrote:

Anyway, this is a very funny way for the thread to evolve because you know who is very open about his love for attractive women? Kotaro Uchikoshi. His games always have at least one woman with massive mommy milkers and his protagonists make horny jokes constantly. Date, the protagonist of the first AI: The Somnium Files, is addicted to porn to the point that he powers up when he sees it.

Also the whole thing about Sigma wanting to see Phi in a swimsuit in Virtue's Last Reward.

(Which gets either better or worse once you've played Zero Time Dilemma, depending on your perspective.)

all-tsun-and-no-dere wrote:

Anyway, this is a very funny way for the thread to evolve because you know who is very open about his love for attractive women? Kotaro Uchikoshi. His games always have at least one woman with massive mommy milkers and his protagonists make horny jokes constantly. Date, the protagonist of the first AI: The Somnium Files, is addicted to porn to the point that he powers up when he sees it. You can't say that he's pandering to westerners and also that western lefties hate attractive women in the same breath. It just doesn't make sense.

To be fair, I recall people hated that aspect about Date and called him a horrible character and criticized all the horny stuff in the first game. Some reviews for the sequel I've seen seemed to lament that those elements are still present. I assume it was one of those 'problematic favorites' things where people are willing to overlook a lot for the sake of certain elements, like how Sailor Moon is praised for Uranus and Neptune for being a couple but it's not like the series don't have tons of other stuff people find distasteful like the rampant sexualization of the Sailor Soldiers and the things the animators like to do with the camera or poses they put the girls in and other elements.

dreamEnd wrote:

I've been a following this man a long time. This one move gained him plenty of traction and lots of followers on twitter, I wouldn't be surprised if this was part of his marketing strategy.

Other than the very minor shoutout in the game about queers, the game doesn't exactly "support" it. The only characters that are queer are Okama stereotype spoiler[ a criminal , and dead person]

That was one of the main things I found odd about the attitude of the first game. People on social media loved the one line Mizuki says about LGBT people being creative, but the Mama character in general was a huge okama stereotype who constantly made many unwanted sexual advances towards Date and was constantly trying to get into his pants. Honestly, I took Mizuki's statement to be ironic when I initially saw it. She's a little kid who was always oblivious to the innuendos Mama made and Date had to keep trying to brush them off and remind Mama to stop saying things like that in front of a kid. Her opinion was based on being completely oblivious to what was being done in front of her.

In general I think people should remember you can have a character that says or does something in a piece of fiction that's not reflective of the of the other characters in it or even the creator themselves. From what I recall, Date wasn't exactly the kindest character to Mama and made some negative remarks about her as well. Mizuki may say LGBT rights but do the other characters? Most media tend to have a variety of character personalities and traits in their worlds. But given how social media tends to work people post things out of context for people or they choose to ignore the context and everything else about a work. Fandoms can totally just latch on to one minor aspect of something and not care about anything else. Likewise, you can be a fan of the game but hate Mizuki as a character and find her annoying, much like people did with Date in the first one.

The lgbt phobia is the comments is appalling but not surprising. Uchikoshi made a clear stand against the brain dead idiots that plague this thread.

Quoting myself now:

"Em... the Hijra from India exist for over Millenia, and they are a socially and legally accepted Third Gender. It's not a fruit of modernity.

Also, you think you know all about science, but if the biological boundaries of men and women are so strict, then what are the Intersex, who come in various shapes such as XXY chromosome, women born with a vulva but with XY chromosome (they're sterile), people born ovotestis (a hybrid organ), or people who are born with various sets of chromosomes (mosaic), among other examples. Intersex represent 1,7% of the world population.

Or, what about the fact that biologically male babies exposed to larger amounts of estrogen tend to become transgender women, or that biologically female babies with large testosterone exposure tend to become transgender males?

Seriously, if you want to use Science, at least study it for an hour, OK?

Or is anything that goes against your narrative forbidden? Is Critical Thinking forbidden now?

As my biology teacher once said: "The right to an opinion comes with the duty of knowing what you're talking about.""

But then again, I don't expect much of an answer from someone who uses a gif as a reply.

love seeing bigots who don't think japan has any lgbtq+ people being told by actual japanese people that they are completely wrong and having their entire worldview shattered

BonusStage wrote:

I'm not sure I agree with the point you're making. Chromosome abnormality do exist but they are universally considered to be negative things; that's why they're called birth defects. Some can be corrected with surgery, but most can't. For the most common conditions like Tuner syndrome, Klinefelter syndrome, and even Downs syndrome I don't think anyone views them as positive things since they lead to poor cognitive and physical development issues. And most unborn diagnosed with those conditions do not make it to term. I can't see someone celebrating being born sterile or physically impaired because of an abnormal genetic disorder. So while it's true there are humans with alternative chromosomes that's not considered normal or ideal.

Humans are also sometimes born as conjoined twins, with extra appendages, or with webbed toes. But for those there isn't any pushback towards people who say humans are a one headed, two-armed, ten-finger and ten-toed creature. It's understood that there's always exceptions to the normal.

The point being made is that the whole "women are this, and men are that" argument has holes in its logic, as proven by particular cases of Intersex people. Furthermore, I am also explaining that there are natural causes for a lot of trans people, not that there needs to be any because trans people are valid in their own right.

A more accurate way is to say that women are most often "like this or like tha"t. If we can accept that there are exceptions to a rule based on being intersex (biological/genetic), we can accept the same notion with transgender and non-binary (psychological/cultural/in some cases also biological).

In the end, I lean most toward Lorna Wing's reuse of a Churchill quote: "Nature never draws a line without smudging it." And my own observation that anyone who uses the phrase "simple biology" probably isn't a biologist.

Shay Guy wrote:

In the end, I lean most toward Lorna Wing's reuse of a Churchill quote: "Nature never draws a line without smudging it." And my own observation that anyone who uses the phrase "simple biology" probably isn't a biologist.

You will realize that most people who talk about chromosomes never tested their own DNA. I think around 2% of them would be surprised.

Rule violators have been dealt with. I want to offer a sincere apology that this thread was not handled with the care it required and included discriminatory and hateful posts against the LGBTQ+ community, especially nonbinary and trans people.

I am reposting the forums rule and highlighting the portions that were blatantly violated in this thread.

Quote:

We've got a completely new set of rules for these forums!

Anime News Network Forum Mission Statement:

Anime News Network is a community brought together by our love of and interest in anime, manga, and video games. All people regardless of their age, religion, race, ethnicity, nationality, culture, gender, sexual identity and sexual orientation, and physical and mental ability are welcome to come here and enjoy fandom together.

Towards these ends, we do not allow hateful speech that denigrates an individual, or group of individuals based on their identity. This includes, but is not limited to, any speech that suggests that any person or group is in any way inferior due to their age, religion, race, ethnicity, nationality, culture, gender, sexual identity and sexual orientation, and physical and mental ability. We also consider hate speech to include any suggestion the rights of an individual should be limited due to the above mentioned identifiers or that their personhood is in some way unethical.

Our rules already forbid hateful speech, so we would like to remind you that any attack on any age, religion, race, ethnicity, culture, gender, sexual identity or sexual orientation will be immediately dealt with by our moderators.

The Anime News Network forums operate under These Simple Rules:

• Don't be a jerk. Anime News Network's staff and moderators reserve the right to remove anyone from this space that cannot conduct themselves in a respectful, courteous manner.

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• Post relevant, thoughtful responses. Consider if what you are writing is relevant or important to others. Engaging in bad faith arguments is not allowed. If you are not interested in what the other party has to say, you are not discussing the topic; you are soap-boxing.

• Moderators have full discretion to enforce the spirit of the rules. Moderators have the right to lock, delete or modify any post at any time if they feel it negatively impacts the forum. If a thread is locked, that means the subject may not be brought up again.

xBTAx wrote:

I think it’s incredibly funny that people seriously think Uchikoshi is not only desperately “pandering to the West” or something here, but also that these incredibly brief (unadvertised, late-game) moments are specifically why anyone bought these games. As opposed to, you know, buying them due to having liked the Zero Escape series?

You can see people under Uchikoshi's tweets and the qrts basically saying they're buying the game now to own the chuds and show support to him for speaking out on the issue so it seems to be partially true. I find super political media and creators to be annoying though and not very fun to interact with so it doesn't do much to sell me on a piece of media.

Thank you for the clean up Mrs. Loveridge but I'm going to quote what A Tasty Sub said on Twitter.

"I love ANN but these forums have always been and still are a goddamn cesspool. I cannot even glance at a thread with more than a page of responses without seeing the same posters over and over claiming that LGBT people shouldn’t exist, that women are second class citizens, straight up racist fantasies, and of [expletive] course tons of thinly veiled defenses of pedophilia."

ANN needs to make a stand and say these people are not welcome here. The next time someone tries to defend loli, ban them. The next time someone says they don't like LGBT characters in media, ban them. The next time people say a an obviously Black character like Piccolo isn't black, ban them. If they deny a trans character like Naoto isn't trans, ban them. I'm tired of just seeing at best some posts being deleted and it happened again in the next thread. And hold the creators and voice actors accountable too. Stop giving platforms and article space to bigots like Eiichiro Oda, Watsuki Takahashi, Mamoru Oshii, Satoshi Kon, Hayao Miyazaki, Rie Takahashi, and the mountain of other people this industry and fandom openly praises despite their views. The fact Gawr Gura was a guest at CRX this year was disgusting given some of the stuff she has said and promoted on her channel. If you promote their work you are actively doing harm to the marginilized com. Or if nothing else, you are saying you don't care if it hurts them.

More articles like this. Less like those Shield Hero puff pieces. Less praising manga from war-crime denying mangakas. It's time to put your foot down and tell rightwingers they are not welcome here - whatever side of the industry they stand on.

Just to clarify, I do not know how invested Uchikochi-san is in Western politics or media, nor am I attempting to say he is or is not "pandering to the west". But those types of comments are not exlusive to the English speaking fandom. There has been an increase in Japanese creators and fans voicing their frustrations about this subject for years now and they also all bring up the West as being the source of the problem. Oshii Mamoru did a recent interview where he talked about his distaste for modern Hollywood and video games and said porikore (a Japanese slang that means political correctness) is the main reason why they are all so bad these days and mostly unwatchable and unplayable. I feel I have seen many Japanese fans and creators express views that align with Oshii-san. I do find Uchikochi-san's comments of Japanese media will one day be filled with trans and non-binary characters and it won't be seen as strange anymore to be farfetched as more and more Japanese creators are starting to speak out in opposition to those ideas being forced upon them but we will have to wait and see what fate awaits the media landscape for the time being..

TheGunheart wrote:

ANN needs to make a stand and say these people are not welcome here.

I made an attempt to report your post, but ANN limits the number of posters that can report posts. So you can know I am not alone in saying your comments are not welcome here. Zealots who think their word is gospel in who should be banned or not is not what ANN is about. Take your politics elsewhere!

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