Gamemoir's Michael expresses his frustration at the way that Vanille from Final Fantasy XIII was heavily sexualized and how this ruined his appreciation for the character.
First. Who, besides someone trying to get everyone to take him more seriously than he deserves, calls Vanille by her whole name? I haven't seen anyone do this until now.
Second. Is this guy frickin' nuts? Let's examine.
The word sexualize, or its variants, are used 17 times in the article. Sometimes in quick succession. This sounds like someone who is either obsessed, or really trying to drive home a point no one else would agree with.
"Straight from the first time you use Vanille in combat she makes orgasmic noises every time she attacks an enemy, whether it be using spells or hitting them with her weapon which acts suspiciously like a whip."
Does anyone remember how Tomb Raider was criticized for this and the female voice actor, not knowing what everyone's problem was, felt embarrassed and shy about it even though she wasn't actually trying to sound sexual when Lara was performing strenuous actions? Same deal here. And Vanille's weapon is not a whip, it's meant to be like a Staff or Rod weapon because Vanille's main job is as a caster, not a fighter. Because she can be a fighter though, she needs to be able to do physical attacks. Since guns and a boomerang were taken, what would this guy have wanted Vanille's weapon to be?
"Bear in mind that from the character’s introduction she has mannerisms that depict her as being rather young so when this moaning and whipping began one of my eyebrows was raised so high it was practically on the back of my head."
Because you need actual help.
"Whilst the rest of the protagonists were branded in fairly innocent places Vanille was branded on her hip, requiring her to lift up her skirt to showcase her brand to the rest of the group."
Lightning's brand was smack dab between her boobs on her chest. That's why when she had to show her brand, it was to a female character without the camera letting you peak at her boobs. But oh no, you get to see a character's hip. WON'T SOMEONE PLEASE THINK OF THE CHILDREN!
"When she awakens she does so completely naked and then her clothes magically appear around her body a few seconds later, obviously for that brief period of time the camera angles used only suggest nudity and you never see anything better than a cheeky bit of side boob but whenever a character awakens later on in the game you are only shown their full body once their clothes have appeared."
Yeah, because she had previously transformed into Ragnarok. You know that giant, world destroying monster? You expect her to be fully clothed after having turned into that and fulfilling her Focus? Fang was naked too, why aren't you complaining about that? Because the camera didn't focus on Fang? So what, you should obviously know that Fang was also naked.
"special effort has been made to turn it into an opportunity to sexualise Vanille in particular."
Only in your twisted mind.
..."he transforms into a cannon which she then proceeds to straddle in a very suggestive manner."
Part 2: "however it’s Vanille’s reaction to this explosion which is most notable. When her eidolon produces this massive explosion Vanille closes her eyes and throws her head back with what can only be described as a look of ecstasy on her face and of course the trademark high-pitched moan returns as she does so."
Scraping the bottom of the barrel for this one aren't you? This just shows you're reading way too much into this and actually have a dirty mind. With that in mind, take a look at this and tell me if I'm right or not.
"Square Enix designed Lightning, the main protagonist of the Final Fantasy XIII series, with an objective of creating a strong female character who displayed none of the typical anime girl tropes, and was thus more representative of women."
LMFAO! So normal women are nigh emotionless men in female bodies pissed off at the world and rude to everyone around them? Lightning was made to be a female Cloud, not to be more representative of women.
Every day I see garbage like this, and every day I have to wonder if there is something in the air or water that I must be immune to because I can't fathom how anyone can invent issues like this and then obsess over them.
I also don't think over-sexualisation ruined her. It's like saying that the smell ruins a bowl of turd - even without the smell, it would still be turd. Likewise, even if she wore less revealing clothes and had less orgasmic noises, she would still be the a terribly bad character.
I liked the cast, for the same reason I liked the cast of 12. Yes, Vanille is annoying but that makes her more likable for me. The super teenagers saving the world stories became too weird with time. In 8 all of them grew up together, in 7 all characters were somehow special, only Tifa was ordinary but still - big boobs to make her "special". 10 had a good party, though still over the top.
Thing is, annoying people do exist. Not everyone can be a cool superhero. I understand that these are fantasy games, but I can enjoy and get into the story much easier when the characters are believable. And saving the world is much more satisfying if ordinary people do it.
that stupid voice did it for me. after i heard her lines (not the narration) i started to hate everything about her...her childish demeanor, her ridiculous battle animations... she was useful only for the ridiculous stagger. Only Hope bested her as the most annoying character. After 13 i played 12 for a bit just to check and Vaan looks badass compared to these 2.
Yeah they are the first one to say they have the right to dress how ever they want though so good luck with them with that argument.
You tell them to dress up more it's oppression, you tell them they look good (or even look at their exposed body for too long) it's sexual harrasment. You can't win.
I hate the fact that women can dress how ever sexy they want and show their ass around the gym for example. Then they go around shaming men for only thinking about sex all the time. Wth are we supposed to do? We get aroused by visuals and having seen all that skimpy clothing and ass spreading at the gym and around town we are shamed for getting aroused and feeling horny.
These SJW feminists are fighting biology and people actually take them seriously? It pisses me off royaly.
Men should start a movement that fights that. If we work out and a girl compliments us we should publicly shame her for objectifying men and only wanting sex, cause lets be honest, girls don't approach good looking guys only to have small talk.
They look at your bulge on a train, publicly shame them, they look at you when you take of your shirt, publicly shame them, they look at you longer than 5 seconds on the beach, publicly shame them, they go to watch magic mike (yeah right, no objectifying of men, just look at how much profit the movie made) protest in front of the cinema and expose women as the sex-wanting, men-objectifying, doublefaced beasts they are.
yeah but you see they are only interested in the other side of the story. Reason and logic do not beat cult and religion. They see only what they want to see.
I don't agree with this guy at all, but what are you talking about? are you saying for someone to talk about a female character being sexual they also have to talk about the physical appearance of the men?
Again, i was just talking about your part on male characters, a lot of people use tha line, like you can't comment on a females clothing etc without saying something about the men too, not to mention you compared it to muscular men which is very different.
I never want any form of censorship in video games.
The only thing wrong with Vanille is she wasn't sexualized enough. She is a drab, boring character as shallow and pointless as she is annoying. Her only value was being eye candy and they didn't even do that right.
how can you call her drab, boring, shllow, pointless and annoying if the only thing wrong with her was that he wasn't sexualized enough? unless you don't know what the word "only" means?
Everything about Vanille is awful. The nonsensical attempts to sexualize her (in a bizarrely non sequitur kind of way) is just another piece of the crap sandwich. As far as I'm concerned, she's the friggin' reincarnation of Jar Jar Binks. Possibly worse.
This kind of idol/mascot/genki character works really poorly in English IMO. They just come across as contrived, fake and irritating as a result.
The only way that kind of character can work is tragically: if their attitude is a front to cover up what they are really feeling or to make an effort to keep the party in high spirits. This is why FFX's Rikku, despite drawing on the same character archetype, isn't as annoying.
However IMO Vanille should have been the main character in FFXIII. She's new to FFXIII's world, much like the player, which makes her perfect to play an audience surrogate (much the way Tidus did after being transplanted into Spira in FFX).
'The only way that kind of character can work is tragically: if their attitude is a front to cover up what they are really feeling or to make an effort to keep the party in high spirits.'
The tragedy of the character can't be a reveal or plotwist unless the reveal is adequately hinted at such that you can emphathise with the character even without knowing the specifics of the backstory.
FFXIII doesn't do that. It just shows an annoying character and then dozens of hours later tells you why that's supposed to be okay. At which point it's hardly convincing (in part because the entire game's plot isn't convincing).
Keep in mind that Vanille doesn't change once her situation is touched upon. It's not a front: it's a perky character that's at odds with her rough situation, not a perky personality forged from it.
The player has to understand the perky character traits are a front, and have some inkling as to the depth of the character's motivations quite early on for this to work.
How people constantly complaining about sexualization of everything ruined the world. That's cool, the fad of being a sexual crybaby will pass in the next year or so and all the whiners will move on to some other equally lame issue.
Over sexualization can make a character bland and generic, to the point that sexuality is basically his or her only trait... But I don't think they went that way with Vanille... :/ I can understand people that hate her and people that like her, because she has a personality. I particularly don't care either way.
I do agree that the l'Cie brand is kind of a fanservice though. But this is totally minor to the point of irrelevancy...
I don't think over-sexualisation ruined her character...she's just an annoying character in general with most of the other FF13 cast.
I skimmed through the article.... Is this satire?
I think your way too sensitive.
I mean why aren't you complaining that all male characters in games are drawn musclebound and fit?
Why not demand that all male leads be overweight or regular guys that never go to the gym and aren't very strong?
It's an art form.
A person can draw an attractive girl and still treat real women with respect and dignity.
if anything it was her personality and voice that was more annoying then her freaking character design.