Post by TheAtom on Jun 9, 2016 4:48:35 GMT -5
@sirawesome39, Neptunia's dope, but I had to take a break from it after doing Re;Birth 1. 2 is still lingering in my backlog (just as Steins;Gate is, actually...).
I'm playing Criminal Girls now though. And damn, for everyone focusing so much on the motivation sequences, this game deals with some heavy stuff! Basically, you end up being a prison guard for a couple of girls that are about to be sent to hell. However, if they better themselves on your way there, they may have a change to be reborn on earth instead (it neatly combines classical Buddhist thought with Christian ideas of purgatory in that sense). Now remember, these girls did bad stuff. But what's bad, really? Here, when it comes to each girl's personal story, it starts to feel more and more like a Nitroplus VN than it does a NIS game. These girls are not your average run-of-the-mill characters; there's depth in here that I was not prepared for myself, and it's really great. I'm SO looking forward to the sequel now.
What this game does so well, is present you with these typical anime tropes, the busty attractive girl, the helpless loli, the feminazi 'strong' girl, and give them a depth, a reason to be that way that you would not expect. Basically this game tells you "all these types you fawn over; they're people with a story of their own", and in that sense this is not even close to being objectifying. Throughout the whole game, you are in many ways treating them as single-minded objects for motivation. But towards the end, there's no way but to accept these characters as full-blown people, and I think that by forcing the objectification in the beginning through likable stereotypes, it also forces the player to reconsider the characters, but also perhaps the character types in other forms of media, as people rather than objects.
Strangely enough though, this seems to be a point missed by a lot of people that have played/reviewed the game...
Here's some spoilers on the backstories of some of the characters that you figure out towards the end of the game
I'm playing Criminal Girls now though. And damn, for everyone focusing so much on the motivation sequences, this game deals with some heavy stuff! Basically, you end up being a prison guard for a couple of girls that are about to be sent to hell. However, if they better themselves on your way there, they may have a change to be reborn on earth instead (it neatly combines classical Buddhist thought with Christian ideas of purgatory in that sense). Now remember, these girls did bad stuff. But what's bad, really? Here, when it comes to each girl's personal story, it starts to feel more and more like a Nitroplus VN than it does a NIS game. These girls are not your average run-of-the-mill characters; there's depth in here that I was not prepared for myself, and it's really great. I'm SO looking forward to the sequel now.
What this game does so well, is present you with these typical anime tropes, the busty attractive girl, the helpless loli, the feminazi 'strong' girl, and give them a depth, a reason to be that way that you would not expect. Basically this game tells you "all these types you fawn over; they're people with a story of their own", and in that sense this is not even close to being objectifying. Throughout the whole game, you are in many ways treating them as single-minded objects for motivation. But towards the end, there's no way but to accept these characters as full-blown people, and I think that by forcing the objectification in the beginning through likable stereotypes, it also forces the player to reconsider the characters, but also perhaps the character types in other forms of media, as people rather than objects.
Strangely enough though, this seems to be a point missed by a lot of people that have played/reviewed the game...
Here's some spoilers on the backstories of some of the characters that you figure out towards the end of the game
One girl only cares about money, and throughout the game she'll be making comments like "Oh, that? Ugh, that's probably worth only a meager 20 bucks. Useless...". Fact is, in life she wanted to be one of the cool kids. Badly. So she bugged her middle-class parents to go to a fancy high school. Of course, having to pay ridiculous tuition fees, parents can't afford her fancy clothes to match. But there you are, among fancy rich kids dressed as a poor bum. So she buys knockoffs, fakes. Obviously that doesn't work either, it's always clearly visible (the type of shit you realize coming home with ASADI slippers or something). She needs the money, but she's what? 15? How is she going to get anything? Basically, she starts to go on dates for money, "never any perverted stuff, though!" she reminds us, but still some of the side effects are not much different. On the streets she's being harrassed by customers that want more, etc. But at least now she gets to go to school in the fancy clothes she always wanted to wear and she gets to make fun of others that don't get to wear such clothes.
Another one is somewhat of a clumsy, dumb girl, bigger sister of a different character in the game. She has quite the sis-complex and relies on her little sister for almost everything. She tends to refer to herself in third person, something we know indeed mostly from child-like characters. When being confronted, you come to realize that she doesn't seem to be half as dumb as she's been making you believe throughout this whole game. Turns out she was scared she'd lose her little sister, so instead of trying to bond, she bound her sister to her with responsibility. As long as the little sister had to take care of her of course, the sister had to be with her. This was huge for me, because throughout the whole game you get to kind of like this dumb-but-trying-hard character, and at the end you notice it was all a façade...
There's also the feminazi character. With almost every 'pervy' comment you make in the game, she'll bash you for it. She used to beat up guys for the sole fact of talking to girls. Turns out she's been stalked, had voyeur pictures being taken of her in a way that it ruined her life. Feeling like men now owe her her life, she felt it was justified to ruin theirs. She felt empty, lost and degraded. Doing this, she thought, would make her feel like she was back in charge again, like she did not succumb to what was done to her. Overcompensation, we call this. None of it helped. Finally, she breaks down and admits she still feels like shit.
Another one is somewhat of a clumsy, dumb girl, bigger sister of a different character in the game. She has quite the sis-complex and relies on her little sister for almost everything. She tends to refer to herself in third person, something we know indeed mostly from child-like characters. When being confronted, you come to realize that she doesn't seem to be half as dumb as she's been making you believe throughout this whole game. Turns out she was scared she'd lose her little sister, so instead of trying to bond, she bound her sister to her with responsibility. As long as the little sister had to take care of her of course, the sister had to be with her. This was huge for me, because throughout the whole game you get to kind of like this dumb-but-trying-hard character, and at the end you notice it was all a façade...
There's also the feminazi character. With almost every 'pervy' comment you make in the game, she'll bash you for it. She used to beat up guys for the sole fact of talking to girls. Turns out she's been stalked, had voyeur pictures being taken of her in a way that it ruined her life. Feeling like men now owe her her life, she felt it was justified to ruin theirs. She felt empty, lost and degraded. Doing this, she thought, would make her feel like she was back in charge again, like she did not succumb to what was done to her. Overcompensation, we call this. None of it helped. Finally, she breaks down and admits she still feels like shit.