Lost in Thoughts All Alone: Exploring the Diversity and Controversy Surrounding Gender and Sexuality in Fire Emblem: if
13:17[Note that this contains very mild spoilers for Fire Emblem: if. I also use the Japanese names in this post as the European localisation has not been released yet, and I'm not actually sure of all of the characters' localised names yet.]
Although
it has been playable in Japan since June 25th, 2015 (Nintendo.co.jp,
2015.), Fire Emblem: if (to be
localized as Fire Emblem: Fates) has
not yet reached European audiences. However, it has already come under the
firing line of the media, primarily due to controversial issues the localisation
team faced in the months following its Japanese release. Since a few negative
rumours regarding the game’s representation of sexuality and gender began to spiral
a couple of days before its release, I decided to play the Japanese version of
the game on release day while considering the game’s social implications, and
followed the opinions of journalists and fellow players alike as further
controversies came to light in the following months.
At
first glance, it doesn’t seem like there could be much dispute regarding if; the game’s premise involves the
protagonist, a royal of the kingdom of Hoshido raised in the opposing kingdom
of Nohr’s royal family, picking their path (or ‘fate’) as the two countries
become involved in a harsh war. As the two main choices you make follow
drastically different paths as a result, the game is split ‘Pokémon style’ into
two versions, with two different price tags. A third route was also made
available as DLC, at yet another cost. (Frederiksen, 2015.) Similarly to
earlier entry in the series Fire Emblem: Awakening, the player character may
increase their support levels with other characters, beginning at C and
transferring to B and A before the player reaches S. As soon as an S support is
reached and read, the two characters who interacted in the support will get
married, and later have children.
However, the storyline and content being divided into two separate
games is where our first controversy manifests, with limits placed on the
protagonist’s sexuality depending on which version you purchase, in an act
described as ‘yet another gimmick designed to extract extra profit from users’.
(Condis, 2015.) To summarise, the protagonist can have a homosexual
relationship with sadistic outlaw Zero only if the player chooses to play a
male character in the Nohr version of the game, or a homosexual relationship
with obsessive mage Syalla if they choose to play as a female in the Hoshido
version. This means that a gay male player in Hoshido can only choose for their
protagonist to marry nobody or marry a female character; they’re not permitted
to marry within their preferences unless they purchase a different version of
the game. Although Nintendo insisted they included gay marriage as “[they] believe that our
gameplay experiences should reflect the diversity of the communities in which
we operate“ (Cited by McWhertor, 2015), it
seems that they conveniently maximized the inclusion of minority sexualities
for monetary gain.
This leads to the ongoing discussion of if’s representation of minority sexualities; to start with, the
official bisexual characters Zero and Syalla’s characters almost entirely play
off of negative tropes associated with sexual minorities, reducing them to a
single quirk and quite often oversexualising them. Although much of this seems
to have been removed in the localization, Zero, described as a sadist, speaks predominantly
in sexual euphemisms, with Hoshidan character Oboro describing his manner of
speaking as ‘shameless’ and ‘infamous’ (which is admittedly accurate). Syalla,
on the other hand, develops an off-putting, stalker-like attachment to the
female protagonist, purposefully similar to Awakening’s
Tharja. Although it is pleasing to see same-sex relationships be an option in Fire Emblem, it is somewhat of an issue
to see the only potential spouses be overplayed as sexual, creepy types. Not
only this, but the game almost punishes people for choosing the homosexual
relationship; male players who marry Zero will miss out on statistically
valuable child units Kanna and Eponine, and female players who marry Syalla
will miss out on Kanna. Although if’s
explanation seems to be biological, with an explanation as nonsensical as
alternate time flow in parallel worlds being an aspect of the children’s
ability to participate in the war, it would make sense for players to be able
to adopt alternate versions of Kanna and Eponine to use in gameplay instead. Fire Emblem: if continues this upsetting
trend of poor representation with other characters of questionable sexuality,
the main example being Soleil.
Soleil is possibly the most well known character in if, simply due to her recurring
appearances in the media and the ongoing controversy surrounding her. She is
one of the child units in the game, the mercenary daughter of a flirtatious
dancer named Lazwald. Similar to her father, she possesses an affinity for
flirting with cute girls – even her personal skill name in the Japanese
version, “Girl Lover”, implies as such, though she cannot marry any female
characters within the game. Although she does state in one support that ‘I
wouldn’t say [boys are] unacceptable [as romantic partners]’, Soleil’s affinity
for cute girls is overplayed to the point where she faints around them; this
was revealed in an infamous support with the protagonist, having Soleil eventually
become the face of a major controversy that earned a response from Nintendo. In
the Japanese version of the game, the protagonist spikes Soleil’s drink with a
‘magic powder’ that causes her to see males as females and vice versa, and
Soleil eventually falls in love with the (male) protagonist after seeing him as
a woman, leading to their marriage. This scene was criticized for “clear connotations of
gay conversion therapy, a method of so-called therapy many real-world religious
groups offer to gay people.” (Skipper, 2016.) This scene was eventually removed
from the English version of the game, with Nintendo stating “In the version of
the game that ships in the U.S. and Europe, there is no expression which might
be considered as gay conversion or drugging”. (cited by Bonds, 2016.) This
support was also criticised by some transgender fans as Soleil openly thinks of
the male protagonist as a female while falling in love with them, which can
be viewed as transphobic and dysphoria-inducing for some players.
Not only this, but
Soleil’s sexuality is so overplayed that she flirts indiscriminately with other
characters, even going so far as to flirt with her own mother, stating ‘This is
bad…even my own mother is adorable!’ in the Japanese version. Another
problematic support has been criticised for transphobic content by Western fans;
it shows her flirting with cross-dressing male character Foleo, refusing to
respect his gender despite him stating it outright, responding with ‘There’s no
way a boy could be this cute!’ and initiating unwelcome physical contact with
him, even going so far as to propose they bathe together so that Foleo can
‘prove’ his gender to her. Although Foleo is not stated as transgender, he is
an example of another character whose gender and sexuality are used for humour;
Shoushi (2008) wrote in an article about Japan and Sexual Minorities that most
LGBT representation in Japan is limited to crossdressers (such as Foleo) who
are shown ‘for the irony and the laughs’. Foleo could also be considered an example of onee, a Japanese term described as “a
loose term which encompasses all the groups of cross-dressers, transsexuals and
gay individuals”. (Kobayashi, 2013). The
writer also explains that onee speak
in a feminine manner, and are often in artistic or ‘feminine’ occupations. As
Foleo speaks feminine enough that he is often mistaken for a girl and has a
hobby of designing and sewing clothes, it seems like Intelligent Systems
intended to portray a version of the onee
stereotype when writing his character.
Although a lot of these
issues have been at least partially remedied in Nintendo of America’s
localisation of the game, it seemed as if there was an outcry from the fans that it was simply a cultural difference, and should be left untouched; for
example, the ‘petting’ minigame involving the player using the touch screen to
stroke characters’ faces was removed. Many viewed this as an example of
‘skinship’, which is a portmanteau of the English words ‘skin’ and ‘kinship’,
described as ‘bonding through physical contact’ (wordsense.eu), and objected to
its removal. Nintendo also stated that ‘even in the original Japanese version
[of Fire Emblem: if], we have not
included any features which are considered inappropriate in Japan’ . (Cited on
Nintendoeverything.com, 2016.) The amount of Japanese articles written about if’s controversies seem to be relatively
low compared to those written by people of Western origin; however, this does
not mean that it has been accepted as unproblematic by all Japanese fans. Although it has now expired, a petition was
created in order to “deepen [Nintendo and Intelligent Systems’] understanding
of sexual minorities” and “improve the [same-sex marriage] system” within the
game. (change.org, 2015.). Along with it was a comprehensive explanation of the
problematic aspects of if and the
events leading up to the introduction of same-sex marriage in the game from the
point of view of a LGBT person living in Japan, further proving that some of
the issues (particularly regarding gender and sexuality) are not regional, but
global. (feifgannbare.jimdo.com,2015.)
In conclusion, I feel that
Fire Emblem: if’s issues regarding
gender and sexuality are not fully recognised or considered. While the media is
focused on the Soleil controversy, many other examples of homophobic writing
lie underneath the surface of the game. When one considers all of if’s LGBT ‘representation’ and the
patterns they follow, it implies that the developers and writers of the game
seem to be writing their LGBT characters to clear stereotypes, and not
portraying varied enough representation of sexual minorities to justify
Nintendo’s wish for game to reflect upon our varied society. While research from authors such as Camp
(2009) imply that there is no cohesive stereotype (specifically among lesbians)
in Japan, it appears that the writers of Fire Emblem: if have their own
stereotypes of hyper-sexual, sadistic and borderline stalker-like tendencies
attributed to homosexual characters, since all of the characters who display
homosexual behaviour in-game appear to have at least two of the three
qualities. The creator of the petition directed at Nintendo and Intelligent
Systems writes specifically regarding if;
there is a stereotype of ‘sexual monsters’ mostly attributed to lesbians in
which they ‘sequentially flirt with heterosexual girls’ that Intelligent
Systems seemed to keep to when creating their LGBT characters, particularly
Soleil. With writers such as Kobayashi (2013) implying that LGBT characters or
actors in Japanese media are often stereotyped for the enjoyment of straight
people rather than to present clearer, more accurate representation of LGBT
issues and lifestyle, it seems that if has
fallen into the trap of creating content purely for a heterosexual
fans of homosexual media; perhaps giving them more accurate representation than actual
LGBT fans with child unit and outlaw Eponine, who is a reflection of fujoshi culture in Japan. A
term literally read as ‘rotten girl’, a
fujoshi has been described by Suzuki as ‘a girl or woman who proactively
read things in a yaoi fashion,
discerning romantic relationships between men where such relationships were not
originally intended’.
Eponine is a character whose main character quirk is
observing, stalking, and fetishizing same-sex couples, made even worse by the fact
her father, Zero, is the only officially bisexual male in the game. If Eponine
is an example of a ‘rotten girl’, then perhaps if is an example of a ‘rotten game’, using sexual minorities as
tools only for the entertainment of straight fans and to force those who wish
for actual representation to pay extra for the chance to play as a character
truer to themselves; Having played it myself, I don’t think it is unfair or
unusual to find the game in the harsh headlights of critics, and can only hope
that Nintendo and Intelligent Systems endeavour to improve their interpretations
of sexual minorities on the back of their grave attempts in Fire Emblem: if.
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