InsaneJournal

RePost: My thoughts on the depection of women in Musou games.
Archive Day! Yes, it's been a while since I've posted - a long while, and I hope my Twitter has proved somewhat sufficient. At any rate, I forgot I had this and was reminded when Rydain posted a great analysis of why the DW6 designs work in some cases and don't in others. This reminded me of this post I had made at KoeiWarriors concerning the depiction of women in the Musou games.

EDIT I'll have to re-add the links that are missing later. For now, enjoy!

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Interesting point: can male KOEI characters be considered sex objects? Hmm...

Yes, they can. Male characters and men can be objectified - objectification happens when a person or persons are treated as tools and lacking in agency or personhood. Specifically, sexual objectification happens when a person is objectified - and the standards of worth for the object are how sexually arousing they are.

Sexualization is different from sexual objectification in terms of characters, because a character can have agency but still be directed or rendered within a peice of media in a way that focuses on (culturally-defined) sexual situations or areas of the body.

A strong example of a sexualized character with agency is Natsume Maya from Tenjou Tenge; she's drawn and depicted in a manner where she has strength of will and the capacity to make desicions but the direction of media often makes her breast, buttocks or crotch the focal point of many peices she's in.

A Musou-specific example of a character who is sexualized but has agency is SW1's Nouhime. She had a clear personality that was predicated in her own goals and personhood, but much of the art and direction of her movements were focused on her sexually provocative mannerisms.

I have my own thoughts on the subject of how women are portrayed within the Musou games; my perspective and reading of the games come from my experiences as a radical feminist and a person involved with social justice, as well as a person who is involved with communications and franchising. So, as much as it may seem a bit... strict, I'm going to lay out a few ground perspectives I am working from. I am sharing these because if you disagree with these fundamental beliefs, that's alright - it's just that you will not enjoy the rest of my post or agree with the base points at all, so it may be better to just skip it.

1) Women exist and live within an international culture that assumes they are less capable and able within times of war.

2) Misandry is not feminism. Feminism has never been about hating men. However, misandry - as troubling and destructive as it is - does not have the institutional power that sexism & mysoginy do.

3) Within forms of oppression, there tend to be four difference practices to it - Interpersonal, Institutional, Cultural, and Personal. This is a primer that explains the four within the context of homophobia. There is a very prominent sub-category in Personal known as Internalized -Ism.

Alright, with that out of the way...

KOEI's Musou games have female characters that both break tropes and re-enforce tropes.

I'll start by focusing on one huge problem in franchises with lots of characters like this - tropes. Tropes are bad. Female character tropes are even worse. Tropes are not Archetypes. Every character is predicated in an Archetype - the way that we overcome an Archetype becoming a Trope is by expanding on the characterization. There is never too much characterization as long as the characterization is meaningful and connotatively makes sense to us the audience.

One of the most common tropes that apply to the Musou games (being an action oriented series) is applying the Virgin/Whore dichotomy within the context of battle.

Virgins ('good' women, decidedly virginal and thus not 'bad' AKA morally ambiguous) are given long-range weaponry - bows or magic, for the most part. This tends to happen because a Virgins ability to have morality is predicated on her staying pure; and the Virgin stays pure by not getting touched (and thus not becoming involved in the physicality of battle). The bows from DW6, and Gracia's bracelet attacks are examples of such.

Whores ('bad' women, have active open sexual appitites and are thus 'morally ambiguous') are given hand-to-hand weaponry; but it's often in the form of speed-focused weaponry or tricks. Whores are culturally attunded to being underhanded and conniving; that's why female assassins tend to be coded as whores - using their sexuality as a weapon. Noh is easily the best example of such.

The other very popular trope is to give the girl-child characters weapons which are hand-to-hand, but they handle them in such an anachronistic manner that they aren't visually coded as weaponry at all.

Tropes are detrimental in many ways; I will focus on how tropes are detrimental in a franchise sense. They're problematic because all the characters end up being exactly the same. That's boring to us in the audience because it means that the individuality of the individual is removed; rather it never existed. Thus, in order for KOEI to maximize the interest in the franchise; the characters must be diverse and meaningfully so.

There are many, many positive factors in how KOEI portrays the women characters in the Musou series. The biggest I've noticed are;

1) There is a relatively large amount of diversity in terms of personality, attitude and appearance. They are distinct from each other outside of appearance; they have distinct speech patterns, beliefs, and attitudes. KOEI's women often break the tropes that have been set for female characters. Noh, while very much predicated in the 'Whore' category, has enough character to break as such. Ina is a character that actively breaks the trope by having strength of moral, but also by being desicive (and very importantly, uses her bow in an upclose upfront manner).

2) All of them have the strength of will and the level of agency to act on the accord of their own beliefs. They all make the active desicion to fight.

3) There are is a great deal of diversity in how the women characters interact with each other (applies primarily to WO; not so much the core games) - there are friendships, antagonistic relationships, rivalries, etc.

However, there are problematic trends;

1) An overwhelming amount of narratives for the women that are predicated on being inspired by, dependent on, or solely motivated by male characters in their lives. (In the core games, women interacting with other women is scarce.)

2) The design sense for the women, with few exception, consistently dress them in minimal or no armor. One could argue that the stylistic nature of games shows the lack of nessecary armor, the fact that the male characters are quite frequently dressed in armor (especially when the female characters already exist in a context where they aren't taken seriously in war) condemns this moot. The exceptions to this are Yue Ying (Pre-DW6 had sufficient armor (even if DW5 wasn't coded as such); DW6 has practical but minimal) and Tachibana Ginchiyo.

3) In the core games, rivalries and antagonistic relationships between women are the primary form of interaction between women. The SW games have Ginchiyo & Ina, but one caveat compared to the Sekigahara Melee stages is minimal and dangerous. The DW games rarely have the women interact period (despite there being potential to do so; Shangxiang and Yueying could easily have become buddies, etc.). The Qiao sisters are another minor exception (we barely see them interact with each other; their stories focus on their husbands interaction).

4) Women whom have open sexual appitites are primarily coded as sexually ambiguous or as 'airheaded'. Noh is coded as incredibly sexual but openly acknowledges such; the more surprising example is Zhen (who, being affilliated with the 'bad' kingdom needed to be the 'bad' girl). Nene, having an openly sexual relationship with her husband, is coded as not even recognizing as such.

5) They're all coded as attractive within culturally-defined beauty standards. All of them. There is not one 'unattractive' woman in the bunch. Part of this is predicated on the fact that many of these women were noted for their great beauty, but even the women who weren't were coded as attractive. There's no excuse for this; it's represensible.

6) They rarely meaningfully affect the tide of the battle in an overt sense, and are rarely commanders. This is again tied to the understanding that one does not want to muck up the narrative too much; however there are many minor stages where the women could lead or have a starring role in an overt sense. Yue Ying aided with the Wood Oxen in Wu Zhang Plains, but it's only referenced in her narrative - and it won't make or break the battle.

So, we've identified the problems! These can be easily fixed, really. But one major question comes up!

How do you create a female character that is both historically & culturally accurate and is an interesting character with agency?

Well... you don't.

You don't as the historical narratives are predicated as women either being tools or superflous; but rather you create a character inspired by the cultural understanding of such. So you don't make a narrative that's almost exactly what happened to Noh, but you take the folktales and popular understanding of Noh and make her an interesting character from that.

For those interested, I use this as a checklist. Look and apply to the female Musou characters, and see what you come up with.

I have to finish this up, so I will post these points as well.

Focus on creation of women as people first, but don't forget that the way that women are treated within the cultural context - being a woman is part of who they are, not all of who they are.

Characters are all archetypes; what differentiates a character from stereotype is level & amount of characterization that breaks type at a closer level.

The coding of popular characters as archetypes predicated in sexualization isn't a problem (archetypes are inherently sexual!); it's when the sexualization overrides the character that is problematic (again, Noh is sexy! But she's not only sexy.)

More characters = greater chance of diversity, higher chance of interest.
Less characters = more attempts to shoehorn, less diversity, less interest.

And for the record; my own reading of all the games? WO1 & 2, as a whole, are by far the most female friendly & feminist friendly Musou games there are.