2243: Issue 2 of the Digitally Downloaded Magazine is Now Available

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Hello! I’m rather pleased to announce that, as the header says, the second edition of the Digitally Downloaded magazine, put together by me and Mr Matt Sainsbury (from the site of the same name), is now available. You can read it here, or hopefully it will embed correctly below.

The topic is “fanservice”, but we’re not limiting ourselves to the tits and ass variety of fanservice; no, we take on fanservice in all its forms, including life and hometown as a deliberate aesthetic choice, continuity fanservice, plain ol’ titillation and fanservice as characterisation.

The specific games we cover in the magazine range from Senran Kagura to Hatsune Miku: Project Diva F via Final Fantasy XIV and Sonic and Sega All-Stars Racing Transformed — quite an eclectic mix of games to cover, I think you’ll agree. There’s also an interesting interview with some Aussie developers who are making their own take on the Zero Escape/Danganronpa formula and deliberately incorporating fanservice for an authentically Japanese-style feel, plus some lovely pictures of Digitally Downloaded mascot Danica “DeeDee” Dee.

I’m really pleased with how this project is coming together, and response to the magazine so far has been good. With each issue, we’ll try something new, and hopefully we’ll be able to make this a long-running feature. I’m certainly having a blast doing games writing the way it used to be done… or rather, a distinctly 21st century take on print format games writing.

Next issue we’ll be covering the thorny topic of “not-games” — those experiences that critics are quick to (often unreasonably) brand “not a game” for not falling into neat genre categories, or perhaps not incorporating traditional “gameplay” in the way you might expect. Yes, we’ll be exploring the walking simulators, software toys, visual novels and other interesting interactive entertainment experiences of the world in an attempt to figure out why these titles “not being games” bothers some people quite so much.

Matt and I hope you enjoy the magazine; please share it around and let people know about it! If you like what you see, please consider throwing us a few quid via Patreon; you can find Matt’s page here, and mine here.

2058: Hi Games Journalism, It’s Time We Had Another Chat

And so soon after the last one! My goodness me. It’s almost as if you don’t listen or have any consideration for your audience whatsoever. Although if you’re writing for “dead” people, I guess I shouldn’t be all that surprised, since the dead don’t usually talk back.

Today in Unacceptable Articles That Should Never Have Gotten Through the Editorial Process, If There Even Is One, I present Vice UK’s depressingly predictable article “Is There Anything More to Senran Kagura 2 Than Big, Bouncing Cartoon Breasts?”, written by one Mike Diver, someone whom I have never previously heard of, but whose credibility has, for me, already fallen in the toilet as a result of this single article.

I learned early on that you should never write a headline that is a question that can be answered with a single word. There are a number of reasons for this, the most obvious being that most people will look at the headline, think of their own personal answer to the question and then not bother to read the article to find out what the author thought. But beyond that, these sorts of headlines are often inherently loaded questions, too, demonstrating clear prejudice before you even get into the article itself. In the case of Diver’s article here, it’s immediately apparent that he has come to Senran Kagura 2 with the assumption that there is “nothing more” to the game than “big, bouncing cartoon breasts” and, as such, will probably take some convincing that, in fact, the series is considerably deeper than that. Or, more likely, he simply won’t even entertain the possibility that his prejudices might, in fact, be mistaken and based on flawed assumptions.

Diver kicks off his article by burying the lede — admittedly only by a single paragraph, but he still opens the article by talking about Metal Gear Solid V, Mad Max and Super Mario Maker instead of Senran Kagura 2. This is an immediate warning sign; it sends the signal that he would rather be doing anything other than writing about Senran Kagura 2, which, of course, begs the question as to why he is writing about it in the first place, but I think we all probably know the answer to that already. (Hint: it rhymes with “dicks”.)

Diver’s second paragraph then introduces Senran Kagura 2 by giving some important context: the fact that he downloaded the game “a couple of weeks ago” and, since that time, has “played maybe an hour” of the game in total, across “five or six brief sessions” that we can extrapolate to have been no longer than ten minutes each. He also briefly discusses developer Tamsoft’s history, implying that the PS1 era’s Toshinden is their most noteworthy and “acceptable” work, while everything since (including Senran Kagura and Oneechanbara) has been “rather more exploitative fare”. (He’s not wrong to call Oneechanbara in particular exploitative, but in that game’s case in particular, it’s a direct reference to “exploitation” horror films and as such is rather more clever than he gives it credit for.)

“60 minutes is enough to know what [Senran Kagura 2 is] all about,” writes Diver. “Breasts. Boobs. Tits. Baps. Knockers, Bosoms. Norks. Melons. Insert your own local, colloquial variation, here. Seriously. That’s it. Breasts. This is a game about breasts.”

I would perhaps be more receptive to this appraisal were it not for the fact that Diver contradicts himself in the same paragraph by saying “oh, sure, there’s fighting too, and a storyline I cannot even begin to fathom on account of it directly following the events of its preceding game, Senran Kagura Burst, which I’d not even heard of prior to picking this up.”

Hold on there. Hold on just a minute. There’s a little thing that you can do as a journalist called “research”. If you’re not familiar with a series — and the fucking great “2” in Senran Kagura 2’s title should be a pretty obvious tip-off that it is part of a series and a sequel to something — then you should probably find out a bit more about it before you jump in halfway. You wouldn’t start reading The Lord of the Rings (or watching the movies) halfway through The Two Towers without at the very least familiarising yourself with a synopsis of what had come before; you wouldn’t start watching Breaking Bad halfway through its third season and then whinge that you had no idea what was going on; you wouldn’t read His Dark Materials starting at the third book. (Or at least, you shouldn’t do any of these things, or if you do, you shouldn’t moan that you “cannot even begin to fathom” what is going on, because it’s your own stupid fault.)

“There’s an extremely long, context-setting intro, but I fell asleep halfway through it,” continues Diver, again contradicting himself by demonstrating that the game clearly does make an effort to get people up to speed even if they haven’t played Burst, and also demonstrating a clear unwillingness to engage with the game on anything more than the most superficial level.

Here’s the thing: Senran Kagura, as a series, is essentially a visual novel in which story sequences are punctuated by brawler-style action sequences — the 3DS games feature 2.5D-style fighting similar to arcade classics such as Streets of Rage, while the Vita and PS4 games feature 3D brawling somewhat akin to the Dynasty Warriors series. Although the games are regarded as “brawlers”, their main reason for existence is not, as Diver claims, “breasts”, but to tell their stories. And they do this through a medium that Japan has proven time and time again to be an effective means of exploring and developing characters: the visual novel.

It is quite surprising to a lot of people coming to Senran Kagura for the first time quite how much effort the game makes with its storytelling. Certainly, it’s not particularly flashy in its execution — it alternates between “NVL”-style full screens of text overlaid on static backdrops or event images for longer, more dramatic sequences or internal monologues exploring characterisation, and “ADV”-style head-and-shoulders conversations for shorter, more incidental and immediate conversations between characters — but it’s an effective means of getting its point across. The longer NVL sequences put the story in context and often feature past-tense narration explaining things that happened in the past, while the shorter ADV sequences give us an insight into how the characters are right now, and how they are responding and reacting to one another.

In other words, ignore Senran Kagura’s visual novel sequences — or “fall asleep” during them — and you are Missing The Point fairly spectacularly, not to mention completely invalidating your own assertion that “this is a game about breasts”.

“That a game like this can come out in 2015 is ridiculous,” continues Diver, now in full-on table-thumping mode. “It’s brazenly, unapologetically sexist. And it’s all as arousing as a dinner date with Des O’Connor, where [at this point Diver trails off into his own bizarre fantasy which I will spare you for now]. The thin waists and titanic whimwams might represent wank fantasy material for teenage boys who, for some reason, can’t bring themselves to find actual pornography on the Internet, but to a grown adult, a married man, a father of two, this is just the dullest, most tired tripe masquerading as titillation. I get more excited making toast.”

Here we get to one of the important issues with Diver’s appraisal of the series: his assumption that it is pornography. As anyone who has actually played the series will tell you at great length, Senran Kagura is most certainly not pornography. It has positive attitudes towards sexuality — most notably fetishes such as sadism and masochism as well as lesbianism — but that doesn’t make it pornographic.

Even the game’s notorious “clothes ripping” mechanic and its jiggly breasts don’t make it pornographic; both of those things have been put in there for two reasons: firstly, simply as part of the game’s aesthetic, in the same way that Bayonetta has masturbating angels and naked witches all over the place but isn’t “porn” — to be honest, you sort of stop actively noticing it after a while, and it just becomes “the way the game looks” — and secondly, as a reflection of the characters’ attitudes towards their own bodies, sexuality and selves as a whole. Compare Haruka’s positive glee as her opponent shreds her defenses to Mirai’s embarrassment at her skinny, childlike body no longer being hidden by her big, baggy Gothic Lolita dress as a great example of how this is used as a means of characterising the cast in a non-verbal manner.

Diver then plays what he clearly believes to be his trump card: that he’s a “grown adult, a married man, a father of two” and that this somehow makes him better than all this. To refute this, all we have to do is go back to his first paragraph, where he mentions Metal Gear Solid V (a game in which you can make a horse shit on command), Mad Max (a game in which you fix up a pretend car and blow up people you don’t like) and Super Mario Maker (a game in which you fashion crudely-drawn penises out of platforms floating in the sky in a magical mushroom kingdom, and then invite your friends over to giggle childishly as they leap all over them). I don’t actually think all of these games can be reduced down to these stupid descriptions, of course — but in the same way, Senran Kagura as a series cannot be reduced down to “this game is about breasts”, particularly after just 60 minutes across five or six sessions with a single game in the fucking series.

It continues, though. “Yet this is a game — a series, which has spawned its own manga and anime offshoots — with so many fans,” says Diver with apparent surprise that something he doesn’t like could possibly be popular or well-received. “Sales of the games to date have passed the million mark [significant for a niche-interest title like this] and coverage elsewhere has emphasised the gameplay improvements made to Deep Crimson, compared to its predecessor. And, you know, I’m absolutely fine with people playing this game, and enjoying it (be fair, most likely in the privacy of their own homes, despite the portability of the platform), and claiming that they’re primarily in it for everything but what’s inside all those fancy blouses.”

No you’re not, Mr Diver. You are not “fine with people playing this game, and enjoying it”, as your incredibly judgemental parentheses indicate. But we’ve already covered this; in your five or six ten-minute sessions with the game, you made no effort to engage with its more interesting aspects, and instead chose to reduce it down to “what’s inside all those fancy blouses”. I feel that you, sir, may be the one with the issue here.

“Of course, they’re fucking lying, as this is a game about breasts,” continues Diver, proving the point I made in the last paragraph. “And nothing else, so stop kidding yourself. You’re not playing Deep Crimson for its multi-layered gameplay, for its sole playable male…”

Hold on a minute. Games journalism as a whole is always whingeing about how there’s no female representation in games, and yet here we have a game with eleven playable female characters, each of whom are developed and explored in great detail across the course of the series as a whole, and yet the “sole playable male” is something worth fixating on or criticising? I’m not even sure what point Diver is trying to make by mentioning this — perhaps the mistaken assumption that horny young men refuse to play as women and as such will only want to play as Murasame? I don’t know. But I digress.

“…its pair battles or its tangled tale of… sorry, again, no idea, but I get that the baddies aren’t all that bad in the big scheme of things.”

Senran Kagura’s “baddies” want to summon youma and take control of these legendary monsters to assert their dominance over the world, and have no problems resorting to kidnapping and even murder in order to further their own goals. I guess Diver is right about one thing: he really does have “no idea” about what the game’s “tangled tale” is all about.

“You’re playing it because misshapen cartoon girls with weirdly massive eyes, piss-poorly made outfits and ginormous gazongas do it for you,” he continues. “And that’s okay, I suppose. Better that you feel up fictional girls on your 3DS screen rather than grope a stranger on the bus.”

Hold on a fucking minute there. The rest of this piece has been dismissive and judgemental, yes, but this particular passage crosses the line into just plain offensive. The not-at-all-subtle implication that people who enjoy Senran Kagura would be committing sexual assaults in public if they didn’t have their terrible, awful pornographic games to sate their depraved appetites and slake their thirst for young flesh is absolutely unacceptable. I don’t think any more really needs to be said about this, particularly as we’ve already had words about this. You do not imply that portions of your audience are criminals based on what kind of entertainment they choose to enjoy. You do not demonise people based on their open-mindedness. And you do not get to pass judgement on a game you have played for “five or six” ten-minute sessions without making any attempt to engage with it beyond “this is a game about breasts”.

This article is completely unacceptable, and should never have made it through Vice’s editorial process — if indeed there even is one. I’ve mentioned before that I strongly believe in a case for specialist writers who know what they are talking about in the field of video games, and nonsense like this just goes to prove the point. Diver’s article achieves nothing other than reinforcing prejudices and frustrating people who know better. It doesn’t drive discourse about gaming forwards, it’s utterly backwards and completely closed to debate; for all Diver’s protestations that he’s “fine” with people liking it and that it’s “okay, I suppose”, it’s abundantly clear that he believes anyone who has even a passing interest in the Senran Kagura series is a sexual deviant who is just one 3DS away from committing a criminal sexual assault in public.

Well, Mr Diver, your attitude is not fine. It is not “okay, I suppose”. Your piece is a vile, hateful, ill-considered and poorly researched screed about a topic you clearly have no business writing about. Go back to Mad Max and pimp up your wasteland-mobile, since that’s clearly what you’d rather be doing — though I’ll expect a 3,000-word essay from you about how the game’s depiction of women is “problematic” by the end of the week, assuming Polygon’s Phil Kollar doesn’t beat you to it.

In the words of Senran Kagura creator Kenichiro Takaki, “the world is full of stuff people will think is fun to them. It just seems so pointless to waste your time on things you don’t like or can’t understand.” If only a few more people took those words to heart.

2041: A Little Respect Goes a Long Way

Whew, that got pretty heated, huh? I make absolutely no apologies for yesterday’s post: it needed to be said, and I stand by every word of it. To reiterate: if you don’t like ecchi content in your games, that’s absolutely A-OK. The second you start branding people who do like ecchi content in their games as paedophiles, though, that’s when you cross a line from “opinionated person” into “total cunt”.

I’m really disappointed to hear of the number of NeoGAF bans that have resulted from the article I mentioned yesterday. (Still not going to link to it.) Quite a few friends — and quite a few new acquaintances — all found themselves banned simply for expressing dissent or dissatisfaction with the article, often in a polite manner. And no, that’s not just excuse-making — they really were polite about it. More polite than I was yesterday, anyway.

I’ve never been a member of NeoGAF. Not through lack of trying, though every time I have tried, my email address hasn’t been “good enough” for them to allow me in, whatever the hell that means. In one particular instance, it took nearly two years for my “application” to be rejected; I didn’t try again after that.

If it hadn't been Omega Labyrinth, some other game would have been the victim (and, likely, beneficiary of a ton of new publicity) of the latest round of outrage. — If it hadn’t been Omega Labyrinth, some other game would have been the victim of the latest round of outrage — and, it has to be said, likely a beneficiary of a ton of awareness it wouldn’t have had otherwise, so it’s not all bad.

NeoGAF is regarded by many as the de facto gaming community online. It’s where all the game journalists from the mainstream publications hang out, it’s where game developers and publishers hang out — in short, it’s a huge, centralised place to talk about games. Or at least, it should be: in the last few years, however, there’s been an increasingly tight leash put on exactly what is and is not acceptable to talk about there — and, relevant to what we’ve been talking about, a lot of the stuff that is outright banned from discussion falls under the Japanese gaming umbrella.

Trouble is, from what I can tell as an outsider to the overall community, there is pretty much no rhyme or reason to what is and is not acceptable. Senran Kagura is acceptable, it seems — or, at least, it was; a significant number of participants in the long, active Senran Kagura thread got banned as part of this latest nonsense — but something like Criminal Girls is not. Japanese games are the only games that appear to be subject to this much scrutiny; big Western games are discussed without any issues whatsoever, regardless of if they have any sexual or violent content in them.

I don’t want to dwell too much on NeoGAF because, as I’ve already said, I’m not a member there and so cannot comment with authority from the perspective of an actual community member. What I do want to talk about, however, is the broader problem that NeoGAF’s situation and yesterday’s debacle really highlights: the fact that it’s deliberately (and, I’d argue, maliciously) creating a divide between different “strata” of people who enjoy video games. In other words, if you like one of the “approved” games, you’re absolutely fine; you can continue discussing games and gaming culture as much as you like. But if you like one of the “forbidden” games — regardless of the fact that these games are not illegal, are not banned and are sold at retail — then your opinion is, it seems, automatically invalid; you’re not welcome to discuss it in the Internet’s equivalent of “polite society” and are instead forced underground to find cliques and subcultures who will accept you for your tastes, rather than everyone being in a happy melting pot respectfully exchanging opinions and learning from one another.

Dungeon Travelers 2 was the last game to come under the microscope for being responsible for all society's ills. Unfortunately for the outrage brigade, it turned out to actually be a really good game, too. — Dungeon Travelers 2 was the last game to come under the microscope for being responsible for all society’s ills. Unfortunately for the outrage brigade, it turned out to actually be a really good game, too.

As I’ve argued before both here and over on MoeGamer, this situation does a lot of creative works an enormous disservice. In my last ever JPgamer column at USgamer, I commented on the fact that a lot of the games that are habitually branded as “creepy” (or worse) by mainstream critics actually tick a considerable number of the boxes that these people tend to want to see as evidence that gaming is “growing up”.

Female protagonists? Or at least women in important positions with regard to the narrative? Sure; check out the Neptunia series, Omega Quintet, Criminal Girls, the Agarest series, Akiba’s Trip, Monster Monpiece, Moe Chronicle, Demon Gaze, Dungeon Travelers 2.

Unconventional storyline that isn’t simply “solve all your problems by punching/shooting/swording them to death”? Sure! Check out the Atelier series, Recettear, the Ar Tonelico series and plenty more.

Ambitious narrative themes? Sure! Take a look at The Witch and the Hundred Knight (coming soon to PS4!), Time and Eternity, Senran Kagura, Criminal Girls, Ar Tonelico…

You get the idea: these games don’t get anywhere near enough credit and are, more often than not, either ignored or derided by people purely on the grounds that they’re open and up-front about — in most, not all cases — wanting to indulge in a bit of light-hearted, cheeky teasing as part of their overall aesthetic. In some cases, the ecchi content is even used genuinely effectively to depict the growing relationship between characters; Time and Eternity and Demon Gaze were both particularly good in this regard, reflecting the protagonist’s sexual frustration and the growing relationship of trust and love between the player character and their main quest-giving “contact” Fran respectively.

Now, as Brad Gallaway wrote in his absolutely exemplary review of Dungeon Travelers 2, “people who are allergic to skin-heavy content might have a hard time getting past it to enjoy the game underneath. And honestly, that’s all right. I’ve always said that not every game is right for every person, so bouncing off of Dungeon Travelers 2 for that reason alone would be totally understandable.” This is the point that appears to be most frequently missed: games are not always for everyone. Sure, there are plenty of box-ticking focus-grouped triple-A games out there that are designed to appeal to the broadest possible demographic: they have to, because they cost an absolute fortune to make, so they’d better sell through multiple millions of copies to prove all the developers’ hard work wasn’t for naught.

I was specifically forbidden from even mentioning Monster Monpiece during my time at USgamer because of its provocative artwork -- despite the fact that it's a really interesting collectible card game. — I was specifically forbidden from even mentioning Monster Monpiece during my time at USgamer because of its provocative artwork — despite the fact that it’s a really interesting collectible card game.

But here’s the important thing: not every game is like that, nor should it be. Games with ecchi content are designed for a specific audience — and that audience cannot simply be defined or written off as “horny teenage boys”, as it usually is, though they are certainly part of it. In reality, the market for otaku games is male and female; young and old; straight and gay; trans and cis; and made up of pretty much each and every race, nationality and religion. The one thing they have in common? They like what they like. Simple as that. And these games are designed to push their buttons without caring what people outside that existing niche think of them. And that’s absolutely fine.

Tastes in art are complex, fluid, ever-changing, and one person can be into lots of things. You can enjoy high-class art and the most lowbrow of entertainment, and I know plenty of people who do. Likewise, you can also choose to enjoy just high-class art or just the most lowbrow of entertainment, or something middle-of-the-road. In the world of games, you can be someone who plays every “walking simulator” out there and believes they’re the future of interactive entertainment. You can be like my Dad, and only ever play Microsoft Flight Simulator. You can play nothing but hidden object adventure games. You can be someone who just plays Call of Duty with their friends on weeknights. You can be someone who has invested a thousand or more hours into Dota 2. Or you can be someone who enjoys games where anime girls have breasts and flash their panties.

Or — and here’s how you get the richest possible experience from one of the most exciting and complex forms of creative media in the world in 2015 — you can be into multiple things, and you can be open to new experiences. You don’t have to like everything, and you almost certainly won’t. That’s all absolutely, completely and utterly fine; the diversity in tastes is one of the best things about modern gaming, and the fact that month after month, all manner of different tastes are specifically catered to by developers and publishers is absolutely brilliant.

I maintain that anyone who hates Neptunia needs far more joy in their life.

What’s emphatically Not Okay by any stretch of the imagination is, as we’ve already said, shaming people for what they are into, regardless of what it is. Don’t like anime panties? Fine. Don’t throw horrible names at people who do. Don’t like Gone Home? Also fine; likewise, don’t throw horrible names at people who do. Don’t like Call of Duty? Also fine… you get the idea, no? To sum up: don’t be a total cunt.

A little respect goes a very long way. And gaming culture as a whole is not remembering that fact right now, and it saddens me greatly. Let’s all try and do our bit to make our wonderful medium a little bit better for everyone, shall we?

1517: The Misunderstood Fan

It can be a trying task being a fan of something at times. And by “fan” I don’t mean “rabid, frothing fanboy/fanmadam” (thanks NISA); I mean simply someone who has a particular preference for something, and who will, in many cases, indulge in that thing to the exclusion of other, perhaps more “mainstream” things.

Since pretty much “coming out” as a fan of visual novels, anime and associated goodness around the time Katawa Shoujo was released, I’ve run into this issue a number of times. In the case of Japanese entertainment, the cultural rift between East and West means that some people are less than understanding about certain aspects of what our friends in the East produce.

And perhaps that’s understandable in some cases; even as a fan of a broad spectrum of Japanese entertainment, I’ll happily admit that there’s plenty of content — primarily around the area where sex and violence cross over — that makes me uncomfortable, and so I deliberately choose not to expose myself to that sort of thing. (“Discovering” Urotsukidoji in my teens was quite enough, thanks.) It exists, though, and I can deal with that; it’s simply something I choose not to engage with. (I also don’t believe for a second that it’s actually harmful — to believe as such is to show an alarming lack of faith in humanity’s ability to distinguish between fact and fiction, and a similarly alarming willingness to believe that everyone is stupid enough to just want to emulate everything they see. Sometimes fantasy is just fantasy.)

The trouble comes when people start to assume the worst about an entire culture’s output based on some of its more questionable or discomfort-provoking aspects, or even, in some cases, based on things they just think they know — the “lol Japan” approach.

Let’s take the recently released Senran Kagura as an example. Here we have a game that explores and respects its characters in great detail — going so far as to give each and every one of them their moment in the spotlight in lengthy, well-written visual novel sequences — that also happens to feature characters with big jiggly boobs who occasionally flash their pantsu. Are the jiggly boobs and pantsu necessary? Of course they’re not, but they don’t detract from all the other good stuff that the game is doing — and frankly, what is there to be ashamed of there, anyway? Senran Kagura’s cast is depicted to be a bunch of strong, independent young women who are more than capable of taking care of themselves and who are, above all, confident and comfortable in who they are and what they look like. (Those who have played it will know that the possible exception to this rule is Hibari, but her own character arc revolves around her coming to terms with her own inferiority complex; the end result is her accepting herself, flaws and all, and recognising that she doesn’t have to go it alone.)

Admirable traits, I’m sure you’ll agree, and so what does commentary about the game focus on? You guessed it; the jiggly boobs and the pantsu. And the aggression with which these criticisms are delivered is astonishing — take this outstandingly vitriolic takedown of the game that appeared not on someone’s personal blog, but on the official Nintendo magazine’s website. Or take the comments that habitually appear on any article about the game, which usually involve accusations of those who enjoy the game being “perverts” or, in more extreme cases “paedophiles”. It’s gross and disgusting, and it makes my heart sink any time I see it. And there’s no point trying to argue your case against these people; they’re people who have made their minds up about something, and have no interest in changing it.

For what it’s worth, I’m firmly of the belief that there’s not actually anything wrong with enjoying the fanservicey aspects of titles like Senran Kagura and its ilk; acknowledging your own sexuality is a healthy thing to do, and finding something that isn’t real attractive does not necessarily say anything about your attitudes towards a real-world equivalent. Indeed, I’ll happily admit to having been attracted to some Japanese titles purely by the fanservice aspect, whether it’s video games or anime; in pretty much every single case, I’ve been pleasantly surprised to discover that beneath the often in-your-face sexuality of some works, there beats a heart of gold; in many cases, I’ve even discovered that the fanservice aspect is a lot “tamer” than a lot of people tend to make out, and the whole point of it is actually to tell an interesting story with some loveable and, yes, attractive characters. (There’s also some stuff that purely exists to be sexy, and that, too, is both fine and can be enjoyable.)

Here’s the thing: I, like, I’d wager, pretty much anyone else who enjoys anime and other Japanese forms of entertainment, am capable of distinguishing between fantasy and reality — and anime-themed entertainment is so obviously fantasy that I find it very difficult to take the more vitriolic criticisms of it seriously, particularly when they’re delivered with such furious anger that it often becomes clear that the one raging has very little actual experience with the work in question beyond the most superficial knowledge — see that Official Nintendo Magazine piece.

I often find myself wondering if fans of other niche interests find themselves subject to similar scorn. Is one of my dearest friends, who is such a fan of heavy machinery (whether military or agricultural) that he describes his reaction to various hulking metal beasts in terms of how “tumescent” they make him, likewise a “pervert” for talking about things in this way? Of course not. Whether or not they really do make him tumescent is neither here nor there, and is nothing but his own business; his own personal interest in such things is something that is important to him, something that I respect and something that, on several occasions, has in fact led me to checking out things that I otherwise never would have explored for myself at all. An ultimately positive experience, in other words.

It’s a pity that not everyone feels they can be open-minded about things not immediately familiar to them, and instead jump to conclusions without bothering to investigate them for themselves. It happens in all aspects of society, not just the ultimately not-all-that-important really fandoms of various forms of entertainment, and it sucks every time it comes up, particularly when I see it upsetting people I know and like. (Or when it upsets me which, I won’t lie, it has done on a number of occasions.)

Live and let live. And perhaps, just once, ask your friend what it is about [x] that they like so much. Be willing to take a look for yourself and reconsider your opinion.

And if you still don’t like it? Don’t be an ass to people who do.