Week8 Stereotype -Video-

 Both Born Sexy Yesterday and Predatory Romance in Harrison Ford Movies provide me an interesting perspective because I could find both tropes in Japanese anime. 

 When I was a junior high school student, one of my favorite anime was Sakura-sou no Pet na Kanojo (The Pet Girl of Sakurasou). I did not realize back then but I would like to say this anime is the typical anime about born sexy yesterday girl. The protagonist is a typical high school student who does not have superior talent. Other characters around him are talented at a certain point but eccentric. Mashiro, heroin is the new resident of the on-campus house, where the main character lives. She is a great artist who talented in art but does not have any common sense about social life. The main character teaches and takes care of her, the same as to do for a pet.  

 The interesting fact is; the background world view of this anime is not science fiction but high school life. These tropes getting more common now in Japan, especially in “Light Novel” (a Japanese term means visual novel for a teenager) field. This anime is also created by a light novel that targeting the male and having almost all elements mentioned in the video. The main character treats the worldwide famous artist as a pet in this anime. 

 I am a woman but I like adorable girl character. However, I always feel not complete satisfaction with the story. The YouTube video gave me the reason for the discomfort of this anime. Since I am not male, I do not feel a sense of superiority by watching the main character taking care of heroin in such a way.

 Also, I felt that I have seen the woman's anger mythology before, and I found that it is similar to one of the genres of character development, “Tsundere”. This type of character usually very angry with the male character but sometimes turn into affectionate. Usually, it is popular to have this kind of character in Japanese novel games that targetting male customers. 

 This term also creates a problem. For example, even a woman seriously hesitates the approach, someone misunderstands it because she is tsundere, which means she is not hated in her mind but shy. It makes serious stress and miscommunication. I would not say this is bad, but separating virtual media and real life is important.

As the video says, much Japanese anime and manga have such tropes a lot especially in the products for a male customer. These videos are really fun to see because I could get new perspectives on the media. I would say it is not bad because these are produced by customer's needs. However, it may create another sexual stereotype.

Week8 Stereotype

 I could see how March carefully not to have any stereotypes within their story because this book is about racism. I could understand racism is one of the biggest issues in the U.S. and people very sensitive about it. However, I believe that stereotype is a really useful tool for developers.

I am using stereotypes in my game a lot especially to show the job, characteristics, and circumstances of characters, which I would like to call them surface-level information. It is important to present this information to the player quickly by visual and by the first impression.

 First of all, the game requires a quicker decision of customers than any other media such as animation and film because the video game is interactive work between the player and the story. While the animation and film keep go through without any viewer’s action, games require the player to play: move the character, choose a response, or fight against enemies. We do not have so many times to introduce the information of character because the player may not choose to speak with the character (and video game player hates to be forced by the developer to do something). In this case, the stereotype is helpful to show a quick introduction about the character in a short time. 

 Also, the stereotype does not always work a bad way because sometimes it creates surprise to the player. In general, the player will be excited with the story about the bad guy (or visually looks bad guy through the story) turns into the companion of the main character. For example, if there is a deep foodie guy with a crazy smile, the player may hesitate him by looking at his surface-level information. However, if his inner level of personality was good and player realized it during or the end of the story, the character will be the best appearing character in the game. This gap between surface-level information and inner level personality is a great strategy of character creation.

 I guess this character does not seems friendly for the first time, and it created to be felt like so from the player.

This game is a multiple ending game, and following this character leads to the true ending, which is not supposed to be seen for the first gameplay.

 In both ways, a stereotype is a great tool for creators. Using it effectively makes the characters appearing to the player. However, to use stereotypes effectively, I am needed to know the stereotype correctly because the wrong treatment of stereotypes makes the wrong treatment of humans and culture, such as the racism issues which told in March.

Week7 Barefoot Gen and Maus

Barefoot Gen is one of my traumatic manga. When I was an elementary school student, this was the only comic that arrowed to be in the library in the school. I have never experienced war, but when I read Barefoot Gen, I am experiencing the scary and horror of the war. Since this manga is sort of realistic, I feel a lot of scary and sad with this manga even now. This is a really good manga to educate children about how scary the war is to not make them do the history again. 

However, this manga is a little too scary which makes children hesitate to read. The first time I read this manga, I believe that was when I was 7 years old, I could not read the entire story because I felt many scary and could not read anymore because I will cry when I read this (Then I said this manga is my traumatic manga at the first paragraph). The time I could read everything was after I became a high school student, which is almost ten years later from the first time. Compare to Barefoot Gen, Maus is more acceptable for children because the characters are not human but represented to the mouse. For educational wise, Maus is easier to be spread to everyone.

Both mangas tell a strong message to the reader because it is based on the authors’ experience. It arrows to us to experience as well by reading them. I should have the same theory when I making a game because the game is also providing experience to the player. Those readings are really valuable to me to reconfirm the important thing to tell a story.