Final Fantasy XVI

[Makoeyes987]

It really depends on context.

Let's say that DnD campaign was a fictional work with an audience. The characters you have going out, actively fighting and advancing the plot are specifically one gender. The women are excluded from advancing the plot or really doing anything active within the world like their compatriots. Regardless of the motivation of sidelining them, you've excluded them actively participating. That's not really a reflection of egalitarianism.

However, a private DnD campaign isn't really a fictional work, is it? It has no audience, no narrative message, it's simply an exercise of creative leisure and entertainment. Choosing to make a matriarchal society that for whatever reason relegates combat to men is your choice and doesn't necessarily reflect any broader message, unless you want it to. Context and relevance are important. There's a big difference between exercising preference for one's personal entertainment and what you put out there for an audience to consume. I don't think critique of personal choice does any real good.

 

[Ite]

All good points, but my meta considerations weren’t divorced from context. There is no such thing as “no audience,” I and my friends live in a world that regularly dehumanizes and perpetuates violence against women. The wholesale disemboweling of women as a background set piece isn’t something I really wanted to bring into our escapism.

Unfortunately, the alternative is as Clement said, men as the expendable gender. But, in a story about war, which is worse? What was I more comfortable describing, as the lead storyteller in a group game of pretend? When playing an Arkham game, how would you feel if the thugs weren’t all men? If you, as Batman, with your high tech gadgets and power suit, were pummeling nameless women unconscious? Is that better than making men the expendable gender?

I suppose it’s the kind of question FFXVI is somewhat tasked with, although rewatching the trailer shows the only two adult women as not really being trustworthy, with mom covering her mouth while speaking and hiding the dangerous magic boy, and the other defying her oath and walking out on the men at the war table. The only other women I can see are the Penelo (no dialogue) and a comment about a Shiva girl that we’re tasked with (hey!) murdering.

If they had names, I‘d be a lot more pacified, but they don’t.

Edit: I should probably clarify that the elf warrior dudes were of a faceless army of NPCs, not requirements I placed on my players, who lived in a more FFT-esque human society, as in, a patriarchy where someone like Agrias is not out of place. It was just specifically elves that I needed to blow away violently and en masse.... :/

 

[cold_spirit]

Oh gosh I have a lot to catch up on in this thread. On representation in FF:

Gotta prologue this with a "I think XVI is going to be amazing", which I hate that I have to say first but I'm seeing fans get super defensive already, which is a bit disappointing.

No one is questioning that FF doesn't have amazing female characters. The issue is ratio and timing. First, let's consider the number of female main characters throughout the series. We have Terra, XI create-a-character, Lightning, and XIV create-a-character. We're looking at 2-4 female leads out of 16 games. That's 25% or less depending on how one counts the MMOs. A fourth.

The second is timing. XIII launched 17 December 2009 and vanilla XIV launched 30 September 2010. The last time we had a female lead was 10+ years ago, again, depending on how one counts the MMOs. A decade.

Lastly, just gonna say it, representation is important. Not gonna argue this one.

So yeah, I feel like people expressing disappointment in XVI on this topic is a totally valid criticism. I wish fans just acknowledged this instead of deploying a straw man argument. It's okay to be critical of the game and also enjoy it, I know I will!

Also, this isn't directed at anyone in particular around here, just what I've been seeing as a whole on the net. I also think it's great this is such a big conversation in the community right now.

 

[Makoeyes987]

Well if you wish to consider your friends and yourself as an audience, you're more than welcome to. That's your choice, and if that's how you wish to align with your ethics, go for it. However, at the end of the day, only you can fully make that determination because you are reflecting on your own ethos and determination of exemplifying what you believe. If you wish to ponder that decision and do what you feel is more egalitarian, then that's what you gotta do.

Batman actually does fight women enemies in the Akrham series. The assassins belonging to Ras Al Ghul. And Batman handles them just like any other enemy. He doesn't kill them, he subdues them like any other enemy. I think that's fair. It'd be absurd and a ridiculously milquetoast depiction of Gotham if every enemy save for Catwoman, Harley and Poison Ivy were men. That's not a rational or accurate portrayal of Gotham and Batman fights anybody. He just does.

Oh gosh I have a lot to catch up on in this thread. On representation in FF:

Gotta prologue this with a "I think XVI is going to be amazing", which I hate that I have to say first but I'm seeing fans get super defensive already, which is a bit disappointing.

No one is questioning that FF doesn't have amazing female characters. The issue is ratio and timing. First, let's consider the number of female main characters throughout the series. We have Terra, XI create-a-character, Lightning, and XIV create-a-character. We're looking at 2-4 female leads out of 16 games. That's only 25% or less depending on how one counts the MMOs. A fourth.

The second is timing. XIII launched 17 December 2009 and vanilla XIV launched 30 September 2010. The last time we had a female lead was 10+ years ago, again, depending on how one counts the MMOs. A decade.

Not sure why you've ignored Yuna and the Gullwings of X-2. And then there's Reynn of World of Final Fantasy. I'd also argue Ashe of FFXII given the sheer scope, focus and importance she holds within XII. Vaan may be our surrogate but the story clearly revolves around Ashe and her development.

MMORPG FFs are analyzed over their memorable and consistently important NPCs since your playable character is merely an avatar of yourself. FFXI had numerous important and key women main characters like Lillisette, Lion, Prishe, Arciela, Aphmau, Shantotto, and Iroha.

Then there's the Scions of the Seventh Dawn in FFXIV. Y'shtola, Krille, Allisae, Lyse, Tataru, and Minfilia.

There are a lot of main characters who are women. I'm sure there are more in XIV that I'm neglecting but that's just off the top of my head.

You can't just discount XIV because it's an MMORPG and you don't play it. It exists. Millions of FF fans play it and experience it. The matter of timing or whatever is an arbitrary erasure of writing that's still consistently happening. Not just from A Realm Reborn, but up to Shadowbringers. This year.

Lastly, just gonna say it, representation is important. Not gonna argue this one.

So yeah, I feel like people expressing disappointment in XVI on this topic is a totally valid criticism. I wish fans just acknowledged this instead of deploying a straw man argument. It's okay to be critical of the game and also enjoy it, I know I will!

It most certainly is important. Which is why you shouldn't ignore it when it happens, even if it's not one you actively play. Pretending Lightning is the last important main woman character in FF is erasing reality. Like a decade of it. They do exist.

If XVI becomes a sausagefest I'll be the first to criticise and be disappointed by it. But this is waaaay too early to even make that determination. No data exists to prove or deny this. It's meaningless to criticise this now when it literally just got revealed.

 

[Odysseus]

When playing an Arkham game, how would you feel if the thugs weren’t all men? If you, as Batman, with your high tech gadgets and power suit, were pummeling nameless women unconscious? Is that better than making men the expendable gender?

Yes. Yes it is. A criminal is a criminal. This mindset is why pretty girls get off way lighter than men for the exact same crime. Violence against women is terrible, but violence in general is terrible. Men can't escape abusive relationships because they're afraid to say anything due to social stigmas created by mindsets like this, it's damaging. I'm not comfortable throwing an entire half of the population under the bus in the name of being PC. But again, it's your dnd campaign, it's not like you're spreading some message to the masses or anything.

If they had names, I‘d be a lot more pacified, but they don’t.

That's... worrying.

 

[Cat on Mars]

There's no war stories. There are stories about people with power and people without it. One way to show it is the use of force; that's the meaning of war. A clash between two opposing forces isn't a story until there's a narrative and certain context to support it.
This applies to History and fiction.
Unless we know how FFXVI's world operates, we don't know what's the real scope of the story.

It's too common these days to see people analyzing trailers too much and passing judegement too soon. We don't really even know what the story will be about since a first trailer, as people have pointed out already, hardly is a true depiction of the wider story.

We are missing the key and we're looking at a dark room and trying to figure out what's in there peering through the keyhole.
Editing typos damn.

 

[Obsidian Fire]

First, let's consider the number of female main characters throughout the series. We have Terra, XI create-a-character, Lightning, and XIV create-a-character. We're looking at 2-4 female leads out of 16 games. That's only 25% or less depending on how one counts the MMOs. A fourth.

I mean... this is where it gets tricky. Because a lot of the woman you didn't mention in the FF games might as well be Co-leads of their games, if not the actual main character. Ashe in particular is more the "Main Character" of FFXII than Vaan is when you actually look at the story the game told and not the marketing for it. Aerith is more the lead of FFVIIR than Cloud is in my opinion. Garnet gets more character growth than Zidane does in FFIX in my opinion. FFX's game is more about Yuna than Tidus, as it it's squeal.

Like... I think it's a valid criticism to say that the SE marketing team thinks young male protagonists are the thing to market. But when you actually play the games and look at the kind of stories being told, it's a lot more mixed than that. Most FF games are less "one person is the main character" kind of games and a lot more "these characters are all co-leads for this story". And aside from two FF games (one an offshoot of a main FF title), the "co-leads" of FF games have all been mixed groups.

However, to see who the "main character" of the narrative is, you really have to get your hands on the game and actually play the thing. No amount of marketing will ever do a good job summing up what narrative is being told and what characters are actually focused on in the narrative. It's... pretty imposible to make snap-judgments about that kind of thing with just a very short teaser.

I also think there should be more attention placed on the different between the main character of the narrative and the character's pov the player experiences the story from. FFXII and FFX have good examples of this, where the player pov character is Vaan and Tidus, neither of who really know what they've gotten themselves wrapped up in. The actual main characters are of FFXII and FFX Ashe and Yuna as it's their decisions that the plot hinges on all the time. And really their stories that hold everyone else's together.

 

[Ite]

I mean... this is where it gets tricky. Because a lot of the woman you didn't mention in the FF games might as well be Co-leads of their games, if not the actual main character. Ashe in particular is more the "Main Character" of FFXII than Vaan is when you actually look at the story the game told and not the marketing for it. Aerith is more the lead of FFVIIR than Cloud is in my opinion. Garnet gets more character growth than Zidane does in FFIX in my opinion. FFX's game is more about Yuna than Tidus, as it it's squeal.

Like... I think it's a valid criticism to say that the SE marketing team thinks young male protagonists are the thing to market. But when you actually play the games and look at the kind of stories being told, it's a lot more mixed than that. Most FF games are less "one person is the main character" kind of games and a lot more "these characters are all co-leads for this story". And aside from two FF games (one an offshoot of a main FF title), the "co-leads" of FF games have all been mixed groups.

However, to see who the "main character" of the narrative is, you really have to get your hands on the game and actually play the thing. No amount of marketing will ever do a good job summing up what narrative is being told and what characters are actually focused on in the narrative. It's... pretty imposible to make snap-judgments about that kind of thing with just a very short teaser.

I also think there should be more attention placed on the different between the main character of the narrative and the character's pov the player experiences the story from. FFXII and FFX have good examples of this, where the player pov character is Vaan and Tidus, neither of who really know what they've gotten themselves wrapped up in. The actual main characters are of FFXII and FFX Ashe and Yuna as it's their decisions that the plot hinges on all the time. And really their stories that hold everyone else's together.

I appear to be alone in thinking that XII achieves a true ensemble cast, like VI, with no one character’s story taking main plot status over another’s (contrasted with Yuna, Ramza, or Cloud). There were times that I thought Ashe might heel-turn and become a villain, which speaks to the quality of XII’s character writing and representation.

@Makoeyes987 Arkham City did have Talia’s mooks, you’re right! I guess I’m hot off the heels of playing Arkham Knight, which (in addition to fridging yet more women, over half the women this time in fact) didn’t have any female mooks at all.

Again, nothing exists without context. Women representation in AAA games is sorely lacking, and the world in which we live has a long way to go in terms of justice for women, and I believe that the stories we tell inform our culture, and that it falls to storytellers to be conscientious of that.

I’m scrutinizing XVI in this way (despite being as excited as I have ever been by a new FF) not because I don’t believe FF has good women representation (historically it does) but because there isn’t much on display currently, as of this trailer. Of course I don’t mean to judge the game before I’ve played it. I’m just talking about what is in front of me, which is a 2 minute short film with a lot of clips, which hint at a larger story. The parts of the story we can see don’t name the women characters, don’t show us playable women characters, and the Japanese line implies that this takes a more medievalist approach to women’s lib than FFIX or FFT. In the context of coming after XV, it’s worth noting.

 

[Clement Rage]

Ite, you can do what you want in your own campaign. But it is worth considering if you're going to be someone that calls out sexism in other people's works that you're not holding your own to the same standards. You are treating the genders differently, which is sexism, because you don't want them to be in battle. Do you have any women players, by the way? What do they think of this?

When playing an Arkham game, how would you feel if the thugs weren’t all men? If you, as Batman, with your high tech gadgets and power suit, were pummeling nameless women unconscious? Is that better than making men the expendable gender?

Absolutely. It's treating them equally. Batman actually takes down Ra's killers less violently than the men, even though they're professional assassins and the men are mostly just thugs. This is one of the reasons I love Dirge, DG and WRO Trooprs both have women included with no distinction.
Bats isn't going around randomly beating people, they're attacking him.

It was a major turn off for me in games like Uncharted, Tomb Raider, and TLOU that the disposable henchpeople are all men.

I get it, it's hard. I make an effort to have gender balance in my own works, right down to the Shinra and Galbadian soldiers (and whenever this isn't present in someone else's works, which so far is everyone but me, I notice). Sometimes I catch myself treating them differently or reviewers do. I've certainly had some major fuckups in my time. Lic can attest to that.

But those thugs, those Shinra soldiers, those henchmen are representation. If it doesn't go all the way down, you're not really being completely representative.

No one is questioning that FF doesn't have amazing female characters.

Actually people were specifically questioning this. It's back on page...11, I think? There's a meme.

No one is saying that there shouldn't be female leads in FF, or more female characters. But people kept going 'this female character doesn't count because' which isn't being honest about this. We don't know anything about the female characters in the trailer yet, but they're already being dismissed as valid representation, despite the fact that we don't know anything about them. All that does is make it more difficult to write representative female characters, because they get so dissected relative to the male ones and held to impossible standards.

 

[Ite]

Please re-read my post, I literally brought it up to scrutinize it, I did it in good faith and inviting all due criticism. And I did it in response to someone presenting that paradigm as an avenue to feminist storytelling, to show that even good intentions can still be poisoned by sexist thinking, of which no one is completely free.

And in fact, I agree with your post completely.

There isn’t a clear path, there isn’t one true way, but can we at least agree that it’s not something to ignore?

 

[Odysseus]

@Clement Rage I remember you bringing that up back in one of your remake threads. I understand why the lack of variance in the Shinra Grunts bothered you now. I don't really remember if I ever commented on it, but sorry for being dismissive regardless.
...
DIRGE IS BEST COMP ENTRY

 

[looneymoon]

There's no such thing as a gender-less meta context, and because we live in a society, existing power structures based on gender makes a "non-sexist" piece of fiction impossible. The best we can do is look at how gender is used as a reflection of the values of those who create that fiction. The video game industry is by large, still a boy's club. The FF series definitely does its job to cater to that boy's club, no doubt. Despite that, it's also a series that I've had faith in for being considerate of its female player-base. I would even say that it's part of the series' core values. It wasn't that long ago that there was a stereotype that FF/JRPGs in general are games "for girls." Mind you, this was very much a Western stereotype (which..... you can intersect that conversation about the patriarchy and racism, "feminizing the orient" and blah blah blah). That's mostly died out, but you get the idea.

Even when I don't like an FF game, I can still appreciate a few of the characters, with the female characters often being the most likable. FF13 is the biggest example of this for me, personally. Frankly, there's not enough info on this game to make me doubt any of that specific rapport the series has built over its history.

A more worthwhile concern for me might be the fact that there's very few women (that we've heard of) in critical roles for this new game. But that's like..... not really a discussion that leads to anywhere interesting since none of us are part of the company This isn't really something that's a uniquely Square-Enix problem, either.

 

[Obsidian Fire]

You could make a trailer for FFXIII that doesn't pass the Bechdel Test though. Or probably FFX-2 for that matter. It all depends what clips you use. And we don't even know what "movie clips" will be available in the game yet.

The point of a teaser trailer isn't "here's all the minority representation this game does right!". It's "here's a new game with a new plot! We finally have a brand new FF game no one knows what to expect from!" without actually telling you what the plot is. This also isn't a trailer for a movie either. It's a trailer for a 40-60 hr game. And unless you want a trailer like the very last FFVIIR trailer we got that spoiled the whole thing, we're not going to see everything this game has to offer in the trailer. Have to save some surprises for when we actually get to play the thing right?

I have like... half a mid to pull up a video from Editing Is Everything, a YouTube channel dedicated to making trailers for movies in a totally different genre than what the movie actually was (okay, here's the one i'd put up). Because this whole discussion feels like people making judgment calls and predictions based on a purposely miss-ordered 1% of a game's playtime. And going "this thing might be bad in this game because of the 1% of it we saw".

 

[The Twilight Mexican]

they had names, I‘d be a lot more pacified, but they don’t.

Do we even know the (presumably) main character dude's name right now? Like, other than "Joshua," there weren't a whole lot of names being thrown around in this trailer.

Also, Shiva is a named female character.

No one is questioning that FF doesn't have amazing female characters. The issue is ratio and timing. First, let's consider the number of female main characters throughout the series. We have Terra, XI create-a-character, Lightning, and XIV create-a-character. We're looking at 2-4 female leads out of 16 games. That's 25% or less depending on how one counts the MMOs. A fourth.

Others have already pointed out the consideration that arguably should be given to Ashe, Yuna, and the female characters of XI and XIV, so I won't delve in there, but you also left out FFIII.

There's probably also something worthwhile to be said for V having a larger number of female than male playable characters, as well as IX having us play as Dagger and Eiko no insignificant amount of the time. The case can easily be made that Zidane and Bartz are co-leads in much the same way as Vaan or Tidus.

 

[looneymoon]

I think there's a genuine point to the ratio criticism. As much as we can say Ashe and/or Yuna are the more important characters to their respective stories, you're still largely experiencing the world through Vaan/Tidus' field models. It's what sets Lightning apart.

One thing I really wanted while playing FF7R was to be able to freely change party members while exploring the map.

 

[Prism]

Regardless of if they’re the main leads or not, FF has had very iconic and well-written female characters (well, on par with the men at a minimum) in most of the entries. Looney makes a good point that it’s still through the lens of the protagonist, though.

It does seem like this discussion has taken a scope a bit larger than just the context of XVI, not that worthwhile words haven’t been said.

 

[Odysseus]

One thing I really wanted while playing FF7R was to be able to freely change party members while exploring the map.

I can forgive the omission in part 1 since there aren't that many areas where it would be worth having such a feature, but once the party is more consistently together in part 2 I would love to be able to do this. Maybe have side quests only certain members can do. This isn't the thread for this speculation though lol.

 

[ForceStealer]

Xenosaga let you mark anyone in the party as "leader" and you would walk around the map with them. And more than that, they all had unique animations for destroying obstacles and such found in the world that evoked their personality and style of attack. That was a lot of fun to play with.

Obviously I will hope for and welcome that in VIIR as well, but Cloud is much more a "main character" in ways that Tidus and Vaan are not. At least Tidus is still important to the plot, even though Yuna is the most important. XII's story isn't even really told through Vaan's eyes once you leave Rabanastre, he basically disappears, lol.

 

[Makoeyes987]

If we're strictly going through experiencing an FF story from a main woman character's lens that leaves us still with Yuna, Lightning, Serah, Terra, and Reynn from WoFF.

In fact, the XIII saga it the only FF series where the leads for all it's games are women.

 

[Obsidian Fire]

Regardless of if they’re the main leads or not, FF has had very iconic and well-written female characters (well, on par with the men at a minimum) in most of the entries. Looney makes a good point that it’s still through the lens of the protagonist, though.

I think what some of us are saying is that the stories are not told through the lens of the protagonist. But that they are told through the lens of a side-character who is more tangentially related to the main conflict of the story.

And a lot of the time, it's because if they were told through the lens of the protagonist, those stories would have more of the problem that FFXIII has at the start of the game: the protagonist already knows the world they live in, so there's not a lot of logical reasons for them to explain it to the player. Think about how FFX would start out if you were playing as Yuna who already knows her own history and the history of Sin and Yu Yevon, why she is a summoner on a pilgrimage, etc. and how it wouldn't be until later in her own story that she would tell Tidus that info. Instead the player is playing as Tidus, someone who has no idea about the world he is now in and so the player can more naturally have the other characters tell him about the world they have grown up in.

FFXII is the FF I bring up the most often here because if the director, Matsuno, had gotten his way, it's very likely Vaan would never have been made a character in the first place. The "lead character" was shuffled around a bit between Baltheir, Ashe and Bash with SE executives doing so much executive meddling with the project that Matsuno left it. And eventually the executives got their way and Vaan was set to be the "main character" that you see in the marketing. Only there's enough left of Matsuno's original story that the roll Vaan fits the best could be considered "the pov of the common people" instead of "the character who the story is about". There's reasons people wonder what Vaan is doing in the game: he basicly serves as a way to get the player to meet Ashe and then the actual story starts, which is... "Get Ashe's kingdom back and see if she'll take revenge on Arcadia or not".

What I do have to wonder though, is how much meddling SE's marketing department has over the different creative decisions. Because like... If you get told your game has to follow "x" criteria... then it kind of has to if you want to make it in the first place...

 

[Makoeyes987]

Honestly? You can swap Vaan out, you know.

I totally forgot until I looked at my Trading Arts mini figures... You can literally switch any character you like as the lead character in XII. It's a freely ensemble cast. If you put Ashe at the front of the party, then the game matches tonally completely as her story. I literally remember doing that upon entering the Tomb of Raithwall. So....

 

[JBedford]

Vaan is the controlled character in towns.

 

[LicoriceAllsorts]

in any world, real or imagined, where the human population is under constant threat (as in, "There aren't enough of us"), men will inevitably be regarded as the more disposable sex, the sex that any given human group can afford to lose in a war. This isn't about gender, it's about biology. It is easier for a group to rebuild from a few men and plenty of women than from few women and plenty of men. For most of its history humanity was chronically short of person-power - partly because it's so fond of fighting wars, partly because so many children died in infancy. Things are different now: we have more people than we know what to do with. This has facilitated our liberation from the tyranny of biology. I'd add that while there will always be a percentage of women who like nothing better than a battlefield, the vast majority of all human beings, men and women, go to war unwillingly, and would get out of it if they could.

The Swiss army has allowed women to do military service for quite a while now. Remember, this is a country that has practically no professional soldiers, and which provides excellent education and employment opportunities for its young people. In Switzerland you wouldn't go into the army because you're poor and are looking for training and career. I see a lot of Swiss soldiers around. I see a few women soldiers. I don't see many.

Most magical/fantasy fictional worlds have a tendency to glorify war and those who fight it, and I'd argue that that in itself is a patriarchal way of looking at the world. War is so shitty and awful in reality, it has to be glorified in fantasy, otherwise all the young men who go off to fight in it (imagining they're off to some big adventure) would "shoot their officers and go home" instead.

 

[Glaurung]

you see the comment that anime characters and the like all 'look white' which i think is maybe not the best way to look at it. sailor moon lives in japan and has a japanese name and is japanese (but also she's a moon princess), but she has big blue eyes and long blonde hair. but that doesn't mean she's white nor meant to look so. do white people have pink or blue hair, like anime characters do? you can look at characters who are pointedly made to look like white westerns to differentiate them from the japanese cast, and they will be drawn with a long pronounced nose or something and not the small nose associated with characters that 'look white'

manga and derivative media use stylised iconography that's not meant to represent a specific race or nationality (i've seen it called 無国籍/mukokuseki or stateless but idk if that's a common term for it). idk if some of this is seeing a stylised face and unconsciously associating that with the race you're more familiar with, unless it's drawn with exaggerated racial features. if the image isn't sufficiently 'othered' you can associate to it more easily.

i tend to judge characters' 'nationalities' by things like setting and character name/profile. 'tsukino usagi' is japanese. but i'm going to assume a pasty-looking guy called 'harold anderson' is going to be white (i couldn't actually think of a white anime character in a real world setting because i'm not a filthy weeb or something) what are you talking about, hito you filthy weeb. 'joseph joestar', son of johnathan and erina joestar from england, is probably meant to be white. i tried to avoid strictly fictional settings like fantasy and sci-fi so far, where i think 'mukokuseki' would really come in. but looking at an edward elric, i think it's a safe assumption he's at very least based on a white person. i base that on name as well tbh.

i get why you'd take the ffxvi characters for being white, since they're pale-skinned people in a setting that stylistically resembles popular depictions of a fantasy medieval europe, commonly thought of and portrayed as being very white. i know there's contentions around the idea that there were no people of colour (some of who can be pale-skinned too) in europe at that time, but here's the great thing. it's actually not medieval europe. it's a fictional setting and they can put whoever they want in there. which would be nice to see, because i thought the npcs in ff7r had a good variety to them.

anyway i forgot the point i was trying to make now

That was what I was getting at, in respect to what Ito said. I've been consuming Japanese media for decades, and I've always seen exactly what you describe, and FFXVI is no different. MC is Japanese but with blue eyes, because japanese like big, blue eyes. But again, you write it better, lol.

 

[Odysseus]

To further out myself as a degenerate, I distincly remember while I was watching the K-ON movie where they go to London that all the actual white people looked pretty different from our Japanese protagonists, despite them also having the anime "white" appearance.