A fictional character didn’t choose how she was dressed. The reasoning given is literally that sunlight keeps the shade at bay. It’s on the same wavelength as Quiet breathing through her skin
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I am not ignoring that it is horny though. I am trying to move to an actual analysis of the work. I can’t find outside evidence contradicting this outside of everyone yelling it’s horny.
On the scale of horndog it is extremely low (outside of the awful achievement.)
Weiss constantly complains why is she in her underwear and Kaine’s response is “none of your damn business.”
Yeah it’s horny but what else?
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i think there is weight and thought in the decision to give a character agency where it is not expected of the writer to do so
kaine is not a character who throws her hands up in disbelief or relinquishes the autonomy she has left to her for any reason. like, her most apparent characteristic is that she refuses to take shit from anyone
y’all are not playing the same game i am, i guess
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Automata is smarter about this too, in that it writes the titillating aspects of the character as intentionally self-subverting, and provides more contrast, where Kaine’s backstory is more or less conveyed in two sentences that the player has to take at face value
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I don’t think we have the same scales of horndog because in no world would I say a character whose most prominent traits are under boob windows and ass cleavage is “extremely low” horniness.
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I mean sure it says that but it also says she chose it to assert her identity, which Quiet certainly did not (after all, when she wears what she wants at the beginning of the game when she comes to assassinate you she’s in regular BDUs, which you can actually pay money to unlock later lol). I dunno where this block of text is from but the impression I got from the game’s text and Kaine’s responses (because she actually has a voice and a whole entire personality, she isn’t written as a literally silent person!) is that the identity-assertion was a lot more important to her than the shade-therapy.
I don’t feel like a tit for tat analysis of each game’s treatment of its characters is really fruitful, so I will say as a quick and probably glib replacement that Kaine’s character resonates a lot with people of gender minorities and I’ve never seen Quiet’s character resonate with anyone. I think there is a reason for this.
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quiet chose to wear a tactical bikini too
sup
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the screencap is literally the character description that they provided for the nier replicant release on their website. It’s an update of the old character description which included a slur that I won’t reproduce here.
You don’t even find out that kaine is intersex without reading x amount of in-game lore, there’s no in-game moments explaining any of this shit. I’m not really willing to give Yoko Taro, of all people, the benefit of the doubt when it comes to sleaziness.
Like, sorry, not impressed that a tsundere character says ‘fuck you’ when someone wonders why she’s wearing a polyester ass napkin and ribbons held together with ten rolls of double-sided body tape. It’s low rent anime shit straight from 2010, the nadir of low rent anime shit
It’s not like we’re talking about something classy like Kei and Yuri of Dirty Pair, we’re talking about a video game.
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I’ll try to move this forward because if am going to spend 30 hours with a game I’ve already spent 45 hours with I should be looking at it’s theming and characters.
Emil feels they can never be accepted and it is extremely touching that acceptance is never questioned or even brought up by Kaine or Brother. It is a really beautiful moment when Kaine is unfrozen and just turns to take in Emil’s new form. No shock. No disgust. Just looking with deep care and love.
In group that goes around commiting mass genocide with unknown powers (Video Games) The Main 4 constantly reaffirm that they care about one another. Caring does not always mean being nice. It means yelling at your friends for being shitheads and sacrifices of yourself for their benefit. Every time that friendship is questioned the response is hurt by the other parties that it would even be questioned.
Now if you want to get real left field debate whether after Emil’s change he is even Emil or we have a Severian thing going on.
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It is worth noting that personally the reason Nier stood out for me is that the characters really are well sketched and performed even with the occasional problematic element (I think Kaine could have worn something less absurd without the game losing anything and likely in fact being a bit better). I think it is to a degree a happy accident as it is something Yoko Taro has never come close to duplicating (Automata plays better but I care for it much less as I think all of the main characters are a notable step down) so it is fair to say that he/they don’t deserve credit for it or to skate on the questionable bits, but I think the fact that the cast does resonate with so many people here should suggest to those who don’t care for it that it is at least doing something of note even if it doesn’t personally work for you.
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This is a strange situation. As a trans woman I look at Kaine and I’m like fuck yeah. But I look at shit like kojima and quiet and roll my eyes at the bullshit explanation for haha boobies. Why is this any different? I don’t know. I don’t know if I can even articulate how I feel about it properly. I don’t think if yoko taro was such a sleaze so much of his writing team would be women, and I think there’s enough in his work to determine that he has some kind of trauma with men. I certainly feel safer around him than kojima.
There’s a repugnant sexual element to it with quiet, where she’s going wifechild mode for big boss and showing you her boobs in the helicopter, and it makes the explanation even more insulting. With Yoko Taro shit it feels like it’s stupid to care about why. It’s stupid to stare at kaine’s outfit instead of kaine the person. The sunlight explanation on the site feels like a shot at kojima rather than endorsement of that bullshit; yoko taro is a funny guy like that. But I don’t know. Perhaps these things are inexcusable despite how they resonate with people.
Quiet is a real doll modeled after a real woman Kojima wants to fuck. Later in the game she leaves. If you do the side quest to go find her you get a cutscene of her in captivity where a Russian guy drowns her in a trough and a cartoon unzipping sound plays as he’s about to rape her. She breaks free and literally stabs them all in the dicks. I never hear anybody talk about this but it made me quit MGS5 very late. This is so much worse than anything I’ve played in a yoko taro game.
Kaine is an actual character, I really like her! I too have an evil mutant body that hates me, swear like a 14 year old, and have a cursed peepee. She’s legit one of my favorite characters in videogames now. If I’m a pervert cuz of that then well lol ok people have called me worse. And the achievement’s funny because she kills you, but I am going to beat the shit out of whoever wrote the description for it
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I honestly would even question how “horny” her design is, beyond acknowledging that that sex sells or whatever. if your complaint is that we’re only getting a character that’s taro’s particular fetish, that’s fair I guess, but I’ve got bad news about literally any sexualized character in any medium ever. it’s all fetish art. if you don’t want that then don’t play any games with a sexually attractive main character. it’s always going to be based on what the person who designed them is turned on by. I honestly don’t see how it’s particularly weirder or grosser with kaine. her design is honestly relatively tasteful and cool looking compared to the norm!
and for what it’s worth, neither her being born intersex or dressing lingerie were taro’s idea!
and in game her character isn’t treated with any less respect or dignity than emil or nier, there aren’t really any gratuitous fanservice shots or poses, and her personality is rounded and nuanced and her appearance is only a footnote to her role in the game. this all seems like an enormous contrast to quiet who is quite pointedly eye candy and fan service and has ~no~ personality, even her backstory is thin and contrived. by the end of msgv I do not care about quiet and she never feels like a real person, but kaine is actually well written and sympathetic and nuanced and we are invited to sympathize with her story on a level that has nothing to do with her sex appeal. I just think it’s weird to pick on kaine because she is so not objectified compared to other female leads in games, comics, movies, even literature. she’s arguably not even a love interest! to the extent that there even ~is~ a love story between her and nier, it’s more of a platonic love and imo that part of the story is told in a beautiful, understated way that you rarely see in any medium.
I would concede that her trotting about in lingerie all the time is arguably superfluous and the things I like about her character and story would work just as well without that, but I don’t see why it’s particularly objectionable either. gratuitous isn’t inherently bad.
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Honestly I felt her clothing was more justified when there wasn’t an in-universe explanation involving magic ghosts.
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I think the reasons Kaine is commanding and headstrong and confident and tender and kind and a ridiculously good and loyal friend are the same reasons she has for naruto running around in lingerie getting into fights and mouthing off to everyone. the same complexity is present in Emil and Brother, and nier’s whole raison d’etre is a plea for compassion and empathy and and regard for the imperfect wholeness of people trying to live with the cards they’ve been dealt
which is to say I think her design isn’t superfluous at all, and the hand-wringing over it only serves to illustrate the necessity for the kind of empathy YT wants to encourage
I really don’t think it’s fair to call the character low rent anime trash it like actually hurts my heart and my brain to try and imagine what good could possibly come of expressing that it’s just so cold
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Fair enough, I never played MGS5 and was only dunking on the in-universe “she shows more skin to save herself from the shade” explanation.
So, to update my dunk, Yoko Taro’s Annah-of-the-Shadows
In this case I think its impossible to find any difference between the characters since they even have the same personality and relationship to the protagonist and his wise-cracking misogynist sidekick.
The comparison to Chris Avellone is more accurate and cutting than Kojima, I think. Less “you will be ashamed of your words and deeds,” more “really makes you think.”
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you’re right but these are the wrong details, it’s not any specific technique but the team sizes to compete going from 60 to 200+ and how difficult and critical and different team management becomes at that scale, and the breakdown of the personality-driven Japanese style
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Why are you here
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Like seriously, do you ever post anything but these passive aggressive digs at people who are actually interesting and capable of expressing themselves
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