The age of consent is much lower in Japan. That doesn't make this game any less creepy, but most the the characters in this game are actually "legal" in Japan.
Actually, the AOC is not "Much lower."
The Japanese Penal Code sets a minimal age of consent of 13.[44] However, the Children Welfare Act chapter 34 forbids any act of "fornication" (淫行) with children (here defined as anyone under 18 years of age)[45] with prefectures and districts specifying further details in (largely similar) "obscenity ordinances" (淫行条例) like adding exemptions for sex in the context of a sincere romantic relationship (typically determined by parental approval).[46] Various sources including police,official and adult related service providers cite that the actual age of consent in Japan is 18 as special laws and new laws precede old and general laws.
@halexandra64: You said it yourself, games are not a sterile medium, but I don't think the issue with quiet is so cut-and-dry. She's super sexualized, sure, but in the context of the narrative it makes sense.
I mean, besides the whole "she needs to breathe through her skin because you burned her lungs" thing, it is revealed way late that she is tasked with getting close to Snake and capturing his heart to utterly crush his hopes and dreams once she activates the English strain buried inside her. She eventually goes against this mission, obviously, and becomes genuinely attracted to Snake.
The whole time the camera is panning around Quiet as she poses provocatively and occasionally moans, it represents Snake himself ogling her, because that's her objective.
Sure, the reasoning is somewhat trite overall, but the intention is just as important as the execution and outcome. Once again, in your words, "People were ignoring the content of the games in favor of arguments about the man." Isn't this the same? The game lays out a fairly logical reason for why Quiet is the way she is, why the camera is the way it is in the helicopter. It's not just the script and the camera that has a reasoning, but the characters as well.
@plan6:This assumes a lot of things about the creator in a really negative fashion. Please read my spoilers above (after playing the game if you haven't, obviously!) for a way pessimistic viewpoint. Don't get me wrong, Kojima has explicitly stated the original design for Quiet is to get cosplayers to play her, but to completely ignore the reasoning behind why characters do things just because someone else wrote them doing it is a damn shame.
@yelix: @halexandra64:I really agree that Naoto's storyline didn't work as a trans allegory at all, mainly because it wasn't. It was almost entirely centered on gender roles and her being torn between "wanting to do detective (manly) things" and "wanting to be herself (a girl)." We see the shadow Naoto take the (il)logical leap and conclude the best way to have both is to become a man, so to both be herself AND do the things she wants.
The same for kanji, it was not at all an allegory about sexuality and being queer. Like Naoto, Kanji's story is about challenging gender roles; he wanted to express his strong emotions and he liked girly things (sewing and etc), and since he is a man, the shadow goes beyond the pale and exclaims that he is super homo stereotypes, because again it is a twisted method to achieve the desires.
I didn't even want to touch the "fat-shaming", but here goes. To recap, Hanako (a very overweight woman) is eating a ginormous meal (it looks like a huge pile of curry and rice, the size of her head). The detective squad, who has nothing to eat due to silly cooking antics, has nothing to eat. They ask her for some to share because she has a lot of food, but she scoffs at them, saying something to the extent of "I barely have enough for myself!" In a very selfish manner. This is hardly fat-shaming; the joke does not use her being overweight as a direct punch line, but rather a way to juxtapose the rest of the situation into a joke later when they are all starving and Kanji had a box of animal crackers hidden away. In other words, the game does not make fun of her being fat, but uses her being fat to tell a joke.
I'm glad you brought up these points on Phantom Pain! I ended up even bowing out of the watching the playthrough because the content was just making me feel too uncomfortable and I ended up feeling actually distant from a lot of people I looked up to because they weren't bringing this up and in a weird way it made me feel a little unsafe, it made me sort of doubt how I saw other people who didn't have this issue. I had to read a lot of arguments like this to know that for a lot of people it was a guilty acknowledgement, sort of like my feelings towards Witcher 3 and its violence towards women, and that I wasn't actually alone in seeing this problem, it had just been separated from the context of their appreciation of the game.
I'm very curious since I haven't played the game, what violence towards women was there in the Witcher 3?
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