It is obvious that this week's Bombcast, especially Patrick's comment, has caused some commotion in Giant Bomb's forum. People talking about Final Fantasy's character illustrator and attacking or defending about it. Some of the comments have been nonsensical, or even immature but at the same time, there has been a lot of good comments.

But what really interests me is that how much people are clinging onto this topic. As a Korean who spent most of his youth in Korea, I have never found the whole "zipper and belts" issues in Final Fantasy annoying. As a mater of fact, I did not notice the excessive number of them until you guys mentioned it. I am used to seeing overly ridiculous anime characters, overly feminine male characters, and over the top character designs. I grew up watching those anime on my TV everyday. As a matter of fact, I found a lot of "western cartoon" characters exaggerated and I know that is something you guys cannot understand because you guys believe anime characters are super exaggerated. I do not need to go through elaborated anime Wikis to interpret each episode of anime to fully get the context of it because watching it is enough for me(the existence of animevice.com still baffles me). I understand the culture because it is MY culture(but Japanese culture is quiet different form Korean but that's a different story). So it is especially surprising to me when people say "8th was fine because it looked realistic enough" and I am sitting here thinking "but... it is a video game that is more or less like an anime.... Why are you expecting a hint of reality from this?" For me, and I cannot speak for every Asian out there, that is like saying "I expect a hint of reality from Dragon Ball Z."

Then, there is other side of people saying "But look at Mass Effect's character design! This guy looks like a guy you might pass by on a street. Final Fantasy can learn something from this!" Now, I love Mass Effect as much as the guy next me, but you really cannot compare Mass Effect(or any "western" RPGs, really) with Final Fantasy. They are very different, they serve different audiences, and they come from two very different cultures. It is just that Final Fantasy happens to be popular in the West for some reason. So really, I feel like comparing those games is like apple and orange type of things.

The way I see it, this whole issues of "character design of Final Fantasy" is nothing but a cultural conflict. It is a clash between a group of people who are more willing to accept Japanese culture and a group of people who just think that is absurd. Maybe I am wrong or maybe I am right. I cannot tell for sure. But reading those comments has been very refreshing to me because it felt like I was in high school again, trying to explain the cultural differences to my high school friends.