Sexism strikes again
Jul. 13th, 2024 07:51 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rocky41_7I finally had the chance to try out the Persona franchise last month or so when I picked up Persona 5 from Gamestop. For a number of reasons I will probably never finish it, but one of the things that stood out very sharply to me as a grating factor was the treatment of Ann by the narrative.
The player character is male, as is the mascot, and your first friend/team member, Ryuji. Both boys are in high school, and the first girl recruited to the team is Ann, who joins almost entirely because she's being sexually pursued by one of the teachers, Kamoshida, who the boys are looking to expose as a predator and abuser of students. Ann is furious about how much Kamoshida's gotten away with and more than willing to put herself at risk as one of the Phantom Thieves to stop him from hurting anyone else.
And what outfit does the game put her in as soon as she joins the team? Skin-tight bright red body suit with cat ears and a tail.
Most of her battle poses have her standing with her chest and ass thrust out, often towards the viewer. Her knock-out pose has her face-down on the floor with her ass up in the air.
Both the PC and your companions have multiple chances to make sexual comments at her or about her. One of the mascot's repeat battle dialogues is a breathy line about how she's "so gorgeous!"
This very anime hypocrisy, where sexual harassment is gross if it's one of the bad guys doing it but funny or cute if it's one of the heroes doing it reminds me aggressively of the reasons I've distanced myself from anime since I was a teenager. The game has no real respect for Ann's feelings or the story it created for her. It pays lip service to the trauma of being a teenager pursued by an adult in a position of power when Ann feels like she can't refuse, but it jumps right from exclaiming about how terrible it is for Kamoshida to treat her like a sexual prize into the PC joking about what a sexual prize she is.
If I had any hope that this would be addressed later on--that Ann might call them out for being disrespectful, particularly in light of her trauma--I might feel differently, but I don't. Ann is a romance option for the PC and given how she's been treated so far, I can only imagine how cringe-worthy that path is.
The player character is male, as is the mascot, and your first friend/team member, Ryuji. Both boys are in high school, and the first girl recruited to the team is Ann, who joins almost entirely because she's being sexually pursued by one of the teachers, Kamoshida, who the boys are looking to expose as a predator and abuser of students. Ann is furious about how much Kamoshida's gotten away with and more than willing to put herself at risk as one of the Phantom Thieves to stop him from hurting anyone else.
And what outfit does the game put her in as soon as she joins the team? Skin-tight bright red body suit with cat ears and a tail.
Most of her battle poses have her standing with her chest and ass thrust out, often towards the viewer. Her knock-out pose has her face-down on the floor with her ass up in the air.
Both the PC and your companions have multiple chances to make sexual comments at her or about her. One of the mascot's repeat battle dialogues is a breathy line about how she's "so gorgeous!"
This very anime hypocrisy, where sexual harassment is gross if it's one of the bad guys doing it but funny or cute if it's one of the heroes doing it reminds me aggressively of the reasons I've distanced myself from anime since I was a teenager. The game has no real respect for Ann's feelings or the story it created for her. It pays lip service to the trauma of being a teenager pursued by an adult in a position of power when Ann feels like she can't refuse, but it jumps right from exclaiming about how terrible it is for Kamoshida to treat her like a sexual prize into the PC joking about what a sexual prize she is.
If I had any hope that this would be addressed later on--that Ann might call them out for being disrespectful, particularly in light of her trauma--I might feel differently, but I don't. Ann is a romance option for the PC and given how she's been treated so far, I can only imagine how cringe-worthy that path is.
