What's the story behind "The Azure Knight"?

What is the foundation for the Japanese fixation with androgenous men with big hair and giant comedy swords?

Dante from "Devil May Cry", "Siegfried from "Soul Calibur", Ragna the Blood Edge from "Blazblue" just to name a few.

Where does this Archetype find it's roots in Japanese culture or popular culture?

Does anyone actually know?

Heh, I always thought the big swords were to......compensate

That doesn't bother me nearly as much as the increased prevalence of prepubascent-looking girls. Especially when they are portrayed in a sixualized manner. It must have something to do with their stunted population growth.

Obviously!

Western games arent much better. Im sick of seeing women in games wear skimpy armour. Aside from it being pathetic, it also ruins immersion.

Allthough I despise jrpgs more. They just look so stupid with the giant swords, and men who look like women.

You'll notice that a lot of anime deals with the transition from childhood to advlthood, which seems to be a particularly big concern in Japanese culture, especially because such a hyper-technological and advanced space leaves little room for social development and interaction. I guess anime is a way to facilitate "growing up". It's a stop-gap measure for a social lacuna. Also, a lot of Japanese advlts are just really unhappy with their lot and want to think back to an easier, "better" time, the time just before they made the wrong choices, or didn't measure up. This time, because of a confluence of cultural and societal influences, is often their teenage years.

This doesn't explain why men look like women, but it does explain the preoccupation with prepubascence and teenage-hood.

I wish some academics would go about investigating Japanese culture from the perspective of anime. It would explain at least 75% of what Japan is all about.

90% of the characters you think are androgynous probably aren't. You just have no clue what a young, attractive, Asian male looks like.

Seriously, look at some JPOP or KPOP males and they tend to look very boyish. Asians are cougars.

Also, Bridget. Trololololol.

I would expect that a lot have, and http://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?q=%22japanese+culture%22+anime&hl=en&btnG=Search&as_sdt=1%2C5&as_sdtp=on seems to indicate that I'm right...

Some women here want to have a word with you.

Take Plooph, for instance. She wears skimpy armour to buy groceries*!

*in the game

I know there are papers and books on the topic. I haven't noticed one that's broad enough, though. Each seems to have an angle, but very few seem to discuss the overall implications for Japan as a whole. Manga discussions naturally centre around six and anthropomorphisation. Anime discussions often focus on the visual aspect too heavily, disregarding the stories that are typically told. I haven't thought to look for a good book on this topic until this thread, but I may just, now. It's interesting stuff.

At least our women in skimpy armour are advlts.

Pretty much the same as a young, attractive Asian female I'd guess.

Only to a baka gaijin like you.

I had to google that, but I suppose you're right.

In their defence, I do see alot of young girls who dress like [censored]s, so while it still creeps me out, I have seen more creepy/depressing things.


I once saw a picture of lots of Jpop stars. It said about how 1 was a female, I had no idea who it was.
... So lots of Asian cougers... How do they feel about white people *gets ready to book flight to Asia*

Japanese don't like themselves, let alone foreigners.

Maybe the comments I've seen from 2ch have made me biased.

Japanese fixation on giant swords? Granted, there are a lot of them, but they aren't exactly uncommon in Western games either. They just tend to be more ornate than their Western counterparts, much like Japanese character design in general.

Characters like http://images4.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20110807054856/kingdomhearts/images/0/0b/Sephiroth_KH1.png are also the exception, rather than the rule. He's an odd one, as I'm pretty sure his sword grows a foot longer with each new appearence he makes.

His sword in that picture is almost twice the length it was in FF7...

http://thepunchlineismachismo.com/comics/2011-08-29.jpg

You should see him in http://i.imgur.com/86EOb.png.

You got me all excited for nothing...

Anyway, I think it's just their fantasies manifesting themselves. I agree with you that there is quite a prevalence of androgynous looking men in JRPGs. Though to be fair, most of the characters portrayed are pretty young, and there are plenty of guys in real life that look like that in their late-teens (they're most likely hormonally challenged, but they still exist).

Only thing that mildly get's me about Japanese games are the bullet-hell shumps---for love of mike you can have screen full of purple bullets and there're players who can doge 'em in their sleep .

Short answer: because FF7 was a huge hit in Japan, and they've been ripping off Cloud Strife and Sephiroth ever since (the giant sword is now even known as the "buster sword" after its name in FF7.) What, you didn't think the western games market was the only one that made endless shallow copies of its most popular ideas, did you?

As for the spiky hair, same answer as above, except substitute "Dragon Ball" for FF7. Akira Toriyama is almost a national treasure, and his signature style is... spiky haired youths like Goku.

Longer answer: Japanese culture is inescapably tied to the status of the sword, as historically it was a symbol of the authority of the samurai class. It's kind of like the lightsaber, it turns normal everyday peasants into world-saving heroes and unlocks the mysteries of the universe for its wielder, etc. The Japanese are also fascinated by European history and tradition (in the same way that some here are fascinated by ninjas) and they often lift elements for a fusion of both cultures - thus Zelda is a typical Asian "mystic quest" adventure, yet set in a seemingly middle-English world: it's the appeal of the extraordinary. On that note, it's not hard to see the "buster sword" as an over-exaggeration of a heavy English broadsword or claymore, compared to the nimbler, more slender katanas.

Also, Japanese humor tends to be a little more over-the-top than most in the west.

It just takes a ton of practice and memorizing the patterns.

That's another thing that shocks me is that in some bullet hell shmups, is that when the screen is full I MEAN FULL of purple bullets you have a single point on your craft that can be hit and your craft is covered in bullets, yet there's folks that can protect that little point (usually the tip of the nose of the craft). I find that very impressive.

Most shmup's are a lot easier when you can see the hit box.