Nintendo All-Stars 2013

[Fryguy64]

Sorry, I've been working on some other NinDB updates and the next Nintendo Force comic. I'll get back to your votes shortly

[Fryguy64]

OK, thanks guys! I have now added your votes to the list!

[Leon]

It's happening!

One thing I'd suggest for Mach Riders profile is to add a line about how some think Mach Rider might be a woman. 

[Fryguy64]

That's right, the first votes have been tallied up. I will now draw like a mad thing and try to get these up as soon as possible.

I'm not sure I want to so explicitly state that Mach Rider is a woman (as in Vs. Mach Rider). It's clearly supposed to be a secret, and I already mention how Mach Rider's identity is unknown.

[nocturnal YL]

I'm shocked. Truly. Never heard of that.

Further online searches led me to this, for those who want more details: www.metroid-database.com/features/machrider.php

First discovering there are more not-for-sale GameCube discs than I thought, and now this... Well, that makes me want to look for more trivia like this. I'd say this is the kind of stuff that should appear in NinDB.

Now, are there more gender-ambiguous characters - Oh right, those Excitebike people.

[Evie ❤✿]

Aug 4, 2013 8:29:49 GMT -5 nocturnal YL said:

I'm shocked. Truly. Never heard of that.

Further online searches led me to this, for those who want more details: www.metroid-database.com/features/machrider.php

First discovering there are more not-for-sale GameCube discs than I thought, and now this... Well, that makes me want to look for more trivia like this. I'd say this is the kind of stuff that should appear in NinDB.

Now, are there more gender-ambiguous characters - Oh right, those Excitebike people.

Another obscure one is Wotsaruto from the Legendary Starfy series. He/she uses the word 'boku' to refer to his/herself typically used by males and wears a bow tie but Wotsaruto's playing card from the Legendary Starfy Trumps is Queen and it seems only female characters have Queen cards, like Ruby and Kit Fish who are female.

[Nester the Lark]

Sorry for getting off-topic, but...

Gender ambiguity seems to be a thing in Japan. I guess it's a cultural difference, as I don't really understand it. I think Westerners (or at least, Americans?) prefer to know someone's exact gender, else it can get a little unsettling. But I'm wondering how it's perceived in Japan. Is it considered humorous? Is it meant to be a joke? Is it taken for granted?

Aside from the instances of very feminine-looking males (which do have a specific gender), there are times when a game character simply isn't identified with a gender. For example, Red in Gunstar Super Heroes is gender-ambiguous in the Japanese release, but is specifically said to be female in the international version. Also, I believe Nights (from Nights Into Dreams) is deliberately gender-ambiguous in all regions, supposedly because Sonic Team wanted to leave it up to the individual to decide.

Does anyone have insight into this? I rarely see it discussed outside of snide, off-hand comments about Japan being weird.

[nocturnal YL]

I think the difference is that people speaking Western European will want to at least know which pronoun to use, while this is not a problem in the east. I don't see how it's particularly humourous, but it is indeed one major thing that can be left for either surprising the audience, or make them more interesting. Or rather, it will become humourous once people start to notice and make fun of the very ambiguity of gender. See TF2's Pyro.

[Nester the Lark]

That might be true about pronoun usage, but it's not really the heart of the matter. Maybe it's simply that Americans have very strong ideas about a distinction between men and women, and we find it unsettling when that distinction fades.

But what I'm curious about is how the ambiguity seems so deliberate in Japan. It's not the case that a character's gender simply isn't mentioned by negligence, but that it's deliberately avoided, perhaps as you say to create mystery and/or confusion. (Is this common in other Asian regions, as well?)

[Fryguy64]

It's easy to forget that gender roles are as much a by-product of language and culture as they are physiological. That's why there's such a huge uproar about transgendered people at the moment. For decades it's been understood that the biological fact of sex determined at birth does not correlate directly with the gender roles each society doles out.

It is likely that the stark gender distinctions present in many western languages simply do not exist in many Eastern languages, and this has a knock-on effect when it comes to how gender is more widely perceived by society. Japan and several other Asian countries are notable for their more relaxed attitudes to gender roles. Think Taiwan.

I'm sure there's a load of research out there on this.

I'm more curious as to how Mach Rider's massive pectoral muscles transform into boobs. Is it a padded muscle shirt?

[Nester the Lark]

I'm gonna spin this off into its own thread so that I don't hijack the Nintendo All-Stars.

EDIT: You can find the new thread here.

[Fryguy64]

First three vote-winners drawn!

[Leon]

Very good, I'm looking forward to the rest of them.

[8bitretroshit]

DON'T TRY ME, WARIO

I see you're going with a deformed style. I like it! Especially Diddy there

[Fryguy64]

Just a quick heads up. I'm running another short poll to find an Animal Crossing representative.

Here's the original post over on deviantArt.
Here's the poll results to date