Now that we're here, can I rant about how some of the Demon's Soul remake's design choices feel intentionally racist? Feel free to point out which part I got it wrong or add any addition though, I'm happy to be corrected.
Okay first. Like what the fuck is this.
It's already racist enough if they depicted them with a typical Japanese look. But how could they, look at the name Satsuki, and decide to use the CHINESE caricature since 19th century or something. Can't they distinguish between Japanese and Chinese?? Is this a proper tribute to a Japanese game??
And speaking of tribute, they claimed that their design "all rooted in our study of the original game's concept art". Okay so this is the Monumental's part in the concept art.
The half-open eyes of Buddhist statue have its own meaning. There are actually three states of eyes that the Buddha can be depicted with:
- closed: used to depict the Buddha entering Nirvana
- opened: actually quite rare, for the statue should be an example for the Buddhist and it's believed the eyes of a Buddhist should not look to the outside too much. Another interesting belief is it looks like the Buddha is angry. Like in my country gangsters or tattoo artists do not dare to tattoo Buddha with wide-opened eyes because it may invites troubles and goes against the meaning of having a Buddha tattoo, which is trying to have inner peace.
- half-lidded: the most popular depiction. Symbolize meditation, mindfulness, and a balanced state of awareness looking both inward and outward. It is not closed, for he is not asleep. It is not wide-opened, for he sees not only the outside world. Also it is the eyes of compassion, because it sees everything without prejudice
Sorry that's a rambling. But anyways what i want to say is, the eyes is an intentional design choice, just like how its clothes being pure white is also used to shown its purity. And what did Bluepoint do? They did the exact OPPOSITE
I honestly don't get it. Why would they do this. What would they achieve for doing this. Do they think they know the character better than Fromsoft themselves? Why do they have to disregard every notes, even though it's explicitly said there's a spiritual inspiration behind it. It's just so awful and disrespectful to me, there's nothing can excuse this.
That was my Asian part speaking. And now it's my Fromsoft fan part. You know how Fromsoft often leaves visual clues for us to figure out the connections of things. Yeah Bluepoint just goes in and says fuck it.
Now the Shrine of Storms is the shrine of the Shadowmen tribe, who has this particular custom of removing the lips, as seen on the figure on the Archstone, likely to make them look more like skeleton.
This is reflected in both the Abjudicator's and the Old Hero's appearance, who both are the manifest of Shadowman's beliefs and both have their lips removed in a similar way
Their attires also look similar, tied them up as beings from the same culture
And then Bluepoint just has to go with the most random designs ever. There are no connections between them, unless you consider nose rings and nipple rings are good enough design to describe an "uncivilized" tribe.
This cultural erasure even extends to the Boletarian Mausoleum, where there is a statue that depicts a figure similar to the original design of Old Hero. This implies the Boletarian family, or more specifically Old King Doran was from the Shadowmen tribe, and this statue is built to honor that root. This is something that got carried into Godfrey, who started off as some beast hunter but eventually became a lord. But then Bluepoint just has to go out their way to change it into a generic king statue.
I'm sure there are many more offensive things, I'm not really an expert on Demon's Soul like Forbid or Katy or anyone else out there. I talk about these characters because they are my favorites and it just feels so hurtful looking at what Bluepoint did. And then people still want them to do Bloodborne remake.
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