Oftentimes takes on twitter dot com are focused on calling out shitty and dumb JRPG takes of the highest order as a case of racism towards Japan and Japanese games, but this isn’t quite right. It is not racism that drives this attitude that is prevalent from the random individual to the gaming press at large, it is a form of disdain that comes from their own inability to appreciate the genre in a way that exposes their shame to like what they like, or their refusal to move on that has lasted for several decades.
The focus on nostalgia-focused games shows this. The messianic worship of games like Chrono Trigger, and the excited frothing at the mouth of anything that even superficially resembles it shows not just the focus on the old over the new, but their subconscious refusal to give the same kind of appreciation to today’s games. JRPGs is the easiest target to showcase some kind of pseudo-maturity, of having “moved on” from something inherently seen as childish and immature. The same kind of reaction that anime receives of cudgeling the new to worship the old.
This easy target is compounded with the rise of mainstream WRPGs, but also the rise of other types of Japanese games that appeal more to a western audience and give them the sense of maturity that they crave. From Software games are key example of this, as its audience even avoid the JRPG moniker. Ask a random fan and they’ll tell you it is closer to a Western RPG than a Japanese RPG. But the influence of the Souls series is deeply rooted in the influence of Japanese games, from their own catalogue of King’s Field, Shadow Tower and Armored Core or even other influences like Ueda’s games like ICO. Fundamentally, Dark Souls has more in common with “Tales of” than any western RPGs. You cannot compare it to games like Elder Scroll or Amalur and think they are even remotely similar in terms of inspiration, game feel and storytelling. However, this dissociation of the Souls series with the genre of Japanese RPG is an important one for many people, as they separate the perception of a genre perceived as immature and childish with one that has a better reputation, while still enjoying a distinctly Japanese work. The best of both worlds, so to speak.
Japanese RPGs, at its core, have always been influenced by western work. After all, many designers grew up on them and want their games to have a distinct feel and a level of inspiration that makes them feel different and unique. They want to add their touch to a body of work they enjoy. But today, this natural and organic behavior has been decried and exists as another side of the coin of this nostalgia. These “fans” of the genre have internalized the classics of the genre as thoroughly Japanese and devoid of this western influence (they were too young to understand it wasn’t), so any studio and designers seeking to deliver new experiences with the exact same mindset that they also had then is to be hammered down as chasing trends and aiming for a mainstream audience. In 2000, Vagrant Story developers went on record saying that they wanted the game to feel western and separate themselves from feeling Japanese. It was not only accepted but praised as doing something new. It wasn’t a betrayal of the genre, but ways to push the envelope while still remaining a bonafide JRPG. Any developer claiming something similar today would be crucified on the cross immediately. The Japanese RPG has to remain Japanese.
JRPGs are caught in a rock and a hard place. They are both doing too little and too much. Today, Western RPGs like The Witcher 3, Cyberpunk 2077 and Baldur’s Gate 3 are now easily used as cudgel to beat the JRPG genre to death. Look at these games, why are JRPGs not more like this? Look at this freedom, this maturity, this production level! But none of these games would exist if JRPGs didn’t exist in the first place. These games are absolutely borrowing the language of the JRPG genre in delivering accessible experiences that puts a deeper level of focus on visual storytelling instead of inscrutable text-heavy top-down games. On focusing on a heightened sense of movie-like drama that the JRPG genre pioneered and characters delivering theatrical and emotional performances. This is not to say Western RPGs are not distinctly Western and owes everything to the JRPG genre, but to show there is a symbiotic relationship between the two in delivering something new and unique. And while the old guard of the WRPG could annoyingly claim that WRPGs should be more like Planescape (itself inspired by JRPGs, check the credits), none could dispute the sheer amount of new audience that have been exposed to the genre in recent years in this effort to be distinctly more accessible.
But here’s the thing, JRPG as a term is something that the Japanese industry do not own. It is a distinctly western term coined by a western audience to categorize the genre and is now part of the argument to put it into a box and to strike at those games that dare to escape it. I remember an article after an interview from famed action developer Hideki Kamiya saying JRPG is a fine term and that he would be happy with J-Action. Leaving aside an action game designer speaking over RPG designers, a commenter rightfully pointed out that, of course he would be happy about the term J-Action because he coined it and owns it. It categorizes the genre in a way that he wants. Said article writer responds that Kamiya would enjoy it even in the same context as the JRPG term is. This is an insane thing to say. In this drive to want to make JRPG as a term of endearment, they are trying to put an equivalency between a new term with no history with singular ownership and a term with a massive historical context that is in contention even now. It is plainly trying to contort the term as something that exists in a void and that actual RPG designers should like. It is frankly lunacy.
Now, I don’t give a fuck about the term JRPG existing. I do not consider it a slur as some are trying to make it, and I will continue to use it because it still has some value to me. However, I will not rewrite its history like that one article writer did. And this history is important to explain how this form of disdain to the genre online exists. This categorization is extremely useful especially in the western gaming press because it allows them to legitimize them in the cudgeling that they participate in. In a drive to legitimize gaming as a whole, as a mature form of art, JRPG is absolutely the easiest target to pick on to show what not to do. This distinctly western lens, western ideology and ethnocentrism naturally puts them at odds at the industry of another country with a different culture. But I do not believe it to be racism, as many, if not all of them, grew up and were influenced by Japanese games. No, the press is simply living in a current period of pseudo-maturity, of thinking they are better than the games they consume. But is it maturity to fail to understand what the genre can provide with this inability, consciously or subconsciously, to give a level of critique that goes deeper than superficial comparison or that cannot be distilled as mere critique of the optics?
Western games in particular have adopted the language of the press to present themselves in ways that deliver the type of storytelling and progressiveness that specifically appeals to them. In some ways, it is good. Elements like more diversity and more display of sexual identities *is* good. However, this appeal to them that they embrace willingly betrays how their critique and analysis are deeply blunted from it in their course to find the maturity they so crave. Despite a press that would most likely consider themselves leftists, the writing comes across as despairingly neoliberal, focusing on the veneer and the window-dressing over the analysis of the media that would allow them to have unique perspectives on whether or not this appeal to maturity actually succeeds or not.
I distinctly remember an article made about Aloy from Horizon finally having her lesbian kiss, confirming the canonicity of her sexual identity. This is good. However the article was framed as a middle finger to chuds crying about it online, as the press, one that is deeply tribalistic by nature, has entrenched itself into a long-lived struggle against randoms online. But this works to the advantage of the western game industry itself, which allows themselves to be seen uncritically and unchallenged as it is now a weapon to be wielded against anime profile pictures on twitter. No thought ever addressed about its content, and no critical assessment about why a series needed two games and a DLC to have an optional kiss scene at the end. One that conveniently allows both games to be sold in countries banning media for having LGBT content (only the DLC is banned). In this drive to seek maturity in the midst of a culture war, western games allow themselves to be presented in a way that is digestible and appealing to the press. The press do not have to dig to find the things you want, because it is specifically tailored for them right in front of their face. Why dig deeper when what you want is already in front of you?
I also remember all the criticism about 2B’s outfit in NieR: Automata. It is, at the end of the day, an outfit that has its form of sex appeal and could be easily argued was made for the male gaze. It is a form of examination that is perfectly fine to make. Hell, maybe the industry could be better without characters dressing like this that is appealing to online chuds! Who knows? But in this process of superficial examination, of only seeing what’s in front of them in this drive for maturity, the level of critique continues to be blunted. There is zero examination of the outfit outside of its problematic nature, of why it matters. When the YorHa units, made of different outfits that highlights their own form of humanity through the personality that their clothes highlight, are made to all wear the same special unit outfit to perform a cleansing of machines, one could analyze the fascistic nature of this organization made to morph into a whole that is not only similar to the one consciousness of the machines, but is actually worse. The androids made by mankind to serve mankind carries the ideological poison that machines have learned to outgrow, that is made especially stark by Pascal and her community delivering on what YorHa is specifically made to not become.
You could argue against my own interpretation and analysis, you could even say “what does that change about the outfit being the way it is?”, but my point is that it is not even argued. The critique is immediately superficial by the lack of even trying to understand why things are the way they are, because they are fundamentally not appealing to the maturity they seek. But all of it is meaningless. In seeking maturity, they will never reach anything of note and will always be stuck with a neoliberal point of view of seeing things only in form of optics or problematic/unproblematic that does a disservice to the entire medium. If anything, maturity is to enjoy video games in all forms and have an earnest and thought out form of analysis and critique that arrives to a deeper conclusion beyond the superficial look. Why dig deeper when the thing to criticize is already in front of you?
And this is something that is at the crux of the disdain towards JRPGs, because on top of being an easy target to pick on, the fundamental ethnocentrism of the gaming press all too easily dismiss these games as being more than they are at first glance, as other, more carefully crafted games (mostly of the western kind) nails that first glance in an appealing way. That outlook, conscious or subconscious, is also a deep issue that blunts critique considerably, because it prevents them the level of analysis that is expected for the medium to attain any form of legitimacy they want (one that I don’t personally care about). They are not writing about the game, but the lens in which they view the game. In the end, it is not about the game at all.
It is form over substance. Japanese RPGs can be messy, and they especially appear this way from a western point of view, but this acknowledgment is all the more important to deliver a deeper level of critique that does away with the neoliberal lens. The ambition, the political and philosophical ideas, and the mechanics that ties a JRPG together is important in this genre and it is doing a disservice to only look at the form because the genre being different becomes a barrier of critique.
This is also why I talked about nostalgia, because *they* know this. Old JRPGs are given the reverence that they understand. In other terms, their reputation legitimizes the exercise of critique and to look deeper. I remember a tweet talking about a Japanese video games saying “who is surprised that a game about Kaijus is messy?”, do you know what other game has Kaijus? Well, an extremely well-received JRPG made in 1997 from a popular series that had exactly just that. Again, it is disdain of the new, and a disdain of the genre not grounding itself to the ways they want it to be to appear mature, despite loving it in their childhood when they were wild and ambitious and unpredictable. They are fundamentally ashamed of what they like. And they cannot move on from this conundrum they trapped themselves into.
This prison of nostalgia, shamefulness of the genre proudly being what it is and the fans and game journalist’s inability to just go on to greener pastures becomes a cycle of thoroughly ignoring the new in their glory and to seek the safe, cozy, the remake, the “palate cleanser” (i *hate* this term) that whispers to their ears that no deeper examination is needed. A warm blanket put over them to reclaim their childhood gone to the wind, and the constant hammering of anything that is in defiance of that trend. How is this critique? How is this analysis? How is this maturity?
To talk about JRPGs in any meaningful capacity is to at least acknowledge that the genre has a worth, that it is worth existing and that it continues to have potential beyond the warm blanket. As long as players and the press continues to be ashamed of the genre being what it is and to wield this shame as proof there is little worth in examining and finding the diamond that they seek, they will keep being trapped in this cycle of complaint for several additional decades to push JRPGs to be what they want, than to accept it for what it is. They will be trapped in a cycle that prevents them a fulfilling intellectual exercise of the substance the genre offers that an audience would thoroughly enjoy. Until then, the genre remains doomed to be reshaped by its own audience into a safe refuge until nothing of worth is left. A palate cleanser that will never have the ability to stick to the mind. Maybe it is time to rediscover that the genre is its own strong unique flavor.
Rain, Sun, and Flower 