5/12/2015

Do we need a Metal Gear action figure with squeezable breasts? | Technology | The Guardian

Do we need a Metal Gear action gure with

squeezable breasts?
Keith Stuart
Metal Gear developer Hideo Kojima has announced that an action gure of his mute female
assassin Quiet will have pliable boobs
Tuesday 12 May 2015 07.54 EDT

ast year, Hideo Kojima, the creator of the Metal Gear series of stealth adventures,
caused a minor controversy when he tweeted about a new character in his
forthcoming title, Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain. The character is a mute
female assassin named Quiet, whose complex backstory will apparently explain why she
wears only a bikini and laddered tights while carrying out covert missions in 1980s
Afghanistan.
Ive been ordering to Yoji [Shinkawa, character designer] to make the character more
erotic, wrote Kojima. And he did it well. He later claried the comment, correcting
erotic to sexy and claiming that his game would provide a context for the characters
clothing. Once you recognise the secret reason for her exposure, you will feel ashamed
of your words & deeds, he tweeted.
But of course, another tweet (which may well have been loaded with irony) got to the
heart of what is going on here:
Which brings us to Kojimas latest controversial tweet, about the Quiet action gure,
which, it seems, will have squeezable breasts made of soft, pliable PVC.
In his message on Twitter, Kojima wrote: Yoji, a supervisor says some soft materials
enables to be pushed & lifted. lol, and supplied four photos of the model. It does indeed
have strangely aerated boobs, like balloons inated to bursting point helpfully, a
modeller is seen pushing the breasts together slightly in case anyone is concerned they
are not malleable enough.
Naturally, the revelation has attracted plenty of coverage and discussion in the gaming
press. Is it sexist? Is it objectifying? Is it just part of Japanese game culture?
In this way, the Quiet action gure has become the latest exhibit in an ongoing culture
war between those who want to challenge the often overtly sexualised depiction of
women in games and comics, and those who feel that writers and developers are being
browbeaten into political correctness by feminist thought police, or whatever they call
the people who worry about how representation aects people.
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5/12/2015

Do we need a Metal Gear action figure with squeezable breasts? | Technology | The Guardian

Its pretty creepy though. This is a creative industry in which female characters are
routinely sexualised from the ludicrous sight of Ms Pac-Man lounging provocatively on
the front of game cabinets to Lara Croft and the enthusiastically circulated myth of her
accidental breast augmentation, women have been envisioned through a certain lens of
desire and voyeurism.
This happens in other media, and yes, male game characters are physically idealised, too
but lets not pretend its to anywhere near the same extent, or for the same reasons.
There are plenty of female characters who are not sexualised (so please lets not bother
listing them in the comments section), but we have to recognise that, well ... this is the
industry that brought us Dead or Alive a whole game series which is eectively about
watching digitised breasts being groped by the worlds worst physics engine.
Its worth pointing out, however, that the Quiet gure is hardly a standalone example.
The high-end video game action gure market is huge in Japan, where companies like
Play Arts Kai and HotToys specialise in making very detailed, very lifelike PVC models of
favourite characters.
Although they often come with accessories (Quiet even has a separate head that features
smudged make-up), they are designed for display, and theyre not for children. Female
game and manga gures are particularly popular, both those drawn from mainstream
titles like Metal Gear, DoA and Street Fighter, and those from the eroge or erotic game
genre.
More specialised manufacturers like Lechery, Ques Q and Grion produce dozens of
models drawn from key series, posed sexually, with masses of plastic cleavage. Grion,
particularly, has been producing models with squeezable breasts for years, and
emphasises boob pliability in its online advertising. So its creepy but its not new.
As for Quiet herself, well, she comes from a long line of sexualised female assassins, a
game/comic trope (no doubt spawned from the femme fatale archetype), that takes in
Catwoman, Elektra, Black Widow, Nikita and just about every female character in
Quentin Tarantinos Kill Bill.
Thats not justication, thats the context we need to bear in mind when we ask:
Kojima, what the hell are you doing? Indeed, Quiet is actually a westernised take on
the problematic silent Asian assassin sub-trope, which takes in the likes of Deadly
Little Miho from Sin City and one-time Batgirl Cassandra Cain. Those depictions were
rife with notions of otherness and the Asian as alien aggressor maybe thats what
Kojima is getting at. But maybe not.
Maybe this is just in extremely bad taste, a sad example of games merchandising inching
its way toward the territory of love dolls. What does that tell us about game culture?
Nothing great, really.
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