Representation of LGBTQ+ characters in

major Japanese fighting game released

between 2010 and 2021

Nathaniel Sherman

Field of study: Game Design

Level: Master
Credits: (30 credits)

Thesis Defense: (Spring 2023)

Supervisor: (Rainforest Scully-Blaker)

Department of Game Design

Table of Contents
Acknowledgments ................................................................................................................. 4

Abstract ................................................................................................................................. 5

1. Introduction ................................................................................................................... 6

1.1. Problem statement .................................................................................................... 6

1.2. Roadmap of paper .................................................................................................... 8

1.3. Theoretical framework ............................................................................................. 8

1.4. Positionality and reflexivity ................................................................................... 10

2. State of the art ............................................................................................................. 12

3. Analysis ........................................................................................................................ 15

3.1. Method and methodology ...................................................................................... 15

3.2. Limitations ............................................................................................................. 18

3.3. Results .................................................................................................................... 19

4. Discussion ..................................................................................................................... 39

4.1. Evolution of the industry ....................................................................................... 39

4.2. The special case of Persona 4 Arena ..................................................................... 40

4.3. Non-fighting game media characters ..................................................................... 42

4.4. Ambiguous hints .................................................................................................... 45

4.5. Unexpected cases ................................................................................................... 48

4.6. Issues with the classification .................................................................................. 51

5. Conclusion .................................................................................................................... 52

Bibliography ........................................................................................................................ 54

Ludography ......................................................................................................................... 57

Appendix A: Game data..................................................................................................... 59

Appendix B: Character data ............................................................................................. 62

1. 2010 Character data ................................................................................................... 62

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 2. 2011 Character data ................................................................................................... 63

3. 2012 Character data ................................................................................................... 66

4. 2013 Character data ................................................................................................... 71

5. 2014 Character data ................................................................................................... 73

6. 2015 Character data ................................................................................................... 74

7. 2016 Character data ................................................................................................... 76

8. 2017 Character data ................................................................................................... 79

9. 2018 Character data ................................................................................................... 80

10. 2019 Character data ............................................................................................... 83

11. 2020 Character data ............................................................................................... 85

12. 2021 Character data ............................................................................................... 85

Appendix C: Summary data .............................................................................................. 87

1. Summary of Game data ............................................................................................. 87

2. Summary of Character data ....................................................................................... 87

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Acknowledgments

I would like to thank my supervisor Rainforest Scully-Blaker for his support and helpful
advice in the preparation, research, and writing process of this thesis.

I would like to thank Professor Koji Mikami for having welcomed me as a research student in
his lab and for all his interesting, expert, and helpful feedback he provided when I was in the
first steps of my research, as well as the perspective of a Japanese person.

I would like to thank Professors Cecilia Rodehn and Marie Dalby, and Tieren Costello for
their help when I was still trying to finalize my research topic, for their advice and allowing
me to bounce some ideas.

Finally, I would like to thank my family for all their support, and especially my parents for all
their help, encouragement, and assistance with reviewing my thesis in the final stretch.

4
Abstract

Through the lens of hegemonic masculinity in the contemporary game development industry,
this paper will present the current state of the LGBTQ+ representation in major Japanese
fighting games that were released from 2010 to 2021. By performing a quantitative data analysis
of the characters from the games, where each character is coded for their gender and sexuality,
the frequency of representation can be determined over the period of time and across games
which can indicate the state of LGBTQ+ representation in these games.
Not much research has been conducted in the field of gender studies and representation when
specifically focusing on fighting games. It is also a genre that has the reputation of not having
good representation and inclusion in the games, but also within the community. It is a genre
where the characters are front and center and play a primary part in the appeal of the game, so
having good representation should be a requirement. Many players will want to be able to
identify and connect with the characters they play but for many this is not a possibility due to
the lack of diversity. The results show that there may be a slight increase in the representation
over time, but the numbers are still surprisingly low. This shows us the importance of needing
to bring more attention to this topic as it is a critical issue that is present within this game genre
but also within the gaming industry as a whole.

Keywords: LGBTQ+ representation, fighting games, representation in video games,

hegemonic masculinity.

5
1. Introduction

1.1. Problem statement

In this thesis, I focus on the state of the LGBTQ+ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans, Queer, plus
others) representation in major Japanese fighting games that have released in the last decade,
between 2010 and 2021.
Research into LGBTQ+ representation is a concern that has emerged quite recently as more and
more people become aware of its importance. As a result, it is a topic that has not been explored
much yet. This lack is even more visible in more specific areas of research such as LGBTQ+
representation in video games. Current research that tackles this topic usually try to do an
overview of the whole of video games (Utsch et al., 2017), compromising some more specific
information like the specific details about certain games genres. Some studies decide to look at
a specific period of time (Shaw et al., 2019; Williams et al., 2009), and some focus on more
unique or focused topics such as independent games (Nicholl, 2017), or game genres (Haines,
2019).
Similarly, the topic of fighting games within academic research is not an area that is discussed
much, there are only a few papers on the topic from what I was able to find. Most of the research
that is performed on fighting games pertains to the domain of computer science and are research
papers that focus on AI and machine learning. The only research that I was able to find on the
topic of fighting games and which is also related to queer studies is a paper that proposes a
queer reading of the fighting game Street Fighter V (Capcom, 2016), to show what a game’s
representation would look like when analyzed with a different gaze than that of a heterosexual,
cisgender male (Wilund, 2022). The other significant research I was able to find was a paper
about fighting games but not about queer studies, it analyzed the performance and practices of
the community of players who play fighting games (Harper, 2013).
The definition of ‘fighting games’ that I will be using for this paper is based on the definition
given by Harper in his paper. The main points are: “these are games of close-quarters combat”,
“characters in these games have standard and special attacks”, “match parameters are quantified
on-screen in some way”, “fighting games are competitive”, and “these games allow for
multiplayer competition”. I will add a few notes about Harper’s definition to keep it up to date
with more recent fighting games and add further focus while explaining some of the exceptions.
In his definition, Harper says that ““special” moves […] require more complex controls”: this
was maybe true in some ways at the time that he wrote his paper, however, fighting game
developers have tried to evolve the genre over the years and make it more accessible for new
players. We have many games nowadays that no longer require complex inputs to execute
‘special moves’, so this part of his definition is no longer valid.
Secondly, I would like to add a specification in which fighting games will generally have the
game and combat revolve around a 2D plane. This is also valid for games that include 3-
dimensional movement such as Tekken (Namco, 1994), or Soulcalibur (Namco (Project Soul),
1998) in which the fighting and attacks are still based on a 2D plane. In addition, the characters
will always be facing each other, and attacks will always go in the direction of the opponent.
The final point I will add is that the goal in fighting games is always to reduce one’s opponent’s
health value to 0 or to have more health than your opponent when the round timer runs out.

6
I will now give a few examples of some games that people usually associate with fighting games
but which are not technically fighting games, and so, not games I will be looking at in this study.
The first one that most people will ask about is the franchise of games Super Smash Bros. (HAL
Laboratory, 1999) and similar style games. There is a general consensus in the fighting game
community that these games are their own separate genre, ‘platform fighters’. The reasons
being that there are some fundamental concepts in fighting games that are not present or
different in platform fighters. The goal in those games is to knock the opponent off the stage
and out of the screen, no longer reducing the opponent’s health value to 0. The characters in
these games will also not always be facing each other as the origin of this game genre was a
game that was intended to be played with more than two players. These elements are
accompanied by a very different style of gameplay and concepts which have resulted in the
emergence of multiple different games trying to recreate this type of experience from which
stemmed the creation of a whole new game genre. Additionally, the Super Smash Bros. games
were created and intended to be more of a party game genre which is not focused on the
competitive aspect, meaning some of the mechanics and inner workings of the game system are
not always balanced in a way that is suited for a very competitive environment, and as we talked
about, competitiveness is one of the major components of what characterizes fighting games.
Platform fighters are a genre that is closely related to fighting games and have a lot of
similarities but have enough differences to make it quality as a separate genre.
The second group of examples are games that are part of the genre that people call ‘arena
fighters’. This genre includes games such as the game series Naruto: Ultimate Ninja Storm
(CyberConnect2, 2008), Jump Force (Spike Chunsoft, 2018), and My Hero One’s Justice
(Byking, 2018). These games are generally not considered fighting games as they lack the
competitive elements that traditional fighting games have (Bambo, 2022 November 11). These
games are made for fans of certain shows and franchises not for people who are looking for a
competitive game experience. These games focus on fan-service and showing off cool looking
animations and references to the shows, these games are more oriented towards a casual
experience.
I decided to talk about fighting games specifically because they do not get much attention in
the domain of research. They are also one of my favorite genres of games. I have chosen to
analyze only major game releases as this offers the best representation of what most consumers
chose to interact with, meaning that these games are the ones that will have the most influence
on players’ perception of characters identities (Carr, 2019). I also decided to focus only on
games from the last decade to be able to analyze the evolution and changes in the recent market
to draw conclusions that are relevant to the current game industry. The choice to research
exclusively Japanese games was in part to reduce the scope but also because Japanese fighting
games are my passion and area of expertise. In addition, there are not many major non-Japanese
fighting games, which means that if I were to make a study of fighting games in general there
would be a large difference in sample size between Japanese and those of other countries. It
would not be representative to consider them all together because the cultural environmental
differences between developers from both regions are significant. Importantly, the current
social climate in Japan in still very hostile to and non-inclusive of LGBTQ+ people and their
representation, which is why it is an important and interesting topic to discuss at this point in
time. These constraints allow me to scale the amount of research that I need to do to have a
subject that fits more comfortably into the scope of this thesis project.
The goal of this research is to offer a concrete understanding of the state of the LGBTQ+
representation in contemporary fighting games, one of the main genres in video games (Utsch
7
et al., 2017) that is notably under-represented in game studies research. To be able to respond
to this gap in research, I will be answering the following questions:
Q1: To what extent are LGBTQ+ characters represented in major Japanese fighting game
releases between 2010 and 2021?
Q2: How has this representation evolved throughout the period and what are the causes?
To answer these questions, I have compiled a list of fighting games released by Japanese
developers between 2010 and 2021 and coded each character from these games with different
attributes, mainly gender and sexuality. I then organized all the data from the character coding
process to look for evolutions, patterns, and trends that have appeared over time. Through this
process I show that the evolution of the representation of non-binary characters is on the
increase, similar patterns are seen for the evolution of non-heterosexual characters
representation, while the representation of norm-breaking characters is somewhat constant, and
the presence of non-humanoid characters is decreasing.
Then, to understand the possible causes for these findings, I apply both my own knowledge of
game development as a game designer and my knowledge of fighting games as a fan of the
genre. I take the position of an aca-fan (academic fan), doing research on a topic that I have
interests in and a community that I am a part of (Cristofari & Guitton, 2017). This allows me
to both have better starting knowledge about the games I am going to talk about and analyze
them effectively, while also having a base knowledge of the characters and their context which
allowed for greater efficiency in the coding process. I ultimately argue that the overall number
of LGBTQ+ characters in Japanese fighting games seems to be increasing, however the
numbers are still quite low compared to cisgender heterosexual characters.

1.2. Roadmap of paper

After going over my theoretical framework and my positionality regarding this topic in the
introduction, I will then present a state-of-the-art analysis with a review of some of the
important papers on which I have based my research. Then moving on to the analysis section,
I will first talk about the method I chose and explain my reasoning behind my choices, and the
limitations I encountered when doing this research. Then I will present the results of my
research and explain the data that I have collected. After that, I will discuss the meaning behind
some of the patterns and cases that appear in the data. Finally, I will conclude with a summary
of my research and some possible future studies that can be done based on this paper.

1.3. Theoretical framework

There are three main pillars within my theoretical framework, which I will discuss in the
following order: diversity in fighting games and the fighting game community, hegemonic
masculinity, and representation in games.
Within the main game genres, defined by Utsch et al., fighting games are amongst those with
the lowest amount of queer identity representation. In their research, they found that from all
the collected instances of queer representation less than 5% were from fighting games (Utsch
et al., 2017). The representation in fighting games will typically only consist of negative
stereotypes of the different ethnicities represented. Harper shows that even the fighting game
8
community has a problem with gender representation within itself with a large majority of men
and a culture of masculinity; however, the racial diversity in the community is better than in
games (Harper, 2013). While I am basing my definition of fighting games on the definition
presented by Harper, the issues of diversity and representation that are brought up in his paper
are additionally important as a base for my research as they show a lack of LGBTQ+
representation, which is the focus of my research aims. This under-representation also ties back
to the idea of hegemonic masculinity that fosters an environment with little diversity and
establishment of certain gender expressions and sexualities as defaults.
Given that the basis of my study is the coding of characters from video games and the
identification of the ones that are part of the LGBTQ+ spectrum to analyze the representation
in games, queer theory, hegemonic masculinity and other similar terms (Flood et al., 2007) are
central to my research and will be used to identify LGBTQ+ characters within fighting games.
The main terms I use for my classification are ‘Transgender’: this is a person that does not
identify with the gender that has been assign to them based on their physical body; ‘Bisexual’:
refers to a person who is romantically and sexually attracted to both men and women, this
sexuality retains the idea of binarity of gender; ‘Homosexual’: refers to a person who is
romantically and sexually attracted to people of the same gender as themselves; ‘Heterosexual’:
refers to a person who is romantically and sexually attracted to their opposite gender, between
a man and a woman. This latter term has been institutionalized as the default relationship within
society. We can also find in this encyclopedia the definition of ‘hegemonic masculinity’ that I
will define in the next paragraph.
I will add some additional terms that I use in my research that do not have an entry in the
encyclopedia providing the definition that I will be using for my research. ‘Non-binary’: refers
to a person who identifies themselves with a gender outside the binarity (man and woman) of
gender that has been established by society as the norm; ‘Agender’: refers to a person who does
not conform to the idea of gender; ‘Cisgender’: refers to a person that identifies with the gender
that has been assigned to them based on their physical body, like heterosexuality, this has been
institutionalized as a societal default; ‘Pansexual’: refers to a person who is attraction to others
is not determined by gender; this idea is similar to bisexuality but rejects the idea of binary
genders. My research will need to refer to literature on hegemonic masculinity since it is
fundamental for understanding the context for the production process of video games and the
community that plays them (Shaw, 2009). By considering that most games are produced in an
environment that fosters hegemonic masculinity, this could be an explanation for the lack of
meaningful diversity of character genders and sexualities in fighting games.
The theory of hegemonic masculinity suggests that there is a socially unconscious way of
thinking by most people in which white, male and cisgender people are thought of as the default
race and gender, and heterosexuality the default sexuality. In this paper I do not consider the
topic of race, even though this is a major part of hegemonic masculinity, as I chose to focus on
gender and sexuality within the scope of my research. Therefore, I will be talking about
hegemonic masculinity strictly in regard to gender and sexuality. This theory argues that if
nothing is mentioned about a character’s gender or sexuality, they will be perceived by most
people as heterosexual and cisgender. When the gender is not distinctly shown through
stereotypical signs the gender will be perceived by most as a man. Based on this, the correlation
that I present with LGBTQ+ representation is that if we are currently in a society that will
perceive and assume male, cisgender, and heterosexual as a default, characters that are designed
in media will most likely be following those same rules. This can be a reason for the lack of
representation of any other type of character, and therefore a lack of LGBTQ+ representation.
9
Finally this research will be based on the theories of representation in games, following
methodologies, methods and guidelines for how to research and analyze representation in
games (Carr, 2019). Carr proposes that “the term “representation” […] addresses the way that
social groups are depicted in popular media”. This means the way in which characters and
groups of people are shown in video games, either through character design, locations, or events.
It is possible to identify trends in the types of characters that are made for games, and this can
be directly tied to the environment in which they are produced (Shaw, 2009). An important
aspect for some people when playing games and/or watching movies/tv shows is being able to
identify with certain characters to be able to feel what they feel. This allows the generation of
an emotional connection between characters in a piece of media and the consumer. These
associations are the reason that gender diversity and sexuality diversity is a crucial aspect of
these media products, not only in terms of its presence but also in terms of the accuracy of
representation and the avoidance of negative representation. There are many cultures and
identities that are presented as minorities because of the dominance of hegemonic masculinity
and that, as a result, are not well represented in media. These representations in media can
significantly influence how people perceive minorities. Greater exposure increases media
influence, which is why it is important to ensure positive representation and to avoid
perpetuating negative and harmful stereotypes.

1.4. Positionality and reflexivity

Even with all the academic precautions applied to the research of this project, there will
inevitably be some flaws as I am not Japanese, nor do I live in Japan, or speak Japanese fluently.
This will limit my potential understanding of cultural differences in representation between
Japan and Western countries, as I have grown up in Europe and have been raised in Western
culture. In addition, I am not able to use sources in Japanese as I am not able to understand
enough of the language to consider this as an option, so the research will be a view through the
lens of a foreigner and through the lens of Western culture and understanding. I will also have
a different view and understanding of reality being a white cisgender male who has only lived
in Europe and North America. I have lived 3 months in Japan, but I would not consider that
enough to have much impact on my views on this research. I also cannot speak from experience
of a LGBTQ+ person as I am still in questioning and not yet sure if I can place myself on the
LGBTQ+ spectrum.
As there is very little information about fighting game characters as the genre does not facilitate
the expansion of character lore and backgrounds, I will have to make decisions about the gender
and sexuality of characters as some do not have any information available online that would
provide any certainty. To counteract the lack of information, I have decided to use the theory
of hegemonic masculinity, it is shown that due to the lack of diversity in the workplace, there
is a lack of diversity in games, and this will result in most games being designed through the
lens of white heterosexual cisgender males (Shaw, 2009). Where I encounter difficulties finding
any source of information about a character’s gender or sexuality and their visual design reflects
a standard representation through the lens of hegemonic masculinity, I will be able to make the
assumption, using the perspective offered by hegemonic masculinity, that the character is
cisgender and/or heterosexual. Although I do not like this approach, this will probably not affect
the statistics because as I said earlier, most games are developed in an environment that fosters
hegemonic masculinity, even if the designers are not aware of it or using it intentionally, they
are perpetuating this paradigm.

10
Furthermore, a sub-theory found within hegemonic masculinity is the theory of the ‘male gaze’
(Mulvey, 1989). This theory suggests the idea that media that is created is made through and
for the gaze of cisgender white heterosexual men. This theory supports my decision to classify
characters as cisgender and heterosexual when I am unable to find information that can prove
me otherwise.
LGBTQ+ representation in games is an important topic to me that I wished to research. I wanted
to contribute to the discussion and try to help this community by bringing additional information
that will hopefully be helpful to designers and players. To be able to focus my research I decided
to only talk about Japanese fighting games. I made this decision because of my enthusiasm for
the genre as well as the broader fighting game culture and community. Through my personal
experience, I found that there is a surprising amount of queer people in the community, yet they
are not well represented in the games. As a fan of the genre and as someone that thinks that
good representation for these identities is important, I thought it would be a practical idea to
research the current state of their representation.
As mentioned before, I take the position of an aca-fan, as I am a fan of the genre of games that
I am researching. This provides me with more preexisting knowledge about the games and
characters that I am analyzing, it allows me to have more knowledge about elements that are
present in the community such as views on certain topics. With all this base knowledge comes
bias and assumptions, making my research and results probably quite different from someone
who comes in without any knowledge of fighting games and their community.
Japan is a country that fascinates me, and there are many elements of that culture that I enjoy
and find interesting, but I am aware of the many issues that are prevalent in Japan. Awareness
and acceptance of LGBTQ+ identities are limited, and many people are not well informed and
sometimes not aware of all these identities (Ye Hee Lee, & Inuma, 2023 April 12). That is why
I also wanted to bring it into the context of Japan game production, to possibly bring more
awareness to this topic and create discussion.
Also, many points and many elements of this research rely on human interpretation and
decisions, which makes the results prone to inaccuracies or non-completeness. The game list
that I have selected is most definitely not exhaustive and might not be a completely accurate
expression of what a ‘major’ ‘Japanese’ ‘fighting game’ should be, as the definition of these
terms is based on my personal interpretation and also that of the people who run “The Fighters
Generation” website from which I drew my game list (The Fighters Generation, n.d.). The
selection of the different elements that will be coded and analyzed was chosen by me and can
have an impact on how the data is analyzed. The coding of the characters is based on personal
interpretation, bias, assumptions, and personal reading and will determine the results of the
research. All this has been taken into account and considered while doing this research and the
results will be interpreted while keeping this in mind.

11
2. State of the art

While the research on the representation of LGBTQ+ characters in Japanese fighting games is
not a subject that has received much attention, there are some papers that tackle certain aspects
of that question and connect to this topic.
Research on fighting games is limited in the domain of social studies. From what I could find,
one of the most important and influential papers on fighting games that is not in the field of
computer science is a paper from Todd Harper that talks about this genre of games and the
community (Harper, 2013). He discusses fighting games and the performance of players in a
certain type of gaming style (casual, hardcore, competitive), using gender performance theory
(Butler, 1996, 2011). He is trying to identify what types of people are playing fighting games
which he does by observing the players of the fighting game community and talking with them
about their experiences. Harper discusses the multiple facets of the Fighting Game Community
(also known as FGC) and presents different answers from members of the community he
interviewed. The topics that are talked about during the paper are: defining what a fighting
game is, a brief history of the genre and arcades, a discussion on the technology used, the
practice of play, playing together (online and off), FGC culture outside of the game, online
communities, sources of information, the organizers (people behind the rules and normative
play), this is useful for giving context when I talk about different aspects of these games and
their communities. Harper presents an interesting definition of fighting games that I base mine
on. I will define it later in more detail in the method section.
Finally, Harper has a section where he talks about race, ethnicity and gender within the
community. He mentions that racial diversity in the games is mostly negative representation
through strong racial stereotypes, “Street Fighter 2’s cast of “World Warriors” is almost
exclusively a parade of cultural and ethnic stereotypes” (Harper, 2013, p. 109). Racial diversity
is however quite good within the community of players itself, but gender diversity is still
lacking in and out of the game. This problem with gender diversity could be attributed to a
culture of hegemonic masculinity that is cultivated in the gaming industry, this culture will
often make people who do not identify as men feel unwelcome in these types of communities.
This culture of hegemonic masculinity can be found in the communities but also in the
development side of the games.
This is what Shaw talks about in her paper on the LGBT representation in video games from a
cultural production standpoint (Shaw, 2009). The theoretical sampling method was used for this
project, a compilation of characters, themes, locations, interactions, events, etc., into a list,
based on articles and forums. Then they contacted the developers of the chosen games and
individuals that had written these press articles or blog posts to invite them to answer a few
questions. These interviews were supplemented with analysis of press coverage online and in
print. During the interviews the main concern of the interviewees was for companies to avoid
stereotypes, the solution seems to be that representation should only be added “if it matters”.
When LGBTQ+ content is put as “optional” it will not be as positive for the representation of
the community since players will only be exposed to it if they know of its existence and the
possibility to access it.
Shaw also used preexisting survey data from a workforce diversity survey. The results show
that there is a large majority of men and heterosexual individuals in the game industry
workforce. Shaw suggests that this homogeneity can explain the lack of diversity in game
12
content. There is a lack of representation of LGBTQ+ characters in games and for the existing
representation there are many that are negative stereotypes that do not give a good image of the
LGBTQ+ community. This is an important point as this shows that the situation of the
production of games can be an explanation for the lack of meaningful representation in games.
I use this as the context for game production of the games that I am studying. This paper talks
primarily about game production in the West, and there are probably some differences to game
production in Asia. However, we know that Japan also has issues with a male dominant culture
so it would be fair to assume that this hypothesis can also be applied to games produced in
Japan.
As seen, the situation in the game development workforce can influence how well diversity is
portrayed in the games. There are some papers that have the goal to show the representation
within games.
This is reflected in a paper by Haines which analyzes the representation of LGBTQ+ characters
in popular narrative games (Haines, 2019). Haines states that if there is a regular consumption
of video games, the ways games depict different people, social groups, and cultures can affect
and mold people’s perceptions of them in a positive way but also in a negative way. Media can
provide symbolic support for groups or diminish them. The effect that games have on people’s
perception of other social and cultural groups is stronger than in other forms of media as the
consumer is taking part and interacting with this representation.
This paper presents a quantitative and qualitative study to identify the representation in
contemporary AAA (triple-A) game narratives. The quantitative study is an analysis of many
characters from popular AAA games. The games chosen were selected based on the number of
units sold (excluding certain genres that do not contain narrative elements) based on the reports
of the website VGChartz. Each character was coded with different attributes to then be able to
determine patterns across games and genres about the representation in these games. Codes
include character name, character race, character gender, sexuality, character screen time
measured in minutes, character dialogue measured time spent speaking in minutes, character
attire, and noticeable behaviors. I used parts of this classification as a guideline for my own
classification of characters. I also followed the method used to perform my research. The
qualitative study consisted of interviews questioning game players to determine people’s
perception of representation in games, how they see it, how it affects them as a person and how
they view others.
As stated earlier, Harper mentioned that fighting games do not have good racial or gender
representation. Haines’ paper analyses the representation in a specific genre, narrative games.
There are some other papers that do not focus on a specific genre and overview multiple as
once, this can still give more information and a good basis to expand upon gender representation
in fighting games more specifically.
Utsch et al. writes about representation in multiple genres through an analysis of preexisting
data from previous research on archiving LGBTQ+ representation and creates visual
representations to offer a better understanding of queer representation (Utsch et al., 2017). They
talk about how games have less LGBTQ+ representation than most other forms of media and
that there is very rarely explicit display of queerness in games, and if there is, players will
usually have to intentionally take part in it (Heritage, 2021 March 10). This paper’s objective
is to present the data from the database the LGBTQ Game Archive in different forms of
visualization to have a better understanding of the data. This was a good example of data

13
visualization that I used to decide how to display the data I gathered from my own research, as
I wanted it to be very clear and readable. They compare the representation of LGBTQ characters
across genres. The data that is found on fighting games supports the claims of low
representation made by Harper. This shows the importance of having more research done in
this area that has not been explored much yet. Utsch et al. state that in games, there is a trend
towards a bigger presence of diverse sexualities compared to diverse gender identities. We will
later see how I was able to confirm this through the data I obtained from my own research.
Throughout all these papers, I talk about representation, and analyzing game data. For this I
need to be able to define what representation is and how to correctly analyze games. I have used
a paper by Carr as a guide on doing research on representation and analyzing games (Carr,
2019). This paper defines representation as the way that social groups are depicted in media,
“The term “representation” as it is used here connects to a long tradition of work within
humanities-orientated screen, media, literary, and cultural studies that addresses the ways that
social groups are depicted in popular media”. The notions presented in this paper share certain
common tendencies, including an interest in centrality and marginality, normalized inequalities,
privilege, and the “othering” of particular social groups. I talked about this previously and we
will also see this in the next sections, I have classified some characters as ‘Other’ and have
included them into the count towards LGBTQ+ characters. Through hegemonic masculinity,
these characters do not conform to the standard of gender and masculinity, so they could be
viewed as outsiders in a way but as we will talk about that is not always the case.
Carr also discusses how to perform a textual analysis on a video game. For this, it is necessary
to perform a fragmentation of the game, as games are complex and contain too many different
elements to easily view it all at once. This could result in many complications in the data
collection and results as many elements of games can be lost in this analysis process. Viewing
games as texts does not deny that they involve play, mutability, chance, interactivity, or change.
This is a result of games being the combination of so many different elements. This research
method involves playing a game, then fragmenting it, then considering all these fragments
through different overlapping lenses: structural, textual, and intertextual. There are however
issues with analyzing games through fragmentation: games lose the movement through space
and time plus those elements attributed to music, theater, and performance. Games can often
have variations in replays creating new interpretations of a fragment. Games vary a lot between
each other, this means the fragmentation method needs to be adapted to each game. The guide
on methodologies about reading games, is however not as relevant for me in this situation as
for this research I will not be analyzing game content specifically.

14
3. Analysis

3.1. Method and methodology

This project spans over the course of two different periods, I first did a two and a half months
research internship where I began this project. During that time, I was able to compile the list
of games and start coding the characters from the games in the years 2010, 2011, 2019, 2020,
and 2021. This period was conducted as an internship in which I went to Japan to work under
the supervision of Professor Koji Mikami of Tokyo University of Technology. As I am working
on Japanese games specifically, being in Japan with a Japanese professor and other Japanese
students, allowed me to get feedback about the context and the point of view of Japanese people
about my research and the topic. The second period that followed was 3 and a half months back
in the games department of University of Uppsala Gotland here in Sweden.
Professor Mikami explained to me that in 2015, a new law was passed in the Tokyo prefecture
to allow same-sex partnerships to be recognized to some official capacity, which brought a
big wave of awareness for LGBTQ+ issues to the general public in Japan. With the results of
my research, I hope to be able to tell if there was an impact on the gaming industry after the
increase in awareness (What are LGBT issues?, 2020).
The method that I use for this research is quantitative data analysis. I have a list of games that
I compiled from an online source, a website called “The Fighters Generation” that I will present
below, of most of the major fighting game releases that came out between 2010 and 2021 from
Japan. I have gone through each game and listed each character, coding them with different
attributes such as gender and sexuality based on the information I was able to find about them
from available sources. These sources vary from official game websites, store pages, game wiki
pages or even the games themselves. Most of the information I was able to find was on non-
official fan wiki pages as they gather all the data from games in to one place as well as
occasionally some information that appeared only in interviews and similar media sources.
With this list of coded characters, I was able to identify patterns throughout the data and draw
some conclusions from that. To help clarify my findings, I have also generated statistics and
graphs that show different types of representation and offer comparisons. As noted earlier, my
approach to quantitative data analysis takes inspiration from multiple different research papers
that use similar methods (Haines, 2019; Nicholl, 2017; Shaw et al., 2019; Utsch et al., 2017).
I have chosen quantitative data analysis (Dhall, 2019) as my method for my research as I felt it
would be the best way to analyze trends of representation in Japanese fighting game over a
period of time. Such a large amount of data allows me to utilize visualization tools to see the
variation over time and to clearly identify and distinguish trends and patterns that have emerged
over time. Of particular note is that I can compare the number of LGBTQ+ characters present
in games on a year-by-year basis, which will allow me to better understand the progress (or lack
of progress) in the representational politics of Japanese fighting games.
To create the list of games that formed the basis of my research, I had to establish some rules
to define which games I would be using. To limit the amount of work that would be involved
in seeking out all the games myself, I consulted the website “The Fighters Generation” and used
the list of games they have already compiled which fit with my search criteria. This website
contains a list of ‘major’ fighting game releases only. I will be using their definition of ‘major’
to facilitate the research and to avoid reducing the sample pool too much. For example, the
category “2D Fighter” on Steam has over 900 entries, even if this takes into account extra
15
content such as DLCs (downloadable content), this is still a significant amount of data that I
would have to process, and this would not be possible in the time I had at my disposal for this
project. I would also have to verify the games to check whether they are fighting games which
fit with my definition. The more common definition of ‘major’ would be triple-A games, so
games that have a high budget and get high numbers of sales and players. However, many of
the games that are listed on The Fighters Generation might not be considered triple-A games as
some have smaller scope and budget. For me the definition in this situation is more about the
social impact and presence of these games within the FGC more than the copies of the games
that were sold nor how much money the game has made. This is the definition I will be using
as an aca-fan, since this is how I understand this game selection. Beyond limiting myself to the
games on this list, these were the additional constraints that I initially put in place to define
which games I surveyed:
• I will count each game once; expansions of the same game will not be considered as a
separate game, but I will count the new characters that come with the expansion as part
of the same original version of the game, so in the year of the original release.
• I will not consider rereleases/remaster/remix/enhanced versions or anthologies of older
games as part of my data set as the version of those characters for those games were
created many years before the studied period.
• The game needs to have been released between 2010 and 2021, if the first version of the
game that appears in my research period is an expansion, I will not count it.
• The main developers of the game must be a Japanese company.
Based on this set of criteria, the information collected for each game was: name(s), release date,
name of developer(s), name of publisher(s), platform(s), graphical style, and notes for the
name(s) of the expansion(s).
I also created rules for the character selection process to avoid having characters that would
falsify data, so I decided to count only playable characters and I did not count different
selectable characters that are the same person. For example, in the Tekken series of games, one
of the main characters is Jin, there is in some versions of the game a second version of Jin called
Devil Jin which is Jin when he is in his Devil form. They are the same character but have a
different physical appearance and different abilities.
In consultation with the Flood et al. (2007) glossary discussed above, the coding rules and
attributes I adopted to classify each character were:
• Gender: Male, Female, Other
• Sexuality: Heterosexual, Non-heterosexual, Other
• A note section in which I specified the type of non-heterosexuality. In this section I also
noted down if a character is non-humanoid or any other information that could have an
influence on my classification of their gender and sexuality.
I used the terms ‘male’ and ‘female’ while coding my data, however, I was informed after I
finished that the terms ‘man’ and ‘woman’ would be more appropriate as ‘male’ and ‘female’
refer more to biological sex while ‘man’ and ‘woman’ are more about gender.

16
As stated in the previous sections, if not stated otherwise, characters will be coded as
heterosexual and cisgender since this is the assumed default within hegemonic masculinity, and
since most major games are created with this foundation.
In the case of characters that have a gender that I coded as ‘Other’, I also coded their sexuality
as ‘Other’ since a non-binary person cannot be heterosexual, homosexual, or bisexual since
these assume the binarity of the gender of the person who has that sexuality. As well, in
situations where it did not make sense to give a gender or a sexuality to characters, I coded them
as ‘Other’, for example, non-sentient robots, other-worldly creatures, etc. So, most of the non-
human characters, such as aliens, have been coded as having ‘Other’ sexualities because they
probably have a different perception of sexuality. Andrew Smiler talks about two main types
of sexuality cultures that are present in different countries and that changes people’s general
perception and approach to sexuality (Flood et al., 2007), so this could be very possible for non-
human characters to not share the same perception of what sexuality is. Because of this I am
not talking about LGBTQ+ as a community but more as a stand-in concept for non-normative
identities. Some of the characters that are coded like this would not normally reflect queerness
and would not be normally coded as LGBTQ+, but in this situation, I decided to view it as
genders and sexualities that are non-normative within hegemonic masculinity.
Most of the characters whom I have coded as ‘Other’ for their gender or sexuality were coded
like this because they do not conform to the standard view of gender and sexuality established
by hegemonic masculinity. With that in mind I decided to count these characters in the count
for non-binary and non-heterosexual characters even if they are not directly coded as LGBTQ+.
For example, if we compare it to the equivalent of a human, a non-sentient robot could be
considered asexual since they do not reproduce and have no will to do so, in addition, they do
not have emotions and sentience making them unable to feel sexually attracted to another entity.
I decided to count them in the number of LGBTQ+ characters as when creating characters,
developers will (un)consciously base their profiles on notions of hegemonic masculinity,
meaning that the characters are always cisgender and heterosexual as a default. Consequently,
developers do not always consider the outcomes on the characters they create. This leads to
some complications as some characters that I have classified as queer should not be considered
as such. However, as I mention above, for this research I have decided to use terms related to
queerness and LGBTQ+ as more of a concept for characters that break hetero and cis-normative
rules, not as much as a representation of the community.
When I was in Japan, I coded this first wave of characters. One attribute that I was keeping
track of was fan/community readings of characters. I was originally interested in looking at this
aspect as I wanted to see how big the difference would be between the more official
representation and the fan interpretations. However, when I came back to Sweden and started
to work on my research again, I soon decided to stop keeping track of that information for
multiple reasons. Beyond the sheer number of fan interpretations expanding the amount of data
collection well beyond the scope of this project, I also found that it was very difficult to find
information on these topics since they are scattered throughout the internet. Even when I did
find queer readings of a given character, it was also very difficult to come to an agreement on
what reading was the more common one as conclusive information was very hard to come by,
so I did not want the opinion of one person’s post to determine the community opinion. In a
way every character can be anything; there will always be someone that has interpreted a
character in a certain way. Beyond complicating my research out of the scope of this project,
any community readings I could access would be limited since they would need to come from
the Western part of the world and English-speaking people only. This would, in turn cause the
17
research to become a lot more complex as I would have to talk about Western readings of
Japanese games and speculate as to how this would not be the same with the Japanese
community, and how the cultural difference between Japan and the West might cause different
interpretations of a character. As I am already talking about Japanese culture viewed through a
Western perspective as I am myself looking at Japanese developers’ view on that subject, this
would create a double layer of complexity since it would be a comparison between a Western
view of what Japanese developers meant and Western fan interpretations of these characters
created by Japanese developers.

3.2. Limitations
As I explained in my reflexivity section, even with many precautions and careful research there
will be many limitations and biases in this research and result data, although not all of them
stem directly from my lived experiences. One main aspect that I do not talk about in this paper
is the difference between romantic attractions and sexual attraction. For reasons of time and
scope, I treated both of them as the same for the purpose of my research. This might not have
had a significant impact on the results of my study because, if a character has any form of
attraction that goes against heteronormativity, that would be classified as queerness. However,
this is still an important distinction, and a topic that could be researched in the future as an
expansion of this topic.
Even as I was trying to stay as objective as possible, I feel some bias was inevitably introduced
in my coding towards characters and games that had prior knowledge or preconceptions about.
As a result, I may have coded some characters using inconsistent mental processes. I will
sometimes think of the coding of some characters as if they were human even if they are not,
such as robots being asexual, while for some other characters I will not assign them a
conventional sexuality as they are not human, and I determined that they have a different system
and understanding to those of humans. As I discussed in the previous sections, I am using
LGBTQ+ more as a concept to talk about non-conforming identities, however, I realized after
completing my research that this falsifies a little the data and perception as some of these
characters would not normally be classified as LGBTQ+. Some that I have classified as such
will even perpetuate some ideas of hegemonic masculinity. Not having time to do whole pass
over all my data I decided to switch to this idea of concept of non-normative gender and
sexuality. As a result, the final data will have better representation than it would have without
these special cases. However, as we will see the numbers are still very low and even with this
artificial increase, there is still an issue with representation in these games. These types of issues
are bound to show up when doing this type of research alone, as I had no one to cross validate
my coding.
I made choices to present my data in specific ways, and it may cause me to miss some aspects
of the data that do not appear with my current methods. It would be an interesting departure
point for new research using my data. Further, there is also a difficulty with interpreting this
data as the number of characters varies each year and for each game, making it more difficult
to observe trends in the data. This is especially accentuated by years where there is very little
data. Only observing one game and making conclusions based on that alone might not result in
the best findings.

18
I will now present the results of my research though the various graphs I constructed with the
data, and I will give explanations about the patterns and some explanations on why they are
such as they are.

3.3. Results
Following are the results that I obtained from compiling all the data I collected. This will help
us to answer the first research question, to show the extent of the representation of LGBTQ+
characters in major Japanese fighting games and over the studies period of time 2010 to 2021.
I decided to present the data through two different perspectives, chronological, and game per
game. The chronological viewpoint will allow an easier look at the evolution over the observed
period. It also allows us, as we will see, to better observe the heterogeneity of the game releases
and resulting number of characters for each year. The game per game perspective gives a more
detailed breakdown and grants us the possibility to see the evolution between games. This is
helpful because of the fact that not all years have the same number of games and characters, so
this will give a more accurate representation of the evolution, but we will no longer be able to
easily seetrans the main years with the most representation.
For this research, it has been very difficult to find the information that I need to accurately
determine gender and sexuality for the character. As mentioned previously, fighting games do
not usually have a strong emphasis on the narrative elements, meaning that there is usually not
much information about the characters and their backgrounds. As a result, the information that
is available online is very limited, there is also very little official information present that would
be relevant to my research. Gender and sexuality are not topics that are very present in the
narrative of fighting game characters. Taking all this into account, I had to make many
compromises when coding the characters. I mentioned this earlier as well, but I tried my best
to be as unbiased as possible.
For every category, I will present the data in two different forms, one as a column graph to
present the values, the second as an area graph to represent the percentage of the total I am
looking at. In the column graph I will always have the total number of characters compared to
what I am looking at, while for the area graphs, I will have to subtract the number of what I am
looking at from the total number of characters to be able to get a correct percentage.
First, I did an overview comparison of the number of games compared to the number of
characters over each year:

19
 Number of games and characters per year
8 250

7
200
6

Number of characters
Number of games

5 150
4

3 100

2
50
1

0 0
2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021
Years

Number of games Number of characters

Figure 1. Number of fighting games and characters per year

In this line graph I show the number of games and characters for each year. The X axis is the
years, the blue line represents the number of games on the left Y axis, and the orange line is the
number of characters on the right Y axis.
The number of games and characters follow a similar proportional pattern, but overall, the more
games there are, the more characters there are. There is a visible disparity that can be seen
between 2014 and 2016. The number of games did not vary much between these years, 2, 3, 2
games each year respectively. While the number of characters changes more dramatically. There
were 37 characters in 2014 which then jumped up to 108 in 2015 and stayed at 104 in 2016.
There are two main peaks, one in 2011-2012 and one in 2018. We can notice that the number
of characters varies a lot over the whole observed period. At the highest point in 2012, there are
over 200 character entries while some years have less than 50: 2010, 2014, 2017, 2020 and
2021.
The years with the most characters are also the years with the most games. One of the reasons
why some years have less games is due to a lull in new game releases as some companies
decided to focus on their previous games by giving them expansions and new updates. This
allows companies to allocate fewer resources into the release of new content giving them
revenue without having to release a whole new game. For example, the game Under Night In-
Birth (French Bread, 2012) as had three main expansions since its original release in 2012. In
2013 the first expansion was released named Under Night In-Birth Exe:Late (French Bread,
2013), in 2017 was Under Night In-Birth Exe:Late[st] (French Bread, 2017), and in 2020 the
newest expansion (at the time of writing this paper) was released, Under Night In-Birth
Exe:Late[cl-r] (French Bread, 2020). Since I decided not to take game update and expansion
into account for my data collection, this creates a hole in the data. We will have to take into
account the fact that not every year is proportional and keep it in mind while looking at the rest
of the data. Some of the years with more characters may have more LGBTQ+ characters in
numbers but not proportionally compared to some years with less total characters. We can notice

20
a slight general trend towards a decrease in the number of games over the years. This is due to
companies switching to live service models for their games and the increase in development
time for games that has increased over the years. A live service model means that after a game
is released, the company that developed it continues to create new content for it and updates the
games with new features and, in the case of fighting games, new characters, stages, etc.… By
doing this, they spend more time on one game and less new games are developed (Narita, 2022
May 31). Games that followed this model are for example, Street Fighter V (Streamline Studios,
2001), Under Night In-Birth, Tekken 7 (Bandai Namco, 2015), and Dragon Ball FighterZ (Arc
System Works, 2018).
We will now look at the results for the data collection about character gender, and the evolution
of non-binary gendered character representation in fighting games over the chosen years 2010-
2021.

Number of characters and non-binary characters

250
218

200
165 163

150

108 104
100
77
60
50 33 37 36
23 22
9 14
7 4 5 5 3 2 2
0 0 0
0
2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021

Number of characters Number of non-binary characters

Figure 2. Number of non-binary characters per year

For this and subsequent bar graphs in the chronological section of results, the Y axis is the
number of characters, the X axis is the years, the blue bars are the number of overall characters
for that year and the orange bars are for the specific type of character that we are looking at for
that year.
We can see the number of non-binary characters is low overall compared to the total number of
characters. It seems to be linked to the number of total characters, the years with the highest
number of non-binary characters are also the years with the most characters. Some years, 2010,
2014, and 2019 do not have any non-binary characters that were part of the games that were
released in those years. Even though 2011 and 2012 have a higher number of characters, 2018
is the year with the highest number of non-binary characters. The main contributing factor is
the release of Dragon Ball FighterZ, which contributes to half of the total non-binary characters
of that year with 7 non-binary characters. These are all the different alien species that have
various characteristics that lead me to classify them as non-binary characters. I will go more in
21
depth in the discussion section later in the paper. This is as much as the total number of non-
binary characters that were present in 2012.

Percentage of non-binary characters

100% 0 7 0 0
9 4 5 5 3 14 2 2
90%

80%

70%

60%

50% 33 211 37 60
156 73 103 99 33 149 21 20
40%

30%

20%

10%

0%
2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021

Number of binary characters Number of non-binary characters

Figure 3. Percentage of non-binary characters per year

For this and subsequent area graphs in the chronological section of results, the X axis shows
the years, the Y axis shows the percentage of characters: the blue area representing those that
we are not tracking, and orange for the ones that are being tracked. Finally, the numbers
displayed are the number of that type of character.
While the total number of non-binary characters seems to be on the decrease in the previous
graph, as apart from 2018 with 14 non-binary characters the number was on the decrease each
year, going from 5 in 2015 to 2 in 2021. When we look at the percentage, there is in fact a slight
increase, the proportion of non-binary characters is actually higher because the later years have
less games and so less characters. When calculating the percentage of non-binary characters,
the values do not go over 5.5% until 2017 where the percentages are all over 8%, with an
exception in 2019.
I now do the same analysis for heterosexual and non-heterosexual characters.

22
 Number of characters and non-heterosexual characters
250
218

200
165 163

150

108 104
100
77
60
50 33 37 36
28 23
19 22
16 11
6 8 6 9
1 2 2 1
0
2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021

Number of characters Number of non-heterosexual characters

Figure 4. Number of non-heterosexual characters per year

For non-heterosexual characters there is a similar pattern to the non-binary characters, there are
a higher number of non-heterosexual characters in the years where there are a higher number
of total characters. As for the previous category, 2011, 2012 and 2018 are the years with the
highest values with 16, 19, and 28 respectively. Again, 2018 has the highest value while having
the lowest number of total characters among the three. Dragon Ball FighterZ, is again a big
contributor with 8 non-heterosexual characters, but not the main contributor. The main
contributing game is BlazBlue Cross Tag Battle (Arc System Works, 2018) with 12 characters.
This game contains many characters from different franchises, and we will talk about it more
in detail later in the paper.

We can observe that there are slightly more non-heterosexual characters in overall numbers
compared to non-binary characters, additionally, there is at least one non-heterosexual character
per year. The higher amount of non-heterosexual representation compared to non-binary
representation could be a cause of a trend presented by Utsch et al. where it is seen that
developers will more often include homosexual or bisexual characters to try and appeal to
LGBTQ+ communities and have more representation in their games while it is less common to
have non-gender conforming characters on the other hand (Utsch et al., 2017).

23
 Percentage of non-heterosexual characters
100% 1 2
19 6 2 8 1
16 11
90% 6 28

80% 9

70%

60%

50% 32 58
199 71 35 96 21
149 97
40% 30 135

30% 14

20%

10%

0%
2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021

Number of heterosexual characters Number of non-heterosexual characters

Figure 5. Percentage of non-heterosexual characters per year

When looking at this graph, we can see there actually seems to be an increase in proportion of
non-heterosexual representation. The percentages are also higher overall than for the non-
binary characters, we have an early ~9.7% in 2011 and go up to ~17.2% in 2018. We can
observe a huge spike in 2020 with 39.1%, this is different from what the column graphs showed,
as it is showing a peak in 2018. The reason for the spike in 2018 is because there is a high
number of non-heterosexual characters, but there is also a high number of overall characters,
while for 2020 there are less characters overall since there is only one game observed for that
year, while there is also a large amount of non-heterosexual characters. This makes the number
of non-heterosexual characters in 2020 amount for a bigger proportion of the overall character
pool for that year. The game in question that is studied in 2020 is Granblue Fantasy Versus
(Arc System Works, 2020), which contains many LGBTQ+ characters. I will go more in depth
about the different cases and the possible reasons for this in the discussion section.
The next two categories that were observed do not directly indicate LGBTQ+ characters but I
think this information is relevant for the context and can provide a better understanding of some
trends.
The first category is characters that break certain gender and sexuality norms but do not fit well
in any of the categories I set up. These characters end up being characters that dress and appear
in a very different way to what might be considered normal for their perceived gender. It could
also be characters that have very strong indicators of non-heterosexuality but are either are not
indicated as or stated not to be.

24
 Number of characters and norm-breaking characters
250
218

200
165 163

150

108 104
100
77
60
50 33 37 36
23 22
3 3 5 8
1 0 2 2 0 0 0 0
0
2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021

Number of characters Number of norm-breaking characters

Figure 6. Number of norm-breaking characters per year

We can see that the numbers are even lower than for the non-binary characters. Although, we
still have the same peak that comes up in 2018 from the two previous column graphs with 8
norm-breaking characters that makes it the highest value overall. The games that contributed
the most in 2018 are BlazBlue Cross Tag Battle and Soulcalibur VI (Bandai Namco, 2018) with
4 and 2 respectively. Apart from the peak in 2018, the most important cluster is in 2010, 2011,
and 2012 where we see 3, 3, and 5 characters respectively.
The overall number of these characters is lower than the previous categories we observed
resulting in a few years with 0 characters that fit into this section. However, this might not be a
negative indicator as this could mean that my classification for characters was wide enough to
take into account more characters and having a few that I was not able to classify could mean
good coverage. This could also be a bad point, meaning that the characters that are created in
these games are too often similar and do not try and break character tropes enough, making it
possible to classify them into large categories. This could mean that even the LGBTQ+
characters are too similar. Lastly it could be considered a limitation of my research framework
which does not provide enough categories to take into account some of the differences between
characters.

25
 Percentage of norm-breaking characters
100% 3 5 1 0 2 2 0 0 0 0
3 8
90%

80%

70%

60%

50% 162 213 76 37 106 102 36 60 23 22

30 155
40%

30%

20%

10%

0%
2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021

Number of norm-fitting characters Number of norm-breaking characters

Figure 7. Percentage of norm-breaking characters per year

With the area graph we can now see something that was not very visible in the column graph,
which is that 2010 actually had the highest proportion of norm-breaking characters with ~9.1%,
while the previous peak in 2018 only has ~4.9%. This is again due to the difference in total
number of characters, 2018 having more than 2010 while having relatively similar numbers of
norm-breaking characters.

The next category that we are looking at are non-humanoid characters. These are characters that
do not have a physical shape that follows similar proportions to the human body. These will
usually be animals or monster type creatures. This is an important stat to look at because these
characters will not have many of the visual indicators and signs that can be used to show gender
in human characters.

26
 Number of characters and non-humanoid characters
250
218

200
165 163

150

108 104
100
77
60
50 33 37 36
23 22
11 8
0 4 0 3 0 2 4 0 0 0
0
2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021

Number of characters Number of non-humanoid characters

Figure 8. Number of non-humanoid characters per year

The patterns here for non-humanoid characters are not that different from the previous column
graphs, as we can see that the years with more non-humanoid characters are also the years with
a higher number of total characters. However, the main peak is no longer in 2018 which has 4
characters but in 2011 and 2012 which have 11 and 8 non-humanoid characters respectively.

Similar to the norm-breaking characters, there are many years with no entries for these
characters, but this has a different meaning. It is not related to categorization; it rather reflects
the trends for non-humanoid characters. We can see that the highest point is 2011 with 11 non-
humanoid characters, after that there is a clear decline in the presence of these types of
characters in the years after. This could be simply due to a decrease in the popularity of these
types of characters, so developers decided to include fewer in their newer games.

27
 Percentage of non-humanoid characters
100% 0 8 0 3 0 4 0 0 0
11 4 2
90%

80%

70%

60%

50% 33 210 37 105 104 159 60 23 22

154 73 34
40%

30%

20%

10%

0%
2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021

Number of humanoid characters Number of non-humanoid characters

Figure 9. Percentage of non-humanoid characters per year

In the percentage graph for non-humanoid characters, we can see that there were a larger
number of these character types in the earlier years, specifically between 2011 and 2013. We
can see that there is a general trend towards a decrease in non-humanoid characters over the
years. We start at ~6.7% in 2011 and then decrease to ~3.7% in 2012 and ~5.2% in 2013 with
~5.6% in 2017.
Finally, for the overall number of characters that I was able to categorize as part of the LGBTQ+
spectrum was a separate value I had to count as I could not simply add together the number of
non-binary and non-heterosexual characters as there are some characters that are part of both.

28
 Number of characters and LGBTQ+ characters
250
218

200
165 163

150

108 104
100
77
60
50 33 37 36 32
20 23 22
16 12 11
6 9 6
1 2 2 2
0
2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021

Number of characters Number LGBTQ+ characters

Figure 10. Number of LGBTQ+ characters per year

As we can expect, it is normal to see similar patterns to the previous categories we looked at
since this is in a way a combination of non-binary and non-heterosexual character, removing
the duplicates. It is also normal to see higher values than in the previous ones. We can see that
overall; the highest point is in 2018 with 32 characters. There is not much to add in terms of
differences compared to the two individual ones.

Percentage of LGBTQ+ characters

100% 1 2
16 20 6 2 9 2
12
90% 6 32

80%
11
70%

60%

50% 32 58
149 198 71 35 95 20
96
40% 30 131

30%
12
20%

10%

0%
2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021

Number of non-LGBTQ+ characters Number of LGBTQ+ characters

Figure 11. Percentage of LGBTQ+ characters per year

29
With the area graph, however, it is quite clear that there is a general increase over the years,
from ~3% in 2010 to ~19.6% in 2018. Again, there is this peak in 2020 that reaches ~47.8%,
almost half of the characters that came out in a fighting game that year where LGBTQ+
characters. However, we need to keep in mind that, as I mentioned earlier, only one game was
released that year, Granblue Fantasy Versus.
The second way I decided to present and compare the data was game per game. I present the
same data as the chronological order but this time I show each game individually. The games
are ordered chronologically and then alphabetically within the years with multiple games.

Number of characters
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70
2010 33
2011 13
14
23
50
54
11
2012 24
32
20
26
55
40
21
2013 45
32
2014 20
17
2015 33
25
50
2016 46
58
2017 36
2018 17
16
53
30
18
29
2019 30
30
2020 23
2021 22

Figure 12. Number of characters per game

For this and subsequent bar graphs in this second section where we look at the evolution per
game, the X axis is the number of characters. The Y axis is now each game sorted by year and
alphabetically within the year, all games that are in the same year are assigned the same color.
Similar peaks are visible when comparing the release dates of all the games every year. The
main difference is that some new peaks appear in years that did not have as many games but
the few that were released had a large number of characters, such as 2010 which has only one
game with 33 characters, 2013 which has a game with 45 characters and 2017 which has also
only one game which has 36 characters.

I will then go through the same categories as before but this time the values for each game will
be separated. I was forced to change the orientation of the column graphs for this section as not
doing so would create problems with the visual clarity, but I was not able to fix it for the area
graphs. There also was not enough space for me to have the name of every game in front of
each value. Instead, I noted when a new year starts and kept all the entries within a year in

30
alphabetical order. I also color coded the years for ease of understanding since the year is not
written in front of every entry.

Number of non-binary gender characters

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
2010 0
2011 0
1
0
3
5
0
2012 1
0
0
1
2
3
0
2013 1
3
2014 0
0
2015 3
0
2
2016 4
1
2017 3
2018 0
2
3
7
0
2
2019 0
0
2020 2
2021 2

Figure 13. Number of non-binary characters per game

Looking at this graph, it is more obvious that many games do not include any non-binary
representation. We can also notice that there are less peaks and it is a bit more homogenous,
apart from the two main peaks in 2011 with 5 characters in Tekken Tag Tournament 2 (Namco
Bandai, 2011), and in 2018 with 7 characters in Dragon Ball FighterZ.

31
 Percentage of non-binary characters
100% 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 1 2 0 1 0 0 0 2 1 0 0 0 0
1 3 5 3 3 3 4 3 3 2 2 2
2
90% 7
80%

70%

60%

50% 33 13 23 11 23 32 20 25 53 21 44 20 17 25 48 57 17 18 30 30
13 47 49 37 29 30 42 33 50 27 21 20
14
40% 23
30%

20%

10%

0%
2010
2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017
2018 2019 2020
2021

Number of binary characters Number of non-binary gender characters

Figure 14. Percentage of non-binary characters per game

For this and subsequent area graphs in this second section where we look at the evolution per
game, the X axis each game sorted by year and alphabetically within the year. The Y axis is the
percentage of characters: the blue area representing those that are not being tracked, and orange
for the ones that are being tracked. Finally, the numbers displayed are the number of that type
of character.
The area graph confirms that the distribution is more homogenous, but we can notice more
clearly the disparity between games as the graph is very jagged. There is almost one game
without non-binary representation for each two games with representation, 14 games without
and 20 games with, so one game without for 1.5 games with. We can still notice a peak in 2018
that corresponds to Dragon Ball FighterZ at ~23.3%. There is only one other peak that is above
10%, Blade Strangers (Studio Saizensen, 2018) in 2018. Despite having a low number of non-
binary characters at 2, the total number of characters is also very low at 16, which is why the
percentage is so high. No other games have a percentage of non-binary characters over 10%.

32
 Number of non-heterosexual characters
0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14
2010 1
2011 1
1
1
7
6
0
2012 5
1
4
1
4
3
1
2013 2
4
2014 1
1
2015 6
2
3
2016 6
2
2017 6
2018 1
1
12
8
3
3
2019 1
1
2020 9
2021 1

Figure 15. Number of non-heterosexual characters per game

Let us now look at the non-heterosexual characters, we can see similarly to the ‘per year’ graph,
almost all games have at least one non-heterosexual character, except one game in 2011,
Yatagarasu (Circle Edge, 2011). The peaks are similar to the ‘per year’ graph as well, but there
are a few extra ones. The significant ones that come back are 2011 with 7 characters from
Marvel vs. Capcom 3 (8ing, 2011) and 6 characters from Tekken Tag Tournament 2, and 2018
with 12 characters from BlazBlue Cross Tag Battle and 8 characters from Dragon Ball
FighterZ. The peak in 2020 is a lot more visible in this version as it is now the second highest
value. Some new peaks each with 6 characters appeared in 2015, 2016, and 2017 with BlazBlue:
Central Fiction (Arc System Works, 2015), Street Fighter V, and Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite
(Capcom, 2017) respectively. These peaks were somewhat present but not as visible in the ‘per
year’ graph because some of the other years outpaced them significantly. The one peak that is
no longer visible is the peak in 2012. As we can see in this graph there are no games that have
more than 5 non-heterosexual characters in that year, on the other hand, there are many games
and over half of them have more than 3 characters each. This resulted in a high total value for
that year, but the individual games do not have that many.

33
 Percentage of non-heterosexual characters
100% 1 0 1 1 4 3 1 2 2 1 1
1 1 1 6
1 1 2 3 1 1 3
1
7 4 6 6 3
90% 5 4 6 12 8
80% 9

70%

60%

50% 32 11 31 25 51 37 20 43 56 29 29
12 13 22 19 16 23 47 16 15 26
21
43 48 28
27
40 30 15
40% 19 16 41 22
30% 14

20%

10%

0%
2010
2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017
2018 2019 2020
2021

Number of heterosexual characters Number of non-heterosexual characters

Figure 16. Percentage of non-heterosexual characters per game

In comparison to the bar graph, we can see many similarities such as the peaks in 2015, 2016,
2017, 2018, and 2020. On the other hand, the peaks of 2011 are a lot less prevalent at 14% and
~11.1%, for even though their value is high, the number of characters is high as well, making
the proportion a lot lower. In opposition, in 2012, we can see some high peaks that were not
visible in the previous graph, with 5 characters from BlazBlue: Chrono Phantasma (Arc System
Works, 2012) at ~20.8% and 4 characters from Persona 4 Arena (Arc System Works, 2012) at
20%. These peaks appear here because there are fewer overall characters for those games while
still retaining a an above average number of non-heterosexual characters. The peak in 2020 is
now the highest point in this graph compared to the bar graph, standing at ~39.1%.

34
 Number of norm-breaking characters
0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4 4.5
2010 3
2011 0
0
0
3
0
0
2012 2
0
1
2
0
0
0
2013 1
0
2014 0
0
2015 2
0
0
2016 1
1
2017 0
2018 0
1
4
1
0
2
2019 0
0
2020 0
2021 0

Figure 17. Number of norm-breaking characters per game

Moving on to norm-breaking characters, it is a bit more complicated to determine peaks

compared to the ‘per year’ graphs as the numbers are so low. All the games have at least one
game that is at ± 1 character from each other, so no game is really far apart from any other.

Percentage of norm-breaking characters

100% 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
3 3 2 2 2 1 4 1 2
90%
80%
70%
60%
50% 13 14 23 54 11 32 19 55 40 21 44 32 20 17 25 50 45 57 36 17 18 30 30 23 22
30 47 22 24 31 15 49 29 27
40%
30%
20%
10%
0%
2010
2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017
2018 2019 2020
2021

Number of characters that break the norm but cannot be clearly identified
Number of norm-fitting characters

Figure 18. Percentage of norm-breaking characters per game

35
The area graph confirms what we noticed in the previous one, there are no apparent peaks, and
the number of norm-breaking characters is low overall. The highest game in proportion is The
King of Fighters XIII (SNK Playmore, 2010) in 2010 with ~9.1%.

Number of non-humanoid characters

0 1 2 3 4 5 6
2010 0
2011 1
1
0
5
4
0
2012 1
0
1
0
2
3
1
2013 2
2
2014 0
0
2015 1
0
2
2016 0
0
2017 2
2018 0
0
4
0
0
0
2019 0
0
2020 0
2021 0

Figure 19. Number of non-humanoid characters per game

When looking at the data per game for non-humanoid characters, we can notice the trend that
we mentioned for the ‘per year’ graph. There is a decline in the presence of non-humanoid
characters over the years, we can see that they are mainly present from 2011 to 2013. There is
a peak in 2018 with 4 characters from BlazBlue Cross Tag Battle, but there are no other
characters after 2017. The highest points are in 2011 with 5 characters in Marvel vs. Capcom 3
and 4 characters from Tekken Tag Tournament 2.

36
 Percentage of non-humanoid characters
100% 0 0 0 1 0 0 2 0 0 1 0 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
1 1 5 4
1 3 1 2 2 2 4
90%

80%

70%

60%

50% 33 23 11 23 32 26 53 20 17 32 25 48 46 58 17 16 30 18 29 30 30 23 22
12 13 45 50
19 37 20 43 30 34 49
40%

30%

20%

10%

0%
2010
2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017
2018 2019 2020
2021

Number of humanoid characters Number of non-humanoid characters

Figure 20. Percentage of non-humanoid characters per game

For the area graph, we can see that many of the trends and particularities of the previous graph
come up again in this one. There is the same overall decline, and the same peaks in 2011 that
come up with 10% and ~7.4% respectively.

Number of LGBTQ+ characters

0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14
2010 1
2011 1
1
1
7
6
0
2012 5
1
4
1
5
3
1
2013 2
4
2014 1
1
2015 7
2
3
2016 7
2
2017 6
2018 1
2
13
9
3
4
2019 1
1
2020 11
2021 2

Figure 21. Number of LGBTQ+ characters per game

37
Finally for the summary of LGBTQ+ characters per game, we can see many of the similar
trends that we have been talking about in this analysis section. We have the main areas in this
graph that show many LGBTQ+ characters which are in 2011, 2012, 2015, 2016, 2018, and
2020. We can see that there is a general increase in the number of LGBTQ+ characters over the
years, with the highest points being BlazBlue Cross Tag Battle with 13 characters, Dragon Ball
FighterZ with 9 characters, and Granblue Fantasy Versus with 11 characters. In the whole list
of games studied, there is at least one LGBTQ+ character per game except for one game in
2011, Yatagarasu. This is the only game to not contain any non-binary nor any non-
heterosexual character.

Percentage of LGBTQ+ characters

100% 1 0 1 1 2 1 1
1 1 1 5 3 1 2 4 1 1 2 3 1 2
7 6 7 6 2 3 4
90% 5 4 7 13
9
80%
11
70%

60%

50% 32 11 31 25 56 29 29
12 13 22 48 50 37 20 43 28 19 16 23 47 16 20
43 39 30 14 15 25
40% 19 16 26 40
21
30%
12
20%

10%

0%
2010
2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017
2018 2019 2020
2021

Number of non-LGBTQ+ characters Number of LGBTQ+ characters

Figure 22. Percentage of LGBTQ+ characters per game

In comparison to the bar graph, there is not much difference, but we can more clearly identify
the areas with the most representation, those being 2018 and 2020. We see some change from
the bar graph to the area graph in 2011 and 2012 where 2011 is now lower, with 14% and
~11.1%, than 2012, with ~20.8% and 20%, which was the opposite in the bar graph with the
raw values. In 2018, we can notice that even though BlazBlue Cross Tag Battle has a higher
number of characters with 13 LGBTQ+ characters, Dragon Ball FighterZ has a higher
proportion while only having 9 LGBTQ+ characters, ~24.5% to 30% respectively. The highest
percentage is again in 2020 with Granblue Fantasy Versus that has ~47.8% which is as we
talked about previously almost half of the characters in that game fell into my categorization of
LGBTQ+ characters.

38
4. Discussion

I will now discuss the results that I obtained through my research, and I will propose theories
to explain why these different trends appear. This will allow us to answer the second research
question, as to how has the representation evolved and what are the causes. We can see overall,
throughout the observed period, there seems to be an increase in the representation of LGBTQ+
characters in major Japanese fighting games. This can be seen when calculating the evolution
of the overall average every year for the percentage of LGBTQ+ characters.
2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021

~3% ~6.4% ~7.3% ~7.4% ~7% ~7.7% ~7.8% ~8.9% ~10.1% ~9.4% ~12.9% ~13.8%

Figure 23. Table showing the cumulated average of percentage of LGBTQ+ characters

Multiple factors could be the cause of this increase in representation. We could look at it in a
positive light and just say that developers care more about diversity issues, so they try to include
more diverse representation (Fanucci, 2022 September 12). That may be the case for certain
games, but I think some other factors come into play as well. Because of the increase in the
public awareness of the presence of the LGBTQ+ community, there has been a lot more vocality
about bad and misrepresentation or even the lack of representation all together (Greer, 2018
May 15). It would stand to reason that some developers would decide to include some form of
representation to try and appease and please the LGBTQ+ community. In most cases throughout
media, when the creators try to add representation for the sake of symbolic representation, it
will usually lead to ‘token’ characters, very shallow characters with very little personality
whose queerness is their only personality trait (Haines, 2019; Shaw, 2009; Reymann-Schneider,
2018 December 13).
Most of the characters that are queer in the more recent games that I observed were already
present in previous games and were already presented as queer. It is actually harder to identify
token characters because one characteristic of token characters is their very shallow background
and personality, however this superficiality is something that is very present in many fighting
games with regard to all characters. Because of this lack of apparent depth as well as
information about the characters, the community of players will often assign their own
interpretation to these characters. This might be the original intention of the developers to be
able to let players choose their perception and opinion of the characters.

4.1. Evolution of the industry

One of the reasons that could be behind the increase in LGBTQ+ representation is in the
increase in production quality of games in general over the years. Games take more and more
time to produce (Brooks, 2021 February 9). Also, there has been an increase in popularity for
video games over the last few decades, and as a result the industry has grown immensely, such
that more specialized jobs have been required as game development companies grow. With an
increase in specialization in jobs and roles within a development team, more attention is now
given to each element of games such as art, narrative, character design, sound design, level
design, etc. This is mainly in the context of large companies where there are many people that
have specific roles and jobs that did not exist a few decades ago. As the industry has developed,
the standards for quality have also increased, as well as our expertise in game development,
39
allowing for more specialized education to appear helping new game developers to have better
starting knowledge than previously existed.
Helped by the arrival of the internet, instant worldwide communication, and social media
platforms, consumers now have instant access to immense quantities of information such as
reviews, and promotional materials to help them make decisions before purchasing a game.
Through this, there has been an increase in the expectations of the players to have more
graphically impressive, more complex, and more technologically advanced games every time.
With an increase in the awareness of the LGBTQ+ representation issues, people have become
more vocal about wanting better and greater representation in their games. More attention is
now then given to the different elements of game production and resulting in an increase in the
quality of characters present in games, making better and more frequent LGBTQ+
representation.

4.2. The special case of Persona 4 Arena

I talked about how some developers were intentional in making their characters ambiguous to
allow for player interpretation, this is the case with Persona 4 Arena. This one is an extreme
case where there is a lot of information, but the official source material was intentionally trying
to blur the lines and make it ambiguous to leave it up to the player’s own interpretation. For
this game there are two characters that were particularly complicated to classify, Kanji Tatsumi
and Naoto Shirogane. Kanji is a male character that at first glance shows the commonly
perceived and accepted traits of masculinity, he is strong and does not show much emotion.
Complications appear when we start looking at Kanji’s sexuality. Most of the information I was
able to collect was from the game the fighting game is based on, Persona 4 (Atlus, 2008). In
the story of that game, Kanji is shown to have an attraction towards another character from the
party, Naoto. At this time, Kanji thinks that Naoto is a man, as Naoto dresses and acts as if she
were a man. After Kanji discovers that she is a girl, he says that he is still in love with her. A
big part of Kanji’s story in that game is centered around him wanting to fit into this social view
of manliness while being aware that there are things that he likes such as fluffy things and cute
animals that do not fit in with this image.

40
Figure 24. Screenshot of Kanji's dialogue from Persona 4

The addition of having been attracted to a masc. presenting person makes him question himself
a lot. There are many other elements that could hint at the character’s queerness. While I have
not played this game myself to be able to interpret the work personally, from the information
that I have discovered from online sources like forum discussions and wiki pages, I would lean
towards coding Kanji as a pansexual character, as gender does not seem to matter for him, he
is more interested in the person that they are.
Speaking of Naoto, as we just mentioned, she is a woman and identifies as such, however she
is determined to become the best detective ever, considered to be typically a men’s profession.
Since the field is dominated by men and men have a greater chance for professional recognition,
she decides to hide her gender by dressing and acting as if she were a man. There are fan
arguments which lean towards her being trans, but I do not find adequate support for this in any
official sources as she is said to be crossdressing so she can be treated as an equal in a field of
work that has a strong culture of hegemonic masculinity. Because of this, I coded her as a
heterosexual woman, since as I explained, I did not find any information that would go directly
against that classification.

41
Figure 25. Screenshot of Naoto's dialogue from Persona 4

As said before, these cases were intentionally left very ambiguous by the authors to let the
players bring their own interpretation. This made coding these characters interesting and
difficult because they do not fit well within the classification that I defined.

4.3. Non-fighting game media characters

The final theory that I wish to evoke about the overall increase in representation over the years
is supported by a trend that can be seen, in which games that contain characters that come from
other forms of media have, most of the time, more representation than games that only have
original characters. This can be seen with games such as Marvel vs. Capcom 3, Marvel vs.
Capcom: Infinite, BlazBlue Cross Tag Battle, Dragon Ball FighterZ, and Granblue Fantasy
Versus. Since fighting games do not usually prioritize story and narrative very much, games
that have characters that come from some other media are usually more complex and developed.
As these original media put a higher emphasis on the narrative aspect, the characters will often
be more complex and deeper. With this, there is a higher chance for better representation since
there is more of a chance that the authors consider diverse gender and sexuality representations
when creating the characters.
Some of the characters from Marvel vs. Capcom 3, Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite, and BlazBlue
Cross Tag Battle, are from media that was not created in Japan. We should keep this in mind
when talking about this as these characters were not made by Japanese developers. In the
‘Marvel vs. Capcom’ games, the characters in question are those from Marvel Comics, and in
BlazBlue Cross Tag Battle they are the characters from the animated show RWBY. Among the
Marvel characters, there is Deadpool (pansexual), Ironman (bisexual), Ultron (agender) and
Winter Soldier (bisexual). Since the Marvel characters are from comics where the main element
is narrative, there is much more time and space to develop characters that are from diverse
backgrounds and have diverse identities. The RWBY characters are a bit more complicated to
analyze, as only one character has been officially stated to be queer, which is Blake Belladonna
42
(bisexual). Most of the other characters have strong hints and cues leading to believe that they
could be non-heterosexual, the strongest one being Yang Xiao Long who seems to have an
interest in Blake, making her potentially bisexual or homosexual.
Granblue Fantasy Versus is a very unique case as it is the game with the highest amount of
representation within all the games I observed. Almost half of the characters are queer, and I
think it can mostly be attributed to the type of game these characters come from. Granblue
Fantasy Versus is based on a mobile game Granblue Fantasy (Cygames, 2014). In this game,
you start by choosing a gender (Male or Female) for the main character you will be playing as,
then as you play the game you unlock and recruit more characters to your crew. You have the
chance to interact with the different members of your crew that you recruited and from my
understanding, you can also romance these characters to some limit. From what I have found
online some of these characters have dialogue that would suggest romantic interest for both
versions of the main characters. As a result, many of the characters could be coded as bisexual,
which is what I have done where I was able to find information supporting it. There are also a
few characters that are officially queer in different ways. There are two trans characters just
within the fighting game, Cagliostro and Ladiva; there are also two homosexual characters,
Vira and Yuel (SugarPunch, 2022 June 30).

Figure 26. Screenshot of the Ladiva character page on the official Granblue Fantasy Versus website
(https://granbluefantasyvs.com/characters/ladiva/)

It is quite common in these types of mobile games to have many instances of gender and
sexuality non-conformity as forms of fanservice for the players. However, it is rare for
companies to officially take stances on these topics and prefer to leave it ambiguous to allow
players to make their own choice.

43
As discussed earlier, some games like Persona 4 Arena have characters that are quite complex
to codify. One difficulty I encountered when doing my research was that in addition to finding
limited information online, some games and source material made analysis more complex, as
in the case of Persona 4. There are other examples of games that have ambiguous characters,
but this does not usually result in a significant degree of representation. The game JoJo’s
Bizarre Adventure: All-Star Battle (CyberConnect2, 2013) is based on the manga JoJo’s
Bizarre Adventure (Hirohiko, 1987-present). This manga is known for its very particular art
style and character design, where characters have very sharp edges, and all the relevant
characters are dressed in very unique and flashy outfits. There are many instances of homo-
erotic mannerisms and interactions between some of the characters, most of the main characters
are very burly young men with unique and sometimes revealing clothing. With this underlying
theme of homosexuality, codifying characters is quite difficult, as there is very little data that
would confirm this. In addition, because this is an overall style through the manga and anime,
it could be argued that it is all a stylistic choice and has no impact on the sexuality of the
characters.

Figure 27. Scan from the manga JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure; the Pillar Men

44
Figure 28. Scan from the manga JoJo's Bizarre Adventure; Josuke Higashikata's pose

I think that this last point is quite important, because of that I decided to not codify any of the
characters as anything more than is showed or said in the official sources, and in addition I was
able to find many instances of proof that characters are cisgender and heterosexual.

4.4. Ambiguous hints

There are other cases of games that have ambiguous interactions that could lead to the belief
that characters are non-binary or non-heterosexual. Some games have characters with slight
traits or interactions that force the question and reflection on whether the character is queer or
whether their interactions are designed to create a certain effect, such as a comedic effect or for
a particular trope like the extremely large and muscular man who is ambiguously gay. There is
an example of this type of ambiguity in the game Under Night In-Birth in which the character
named Waldstein interacts with a character named Gordeau.

45
Figure 29. Screenshot of the dialogue from Under Night In-Birth

Figure 30. Screenshot of the dialogue history from Under Night In-Birth

Waldstein seems to be expressing some form of romantic attraction towards Gordeau, but this
can be read as him using a metaphor for describing the love of fighting and is using it for
comedic effect. Based on the information I was able to find and from my personal knowledge,
I consider that it would be more likely to be the latter intention, as there are no other examples
of this kind of behavior at any other point in the game.
We can see in the dialogue that Waldstein mentions another character named Enkidu. It is worth
noting that this is the name of one of the characters from the Epic of Gilgamesh, which is one
46
of the oldest epics that comes from Mesopotamia. In this story, the relationship between Enkidu
and Gilgamesh is often interpreted as queer. The choice of name by the developers is probably
not accidental. However, it is impossible to know if that is the reason why they decided to use
that name.
Another example that I encountered was in the game SNK Heroines: Tag Team Frenzy (SNK
Corporation, 2018). The part that complicates the coding is the premise of the game, even if
this game is non-canonical with regard to the stories of SNK’s main game series ‘The King of
Fighters’ and ‘Samurai Shodown’, it still creates some strange situations that the developers
probably did not consider when making the game. The setting consists of one person who
decides to trap the consciousness of many of the women fighters from various SNK fighting
games within his dream realm. The complexity that influences this study is that some of the
characters he decides to trap are originally men in the real world but have been gender-swapped
to women in this dream world.

Figure 31. Screenshot of the Terry Bogard character page on the official SNK Heroines website
(https://nisamerica.com/snk-heroines/)

This creates an unusual situation, as it is complicated to define the gender that the developers
intended these characters to have. They were originally men, and technically still are since they
are just in a dream realm and their real body and mind are still those of men. These characters
are described as female versions of the original characters. As well as the fact that this is not
canonical, I decided to code them as women as I think this is what the developers intended as
they refer to them as such. However, for their sexuality, considerations are more complex as I
do not think the developers thought too much about it as this game is supposed to be comedic
and absurd and not really to be taken seriously. The characters’ minds are still those of men,
and they are all clearly defined as heterosexual in the canon, meaning that they are known to be
attracted to women. If we consider it in this way since we defined that they were women from
the setting of this game, this would make them homosexual. This is the reason why I coded
them as ‘Other’ as it was not clearly defined what they were. This is an uncommon situation
and the terms and definitions used for this research do not account for this type of situation.

47
There is an argument that could be made that could count these gender swapped characters as
trans. The reason for this is that some queer people might specifically identify to these
characters or do a queer reading because of their uniqueness and specific situation. However,
as stated before, I decided to avoid going into fan/community readings as this requires a lot
more work and introduces multiple nuances and diverse criteria.
I mentioned that sometimes it is difficult to find any information about the gender or sexuality
of certain characters online. Some cases are more complex than others as we have information
that contradicts what the characters seem to be intended to be. There are a few cases however
where the research of sexuality was not really possible as the characters were not old enough,
meaning there was even less information and realistically the characters themselves probably
do not have a clear idea of their own sexuality. There are two characters from the game Blade
Strangers, Emiko, and Isaac, who are both very young and so are probably not aware of their
sexuality and it is something that can potentially evolve. In addition, Under Night In-Birth is a
game with very little talk about sexuality, or even romance. The closest to such a discussion is
that most of the main girl characters seem to like the main character (man) of the game in some
ways. There are some mentions of them getting embarrassed in certain awkward situations and
some very minor flirting, with certain characters. The main reason for this is that most of the
cast of characters are around the ages of middle school or high school.

4.5. Unexpected cases

Even with some of the difficulties in researching the information for the characters, I was able
to find some cases and games that seemed to have, to my surprise, an above average amount of
representation. The first one being Street Fighter V, with 4 non-binary characters, 6 non-
heterosexual character and a total of 7 LGBTQ+ characters making it ~15.2% of the total roster.
The numbers are not impressive overall but challenged the expectation that I had when
approaching the game with previous knowledge. Historically, the Street Fighter series has been
known for its stereotypical representation of different cultures and ethnicities (Harper, 2013).
There are a few characters in the ones I counted as LGBTQ+ that are just referred to as ‘entities’,
or embodiments of non-physical things like emotions, making them not fit correctly in the
standard classification based on humans that we are using to code the characters. For example,
the character Kage is the embodiment of a dark energy, the ‘Satsui no Hado’ (translation: ‘Wave
Motion of Murderous Intent’). So even if its physical appearance looks like a typical
representation of a masculine character, it is not accurate to assign it a gender. Another character
is Seth, an android that, in Street Fighter IV, had a masc. presenting body but now in Street
Fighter V, have a femme presenting body.

48
Figure 32. Screenshot of both versions of Seth in the character select screen in Street Fighter V

The most interesting case was Poison, she is a very old character in the history of games and
there has been many debates to try and determine what her gender is, if she is a cisgender
woman or a transwoman.

Figure 33. Screenshot of Poison from Street Fighter V

The reasons for those debates are because of a rumor that is circulating on the internet
mentioning that she was originally a woman but was changed to be a transgender woman when
they localized (for the US) the first game she was part of, Final Fight (Capcom, 1989). After
doing some research about it, I was able to find out that she was originally always meant to be
49
a trans woman (MegatonStammer, 2012 February 26), she was noted to be a ‘new half’ (ニュ
ーハーフ) in original character concept documents.

The second surprising game is Dragon Ball FighterZ, which has 7 non-binary characters, 8
non-heterosexual characters, and a total of 9 LGBTQ+ character making it 30% of the total
roster. This one has higher numbers and was even more surprising as I was not expecting to
find so much representation from a show with so many stereotypical representations of
masculinity. When looking at the lore more closely, the diversity comes from the various alien
species. Some of them are mentioned to have different way of reproduction and different ways
to express gender compared to humans, making them queer when we use human classification
to code them. For example, the character Piccolo comes from a race, Namekians, with no
gender, and they reproduce asexually (Peters, 2022 January 30), in which only one member of
their race is able to lay eggs.

Figure 34. Screenshot of Piccolo ‘laying’ an egg from the anime Dragon Ball

The character Frieza also comes from a race that reproduces asexually and seems to only have
one gender or form. These reproduction systems are very different when we try to compare
them to humans, however these are not impossible as there are precedents with some real-world
animals. This shows some of the limitations of my classification system but also of our current
perception of gender and sexuality in society.

50
 4.6. Issues with the classification
As I talked about during my method and limitation section, after I completed the research and
spent some time analyzing the data, I realized that some of the characters, mostly the non-
human characters, that I had counted as LGBTQ+ should perhaps not have been counted. Even
though they fit within the definition of the terms I was using for the different identities, they
were mostly non-human and maybe should have been classified in a different category as they
fit outside of these conventional means of classification. I am aware that this might falsify my
data and by extension results, but to account for that I am using the idea of LGBTQ+ and related
terms as concepts to express a departure from the standard gender and sexuality ideas that are
fostered by hegemonic masculinity.

Because of this issue, games like Dragon Ball FighterZ seem to have very good representation.
While there are many characters with diverse genders and ways of reproduction, they do not
foster the ideas of diversity and representation that would be helpful for the LGBTQ+
community. The Dragon Ball franchise seems to be still very much anchored in the views of
hegemonic masculinity.

That being said, even with the inclusion of these extra characters, the number of LGBTQ+
characters still remain quite low as we have discussed. This underlines the fact greater and
better representation is needed in these games. These characters may not all be the
representation that the LGBTQ+ community is looking for, but I think it is still something
interesting to look at as they are characters that break certain conventions set by our society and
hegemonic masculinity, but we still do not consider them as different, and some people might
view some of these characters as cisgender and heterosexual.

51
5. Conclusion

Throughout this paper, we have seen that there seems to be a development in the representation
of LGBTQ+ characters in modern major Japanese fighting games which answers the first
research question regarding the extent to which LGBTQ+ characters are represented in major
Japanese fighting game releases between 2010 and 2021. However, the progress and the overall
numbers are still very low, in addition it is still very inconsistent across different titles and years.
In more recent years, it seems that developers have been more willing to openly mention that
one of their characters is LGBTQ+. This could be because of better awareness on the part of
the developers or the companies’ marketing strategies.
The amount of non-heterosexual representation appears to be higher than the non-binary
representation. This is a trend that reflects an overall trend in the game production industry
(Utsch et al., 2017). Developers are more likely to include a bisexual or homosexual character
than a non-binary, trans or agender character. However, some developers still prefer to keep
their characters in an ambiguous state and avoid taking an explicit stance, either to allow for
players to bring their own interpretation with the intention of enabling more people to connect
to the character, or because they fear displeasing some people by officially showing queer
representation (Heritage, 2021 March 23).
The coding and classification of LGBTQ+ characters are complex tasks. As we discussed, the
amount of information available on these characters is most of the time quite limited. This is
the result of this game genre which typically has a limited focus on the narrative and story
elements of the game and characters. Since the genre does not allow for much expansion on the
story and background elements, the designers of these characters will usually try and make a
character’s story and personality understandable uniquely through their appearance and
sometimes short dialogues. There is generally little written information about fighting game
characters beyond what can be communicated through the character design alone and characters
that are too complex become difficult to interpret. Characters are also often designed as visual
stereotypes as it is an easy way to communicate more complex character personalities and ideas.
The coding for this quantitative study is also challenging even with external information, as we
have seen some characters and games have elements that are (un)intentional and create
ambiguity in the characters. Games with unique character designs, and characters with complex
personalities can be difficult to code. Well-designed characters are more complex to classify as
they are more intricate and are nuanced such that classifying them in generalized categories
does not allow for completely accurate data. As we saw, most of the characters that I categorized
as LGBTQ+ come from other media sources such as other games, anime, manga, and TV shows
before featuring in a fighting game.
Regarding the Tokyo prefecture law that was implemented in 2015 that we talked about in the
method section, I was expecting to see a difference in the representation of LGBTQ+ character
before and after 2015, but there was no significant change. I think we did not see a big difference
because it takes time for mentalities to evolve and changes to take effect. In addition, the
development time of games is quite long so games that had their development started in 2015
came out only more recently. I am expecting more progress in the years to come, in addition,
this is supported by the findings in my data where we can see a small increase over the years
and if this is maintained could be extremely positive for the LGBTQ+ community.

52
Finally, I have talked about different theories in my discussion that suggest the reasons behind
the different trends observed in the data, which addresses my second research question
concerning how this representation has evolved throughout the specified period and the causes.
I mentioned some unexpected and some unique cases, a particular game example, some specific
situations, and as well as the evolution of the industry.
I would like to reiterate on how important more positive LGBTQ+ representation is in video
games and media in general. All these different types of media are consumed by people of all
ages, so it is important to give young people better example to help fight against the
perpetuation of negative stereotypes, to help to foster acceptance, and most importantly to show
that these identities are all valid. With more and better representation, people might feel
comfortable coming out as queer as they will feel less alone and more validated (Autumn, 2022
June 4; Narayanan, 2022 November 4).
As I talked about at the start of this paper, there are not many existing papers at this time on the
topic of representation in fighting games. There are many other avenues that would be worth
exploring, such as the comparison between the representation in triple-A fighting games and
indie fighting games, or research specifically into indie fighting games, as I know that there are
many indie fighting games that exist that have a great amount of positive LGBTQ+
representation. Another interesting comparison that would be an interesting follow up to my
paper would be a comparison between the representation in games produced in Japan and the
representation in games produced in the West. This could also have a tie-in with indie game
production and how that could affect representation and the cultural differences of the indie
production scene in Japan compared to the West. One of the aspects that I was not able to talk
about much in my paper due to scope constraints was community readings and interpretations
of characters. The topic of LGBTQ+ community readings for fighting game characters is very
rich and still unexplored. Finally, research that builds upon the data that I have collected to
include more games from different origins, will allow us to have a more exhaustive list of
LGBTQ+ fighting game characters and better understand the fighting game genre and the
evolution of LGBTQ+ representation in video games.

53
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58
Appendix A: Game data

Year Name Release Developers Publishers Platforms Style Notes

2010 The King of date
14/07/2010 SNK Playmore SNK Playmore, Arcade, PS3, 2D
Fighters XIII (Arcade), Atlus (US), Rising Xbox 360,
22/11/2011 Star Games (EU) PC, IOS
(Console)
2011 Aquapazza: 22/06/2011 Examu, Aqua Examu Arcade, PS3 2D
Aquaplus (Arcade), Plus
Dream Match 30/08/2011
(Console)
2011 Chaos Code 04/08/2011 FK Digital Arc System Works Arcade, PS3, 2D
(Arcade), PS4, PC
03/04/2013
(Console)
2011 Dead or Alive: 19/05/2011 Team Ninja Tecmo Koei (JP, Nintendo 3DS 3D
Dimensions (Console) US), Nintendo
(EU, AUS)
2011 Marvel vs. 15/02/2011 Capcom, 8ing Capcom PS3, Xbox 2.5D Additional
Capcom 3: (Console) 360 versions:
Fate of Two Ultimate.
Worlds
2011 Tekken Tag 14/09/2011 Namco Bandai Namco Bandai Arcade, PS3, 3D
Tournament 2 (Arcade), Xbox 360,
11/09/2012 Wii U
(Console)
2011 Yatagarasu 13/08/2011 Circle Edge Nicalis (Console), PC, Arcade 2D
(JP), Legend (Console), Rice Digital (PC)
of Raven 12/02/2015
(Arcade)
2012 BlazBlue: 21/11/2012 Arc System Arc System Works, Arcade, PS3, 2D
Chrono (Arcade), Works Pqube PS Vita, PS4,
Phantasma 24/10/2013 Xbox One
(Console)
2012 Dead or Alive 25/09/2012 Team Ninja Tecmo Koei, Sega PS3, Xbox 3D Additional
5 (Console) (EU) 360, PS Vita versions:
Ultimate
and Last
Round.
2012 Persona 4 01/03/2012 Arc System Atlus Arcade, PS3, 2D Additional
Arena (Arcade), Works Xbox 360, versions:
26/07/2012 PSN, Xbox Ultimax.
(Console) Live
2012 Soulcalibur V 31/01/2012 Namco (Project Namco Bandai PS3, Xbox 3D
(Console) Soul) 360
2012 Street Fighter 06/03/2012 Dimps, Capcom Capcom PS3, Xbox 2.5D
x Tekken (Console) 360, PC, IOS,
PS Vita

59
2012 Tekken 3D: 14/02/2012 Namco Bandai Namco Bandai Nintendo 3DS 3D
Prime Edition (Console)
2012 Under Night 20/09/2012 French Bread, Sega (JP), Arc Arcade, PS3, 2D Additional
In-Birth (Arcade), Ecole Software System Works PC, PS4, PS versions:
24/07/2014 (US) Vita Exe: Late,
(Console) Late[st],
Late[st],
and CL-R.
2013 JoJo's Bizarre 29/08/2013 CyberConnect2 Namco Bandai PS3 3D
Adventure: (Console)
All-Star Battle
2013 Tekken 11/06/2013 Namco Bandai Namco Bandai PS3 3D
Revolution (Console)
2014 Dengeki 18/03/2014 Ecole Software, Sega Arcade, PS3, 2D Additional
Bunko: (Arcade), French Bread PS Vita, PS4 versions:
Fighting 13/11/2014 IGNITION
Climax (Console) .
2014 Guilty Gear 30/01/2014 Arc System Arc System Works Arcade, PS3, 2.5D
Xrd -SIGN- (Arcade), Works PS4, PC
04/12/2014
(Console)
2015 BlazBlue: 19/11/2015 Arc System Arc System Works Arcade, PS3, 2D
Central (Arcade), Works PS4, PC,
Fiction 06/10/2016 Switch
(Console)
2015 Guilty Gear 25/08/2015 Arc System Arc System Works Arcade, PS3, 2.5D Additional
Xrd - (Arcade), Works PS4, PC versions:
Revelator- 26/05/2019 Rev2.
(Console)
2015 Tekken 7 18/03/2015 Bandai Namco Bandai Namco Arcade, PS4, 3D Additional
(Arcade), Xbox One, versions:
02/06/2017 PC Fated
(Console) Retribution
and FR
Round 2.
2016 Street Fighter 16/02/2016 Capcom, Sony, Capcom PS4, PC, 2.5D Additional
V (Console), Dimps Arcade versions:
14/03/2019 Arcade
(Arcade) Edition and
Champion
Edition.
2016 The King of 23/08/2016 SNK Playmore SNK (JP), Atlus PS4, PC, 2.5D
Fighters XIV (Console), USA (US), Deep Arcade
29/06/2017 Silver (EU)
(Arcade)
2017 Marvel vs. 19/09/2017 Capcom Capcom PS4, Xbox 2.5D
Capcom: (Console) One, PC
Infinite

60
2018 Fighting EX 28/06/2018 Arika Arika PS4, Arcade, 2.5D
Layer (Console), PC, Switch
29/11/2018
(Arcade)
2018 Blade 28/08/2018 Studio Nicalis, Pikii (JP)
PS4, Xbox 2.5D
Strangers (Console) Saizensen One, Switch,
PC
2018 BlazBlue 29/05/2018 Arc System Arc System Works PS4, Switch, 2D
Cross Tag (Console) Works PC
Battle
2018 Dragon Ball 26/01/2018 Arc System Bandai Namco PS4, Xbox 2.5D
FighterZ (Console) Works One, Switch,
PC
2018 SNK Heroines: 06/09/2018 SNK NIS America, Inc. PS4, PC, 2.5D
Tag Team (Console) Corporation Switch
Frenzy
2018 Soulcalibur VI 19/10/2018 Bandai Namco Bandai Namco PS4, Xbox 3D
(Console) (Project Soul), One
Dimps
2019 Dead or Alive 01/03/2019 Team Ninja Tecmo Koei PS4, Xbox 3D
6 (Console) One, PC
2019 Samurai 25/06/2019 SNK SNK PS4, Xbox 2.5D
Shodown / (Console), One, Arcade,
Samurai 24/10/2019 Stadia,
Spirits (2019) (Arcade) Switch, Xbox
X/S, PC
2020 Granblue 06/02/2020 Arc System Cygames (JP), PS4, PC 2.5D
Fantasy (Console) Works XSEED (US)
Versus
2021 Guilty Gear - 08/06/2021 Arc System Bandai Namco PS4, PS5, PC, 2.5D
STRIVE- (Console) Works, Team Xbox One,
Red Xbox X/S,
Arcade

61
Appendix B: Character data

1. 2010 Character data

Character name Gender Sexuality Community Notes
reading
The King of Fighters XIII
Andy Bogard Male Heterosexual
Athena Asamiya Female Heterosexual
Ash Crimson Male Heterosexual Homosexual Has a very feminine look
or bisexual
Benimaru Nikaido Male Heterosexual Homosexual
Billy Kane Male Heterosexual
Chin Gentsai Male Heterosexual
Clark Still Male Heterosexual
Duo Lon Male Heterosexual
Elisabeth Branctorche Female Heterosexual
Goro Daimon Male Heterosexual
Hwa Jai Male Heterosexual
Iori Yagami Male Heterosexual
Joe Higashi Male Heterosexual
K' Male Heterosexual
Kim Kaphwan Male Heterosexual
King Female Heterosexual Homosexual Dresses like a man, passed
as one in early games
Kula Diamond Female Heterosexual
Kyo Kusanagi Male Heterosexual
Leona Heidern Female Heterosexual
Mai Shiranui Female Heterosexual
Mature Female Non-heterosexual Bisexual
Maxima Male Heterosexual
Raiden Male Heterosexual
Ralf Jones Male Heterosexual
Robert Garcia Male Heterosexual
Ryo Sakazaki Male Heterosexual
Saiki Male Heterosexual Has a very feminine look
Shen Woo Male Heterosexual
Sie Kensou Male Heterosexual
Takuma Sakazaki Male Heterosexual
Terry Bogard Male Heterosexual
Vice Female Heterosexual Homosexual
Yuri Sakazaki Female Heterosexual

62
 2. 2011 Character data
Character name Gender Sexuality Community Notes
reading
Aquapazza: Aquaplus Dream Match
Arawn Male Heterosexual
Chizuru Kashiwagi Female Heterosexual
Hakuoro Male Heterosexual
Karula Female Heterosexual
Konomi Yuzuhara Female Heterosexual
Manaka Komaki Female Heterosexual
Morgan Female Heterosexual
HMX-12 Multi Female Heterosexual Robot
Oboro Male Non-heterosexual Homosexual
Riannon Female Heterosexual
Sasara Kusugawa Female Heterosexual
Tamaki Kousaka Female Heterosexual
Chaos Code
Bravo Peperoncini Male Heterosexual
Cait & Sith Other Heterosexual Male (Cait), Female (Sith)
Catherine Other Other Non-binary
Celia Female Heterosexual Robot
Cerberus Male Heterosexual
Cthylla Female Heterosexual
Hermes Female Heterosexual
Hikaru Male Heterosexual
Kagari Female Heterosexual
Kudlak-Sin Male Heterosexual
Lupinus Female Heterosexual
Ray Male Heterosexual
Rui Female Heterosexual
Vein Male Heterosexual
Dead or Alive: Dimensions
Ayane Female Heterosexual
Bankotsubo Male Heterosexual
Bass Armstrong Male Heterosexual
Bayman Male Heterosexual
Brad Wong Male Heterosexual
Christie Female Heterosexual
Eliot Male Heterosexual
Gen Fu Male Heterosexual
Genra Male Heterosexual
Hayate Male Heterosexual
Helena Douglas Female Heterosexual
Hitomi Female Heterosexual
Jann Lee Male Heterosexual
Kasumi Female Heterosexual
Kokoro Female Heterosexual
Leifang Female Heterosexual
Leon Male Heterosexual
63
Lisa Hamilton Female Heterosexual
Raidou Male Heterosexual
Ryu Hayabusa Male Heterosexual
Shiden Male Heterosexual
Tina Armstrong Female Non-heterosexual Homosexual
Zack Male Heterosexual
Marvel vs. Capcom 3: Fate of Two Worlds
Akuma Male Heterosexual Asexual
Albert Wesker Male Heterosexual
Amaterasu Other Other Agender, God in a wolf
body
Arthur Male Heterosexual
Captain America Male Heterosexual Bisexual
Chris Redfield Male Heterosexual Bisexual
Chun-li Female Heterosexual
Crimson Viper Female Heterosexual
Dante Male Heterosexual Homosexual
or Bisexual
Deadpool Male Non-heterosexual Pansexual
Doctor Doom Male Heterosexual
Doctor Strange Male Heterosexual
Dormammu Male Heterosexual Interdimensional being
Felicia Female Heterosexual
Firebrand Male Heterosexual Gargoyle
Frank West Male Heterosexual
Ghost Rider Male Heterosexual
Haweye Male Heterosexual
Hsien-Ko Female Heterosexual Zombie
Hulk Male Heterosexual
Iron Fist Male Heterosexual
Iron Man Male Non-heterosexual Bisexual
Jill Valentine Female Heterosexual
M.O.D.O.K. Male Heterosexual Head-person?
Magneto Male Heterosexual
Mike Haggar Male Heterosexual
Morrigan Aensland Female Non-heterosexual Succubus, bisexual
Nathan Spencer Male Heterosexual
Nemesis Other Other Creature
Nova Male Heterosexual
Phoenix Female Heterosexual
Phoenix Wright Male Heterosexual
Rocket Raccoon Male Heterosexual Raccoon
Ryu Male Heterosexual Asexual or
Homosexual
Sentinel Other Other Robots
She-Hulk Female Heterosexual
Shuma-Gorath Male Other Creature
Spider-Man Male Heterosexual
Storm Female Heterosexual

64
Strider Hiryu Male Heterosexual
Super-Skrull Male Heterosexual Sexually fluid Shapeshifter
Taskmaster Male Heterosexual
Thor Male Heterosexual
Trish Female Heterosexual
Tron Bonne Female Heterosexual
Vergil Male Heterosexual Very possibly asexual
Viewtiful Joe Male Heterosexual
Wolverine Male Heterosexual
X-23 Female Heterosexual
Zero Male Heterosexual Robot
Tekken Tag Tournament 2
Alex Male Heterosexual Dinosaur
Alisa Bosconovitch Female Heterosexual Android
Angel Other Other Angel, Non-binary,
Unknown
Anna Williams Female Heterosexual
Armor King Male Heterosexual
Asuka Kazama Female Heterosexual Bisexual
Baek Doo San Male Heterosexual
Bob (Robert Richards) Male Heterosexual
Bruce Irvin Male Heterosexual
Bryan Fury Male Heterosexual
Christie Monteiro Female Heterosexual
Combot Other Other Robot
Craig Marduk Male Heterosexual
Dr. Bosconovitch Male Heterosexual
Sergei Dragunov Male Heterosexual
Eddy Gordo Male Heterosexual
Feng Wei Male Heterosexual
Forest Law Male Heterosexual
Ganryu Male Heterosexual
Heihachi Mishima Male Heterosexual
Hwoarang Male Heterosexual
Jack-6 Other Other Robot
Jaycee Female Heterosexual
Jin Kazama Male Heterosexual
Jinpachi Mishima Male Heterosexual
Jun Kazama Female Heterosexual
Kazuya Mishima Male Heterosexual
King Male Heterosexual
Kuma Male Heterosexual Bear
Kunimitsu Female Heterosexual
Lars Alexandersson Male Heterosexual
Lee Chaolan Male Heterosexual Homosexual
or Bisexual
Lei Wulong Male Heterosexual
Leo Kliesen Other Other Non-binary

65
Lili (Emilie De Rochefort) Female Heterosexual Homosexual
or Bisexual
Ling Xiaoyu Female Heterosexual
Marshall Law Male Heterosexual
Michelle Chang Female Heterosexual
Miguel Caballero Rojo Male Heterosexual
Miharu Hirano Female Heterosexual
Mokujin Other Other Training dummy
Nina Williams Female Heterosexual
Ogre Male Other Ancient demon
Panda Female Heterosexual Panda
Paul Phoenix Male Heterosexual
Raven Male Heterosexual
Roger Jr. Male Heterosexual Kangaroo
Sebastian Male Heterosexual
Steve Fox Male Heterosexual
Tiger Jackson Male Heterosexual
Unknown Female Heterosexual
Wang Jinrei Male Heterosexual
Yoshimitsu Male Heterosexual Possibly multiple people
Zafina Female Heterosexual
Yatagarasu
Aja Salisbury Female Heterosexual
Azure Male Heterosexual
Chadha Male Heterosexual
Crow Male Heterosexual
Hanzo Female Heterosexual
Hina Female Heterosexual
Jet Male Heterosexual
Jyuzumaru Male Heterosexual
Kotaro Female Heterosexual
Kou Male Heterosexual
Shimo Female Heterosexual

3. 2012 Character data

Character name Gender Sexuality Community Notes
reading
BlazBlue: Chrono Phantasma
Amane Nishiki Male Non-heterosexual Androgynous, bisexual
Arakune Male Heterosexual Non-humanoid
Azrael Male Non-heterosexual Asexual
Bang Shishigami Male Heterosexual
Bullet Female Heterosexual
Carl Clover Male Heterosexual
Hakumen Male Heterosexual
Hazama Male Heterosexual
Iron Tager Male Heterosexual
Jin Kisaragi Male Heterosexual
66
Kagura Mutsuki Male Heterosexual
Kokonoe Female Heterosexual
Litchi Faye Ling Female Heterosexual
Makoto Nanaya Female Non-heterosexual Bisexual
Noel Vermillion Female Heterosexual
Nu-13 Female Heterosexual
Platinum the Trinity Other Other Male and female souls in
the same body
Rachel Alucard Female Heterosexual
Ragna the Bloodedge Male Heterosexual
Relius Clover Male Heterosexual
Taokaka Female Non-heterosexual Cat-person, bisexual
Tsubaki Yayoi Female Heterosexual
Valkenhayn R. Hellsing Male Heterosexual
Yūki Terumi Male Heterosexual
Dead or Alive 5
Akira Male Heterosexual
Ayane Female Heterosexual
Bass Armstrong Male Heterosexual
Bayman Male Heterosexual
Brad Wong Male Heterosexual
Christie Female Heterosexual
Eliot Male Heterosexual
Gen Fu Male Heterosexual
Hayate Male Heterosexual
Helena Douglas Female Heterosexual
Hitomi Female Heterosexual
Honoka Female Heterosexual
Jacky Bryant Male Heterosexual
Jann Lee Male Heterosexual
Kasumi (Phase 4) Female Heterosexual
Kokoro Female Heterosexual
La Mariposa Female Heterosexual
Leifang Female Heterosexual
Leon Male Heterosexual
Marie Rose Female Heterosexual
Mila Female Heterosexual
Momji Female Heterosexual
Naotora Ii Female Heterosexual
Nyotengu Female Heterosexual
Pai Chan Female Heterosexual
Rachel Female Heterosexual
Raidou Male Heterosexual
Rig Male Heterosexual
Ryu Hayabusa Male Heterosexual
Sarah Bryant Female Heterosexual
Tina Armstrong Female Non-heterosexual Homosexual
Zack Male Heterosexual
Persona 4 Arena

67
Aigis Female Non-heterosexual Android, bisexual
Akihiko Sanada Male Heterosexual
Chie Satonaka Female Heterosexual
Elizabeth Female Non-heterosexual Bisexual
Junpei Iori Male Heterosexual
Kanji Tatsumi Male Non-heterosexual Pansexual
Ken Amada & Koromaru Male Heterosexual Koromaru is his dog
Labrys Female Heterosexual
Margaret Female Heterosexual
Marie Female Heterosexual
Mitsuru Kirijo Female Heterosexual
Naoto Shirogane Female Heterosexual Cross-dresses as a man
Rise Kujikawa Female Heterosexual
Sho Minazuki Male Heterosexual
Teddie Male Non-heterosexual Teddy bear, bisexual
Tohru Adachi Male Heterosexual
Yosuke Hanamura Male Heterosexual
Yu Narukami Male Heterosexual
Yukari Takeba Female Heterosexual
Yukiko Amagi Female Heterosexual
Soulcalibur V
Aeon Calcos (Lizardman) Male Heterosexual
Algol Male Heterosexual
Astaroth Other Other Agender, referred to as
"it"
Cervantes de León Male Heterosexual
Dampierre Male Heterosexual
Devil Jin Male Heterosexual
Edge Master Male Heterosexual
Ezio Auditore da Firenze Male Heterosexual
Heishiro Mitsurugi Male Heterosexual
Hildegard von Krone Female Heterosexual
Ivy (Isabelle Valentine) Female Heterosexual
Kilik Male Heterosexual
Leixia Female Heterosexual
Maxi Male Heterosexual Possible homosexual from
leaks, but nothing
confirmed.
Natsu Female Heterosexual
Nightmare Male Heterosexual Human possessed by a
demon sword
Patroklos Alexander Male Heterosexual
Pyrrha Alexandra Female Heterosexual
Raphael Sorel Male Heterosexual
Siegfried Schtauffen Male Heterosexual
Tira Female Other Is in love with a sword
Viola Female Heterosexual
Voldo Male Heterosexual Strong sexual references
in moves, BDSM themes

68
Xiba Male Heterosexual
Yoshimitsu Male Heterosexual Possibly multiple people
Z.W.E.I. Male Heterosexual
Street Fighter x Tekken
Abel Male Heterosexual
Akuma Male Heterosexual
Alisa Bosconovitch Female Heterosexual
Asuka Kazama Female Heterosexual
Balrog Male Heterosexual
Blanka Male Heterosexual Mutant
Bob (Robert Richards) Male Heterosexual
Bryan Fury Male Heterosexual
Cammy White Female Heterosexual
Christie Monteiro Female Heterosexual
Chun-Li Female Heterosexual
Cody Male Heterosexual
Cole Male Heterosexual
Craig Marduk Male Heterosexual
Dhalsim Male Heterosexual
Dudley Male Heterosexual
Elena Male Heterosexual
Guile Male Heterosexual
Guy Male Heterosexual
Heihachi Mishima Male Heterosexual
Hugo Male Heterosexual
Hwoarang Male Heterosexual
Ibuki Female Heterosexual
Jack-X Other Other Robot
Jin Kazama Male Heterosexual
Julia Chang Female Heterosexual
Juri Female Non-heterosexual Bisexual
Kazuya Mishima Male Heterosexual
Ken Masters Male Heterosexual
King Male Heterosexual
Kuma Male Heterosexual Bear
Kuro Male Heterosexual
Lars Alexandersson Male Heterosexual
Lei Wulong Male Heterosexual
Lili (Emilie De Rochefort) Female Heterosexual
Ling Xiaoyu Female Heterosexual
M. Bison Male Heterosexual
Marshall Law Male Heterosexual
Mega Man Male Heterosexual
Nina Wiliams Female Heterosexual
Ogre Male Other Ancient demon
Pac-Man Male Heterosexual Pac-person
Paul Phoenix Male Heterosexual
Poison Other Heterosexual Female transgender
Raven Male Heterosexual

69
Rolento F. Schugerg Male Heterosexual
Rufus Male Heterosexual
Ryu Male Heterosexual
Sagat Male Heterosexual
Sakura Female Heterosexual
Steve Fox Male Heterosexual
Toro Male Heterosexual
Vega Male Heterosexual
Yoshimitsu Male Heterosexual Possibly multiple people
Zangief Male Non-heterosexual Homosexual
Tekken 3D: Prime Edition
Alisa Bosconovitch Female Heterosexual
Anna Williams Female Heterosexual
Armor King II Male Heterosexual
Asuka Kazama Female Heterosexual
Baek Doo San Male Heterosexual
Bob (Robert Richards) Male Heterosexual
Bruce Irvin Male Heterosexual
Bryan Fury Male Heterosexual
Christie Monteiro Female Heterosexual
Craig Marduk Male Heterosexual
Eddy Gordo Male Heterosexual
Feng Wei Male Heterosexual
Ganryu Male Heterosexual
Heihachi Mishima Male Heterosexual
Hwoarang Male Heterosexual
Jack-6 Other Other Robot
Jin Kazama Male Heterosexual
Julia Chang Female Heterosexual
Kazuya Mishima Male Heterosexual
King II Male Heterosexual
Kuma II Male Heterosexual Bear
Lars Alexandersson Male Heterosexual
Lee Chaolan Male Heterosexual
Lei Wulong Male Heterosexual
Leo Kliesen Other Other Non-binary
Lili (Emilie De Rochefort) Female Heterosexual
Ling Xiaoyu Female Heterosexual
Marshall Law Male Heterosexual
Miguel Caballero Rojo Male Heterosexual
Mokujin Other Other Training dummy
Nina Williams Female Heterosexual
Panda Female Heterosexual Panda
Paul Phoenix Male Heterosexual
Raven Male Heterosexual
Roger Jr. Male Heterosexual Kangaroo
Sergei Dragunov Male Heterosexual
Steve Fox Male Heterosexual
Wang Jinrei Male Heterosexual

70
Yoshimitsu Male Heterosexual Possibly multiple people
Zafina Female Heterosexual
Under Night In-Birth
Akatsuki Male Heterosexual
Byakuya Male Heterosexual
Carmine Male Heterosexual
Chaos Male Heterosexual
Eltnum Female Heterosexual
Enkidu Male Heterosexual
Gordeau Male Heterosexual
Hilda Female Heterosexual
Hyde Male Heterosexual
Linne Female Heterosexual Reincarnation
Londrekia Male Heterosexual
Merkava Male Other Void creature
Mika Female Heterosexual
Nanase Female Heterosexual
Orie Female Heterosexual
Phonon Female Heterosexual
Seth Male Heterosexual
Vatista Female Heterosexual Android
Wagner Female Heterosexual
Waldstein Male Heterosexual Homoerotic quote
Yuzuriha Female Heterosexual

4. 2013 Character data

Character name Gender Sexuality Community Notes
reading
JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: All-Star Battle
Akira Otoishi Male Heterosexual
Bruno Bucciarati Male Heterosexual
Caesar Anthonio Zeppeli Male Heterosexual
Cool Ice (Vanilla Ice) Male Heterosexual
Diavolo Male Heterosexual
Diego Brando Male Heterosexual
Dio Brando Male Non-heterosexual Bisexual
Ermes Costello Female Heterosexual
Esidisi Male Heterosexual
F.F. (Foo Fighters) Other Other Stand, non-binary, body
that they inhabit is female
Father Pucchi (Enriko Male Heterosexual
Pucchi)
Funny Valentine Male Heterosexual
Ghiaccio Male Heterosexual
Giorno Giovanna Male Heterosexual
Guido Mista Male Heterosexual
Gyro Zeppeli Male Heterosexual

71
Hol Horse Male Heterosexual
Iggy Male Heterosexual Dog
Jean Pierre Polnareff Male Heterosexual
Johnny Joestar Male Heterosexual
Jolyne Cujoh Female Heterosexual
Jonathan Joestar Male Heterosexual
Joseph Joestar Male Heterosexual
Josuke Higashikata Male Heterosexual
Jotaro Kujo Male Heterosexual
Kars Male Heterosexual
Koichi Hirose Male Heterosexual
Lisa Lisa Female Heterosexual
Mariah Female Heterosexual
Mohammad Avdol Male Heterosexual
Narancia Ghirga Male Heterosexual
Narciso Anastasia Male Heterosexual
Noriaki Kakyoin Male Heterosexual
Okuyasu Nijimura Male Heterosexual
Pannacotta Fugo Male Heterosexual
Pet Shop Male Heterosexual Bird
Prosciutto & Presci Male Heterosexual Two males
Robert E. O. Speedwagon Male Heterosexual Strong indications that he
might be homosexual or
asexual
Rohan Kishibe Male Heterosexual
Shigekiyo Yangu Male Heterosexual
Trish Una Female Heterosexual
Wamuu Male Heterosexual
Will A. Zeppeli Male Heterosexual
Yoshikage Kira Male Heterosexual
Yukako Yamagishi Female Heterosexual
Tekken Revolution
Alisa Bosconovitch Female Heterosexual
Armor King Male Heterosexual
Asuka Kazama Female Heterosexual
Bob (Robert Richards) Male Heterosexual
Bryan Fury Male Heterosexual
Christie Monteiro Female Heterosexual
Eliza Female Heterosexual
Feng Wei Male Heterosexual
Heihachi Mishima Male Heterosexual
Hwoarang Male Heterosexual
Jack-6 Other Other Robot
Jaycee Female Heterosexual
Jin Kazama Male Heterosexual
Jinpachi Mishima Male Heterosexual
Jun Kazama Female Heterosexual
Kazuya Mishima Male Heterosexual
King Male Heterosexual

72
Kuma Male Heterosexual Bear
Kunimitsu Female Heterosexual
Lars Alexandersson Male Heterosexual
Lee Chaolan Male Heterosexual
Leo Kliesen Other Other Non-binary
Lili (Emilie De Rochefort) Female Heterosexual
Ling Xiaoyu Female Heterosexual
Marshall Law Male Heterosexual
Miguel Caballero Rojo Male Heterosexual
Mokujin Other Other Training dummy
Nina Williams Female Heterosexual
Paul Phoenix Male Heterosexual
Sergei Dragunov Male Heterosexual
Steve Fox Male Heterosexual
True Ogre Male Other Ancient demon

5. 2014 Character data

Character name Gender Sexuality Community Notes
reading
Dengeki Bunko: Fighting Climax
Akira Yuki Male Heterosexual
Ako Female Heterosexual
Asuna Female Heterosexual
Emi Yusa Female Heterosexual
Kirino Kosaka Female Heterosexual
Kirito Male Heterosexual
Kuroko Shirai Female Non-heterosexual Bisexual
Kuroyukihime Female Heterosexual
Mikoto Misaka Female Heterosexual
Miyuki Shiba Female Heterosexual
Qwenthur Barbotage Male Heterosexual
Rentarō Satomi Male Heterosexual
Selvaria Bles Female Heterosexual
Shana Female Heterosexual
Shizuo Heiwajima Male Heterosexual
Taiga Aisaka Female Heterosexual
Tatsuya Shiba Male Heterosexual
Tomoka Minato Female Heterosexual
Yukina Himeragi Female Heterosexual
Yuuki Female Heterosexual
Guilty Gear Xrd -SIGN-
Axl Low Male Heterosexual
Bedman Male Heterosexual
Chipp Zanuff Male Heterosexual
Elphelt Valentine Female Heterosexual
Faust Male Heterosexual
I-No Female Heterosexual
Ky Kiske Male Heterosexual
73
Leo Whitefang Male Heterosexual
May Female Heterosexual
Millia Rage Female Heterosexual
Potemkin Male Heterosexual
Ramlethal Valentine Female Heterosexual
Sin Kiske Male Heterosexual
Slayer Male Heterosexual
Sol Badguy Male Heterosexual
Venom Male Non-heterosexual Homosexual
Zato-ONE Male Heterosexual

6. 2015 Character data

Character name Gender Sexuality Community Notes
reading
BlazBlue: Central Fiction
Amane Nishiki Male Non- Androgynous, bisexual
Heterosexual
Arakune Male Heterosexual Non-humanoid
Azrael Male Non- Asexual
Heterosexual
Bang Shishigami Male Heterosexual
Bullet Female Heterosexual
Carl Clover Male Heterosexual
Celica A. Mercury Female Heterosexual
Es Female Heterosexual
Hakumen Male Heterosexual
Hazama Male Heterosexual
Hibiki Kohaku Male Heterosexual Androgynous
Iron Tager Male Heterosexual
Izanami Other Other Agender, female body
host, death incarnate
Jin Kisaragi Male Heterosexual
Jubei Male Heterosexual
Kagura Mutsuki Male Heterosexual
Kokonoe Female Heterosexual
Litchi Faye-Ling Female Heterosexual
Mai Natsume Other Heterosexual Female transgender
Makoto Nanaya Female Non- Bisexual
Heterosexual
Naoto Kurogane Male Heterosexual
Nine the Phantom Female Heterosexual
Noel Vermillion Female Heterosexual
Nu-13 Female Heterosexual
Platinum the Trinity Other Other Male and female soul in
the same body
Rachel Alucard Female Heterosexual
Ragna the Bloodedge Male Heterosexual
Relius Clover Male Heterosexual

74
Susano'o Male Heterosexual
Taokaka Female Non- Bisexual
Heterosexual
Tsubaki Yayoi Female Heterosexual
Valkenhayn R. Hellsing Male Heterosexual
Yuuki Terumi Male Heterosexual
Guilty Gear Xrd -Revelator-
Answer Male Heterosexual
Axl Low Male Heterosexual
Baiken Female Heterosexual
Bedman Male Heterosexual
Chipp Zanuff Male Heterosexual
Dizzy Female Heterosexual
Elphelt Valentine Female Heterosexual
Faust Male Heterosexual
I-No Female Heterosexual
Jack-O Valentine Female Heterosexual
Jam Kuradoberi Female Heterosexual
Johnny Male Heterosexual
Kum Haehyun Female Heterosexual
Ky Kiske Male Heterosexual
Leo Whitefang Male Heterosexual
May Female Heterosexual
Millia Rage Female Heterosexual
Potemkin Male Heterosexual
Ramlethal Valentine Female Heterosexual
Raven Male Non- Asexual
Heterosexual
Sin Kiske Male Heterosexual
Slayer Male Heterosexual
Sol Badguy Male Heterosexual
Venom Male Non- Homosexual
Heterosexual
Zato-ONE Male Heterosexual
Tekken 7
Akuma Male Heterosexual
Alisa Bosconovitch Female Heterosexual
Anna Williams Female Heterosexual
Armor King Male Heterosexual
Asuka Kazama Female Heterosexual
Bob (Robert Richards) Male Heterosexual
Bryan Fury Male Heterosexual
Claudio Serafino Male Heterosexual
Craig Marduk Male Heterosexual
Eddy Gordo Male Heterosexual
Eliza Female Heterosexual
Fahkumram Male Heterosexual
Feng Wei Male Heterosexual
Ganryu Male Heterosexual

75
Geese Howard Male Heterosexual
Gigas Male Other Genetically enhanced
human, bioweapon
Heihachi Mishima Male Heterosexual
Hwoarang Male Heterosexual
Jack-7 Other Other Robot
Jin Kazama Male Heterosexual
Josie Rizal Female Heterosexual
Julia Chang Female Heterosexual
Katarina Alves Female Heterosexual
Kazumi Mishima Female Heterosexual
Kazuya Mishima Male Heterosexual
King Male Heterosexual
Kuma Male Heterosexual Bear
Kunimitsu Female Heterosexual
Lars Alexandersson Male Heterosexual
Lee Chaolan Male Heterosexual
Lei Wulong Male Heterosexual
Leo Kliesen Other Other Non-binary
Leroy Smith Male Heterosexual
Lidia Sobieska Female Heterosexual
Lili (Emilie De Rochefort) Female Heterosexual
Ling Xiaoyu Female Heterosexual
Lucky Chloe Female Heterosexual
Marshall Law Male Heterosexual
Master Raven Female Heterosexual
Miguel Caballero Rojo Male Heterosexual
Negan Smith Male Heterosexual
Nina Williams Female Heterosexual
Noctis Lucis Caelum Male Heterosexual
Panda Female Heterosexual Panda
Paul Phoenix Male Heterosexual
Sergei Dragunov Male Heterosexual
Shaheen Male Heterosexual
Steve Fox Male Heterosexual
Yoshimitsu Male Heterosexual Possibly multiple people
Zafina Female Heterosexual

7. 2016 Character data

Character name Gender Sexuality Community Notes
reading
Street Fighter V
Abigail Male Heterosexual
Akira Female Heterosexual Wears more masculine
clothes
Akuma Male Heterosexual
Alex Male Heterosexual
Balrog Male Heterosexual
76
Birdie Male Heterosexual
Blanka Male Heterosexual Mutant
Cammy White Female Heterosexual
Chun-Li Female Heterosexual
Cody Male Heterosexual
Dan Male Heterosexual
Dhalsim Male Heterosexual
E. Honda Male Heterosexual
Ed Male Heterosexual
Eleven Other Other Genderfluid, default
version is male
F.A.N.G. Male Heterosexual
Falke Female Heterosexual
G Male Heterosexual
Gill Male Heterosexual
Guile Male Heterosexual
Ibuki Female Heterosexual
Juri Female Non-heterosexual Bisexual
Kage Male Other Demon, manifestation of a
power
Karin Kanzuki Female Heterosexual
Ken Masters Male Heterosexual
Kolin Female Heterosexual
Laura Matsuda Female Heterosexual
Lucia Morgan Female Heterosexual
Luke Sullivan Male Heterosexual
M. Bison Male Heterosexual
Menat Female Heterosexual
Nash (Charlie) Male Heterosexual
Necalli Other Other Entity, male body
Oro Male Heterosexual
Poison Other Heterosexual Female transgender
Rainbow Mika Female Heterosexual
Rashid Male Heterosexual
Rose Female Heterosexual
Ryu Male Heterosexual
Sagat Male Heterosexual
Sakura Female Heterosexual
Seth Other Other Agender
Urien Male Heterosexual
Vega Male Heterosexual
Zangief Male Non-heterosexual Homosexual
Zeku Male Heterosexual
The King of Fighters XIV
Alice Garnet Nakata Female Heterosexual
Andy Bogard Male Heterosexual
Ángel Female Heterosexual
Antonov Male Heterosexual
Athena Asamiya Female Heterosexual

77
Bandeiras Hattori Male Heterosexual
Benimaru Nikaido Male Heterosexual
Billy Kane Male Heterosexual
Blue Mary Female Heterosexual
Chang Koehan Male Heterosexual
Chin Gentsai Male Heterosexual
Choi Bounge Male Heterosexual
Clark Still Male Heterosexual
Gang-il Male Heterosexual
Geese Howard Male Heterosexual
Goro Daimon Male Heterosexual
Heidern Male Heterosexual
Hein Male Heterosexual
Iori Yagami Male Heterosexual
Joe Higashi Male Heterosexual
K' Male Heterosexual
Kim Kaphwan Male Heterosexual
King Female Heterosexual Dresses like a man, passed
as one in early games
King of Dinosaurs Male Heterosexual
Kukri Male Heterosexual
Kula Diamond Female Heterosexual
Kyo Kusanagi Male Heterosexual
Leona Heidern Female Heterosexual
Love Heart Female Heterosexual
Luong Female Heterosexual
Mai Shiranui Female Heterosexual
Mature Female Non-heterosexual Bisexual
Maxima Male Heterosexual
Meitenkun Male Heterosexual
Mian Female Heterosexual
Mui Mui Female Heterosexual
Najd Female Heterosexual
Nakoruru Female Heterosexual
Nelson Male Heterosexual
Oswald Male Heterosexual
Ralf Jones Male Heterosexual
Ramón Male Heterosexual
Robert Garcia Male Heterosexual
Rock Howard Male Heterosexual
Ryo Sakazaki Male Heterosexual
Ryuji Yamazaki Male Heterosexual
Shun'ei Male Heterosexual
Sie Kensou Male Heterosexual
Sylvie Paula Paula Female Heterosexual
Terry Bogard Male Heterosexual
Tung Fu Rue Male Heterosexual
Vanessa Female Heterosexual

78
Verse Other Other Agender, embodiment of
negative emotions
Vice Female Heterosexual
Whip Female Heterosexual
Xanadu Male Heterosexual
Yuri Sakazaki Female Heterosexual
Zarina Female Heterosexual

8. 2017 Character data

Character name Gender Sexuality Community Notes
reading
Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite
Arthur Male Heterosexual
Black Panther Male Heterosexual
Black Widow Female Heterosexual
Captain America Male Heterosexual
Captain Marvel Female Heterosexual
Chris Redfield Male Heterosexual
Chun-Li Female Heterosexual
Dante Male Heterosexual
Doctor Strange Male Heterosexual
Dormammu Male Heterosexual Interdimensional being
Firebrand Male Heterosexual Gargoyle
Frank West Male Heterosexual
Gamora Female Heterosexual
Ghost Rider Male Heterosexual
Hawkeye Male Heterosexual
Hulk Male Heterosexual
Iron Man Male Non-heterosexual Bisexual
Jedah Other Other Agender
Mike Haggar Male Heterosexual
Monster Hunter Female Heterosexual
Morrigan Aensland Female Non-heterosexual Succubus, bisexual
Nathan Spencer Male Heterosexual
Nemesis Other Other Creature
Nova Male Heterosexual
Rocket Raccoon Male Heterosexual Raccoon
Ryu Male Heterosexual
Sigma Male Heterosexual Robot
Spider-Man Male Heterosexual
Strider Hiryu Male Heterosexual
Thanos Male Heterosexual
Thor Male Heterosexual
Ultron Other Other Sentient super AI, male
body type and voice
Venom Male Heterosexual
Winter Soldier Male Non-heterosexual Bisexual
Megaman X Male Heterosexual Robot
79
Zero Male Heterosexual Robot

9. 2018 Character data

Character name Gender Sexuality Community Notes
reading
Fighting EX Layer
Allen Snider Male Heterosexual
Area Female Heterosexual
Blair Dame Female Heterosexual
Darun Mister Male Heterosexual
Doctrine Dark Male Heterosexual
Garuda Male Heterosexual
Hayate Kamite Male Heterosexual
Hokuto Female Heterosexual
Cracker Jack Male Heterosexual
Kairi Male Heterosexual
Pullum Purna Female Heterosexual
Sanane Female Heterosexual
Shadow Geist Male Heterosexual
Sharon Female Non-heterosexual Homosexual
Skullomania Male Heterosexual
Terry Bogard Male Heterosexual
Vulcano Rosso Male Heterosexual
Blade Strangers
Aban Hawkins Male Heterosexual
Ali-Baba Female Heterosexual Homosexual character
design
Curly Brace Female Heterosexual Robot
Emiko Female Other Child
Gunvolt Male Heterosexual
Helen Female Heterosexual
Isaac Other Other Genderfluid, child
Umihara Kawase Female Heterosexual
Lina Other Other Female appearance,
referred to as "it", robot
Joe the Liongate Male Heterosexual
Master T Drakkhen Male Heterosexual
Yokoyama Noko Female Heterosexual
Piaa Female Heterosexual
Quote Male Heterosexual Robot
Shovel Knight Male Heterosexual
Solange Female Heterosexual
BlazBlue Cross Tag Battle
Aegis Female Non-heterosexual Android, bisexual
Akatsuki Male Heterosexual
Akihiko Sanada Male Heterosexual
Azrael Male Non-heterosexual Asexual
Blake Belladonna Female Non-heterosexual Bisexual
80
Blitztank Other Other Tank
Carmine Male Heterosexual
Celica A. Mercury Female Heterosexual
Chie Satonaka Female Heterosexual
Elizabeth Female Non-heterosexual Bisexual
Es Female Heterosexual Signs of asexuality
Gordeau Male Heterosexual
Hakumen Male Heterosexual
Hazama Male Heterosexual
Heart Aino Female Non-heterosexual Pansexual
Hilda Female Heterosexual
Hyde Male Heterosexual
Iron Tager Male Heterosexual
Izayoi Female Heterosexual
Jin Kisaragi Male Heterosexual
Jūbei Male Heterosexual Cat-person
Kanji Tatsumi Male Non-heterosexual Pansexual
Labrys Female Heterosexual
Linne Female Heterosexual
Mai Natsume Other Heterosexual Female transgender
Makoto Nanaya Female Non-heterosexual Bisexual
Merkava Male Other Void creature
Mika Female Heterosexual
Mitsuru Kirijo Female Heterosexual
Naoto Kurogane Male Heterosexual
Naoto Shirogane Female Heterosexual Cross-dresses as a man
Neopolitan Female Heterosexual
Nine the Phantom Female Heterosexual
Noel Vermillion Female Heterosexual
Nu-13 Female Heterosexual
Orie Female Heterosexual
Platinum the Trinity Other Other Male and female souls in
the same body
Rachel Alucard Female Heterosexual
Ragna the Bloodedge Female Heterosexual
Ruby Rose Female Heterosexual Could be pansexual
Seth Male Heterosexual
Susano'o Male Heterosexual God, could be asexual
Teddie Male Non-heterosexual Teddy bear, bisexual
Tohru Adachi Male Heterosexual
Vatista Female Heterosexual
Waldstein Male Heterosexual Homoerotic quote
Weiss Schnee Female Heterosexual
Yang Xiao Long Female Non-heterosexual Bisexual or lesbian
Yosuke Hanamura Male Heterosexual
Yu Narukami Male Heterosexual
Yukiko Amagi Female Heterosexual
Yumi Female Heterosexual
Yuzuriha Female Heterosexual

81
Dragon Ball FighterZ
Android 16 Male Heterosexual Android
Android 17 Male Heterosexual Android, quite
androgynous
Android 18 Female Heterosexual Android
Android 21 Female Heterosexual Android
Bardock Male Heterosexual
Beerus Male Heterosexual Alien, God of destruction
Broly Male Heterosexual
Captain Ginyu Male Heterosexual Alien
Cell Other Other Alien, agender
Cooler Other Non-heterosexual Alien, non-binary, asexual
Frieza Other Non-heterosexual Alien, non-binary, asexual
Gohan (Adult) Male Heterosexual
Goku Male Heterosexual
Goku Black Male Heterosexual
Hit Male Heterosexual Alien
Janemba Other Other Alien, non-binary
Jiren Male Heterosexual Alien
Kefla Female Other Fusion of two people
Kid Buu Other Other Alien, hermaphrodite
Krillin Male Heterosexual
Majin Buu Other Other Alien, hermaphrodite
Master Roshi Male Heterosexual
Nappa Male Heterosexual
Piccolo Other Other Alien, agender, asexual
Super Baby 2 Male Heterosexual
Tien Male Heterosexual
Trunks Male Heterosexual
Vegeta Male Heterosexual
Videl Female Heterosexual
Yamcha Male Heterosexual
SNK Heroines: Tag Team Frenzy
Athena Asamiya Female Heterosexual
Jeanne D’Arc Female Heterosexual
Kula Diamond Female Heterosexual
Leona Heidern Female Heterosexual
Love Heart Female Heterosexual
Luong Female Heterosexual
Mai Shiranui Female Heterosexual
Mian Female Heterosexual
Miss X Female Other Gender-swap, still the
mind of a male
Mui Mui Female Heterosexual
Nakoruru Female Heterosexual
Shermie Female Heterosexual
Skullomania Female Other Gender-swap, still the
mind of a male
Sylvie Paula Paula Female Heterosexual

82
Terry Bogard Female Other Gender-swap, still the
mind of a male
Thief Arthur Female Heterosexual
Yuri Sakazaki Female Heterosexual
Zarina Female Heterosexual
Soulcalibur VI
2B (YoRHa No. 2 Type B) Other Heterosexual Android, female model,
bases on female model
Amy Sorel Female Heterosexual
Astaroth Other Other Agender, referred to as
"it"
Azwel Male Other Loves all humans and
humanity
Cassandra Alexandra Female Heterosexual
Cervantes de León Male Heterosexual
Chai Xianghua Female Heterosexual
Geralt of Rivia Male Heterosexual
Grøh Male Heterosexual
Haohmaru Male Heterosexual
Heishiro Mitsurugi Male Heterosexual
Hildegard von Krone Female Heterosexual
Hwang Seong-gyeong Male Heterosexual
Inferno Male Other Embodiment of a sword
Ivy (Isabelle Valentine) Female Heterosexual
Kilik Male Heterosexual
Maxi Male Heterosexual
Nightmare Male Heterosexual Human possessed by a
demon sword
Raphael Sorel Male Heterosexual
Seong Mi-na Female Heterosexual
Setsuka Female Heterosexual
Siegfried Schtauffen Male Heterosexual
Sophitia Alexandra Female Heterosexual
Taki Female Heterosexual
Talim Female Heterosexual
Tira Female Other In love with a sword
Voldo Male Heterosexual Strong sexual references
in moves, BDSM themes
Yoshimitsu Male Heterosexual Possibly multiple people
Zasalamel Male Heterosexual Reincarnation

10. 2019 Character data

Character name Gender Sexuality Community Notes
reading
Dead or Alive 6
Ayane Female Heterosexual
Bass Armstrong Male Heterosexual
Bayman Male Heterosexual

83
Brad Wong Male Heterosexual
Christie Female Heterosexual
Diego Male Heterosexual
Eliot Male Heterosexual
Hayate Male Heterosexual
Helena Douglas Female Heterosexual
Hitomi Female Heterosexual
Honoka Female Heterosexual
Jann Lee Male Heterosexual
Kasumi (Phase 4) Female Heterosexual
Kokoro Female Heterosexual
Kula Diamond Female Heterosexual
La Mariposa Female Heterosexual
Leifang Female Heterosexual
Mai Shiranui Female Heterosexual
Marie Rose Female Heterosexual
Mila Female Heterosexual
Momiji Female Heterosexual
NiCO Female Heterosexual
Nyotengu Female Heterosexual
Rachel Female Heterosexual
Raidou Male Heterosexual
Rig Male Heterosexual
Ryu Hayabusa Male Heterosexual
Tamaki Female Heterosexual
Tina Armstrong Female Non-heterosexual Homosexual
Zack Male Heterosexual
Samurai Shodown
Baiken Female Heterosexual
Basara Male Heterosexual
Cham Cham Female Heterosexual
Charlotte Christine de Female Heterosexual
Colde
Darli Dagger Female Heterosexual
Earthquake Male Heterosexual
Galford D. Weller Male Heterosexual
Genjuro Kibagami Male Non-heterosexual Bisexual
Gongsun Li Female Heterosexual
Hanzo Hattori Male Heterosexual
Haohmaru Male Heterosexual
Hibiki Takane Female Heterosexual
Iroha Female Heterosexual
Jubei Yagyu Male Heterosexual
Kazuki Kazama Male Heterosexual
Kyoshiro Senryo Male Heterosexual
Mina Majikina Female Heterosexual
Nakoruru Female Heterosexual
Rimururu Female Heterosexual
Shiki Female Heterosexual

84
Shiro Tokisada Amakusa Male Heterosexual
Shizumaru Hisame Male Heterosexual
Sogetsu Kazama Male Heterosexual
Tam Tam Male Heterosexual
Ukyo Tachibana Male Heterosexual
Wan-Fu Male Heterosexual
Warden Male Heterosexual
Wu-Ruixiang Female Heterosexual
Yashamaru Kurama Male Heterosexual
Yoshitora Tokugawa Male Heterosexual

11. 2020 Character data

Character name Gender Sexuality Community Notes
reading
Granblue Fantasy Versus
Anre Male Heterosexual
Beelzebub Male Heterosexual Homosexual
Belial Male Non-heterosexual Bisexual
Cagliostro Other Heterosexual Female transgender
Charlotta Female Heterosexual
Djeeta Female Heterosexual Bisexual
Eustace Male Heterosexual Bisexual
Ferry Female Heterosexual
Gran Male Heterosexual Bisexual
Katalina Female Non-heterosexual Bisexual
Ladiva Other Heterosexual Female transgender
Lancelot Male Heterosexual Homosexual
Lowain Male Non-heterosexual Bisexual
Metera Female Heterosexual
Narmaya Female Non-heterosexual Bisexual
Percival Male Non-heterosexual Bisexual
Seox Male Non-heterosexual Bisexual
Soriz Male Heterosexual
Vaseraga Male Heterosexual
Vira Female Non-heterosexual Homosexual
Yuel Female Non-heterosexual Homosexual
Zeta Female Heterosexual
Zooey Female Non-heterosexual Bisexual

12. 2021 Character data

Character name Gender Sexuality Community Notes
reading
Guilty Gear -STRIVE-
Anji Mito Male Heterosexual Bisexual
Axl Low Male Heterosexual
Baiken Female Heterosexual

85
Bridget Other Heterosexual Female transgender
Chipp Zanuff Male Heterosexual
Faust Male Heterosexual Asexual
Giovanna Female Heterosexual
Goldlewis Dickinson Male Heterosexual
Happy Chaos Male Heterosexual
I-No Female Heterosexual
Jack-O' Valentine Female Heterosexual
Ky Kiske Male Heterosexual
Leo Whitefang Male Heterosexual
May Female Heterosexual
Millia Rage Female Heterosexual
Nagoriyuki Male Heterosexual
Potemkin Male Heterosexual
Ramlethal Valentine Female Heterosexual
Sin Kiske Male Heterosexual
Sol Badguy Male Heterosexual
Testament Other Other Agender
Zato-ONE Male Heterosexual

86
 Appendix C: Summary data

1. Summary of Game data

Number of
characters Number of
that break characters
Number of Number of the norm with
non-binary non- but cannot Number of LGBTQ+ Number
Number Number of gender heterosexual be clearly non-human community LGBTQ+
Year of games characters characters characters identified characters readings characters

2010 1 33 0 1 3 0 4 1
2011 6 165 9 16 3 11 9 16
2012 7 218 7 19 5 8 0 20
2013 2 77 4 6 1 4 0 6
2014 2 37 0 2 0 0 0 2
2015 3 108 5 11 2 3 0 12
2016 2 104 5 8 2 0 0 9
2017 1 36 3 6 0 2 0 6
2018 6 163 14 28 8 4 0 32
2019 2 60 0 2 0 0 0 2
2020 1 23 2 9 0 0 5 11
2021 1 22 2 1 0 0 2 2
Totals 34 1046 51 109 24 32 20 119

2. Summary of Character data

Number of
characters Number of
that break characters
Number of Number of the norm with
non-binary non-hetero- but cannot Number of LGBTQ+ Number
Name of Number of gender sexual be clearly non-human community LGBTQ+
Year game characters characters characters identified characters readings characters

2010 The King of 33 0 1 3 0 4 1

Fighters XIII
2011 Aquapazza: 13 0 1 0 1 0 1
Aquaplus
Dream Match
2011 Chaos Code 14 1 1 0 1 0 1
2011 Dead or 23 0 1 0 0 0 1
Alive:
Dimensions

87
2011 Marvel vs. 50 3 7 3 5 6 7
Capcom 3:
Fate of Two
Worlds
2011 Tekken Tag 54 5 6 0 4 3 6
Tournament 2
2011 Yatagarasu 11 0 0 0 0 0 0
(JP), Legend
of Raven
2012 BlazBlue: 24 1 5 2 1 0 5
Chrono
Phantasma
2012 Dead or Alive 32 0 1 0 0 0 1
5
2012 Persona 4 20 0 4 1 1 0 4
Arena
2012 Soulcalibur V 26 1 1 2 0 0 1
2012 Street Fighter 55 2 4 0 2 0 5
x Tekken
2012 Tekken 3D: 40 3 3 0 3 0 3
Prime Edition
2012 Under Night 21 0 1 0 1 0 1
In-Birth
2013 JoJo's 45 1 2 1 2 0 2
Bizarre
Adventure:
All-Star
Battle
2013 Tekken 32 3 4 0 2 0 4
Revolution
2014 Dengeki 20 0 1 0 0 0 1
Bunko:
Fighting
Climax
2014 Guilty Gear 17 0 1 0 0 0 1
Xrd -SIGN-
2015 BlazBlue: 33 3 6 2 1 0 7
Central
Fiction
2015 Guilty Gear 25 0 2 0 0 0 2
Xrd -
Revelator-
2015 Tekken 7 50 2 3 0 2 0 3
2016 Street Fighter 46 4 6 1 0 0 7
V
2016 The King of 58 1 2 1 0 0 2
Fighters XIV
2017 Marvel vs. 36 3 6 0 2 0 6
Capcom:
Infinite

88
2018 Fighting EX 17 0 1 0 0 0 1
Layer
2018 Blade 16 2 1 1 0 0 2
Strangers
2018 BlazBlue 53 3 12 4 4 0 13
Cross Tag
Battle
2018 Dragon Ball 30 7 8 1 0 0 9
FighterZ
2018 SNK 18 0 3 0 0 0 3
Heroines:
Tag Team
Frenzy
2018 Soulcalibur 29 2 3 2 0 0 4
VI
2019 Dead or Alive 30 0 1 0 0 0 1
6
2019 Samurai 30 0 1 0 0 0 1
Shodown /
Samurai
Spirits (2019)
2020 Granblue 23 2 9 0 0 5 11
Fantasy
Versus
2021 Guilty Gear - 22 2 1 0 0 2 2
STRIVE-
Totals 1046 51 109 24 32 20 119

89