On Mega Man and women (decades-old spoilers)

[Annie Blue]

Just something I've wanted to muse about out loud for a while, and welcome others to join.

The Mega Man series has always had a complicated relationship with femininity, which has ranged from simply ignoring women to casual misogyny to (hilariously) unintentional homoeroticism. I'd like to lay that out here by character to shine some light on the issue and open it up to discussion.


There's a wall of text ahead, so let me just preface this with the points I'm going to touch on.

- The classic series pretty much just has Roll, and handles her presentation pretty poorly

- The X series has a few women but pretty much puts them all behind desks. The only one who actually gets in on the action dies because she can't control her emotions.

- The Zero series gets it totally right in exactly one place, remains weak everywhere else

- ZX pretty much goes affirmative action on the matter with specific quotas for how many women should be in each situation

- Overall, the Mega Man series seems pretty mystified by the concept of women

Right, so here we go.

-Classic-
So, the Classic series has Roll. It's had Roll from the start- her first appearance is briefly at the end of MM1, wherein she welcomes Mega Man home after his defeat of Dr. Wily. She's absent in MM2, and then finally formally introduced in-game at the end of MM3. She appears again at the end of MM4, and then is absent for the next two games. Rumor has it she was intended to be playable in MM2 but the idea was scrapped for various reasons.

So over the course of six games, Roll is just there to be the girl. She doesn't do girl things. She doesn't need to be saved. She's just there to exist as a female thing, and to be the other half of a Rock and Roll pun. It's not until MM7 that Roll actually says or does anothing, at which point she finally becomes a character rather than a wordless, motionless statue. In the Japanese version, she is shown to be dutifully obsessed with cleaning, and appears randomly when Rock gets a new weapon (In place of Dr. Light or Auto) to explain its functions to him. Light gives a straight answer about it, Auto makes a joke about it, and Roll muses on how it can be used to clean the house.

This becomes Roll's life. She is a selfless maid, more powerful than a human girl but less powerful than a proper hero and wholly, mechanically devoted to serving others. She appears in Marvel Vs. Capcom as a joke character where many of her animations result in her own humiliation (notably, the character's underwear becomes exposed when she jumps, resulting in her covering herself in embarrassment and chastising her opponent for looking), as well as a few other cameos as a series mascot whose main purpose is to be cute.

Roll doesn't really do anything meaningful until Mega Man: Powered Up, where she uses the power of cleaning to take arms against her opponents in a non-canonical scenario. Players are encouraged to dress her in a variety of cute outfits while she does this. No other character has these cosmetic options. Players again get to decide her outfit in MM9, and in MM10 she is essentially a damsel in distress, though she actually gets a meaningful heroic moment when she reveals that in her selflessness, she has declined to take her medicine in case someone else needed it more, ultimately saving Mega Man as a result. The character had been created 20 years ago before receiving that moment.


So, that's where we've started. The first Mega Man girl does literally nothing but be a girl for several years, then gains a personality in the form of a girl who loves cleaning the house and being selfless toward others. The Classic series introduces very few other females in this time- one damsel-in-distress, and... Pretty much nobody else in the main canon, besides Splash Woman.

Writing this out is pretty cringeworthy, but it's understandable for the time. Roll didn't appear in a time where the games were especially story or dialogue-driven, so it's not like she got less screen time than the rest of the supporting cast. In fact, she's the most respresented supporting character in the series. Her personality makes sense in that she's a domestic robot, and it's played for laughs. The Classic series could have easily come and gone with no female characters whatsoever without anyone noticing, since most of the time it's just Mega Man fighting formless animal and toy-shaped robots. Roll at least (eventually) has charm as a character and stands out in a series where there isn't a lot of room for supporting characters in the first place.


- X -

To reiterate, the lack of female presence in Classic Mega Man makes sense. There's not a lot of dialogue or cutscenes, and it's a series aimed at young boys so there's no need for a romantic component or a strong female lead. The X series' handling of femininity, on the other hand, is baffling.

X goes three games with no women whatsoever (excluding Zero and his luxurious flowing hair). Again, this is fine. It's the gritty front line of a perpetually losing battle and the main character is almost always alone but for the rogue construction and military equipment staring him down. There aren't many characters to begin with and little time to explore them.

X4 grants us our first dynamic female presence in the series in the form of Zero's love interest Iris, who is presented as the peace-loving counterpart to her warrior brother Colonel. She acts as Zero's navigator in an attempt to bring peace between the two sides, however it all plays out like a more brutal Romeo and Juliet: Zero slays Colonel in a fight, prompting Iris to take arms against him. She dons pink and purple armor for the fight (to remind us that she is female, even though her color scheme was primarily red and blue with only a few pink elements and no purple), and Zero cuts her down. This is as cool a character as we're going to see in the numbered series.

X5 introduces Alia, who unsurprisingly plays the role of navigator, because women in Mega Man apparently all belong behind desks supporting the men. There's no personality whatsoever beneath her blonde hair and pink armor, and she behaves more or less as an extension of her job as navigator. Her role is expanded on in X6, where it is revealed that she was once a research scientist who participated in cahoots with other scientists in sabotaging Gate's research (resulting in the murder of several innocent reploids), but once her evil ex boyfriend is defeated her past on the cutting edge of reploid science is not discussed again and she spends the rest of the series behind a desk, barring a post-game playable cameo in X8. There, she can join the fight alongside her navigator counterparts, Pallette (a peppy cartographer) and Layer (who is not dressed appropriately for the workplace in the slightest), neither of whom really does much in the story except be a navigator and crush on the heroes.

So this is... Ugh.
Basically every woman in the X series is a navigator whose personality revolves around how into navigating they are. Half of them have feelings for Zero, while the other half are just married to their work. Half function, in some capacity during the story, as unwilling antagonists, one because she is untrustworthy and one because she is emotional. One rocks underboob at work.

What I find somewhere between hilarious and suspicious is the level of chemistry between the main characters and these women. X and Alia couldn't have a more coldly professional relationship, and neither has the slightest interest in one another. Two women express feelings for Zero, and he ignores one and kills the other. X never expresses an emotional connection toward anyone but his BFF Zero, which Zero reciprocates. In a series that thus far has mainly been about ignoring women, the intense bond X and Zero share is the strongest, most stable love depicted in the franchise.

Now, mind you, the X series' story is just clumsy as hell anyway. It starts out with a gritty comic book motif and takes strong cues from Blade Runner, and while the art grows more shonen anime, the story becomes more flagrantly genocidal. Quirky mechanic Douglas shows his Jugheadesque face right around the time most life on earth is in imminent apocalyptic danger. Still, I can't help but detest how this leg of the series has treated femininity as a whole. They might as well have slapped a sign on it that said "no girls allowed, we're playing robots and spaceships."

Command Mission expands the cast tremendously, though, giving us a naïve, subservient healer in a nurse outfit, a self-centered thief whose clothing disappears as she gains power, and a pink dominatrix-themed villain predominanty motivated by her attraction to her superior.

Allow me to dry my tears as we continue.

- Zero -

I adore the Zero series. It's not just because of the way the art and gameplay remain consistend throughout the series. It's not just because the story has a proper beginning and end. It's not just because it's stylish as hell. It's because the Zero series starts to recognize that women are people.

Let's talk about Ciel. I love Ciel. She's one of my favorite characters in the series. So who is she? Well, she's a blonde, pink-clad navigator who doesn't participate in combat and frequently needs to be rescued, and falls in love with the hero, because this is still Mega Man.

But she's so much more than that.

Ciel is the leader of the resistance, a human girl rebelling against her own species to fight for justice for reploids. She needs to be saved because she frequenty puts herself on the front lines of combat to accomplish things her soldiers can't. She navigates for Zero because Zero doesn't know the plan and she does. Ciel isn't some pretty support character- She's Zero's *boss,* and whenever she isn't on the front lines, it's because she's working feverishly to stop an entire war through diplomacy and planning, and she's the only one doing that. Zero was never the hero of his own series- he himself admitted that much. He was just the muscle in Ciel's plan.

Ciel is *amazing*.

As for the rest... Well. There's Leviathan, whose job is to be the token girl in her quartet. Harpuia's the smart one, Fefnir's the angry one, Phantom's the stern one, and Leviathan's the flippant, flirty one. Her fondness for Zero more or less defines her extremely-undeveloped character, though this is a trend among the Big Four, all of whom are derived from X's DNA and thus all share X's personal obsession with his Robo-BFF. Take that away, and Leviathan is just the lazy, detached pretty one. Still, she's a collected and fierce combatant who survives multiple encounters with strong opponents, and that counts for something.

There are also a few female bosses. This is IntiCreates' doing. They try to work in a female boss here and there where they can, eventually evolving into Inti's "two female bosses per game" formula as of Zero 4.

Speaking of Zero 4, there's Neige, a human who once had a relationship with the warrior Craft. She's fierce and independent, providing a voice for humanity's frustrations with both sides of the war, though she still goes and gets herself kidnapped and becomes half of a tragic love story, in what is becoming a Mega Man cliche.

So, that's the Zero series, anyway. A few female characters who don't go too far, but one genuinely incredible one who more or less single-handedly drives the series, and that's hella cool.

- ZX -

And then, finally, we had a female main character. Aile is at first basically just a female alternative to Vent, with a similar heroic personality and an ever-so-slightly stereotyped emphasis on moving faster as opposed to weathering blows better. The player can change her outfit for some reason, because the Mega Man series is obsessed with letting players dress up the female characters. Still, I love Aile, because she's actually a real heroine. She runs her sh*t.

What makes her more interesting is that, in ZXA's story, she is the protagonist that Grey encounters. While ZX doesn't necessarily have a *canon* storyline, Grey feels like a more developed and interesting character than his feminine counterpart in ZXA, so the fact that his story includes a mature, experienced, powerful Aile showing up makes her even cooler.

Ashe, on the other hand, is a little less developed, relying pretty heavily on her "self-centered treasure-hunter" persona, but she's still interesting, and still a strong and respectable character. The fact that her abilities diverge more dramatically from Grey than Aile's do from Vent makes her worth playing for more reasons than just a preference for a female avatar.

Ciel stand-in Prairie (formerly Zero series' Alouette) plays a similar role to her older sister, acting as the heroes' leader despite her immature appearance, though she's a bit too much of a carbon copy to stand out much. Her disappearance between games is never explained.

Pandora appears as another instance of the "part of a pair" series cliche, wherein the man is the battle-ready one and the woman is the calm, quiet one. Her silence, however, is deliciously disturbing, and while her backstory and motivations are inseparable from he male counterpart, she's still an enjoyable and dangerous character who does much more than just "be the girl."

Throughout the games, Inti keeps to its "2 female bosses per set of 8" format. This is progressive in context, where previously games were lucky to get one female boss, but also feel a little bit obligatory, like George Harrison's two songs per album- a reminder that women are here and worthy of attention, but not the stars of the show. This one-to-four ratio continues in the enemy Mega Men, with the most brazen inversion of feminine stereotypes the series has seen yet: Atlas, the fire Mega Man, a soldier who believes in a doctrine of might-makes-right.

All in all, ZX feels like it's thinking more consciously about its presentation of women, presenting more relevant female characters than any series thus far. However, its quota-style casting choice where very specifically one out of every set of four enemies is female reads as a clumsily-conspicuous sort of affirmative action.




Aaaand that covers the main platforming games, at least. I've left out Legends for now (you know, the games where players are encouraged to walk in on their adoptive sister while she's naked) since this is long enough, as well as the RPG timeline which is much more story driven and therefore harder to condense into into a single essay.

To reiterate, slash TL;DR

- Classic pretty much has one girl, doesn't treat her super well

- X's women basically all do the same thing in the background while X and Zero enjoy their bromance

- Zero's Ciel is a total badass and the most competent character at her job in the whole continuity

- ZX conspicuously makes sure there is one woman to every three men


So, that's that. To me, it seems like not such a great track record, which gradually progresses from forgetting women exist to presenting them exclusively as secretaries to finally attempting to be equal by filling specific quotas. Now, this kind of thing is typical in video games, yes, but Mega Man has always felt just especially extra clueless about female representation.

It's bugged and bemused me a long time, and I just kind of want to lay this all out here and see what you guys think.

[Call Sign: Raven]

Mega Man has had a complicated relationship with femininity? With an opener like that, how can we take the rest seriously....wow!

[Annie Blue]

Originally posted by Harrison Ford:

Mega Man has had a complicated relationship with femininity? With an opener like that, how can we take the rest seriously....wow!

I don’t see what’s odd about the opener. Would you care to elaborate, please?

[Call Sign: Raven]

It's a game about robots that are shaped like men (mostly) and all named after men, with the exception of maybe 8-10 robots in the whole series. I would say that the game has openly ignored the feminine side of life for decades. The fact that they throw in a fem-bot every 10-15 male robots says it all. And that's fine! It really doesn't matter what the gender of a fictional robot is!

[Annie Blue]

Originally posted by Harrison Ford:

It's a game about robots that are shaped like men (mostly) and all named after men, with the exception of maybe 8-10 robots in the whole series. I would say that the game has openly ignored the feminine side of life for decades. The fact that they throw in a fem-bot every 10-15 male robots says it all. And that's fine! It really doesn't matter what the gender of a fictional robot is!

You’re mostly right. It doesn’t bother me that a game aimed at a male audience has a predominantly male cast in the slightest, especially considering how little dialogue the early games had.

What bothers me isn’t how few female characters there are- It’s how *useless* they are. The series introduces Roll in the first game, doesn’t give her any single thing to say or do for the first six games, and then when she finally gets to say something in MM7, it’s mostly all about cleaning the house. She didn’t even need to be in any of the previous games, but she was put there anyway just to stand there being the token girl.

I’m not outraged by this, mind you- just disappointed and embarrassed that my favorite series has had no idea how to use female characters except as maids and secretaries for the majority of its existence.

It’s clumsy and it’s weird, feel?

[Call Sign: Raven]

I'm starting to see what you mean! I agree. The series has been very clumsy with it's interpretation of women. The men in the series are rather one-note, too. As a whole, video games suffer from this cycle of skewed gender portrayal. This has been a general discussion I've had with many of my buddies; that video game developers are great at making a fun thing to play with, but are terrible at story telling. Especially, back in the day, when the majority of these guys were self-made programmer types (no such thing as college degrees for gaming back then) with huge amounts of imagination and heart, but absolutely no talent at telling coherent stories. Even games that are story based, such as Final Fantasy or Dragon Warrior, had very trite and basic story telling. Basically, just enough to get the job done. I would say the same for Mega Man.

The only point I would disagree with you on, is that you don't have to feel embarassed for the way the developers chose to over-emphasize their portrayal of men and their diminished female characters.

[Annie Blue]

Originally posted by Harrison Ford:

The only point I would disagree with you on, is that you don't have to feel embarassed for the way the developers chose to over-emphasize their portrayal of men and their diminished female characters.

I mean, being a female gamer kind of necessitates embarrassment in this case. It’s dissonant, to say the least, to be a fan of something that pretty much tells you your job is to dress pretty and support the men while they go be superheroes. I’ve loved Mega Man since I was little, but it didn’t throw me any actual female role models for a long, long time, so I got to grow up idolizing X and Protoman while quietly ignoring the fact the game was telling girls everywhere that they can’t be the hero.

But yeah, you’re right that games can often do a very clumsy job of telling stories in general. Mega Man’s plot is basically pretty heavily lifted from Astro Boy anyway, while X does little to disguise its reliance on copying Blade Runner, though neither weaves as compelling a tale as its inspiration. I think Zero gets a pretty cool story in, but it’s very heavily reliant on context.

It’s a common point of debate, whether games can be considered an effective means of delivering a story. I think they can, especially with the personal connection one can have with the plot by playing through it, but I think they very often fall short for a wealth of reasons.

I don’t really blame Mega Man for taking so long to actually use a female character meaningfully as much as I find it fun to laugh at its ineptitude, and it’s terribly entertaining to weave fan theories that X and Zero are lovers while citing their poor track record with fembots as my evidence... But there is just a little twinge of genuine sadness that even now, after decades of development in the series, this is the best they’ve managed to do.

[Call Sign: Raven]

I love what you are saying, but I still don't think that you should be embarrassed by anything you choose to do. I think that video games have come a looooong way in terms of such social stigma. Now, there are so many people playing that I don't feel like a social outcast, like I did when I was a kid.

People will tell you a lot about how you should think and feel about certain things, and while it's great to have input the end result is that you have to be okay with whatever is floating around in your head. For you, and nobody else.

I would add that my role as a man has never come from what video games presumably "tell" me I should be doing. I love weight lifting, for example, but I have a realistic approach and I do not try to look like some meathead from Gears of War, for example. I don't act all heroic all of the time, and I don't run around saving damsels in distress. In fact, I try to look for characters that I don't relate to in the slightest. That's why I always loved the more fantastical things like in Mega Man or Dark Souls. There's absolutely zero realism involved in those games, so I thoroughly enjoy the fantasy settings they provide.

[cowbell]

Why do you want to bang robots?

[Call Sign: Raven]

Hm, not enough cowbell.

[Annie Blue]

I’m bemoaning the lack of meaningful female role models in a series that’s over a hundred games strong. Please rest assured that “bangability” is not a criteria I am judging these characters on.

The first female character doesn’t get a line for six games, the first female combatant has to be killed by the heroes for losing control of her emotions, and the most intelligent, proactive and decisive female character the series has to offer is a little pink pacifist who needs to be rescued more than literally anyone else in the whole series and whose plans can only work when a man who has no clue what’s going on uses his man-strength on it and saves the day (at which point she falls in love with him).

These are not healthy portrayals of women.

[solaris32]

Women are ruining enough stuff nowadays as it is. Leave my childhood classics alone please, they are fine as they are. Future games don't need to be influenced with this feminism nonsense.

[Annie Blue]

Originally posted by solaris32:

Women are ruining enough stuff nowadays as it is. Leave my childhood classics alone please, they are fine as they are. Future games don't need to be influenced with this feminism nonsense.

They’re my childhood classics too, friend. I don’t think acknowledging that they weren’t perfect is ruining them, and based on what I’ve outlined here, they’ve gotten more fair toward women over time, not less, meaning the creators would likely agree that the early games were a little bit lacking for meaningful female characters.

I’m not trying to change the past. I just want to talk about it and examine it for what it is.

[Gamephreak5]

Wow, what an SJW cuck. Caring about how many/useless fictional "female" robots are? How much more pathetic can you get?

The MegaMan games have never been about gender, AA, feminsim, or political ideoligies the likes 3rd Wave Feminazis or "Progressives" portray today, with the exception of maybe very basic and simplified philosophies surrounding the moral and ethical quandries of Robot AI and AI Freedom (going from MegaMan (can only do what he's programmed to do) to X (has total freedom to do and think whatever; not bound by the "Laws of Robotics" and the ramifications of that since every Reploid is based on X's blueprints).

Who cares if Alia is just a navigator? She's not a major character, nor does she need to do anything more than her station. Who cares that Roll is a robot maid? She was never built for combat, plus she's also just a side character. Important connections, yes (MegaMan's "sister"), but for MegaMan, you don't need anything more than that. Roll isn't the focus, MegaMan and his/your struggles are.

The series has never been focused on story or fleshing out characters, and when Capcom tried, it came off as forced, cringy, or edgy.

And as for Ciel being the "only female character done right in the series" (LMAO), remember she was only put there and built up to be Zero's love interest, even though it never makes sense since humans and robots can't reproduce. Don't get triggered too hard!


The MegaMan series is one where you shouldn't think too hard about it's characters or story. It's supposed to be cartoony, it's supposed to be a bit cliche. There's nothing wrong with MegaMan focusing on the "Man" part of the name.

Oh yeah, and there's absolutely NO MYSOGINY in the MegaMan games. None. You're really grasping at straws with that claim. Try not to virtue signal so hard next time, yeah?

[Annie Blue]

Originally posted by Gamephreak5:

Wow, what an SJW cuck. Caring about how many/useless fictional "female" robots are? How much more pathetic can you get?

The MegaMan games have never been about gender, AA, feminsim, or political ideoligies the likes 3rd Wave Feminazis or "Progressives" portray today, with the exception of maybe very basic and simplified philosophies surrounding the moral and ethical quandries of Robot AI and AI Freedom (going from MegaMan (can only do what he's programmed to do) to X (has total freedom to do and think whatever; not bound by the "Laws of Robotics" and the ramifications of that since every Reploid is based on X's blueprints).

Who cares if Alia is just a navigator? She's not a major character, nor does she need to do anything more than her station. Who cares that Roll is a robot maid? She was never built for combat, plus she's also just a side character. Important connections, yes (MegaMan's "sister"), but for MegaMan, you don't need anything more than that. Roll isn't the focus, MegaMan and his/your struggles are.

The series has never been focused on story or fleshing out characters, and when Capcom tried, it came off as forced, cringy, or edgy.

And as for Ciel being the "only female character done right in the series" (LMAO), remember she was only put there and built up to be Zero's love interest, even though it never makes sense since humans and robots can't reproduce. Don't get triggered too hard!


The MegaMan series is one where you shouldn't think too hard about it's characters or story. It's supposed to be cartoony, it's supposed to be a bit cliche. There's nothing wrong with MegaMan focusing on the "Man" part of the name.

Oh yeah, and there's absolutely NO MYSOGINY in the MegaMan games. None. You're really grasping at straws with that claim. Try not to virtue signal so hard next time, yeah?

I’m impressed that you read the whole thing even though you disagree so strongly. Thank you!

You’re completely right that Mega Man is in no way a series that seeks to make a statement about feminism, women, or gender at all (barring perhaps IntiCreates’ weird mathematical gender quotas). It is definitely a game about super fighting robots. And thank goodness! It probably wouldn’t have gotten very far otherwise.

No, the series was never *trying* to say anything about women. That’s not the issue. The issue was the reverse- that it really didn’t think about us very much at all.

I’m not saying it should have, per se. It was a video game for boys in an era where video games were pretty much all for boys. Capcom didn’t have any social responsibility to appeal to the girls who were playing the games, much less to attempt to create wholesome role models for them. It didn’t even have an economic responsibility. It would have been very unnecessarily ahead of its time to do so.

Listen, I’m sorry- by the colorful insults you’re throwing my way, I feel like you’re feeling attacked right now, and I’m sorry to have... what was your terminology? “Triggered” you? That wasn’t my intention. I’m not trying to demonize the games or the people who love them. *I* love them.

I’m not saying the games committed some horrid crime by forgetting to give the girls playing them a better example of women in the universe than the maids and desk clerks it portrayed. I’m just saying that, as a woman, thinking back to how important the games were to me growing up, I just kind of wish they had. So, now that it’s been decades and we’re all grown up and not fantasizing about being super fighting robots anymore, I just kind of want to talk about how it’s sort of funny and sort of sad how different things were back then, and how they changed over the years.

I’m sorry if some part of that was upsetting to you, personally, and/or your sociopolitical sensibilities.

Thanks again for reading, really.

[Naoya]

X x Zero is the best, maybe only second to Zero x Harpuia.

But on a more serious note, I agree the handling of females in the series at large is pretty shameful. Personally, it doesn't change my enjoyment of the series much at all. The Classic and Zero are my personal favorites, with ZX being something I enjoy and the X series being one that I don't particularly like at all. Either way, it was interesting to read a more in-depth analysis of the females in the series. Maybe Rockman 11 could even try to buck the trend. I mean, likely not, but it'd be nice regardless.

Speaking of which, have you tried reading the Archie comics of the series? It tries to add in interesting, competent female characters when it can, without sacrificing the core of the series either. It's a fun read, besides.

I'd type more, but I gotta go for now, so I might come back and talk more later.