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.

[Annie Blue]

Opprinnelig skrevet av 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.

Agreed on all counts. The games are amazing regardless of characterization, classic and Zero are delicious, and Zero x Harpuia is a pairing that is both logically defensible and adorable. The Big Four all seemed to inherit X’s particular preoccupation with Zero in some capacity, so I imagine Harpuia was probably contending with a reluctant obsession. It’s a thought that makes the story all the richer...

Haven’t read the comics yet- need to get around to it. They seem pretty cool, overall! Glad to hear they carry themselves well.

[Naoya]

Opprinnelig skrevet av Chicory Blue:

Opprinnelig skrevet av 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.

Agreed on all counts. The games are amazing regardless of characterization, classic and Zero are delicious, and Zero x Harpuia is a pairing that is both logically defensible and adorable. The Big Four all seemed to inherit X’s particular preoccupation with Zero in some capacity, so I imagine Harpuia was probably contending with a reluctant obsession. It’s a thought that makes the story all the richer...

Haven’t read the comics yet- need to get around to it. They seem pretty cool, overall! Glad to hear they carry themselves well.

It makes me happy that that the series has pairings like that, as a gay gamer. Certainly made my playthrough of the Zero series all the better. Like that time Harpuia saved Zero's life. I wonder just what was going through his head at that moment?

Otherwise, I must say I've never actually played X7 and X8. Hearing about those naviguators makes me a bit sad, and I hope there's a way to turn them off.

[Annie Blue]

Opprinnelig skrevet av Naoya:

Opprinnelig skrevet av Chicory Blue:

Agreed on all counts. The games are amazing regardless of characterization, classic and Zero are delicious, and Zero x Harpuia is a pairing that is both logically defensible and adorable. The Big Four all seemed to inherit X’s particular preoccupation with Zero in some capacity, so I imagine Harpuia was probably contending with a reluctant obsession. It’s a thought that makes the story all the richer...

Haven’t read the comics yet- need to get around to it. They seem pretty cool, overall! Glad to hear they carry themselves well.

It makes me happy that that the series has pairings like that, as a gay gamer. Certainly made my playthrough of the Zero series all the better. Like that time Harpuia saved Zero's life. I wonder just what was going through his head at that moment?

Otherwise, I must say I've never actually played X7 and X8. Hearing about those naviguators makes me a bit sad, and I hope there's a way to turn them off.

I vaguely recall it being possible to choose no navigator in X8. It’s a pretty strange game that offers a lot of choices: you pick two of the three heroes, then in X’s case you pick one of two armor sets (or mix and match the pieces from each), and then choose which of the three navigators you want. The navigators each specialize in giving a different sort hints throughout the stage, with Alia emphasizing key features of the stage and boss rooms, Pallette emphasizing the identification of hidden paths, and Layer giving information on enemies and bosses.

Each one also functions as a weaker counterpart to one of the heroes and becomes playable if you beat the game having picked her more than the other two. Alia’s arguably the weakest, playing like X but without the ability to gain any of his armor powers, while Pallette acts as Axl without the copy shot or white armor variant, and Layer functions pretty much identically to Zero but without his black armor variant. The only practical purpose they reasonably serve is letting you select them alongside their counterpart so you can double down on a preferred play style in exchange for less overall power, but using them in any other context is just playing with a concrete disadvantage in exchange for wanting to play as a girl.

It’s interesting, in that at least they’re useful to the team in a sense, employ different specialities, and can function as more or less non-canon combat characters (cutscenes and dialogue are disabled while using them), but the overall message is that the boys fight while their genderswapped versions bravely man the help desk, and that your reward at the end of the game is watching *your personal favorite* help desk girl adorably try to be as strong as her male counterpart but fail at it.

On to something less infuriating, the Zero series aesthetic meanwhile feels deliberately pro-gay (which at least renders a satisfying excuse for the series’ tendency to ignore women) with the characters switched from clunky saturday morning cartoon robots to lean, androgynous beauties rendered with romantically hand-sketched outlines. The story itself plays out like a post-apocalyptic post-analysis of X and Zero’s lost love, as Zero stumbles about cutting an aimless path of destruction through his former partner’s legacy- a world of timid, insecure and obsessive peace where both friend and foe all seem to idolize a wholly-bewildered Zero.

Examined without any consideration to romance, Harpuia seeing the man who just decapitated his kingdom and choosing to save him is a very bewildering choice indeed. You might call it respect between warriors, but Harpuia’s logical devotion to his cause of creating a better world for humans doesn’t seem like it would allow such a pointless sentimental gesture. I might say it has something to do with him latently knowing that Copy X was not quite right, or him at last understanding that Elpizo’s rise to power is going to result in unnecessary bloodshed. He seems to trust Zero to do the right thing in Z2’s climactic crisis, but why? Zero is by all accounts just the bullet in the chamber of a gun aimed at the world Harpuia has been put in charge of. Unless Harpuia is more genuinely unsatisfied with what Neo Arcadia really is than he’s letting on (which I do feel is a very real possibility), the gesture feels more self-destructive than merely logical or sentimental.

Factoring in X’s emotions, though, I feel it makes more sense. X would surely have let his respect and admiration for Zero hold him back and hesitate on killing him when he wasn’t an immediate threat, X would have absolutely been unsatisfied with what Neo Arcadia had become, and X would have without a doubt trusted Zero with the task of eliminating him should he become maverick.

For a man in charge of governing all of humanity, Harpuia’s choice to save the biggest threat to his own world is apparently irresponsible to say the least, but for a man agonized with X’s guilt over what his world was perverted into, it makes sense, especially considering him begging Zero to kill him as he began to lose control of himself.

That is to say, I think Harpuia share’s X’s death wish as expressed in X4, which becomes an intensely romantic thing in regards to Zero’s entire purpose being to destroy Light’s legacy, the very heart of which was X. As Light and Wily’s feud begins to claim the whole world for a victim, X is obsessed with being able to stop fighting, and grows more and more eager for his dearest comrade and fated undoer Zero to end his painful existence. Harpuia, being an expression of X himself, shares at least an echo of this sentiment, sparing Zero out of both love/admiration and the latent hope that Zero will continue to undo all of the trouble that X unwittingly caused.

It’s all speculation, but I like it.

“Destroy me, senpai~”

Teehee.

[Naoya]

I could easily see myself just never using the naviguators.I always disliked the "helper fairy" type characters. I don't like having characters speak while I play, and I've always been more the kind to prefer ambient storytelling to dialogue. Plus, it's distracting. Sure, that means I don't get the naviguators as playable characters, but eh, I'll live! Speaking of which, I remember the Rockman Complete Works, that only released in Japan sadly, having a similar system. You could go through the first 6 games, but Roll and Light could contact you to give you info as you play. The main difference, I think, is that it was totally optional in that it would just tell you "Hey, you have a message", and you'd have to be the one to press the button to see it.

Speaking of Rock, I always felt there was something between him and Forte/Bass. I mean, Forte is obsessed with strength and being the strongest, yet he always ends up being beaten by Rock no matter how hard he tries. That alone creates a sort of obsessions with wanting to beat him, but I dunno... He seems more than just obsessed with beating him, he seems to be obsessed with being THE ONE to beat him. Enough to team up with him sometimes to defeat common foes. It's hard to say how much of this could be converted to romantic subtext, considering the general lack of dialogue in the Classic series, but I think there's potential there!

And yeah, I think one of the major reasons I loved the Zero series was just how handsome and pretty the men are. Zero looks hot as heck in that series, much more so than his blue crystal nipples counterpart from the X series. And you're pretty much spot on with what I've felt between him and Harpuia, too. Some could be said to exist between him and Fafnir as well, but I think Zero and Harpuia is much stronger.

[Annie Blue]

The Rock/Forte dynamic would seem to arise from the same place as X/Zero, no? Wily tends to build his robots around the single-minded purpose of destroying Mega Man, so it’s easy to see them being consumed by an obsession with him, like with Hyadain’s reimagining of the MM2 cast as all being in love with Rock in some sense. Rock is Forte’s whole world, after all. I could easily see Forte coming to Rock’s rescue if it meant denying someone else the right to defeat him.

Meanwhile, Fafnir’s obsession with Zero is not only plausible but kind of necessary by Zero/Harpuia logic. Each of the Big Four share X’s DNA/data, so his personal fixations on Zero are baked into them. Fafnir and Leviathan both confess to feeling invigorated when fighting Zero, as if it’s the thing that makes them feel most whole. Leviathan isn’t even a combat junkie like Fafnir, coming across as fairly lazy and delicate, but still seems completely enthralled by her fights with Zero.

Curiously, I don’t get that same heat off of Phantom, whose attitude toward Zero is one of open contempt and begrudging respect. I’m led to wonder whether the Guardians inherited different aspects of X’s feelings toward Zero, with Phantom harboring X’s darker emotions, such as his bitterness over Zero’s disappearance or his memories of how dangerous Zero can truly be.

Of course, the common factor in all these star-crossed pairings is their originators, Light and Wily, which makes me wonder...

[Naoya]

I can almost see why there's all these Hyadain songs pairing up Rock with the various Robot Masters of Rockman 2, then. I mean, they were ALL built specifically for fighting him! Rock's got quite the harem going.

I think Phantom hated Zero on the outset perhaps out of doubt that he's the real Zero. Perhaps seeing him as tarnishing the legend of Zero, much like how angry X got at Nightmare Zero in X6. Once Phantom gets defeated in the Cyberworld, he seems really interested in seeing Zero grow into the hero he can become, going as far as convincing the other guardians to help him out. The way I see it is that he simply needed a bit of eye opening.

Dunno about Light and Wily though. Wily certainly DOES seem rather obsessed with Light too. Enough to basically dedicate the rest of his life to outdoing him and proving he's better at making robots. The amount of times he steals Light's robots is telling too. Might also explain his weird fetish for Gutsman :P

[Little Game Fairy]

Gosh, you're right. Reading this is kind of depressing. The way Mega Man skews towards men so much I don't like.

As a big fan of Roll this makes me wonder if it's very superficial. I wonder why I've become so attached to Roll as a character and why I'm such a big fan.

[Naoya]

Opprinnelig skrevet av Little Game Fairy:

Gosh, you're right. Reading this is kind of depressing. The way Mega Man skews towards men so much I don't like.

As a big fan of Roll this makes me wonder if it's very superficial. I wonder why I've become so attached to Roll as a character and why I'm such a big fan.

I wouldn't worry too much about it. We like what we like. Roll was certainly made to appeal to people, and it's not like I dislike her myself, even if I don't care too much for her. It's also important to remember that she's a bit of a relic of her time, so judging her by modern standards would obviously make her seem worse than she is.

I wouldn't say the series is depressing though. It handles women rather badly, yes, but it's still an amazing series.

[Annie Blue]

Yeah, Roll doesn’t have the most dignified history, but she’s grown into her role as a mascot character, at least. Her subservience is played for laughs alongside her cuteness, and the lighthearted humor she contributes does more for the series than, say, any of the X series navigators, who are overall pretty forgettable. It’s not like every female character *needs* to be a role model, after all, and even so, the selflessness and devotion to her comrades she shows later in the series is commendable.

There’s nothing wrong with being “the cute one.” It’s a bit of a shame when “the cute one” is the only girl for miles, but that doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with enjoying her being around.

Mowing down robot masters with a broom is awesome. If anything, we need more of that.

[kuwanger]

Up front, I'll mention I've not played X7 or X8 nor ZX Advent, so I'm not sure how much that plays into it.

The general issue, I'd say, is that you play a Mega Man [X/Zero] game to play Mega Man [X/Zero]. So, each new iteration always had the opportunity to introduce a character, but trying to introduce a new character later would be hard without establishing in-game of the previous version that said person was a rising star. Look no further than people's feelings about Axl.

Point two, your statement about Iris doesn't seem right because Iris was never a peace lover. She was meant to be the counterbalance to what Colonel was. Where he was honor and duty, she was strategy and determination. This duality plays out throughout the series: MMX is the man, MM Zero is the resistance. However, it's clear that MMX is defetive. His drive to save humanity means saving every last human, even a genocidal maniac like Dr Weil. Perhaps it's precisely this that magnfies his actions to grant him an immortality suit?

In any case, the whole plot line of Zero seems crazy to me, especially with the later reveals about Omega and Dr Weil. The whole idea of Cyber Efls makes little sense. The notion of the Defective Suffering Circuit to explain mavericks also is very cludgy. So, just the general plot has issues.

So, the general lack of women in any direct roles comes down to, IMHO, simply focusing on "the heroes", establishing "the heroes" at the start of each series, and generally ignoring everyone else because "this is war"...with some exceptions. So, yes, X x Zero might be a thing because of a long-term relationship where each is married to their work but eventually trust each other. Also, it doesn't help that X is the father of all reploids and Zero is destined to destroy reploid kind, which is all sorts of akward.

Finally, Harpunia is X but without the Suffering Circuit flaw--the one that would prevent X from killing a human. Instead, he's driven by a hardcore duty to his predecessor's legacy. Of course, the whole concept of Guardians doesn't really fit X's personality--which is why X was on the front line (mostly) the whole time of the MMX zeries. Nor does the X7-X8 copy chip really fit into anything. *sigh* Yet another major plot hole.

The real thing, then, is why there wasn't a decent gaiden of Mega Man set during the X or Zero periods? Probably because Capcom lacks the imagination? So, yea, I definitely agree this all is fundamentally sad for the inclusion of female characters of any significance to the epic plot line.

[Scrinkus Dinkus]

Yeah. Hopefully there's a bit more a a diverse cast in Mega Man 11 (Woot Woot.)

[Call Sign: Raven]

Opprinnelig skrevet av Naoya:

Opprinnelig skrevet av Chicory Blue:

Agreed on all counts. The games are amazing regardless of characterization, classic and Zero are delicious, and Zero x Harpuia is a pairing that is both logically defensible and adorable. The Big Four all seemed to inherit X’s particular preoccupation with Zero in some capacity, so I imagine Harpuia was probably contending with a reluctant obsession. It’s a thought that makes the story all the richer...

Haven’t read the comics yet- need to get around to it. They seem pretty cool, overall! Glad to hear they carry themselves well.

It makes me happy that that the series has pairings like that, as a gay gamer. Certainly made my playthrough of the Zero series all the better. Like that time Harpuia saved Zero's life. I wonder just what was going through his head at that moment?

Otherwise, I must say I've never actually played X7 and X8. Hearing about those naviguators makes me a bit sad, and I hope there's a way to turn them off.

Why is it important to have a character that you can relate to as a gay person? I'm a straight person but I never need that as a way to relate with characters. Is sexuality in fictional characters really so important? In fact, I learned something about myself when I played Prince of Persia a long time ago, and the game hovered over some chick's ass in a cut scene (wearing a thong) for a long time. I turned the game off and returned it (back when you could actually do that.)

I find that I like games for the action, and less for the characters themselves.

Plus, I don't really relate to any Mega Man character, as I'm not a robot.

[Call Sign: Raven]

Opprinnelig skrevet av Arim Handstands:

Yeah. Hopefully there's a bit more a a diverse cast in Mega Man 11 (Woot Woot.)

Why do we need it to be more diverse, though? Do we need a Mega Man that's black or asian? I mean, he's a robot, and is made by an inventor that looks European, so why would he make something that he, as the creator, can't relate to?

[Naoya]

Opprinnelig skrevet av Harrison Ford:

Opprinnelig skrevet av Naoya:

It makes me happy that that the series has pairings like that, as a gay gamer. Certainly made my playthrough of the Zero series all the better. Like that time Harpuia saved Zero's life. I wonder just what was going through his head at that moment?

Otherwise, I must say I've never actually played X7 and X8. Hearing about those naviguators makes me a bit sad, and I hope there's a way to turn them off.

Why is it important to have a character that you can relate to as a gay person? I'm a straight person but I never need that as a way to relate with characters. Is sexuality in fictional characters really so important? In fact, I learned something about myself when I played Prince of Persia a long time ago, and the game hovered over some chick's ass in a cut scene (wearing a thong) for a long time. I turned the game off and returned it (back when you could actually do that.)

I find that I like games for the action, and less for the characters themselves.

Plus, I don't really relate to any Mega Man character, as I'm not a robot.

It's not essential, no. For instance, I love The Witcher 3, and Geralt is straight and can have sex with multiple women throughout the game. Yet, I can still relate to Geralt outside of his sexuality, and really like him as a character. So no, it's not "important" to me that a character be gay, and it's not absolutely needed for me to relate to them. But good gay characters in games are EXTREMELY rare, especially playable ones, so when I get to play as one, it's one of the few times I can relate to characters on that front, and makes me rather happy.

Note however that I said GOOD gay characters. If the only characteristic of the character is them being gay, then they're a ♥♥♥♥♥♥ character and absolutely not relateable in any way.

[kuwanger]

Opprinnelig skrevet av Naoya:

But good gay characters in games are EXTREMELY rare, especially playable ones, ...

Is that so? Perhaps good explicitly gay characters in games are EXTREMELY rare, especially playable ones, but a lot of characters aren't explicitly anything. Now, plenty of games presume the viewer is heterosexual male...