DAVE THE DIVER

[› Furin]

In this game, the sushi chef, Bancho, is Black.

Here's some demographic data to illustrate how improbable this is:

According to Zippia, Black sushi chefs account for 7.4% of all sushi chefs in the US.
https://www.zippia.com/sushi-chef-jobs/demographics/

While I couldn't find any ethnic data on sushi chefs in Japan, permanent residents of foreign nationality make up ~2.4% of the total population.

https://www.stat.go.jp/english/data/nenkan/73nenkan/1431-02.html

https://www.e-stat.go.jp/stat-search/files?page=1&layout=datalist&toukei=00250012&tstat=000001018034&cycle=1&year=20200&month=24101212&tclass1=000001060399&tclass2val=0

The number is even smaller when you reduce it to places where Black people might come from (people from other Asian countries account for ~2% all by themselves). This means Black people realistically account for less than ~0.4% of all permanent residents of foreign nationality in Japan.

[The Appalachian Man]

Its improbable but not impossible. There are some black people who live in Japan. Its the same in South Korea, its stupid easy for people in Africa to get a visa to live in SK. As for the chef angle, ehhh I mean again, its more of a dumb little story. I honestly wouldn't be shocked if I do end up running into a black sushi chef in my timeline. Besides, his character doesn't honestly change all that much if he was white or black, unlike most games where the main character is race swapped for whatever dumb reason, Bancho works more naturally in this.

[CarnageInc.]

I don't think the color of the chef matters for that game, since it doesn't affect the story or trying to push any current day buzzword nonsense.

[᲼᲼᲼᲼᲼᲼᲼᲼]

Originally posted by CarnageInc.:

I don't think the color of the chef matters for that game, since it doesn't affect the story or trying to push any current day buzzword nonsense.

Yes, I don't think this particular aspect of the game is woke.
The chef is a caricature of masculinity, your stereotypical alpha male (they took the masculinity of the samurai culture and mixed it with the masculinity of the american hip hop culture, the result is absurd and in my opinion pretty funny). Dave is the opposite: he is the caricature of effeminacy, he is a beta male, he is the ultimate yes-man and looks like an average fat redditor (he has a fedora too). But they are both good men.

[Labyrinth2 0]

This isn't really a good reason, if you played the game and follow the backstory, Bancho is known as an "exotic chef", implying that he's obviously from a foreign land where people have high suspicion of him until he proves them wrong by having them try his cooking. He never brings up his skin color at all and his cooking skills is purely talent based.

As for Dave, him being fat is sort of the butt of the joke the entire game, where he lets everyone around him push him around and do all the hard work, with him constantly being interrupted and never allowing himself to say enough is enough. It's also pretty common in Asian comedy where the fat guy happens to be fast with athletic endurance, hence the diving.

I'd reconsider removing this game from your list and recommend you give it a try.

[› Furin]

Originally posted by Labyrinth2 0:

This isn't really a good reason, if you played the game and follow the backstory, Bancho is known as an "exotic chef", implying that he's obviously from a foreign land where people have high suspicion of him until he proves them wrong by having them try his cooking. He never brings up his skin color at all and his cooking skills is purely talent based.

As for Dave, him being fat is sort of the butt of the joke the entire game, where he lets everyone around him push him around and do all the hard work, with him constantly being interrupted and never allowing himself to say enough is enough. It's also pretty common in Asian comedy where the fat guy happens to be fast with athletic endurance, hence the diving.

I'd reconsider removing this game from your list and recommend you give it a try.

Humor doesn't change the fact that Bancho is, at best, minority pandering. Same with Dave. For a man who dives extensively and eats a primarily seafood-based diet, he would slim down pretty quickly.

Just because stereotypes/character tropes exist in media doesn't necessarily mean their usage is innocuous. The girl-boss/Mary Sue is an existing archetype. That doesn't mean its usage in media isn't indicative of feminism.

The fact that there is a "fat guy who is strangely athletic" trope in Asian media doesn't mean we should ignore the insertion of a physically unfit person into a role that requires extraordinary physical fitness. Again, I don't see how that is anything aside from DEI.

After looking into this game again, I see no reason to change its review. In fact, I'd say there are more things of note that haven't yet been covered here.

For example, for a place that is described as "remote," the Blue Hole has quite a lot of "modern diversity." This is obvious not just when looking at the ethnicities of the named characters, but also the customers of the sushi restaurant.

While I couldn't find a ton of good data, from what I could find, Whites and Asians consume sushi at a far higher rate compared to other ethnicities here in the US:

https://foodtruckempire.com/news/sushi-industry-statistics/
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13669877.2013.822925?scroll=top&needAccess=true
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/47716238_Influence_of_age_on_customer_dining_experience_factors_at_US_Japanese_restaurants

I couldn't find customer demographic data for sushi restaurants in Japan and South Korea, but given their population demographics, I would expect Asians to be the overwhelming majority.

In regard to the ethnicities of the named characters, the fact that many of them have Japanese names indicates the Blue Hole is in a predominantly Asian area (most likely Japan). That makes the diversity seen among the named characters and restaurant clientele even more improbable (again, see the Japanese population demographic data I already referenced in the op).

[CarnageInc.]

Originally posted by Labyrinth2 0:

This isn't really a good reason, if you played the game and follow the backstory, Bancho is known as an "exotic chef", implying that he's obviously from a foreign land where people have high suspicion of him until he proves them wrong by having them try his cooking. He never brings up his skin color at all and his cooking skills is purely talent based.

As for Dave, him being fat is sort of the butt of the joke the entire game, where he lets everyone around him push him around and do all the hard work, with him constantly being interrupted and never allowing himself to say enough is enough. It's also pretty common in Asian comedy where the fat guy happens to be fast with athletic endurance, hence the diving.

I'd reconsider removing this game from your list and recommend you give it a try.

I think an informational is sufficient enough for this type comedy/humor game. I don't think using a fat guy for comedic purposes is some sort of DEI since they're not shoving any of that current day buzzword garbage into peoples faces.