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Anybody feel like Fates is racist?


Dwlr
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Personally, I've come to think of it as a stand-in for the word "Norse" since we have powerful, mostly blond warriors (talking about the Nohr siblings) living in an aggressive pseudo-European society. There's also the fact that we have a character named "Odin" and that Nohr's shapeshifting character (excluding Corrin, of course) is a wolf, which could relate to one of Loki's children, the wolf Fenrir. (WHom ironically enough kills Odin at Ragnarok.)

Nohr's culture is literally no where close to Nordic in any way shape or form though. Its like Westeros meets Rome in terms of culture. Its not even remotely close to Scandinavian culture in the last couple of centuries. Nohr is full of hedonism, slums, power corruption, etc. Im sorry, but it just doesnt read at all like a Norse culture stand-in. It doesnt even feel close to German culture.

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I think the last Eastern nation we had was Sacae, which were most likely based on the Mongols--given their choice of tents and manner of dress.

That was quite a while ago.

There was Chon'sin in Awakening, but honestly it only barely counts, since you only get like three characters from it, and two of those characters are pretty much the entirety of its relevance to the plot.

Anyways, if anything is racist about Fire Emblem, it's the fact that you can count the number of characters who are canonically dark-skinned on both hands (compare to the literal hundreds of light-skinned characters in the series). If anything, the East vs. West dichotomy in Fates was to further distinguish the two nations from each other and reinforce the duality. I mean, I wish the morality was more gray vs. grey, too, but more because the advertising played up the difficult nature of the choice than anything, so it would've been nice if that were better represented in the relationship between the two nations.

There have been tons of both good and evil Western-based nations in past Fire Emblem games, and Nohr is probably one of the most sympathetic of the evil ones.

I'm 100% certain it's not a "Japanese supremacy" thing.

Edited by Topaz Light
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Official reminder that Awakening had a nation worshipping a genocidal dragon who showed no signs of even pretending to do jack for his followers if he won led by a hyena and a shoddier Manfroy. While its archenemy's foulness was restricted to a backstory that serves to glorify Emmeryn and demonize Gangrel and an underexplored traitor.

The point is that what the OP noticed isn't some sort of Japanese supremacy. It's really a shift in narrative that happened back in Awakening.

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I don't think its racist or trying to make a political statement. If anything it just needed a bit of better writing although I enjoy the story plenty enough. If it was really sending a political message I have the feeling it wouldn't be getting the positive reception its getting now. Regardless of where you lie when people play games or watch movies they want to be entertained not preached to. Moreover, even in the Nohr route the siblings (and most of the units for that matter) are actually portrayed as caring half-decent people for the most part.

Edited by LordTaco42
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I'm not sure why everyone decided to shit on the OP. He was basically just saying what everyone here discussed months ago, that Japan was likely doing some cultural posturing. Everyone does it so you can't say it's awful for Japan to prop itself up but I'd call it a negative just because it dulls the setting.

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