What makes a loli bad?

[TMR]

Okay, since i'm accidentally taking over another thread with this tangent i'll make a new one...

What exactly makes lolis in shoot 'em ups so abhorrent for some people? i can understand if it's a saturation thing, an annoyance that a large number of shoot 'em ups use lolis rather than the more "oldschool" big spaceships or mecha fight themes, although boycotting the few titles being released purely on those grounds does feel like people cutting off their nose in order to spite their face.

If it's about sexuality as was suggested in t'other thread, well it might just be me but i can't actually see that in these games as such; there isn't any overt sexuality on display between the characters at least not in the loli-oriented games i've played, so where's the difference between a gothic lolita with a huge gun or even magical powers and a well-armed mecha of some kind?

Perhaps it's the idea of playing as the opposite gender? That one really doesn't worry me personally and from what i've read it's more a Western thing than anything else, but are there players out there who don't purely because their in-game avatar isn't male?

i'm not asking this as a challenge to those who don't like/play loli-based games, but i want to understand the reasoning behidn their decision.

[E. Randy Dupre]

I think you're misunderstanding what the terms 'loli' and 'lolita' actually mean. By their very nature, they imply a large degree of sexuality, and that's what causes the discomfort/dislike. You may not be able to see it, but it's often clear in the clothing the characters are wearing, the situations they're put in or the story/cutscenes. It's absolutely blatant in a lot of the promotional art for Deathsmiles, for example.

[captpain]

Yeah, you're either a bit dense or lying to yourself if you can't see how hilariously sexualized these girls are

[ForceDevice]

Honestly? To me, the worst thing about lolis is that looking at them always reminds me of the public they appeal to. Of course there are exceptions, but you can't deny that most people who actually like lolis in their anime/games/whatever are creepy basement-dwelling japanese otaku with pedophile tendencies.

[Taylor]

I can't deny that I only play Deathsmiles for the massive amounts of lolita fetishism contained within. The ~30x38 sprite of Casper is so hot I can’t concentrate as all the blood rushes from my head, and I get flustered just thinking about what's going on under that temptresses' enticing pixellation. Buy my true love is Element Daughter 01 A.I, who has no rib cage and turns into a plane making her my ideal girl. But the tradegy of our love is she is 500 times my size. And wants to kill me. And doesn’t exist. Cave, why do you toy with our hearts like this?

[cj iwakura]

Deathsmiles is disturbingly sexualized.

Touhou, on the other hand, is pretty innocent by comparison.

It's the fans that make Touhou look perverse.

[captpain]

Deathsmiles is disturbingly sexualized.

Touhou, on the other hand, is pretty innocent by comparison.

It's the fans that make Touhou look perverse.

No, grown men playing games (not just Touhou) that consist mostly of cutesy, preteen girls is adequately creepy in the first place. The rest is just icing on the cake.

[Dragoforce]

Being under the age of consent. Being a boy (Looking at you DSII!)

[TrevHead (TVR)]

I tbh quite liked how touhou was when i first saw them i thought that i made a nice change to the generic looking spaceships i had mostly seen beforehand. Its that every man and his dog has jumped on the bandwagon and we are seeing lolita everywhere that I hate and now (for doujin anyway) im very much looking forward to crimson clover because it takes a break from the lolita norm and uses spaceships, a total reverse to how things originally were.

(just so that nobody thinks im some basement dwelling creature) Ofc I hate characters portried in a creepy pedofile way but if done tastefully like in Touhou i can aprichiate the artwork even if most of it is two a penny.

As a coincidence today i came across this wikipedia page that decribes lolita and its kinda funny that lolita in a fashon sense is the total oppersite of perverted since its all about dressing in victorian influenced dresses with the lifestyle been victorian like aswell (non sexual, modest, likes knitting, bakery etc). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lolita_fas ... hic_Lolita

[SockPuppetHyren]

Deathsmiles is disturbingly sexualized.

Touhou, on the other hand, is pretty innocent by comparison.

It's the fans that make Touhou look perverse.

No, grown men playing games (not just Touhou) that consist mostly of cutesy, preteen girls is adequately creepy in the first place. The rest is just icing on the cake.

That's a bit overblown, don't you think? There are many really good games that have young girls as main character (Gunbird, Gurumin, Cotton, etc.). Along the logic your working, playing Gears of War is creepy because of the possible implications of the player wanting to murder people. Hell, playing Video games at all would be "creepy".

[harlequ1n]

I don't understand what's so horrendous about playing a game with loli characters, it's a videogame where you shoot and blow everything on sight... isn't that stupid and unreal enough to even show any concern about whether it's disturbing or sexualised?

[Taylor]

Deathsmiles is disturbingly sexualized.
Touhou, on the other hand, is pretty innocent by comparison.
It's the fans that make Touhou look perverse.

No, grown men playing games (not just Touhou) that consist mostly of cutesy, preteen girls is adequately creepy in the first place. The rest is just icing on the cake.

Totally agreed, bro. Once your balls drop you should only be playing manly games with tanks, guns and explosions. I want to see nothing less than thick bald space marines glistening with sweat, gripping their oversized guns close in their muscular manly chests. If I ever catch you fags playing Cotton I will force you to watch Football until you are right again. That girly shit could maybe probably turn you into a paedophile based on lots of evidence I have.

[laurie47]

Has anyone here read Vladimir Nabokov's book?
I think the Japanese take on 'lolita' is a very different thing.
For instance there is no way Follet is under 12 with those breasts.

[Spiderift]

First things first...
Loli -> Girls who look underage. To make some fans feel it's okay, they usually employ some 'supernatural' plot device so that she's 'actually more than 600 years old'. Touhou's notorious for this.
Lolita -> Usually implies the fashion style of dressing up in elaborate frilly dresses. People who dress up in this style insist that it's all about innocence and there's not supposed to be anything sexual about it. They're fighting an uphill battle of course due to the very original definition of 'lolita' and the many otaku products that do go about sexing it up.

I've never played DeathSmiles, so I can't say whether its cast features lolis, but it does definitely have that lolita style going on.

As for the why, in the end, it's just a matter of what you're comfortable with. I, for one, don't blame the majority of people seeing a game full of lolis and immediately feeling repulsed. Shame if there's actually a good game underneath all that fluff though.

Lolis don't bother me. What bothers me more is if it comes with voice-acting (like...eXceed). That combination tends to get annoying real fast. Hilarious though.

[TrevHead (TVR)]

AraraSPAMWitch in the other "what makes a good shmup" thread where this discussion started had a good point, in that he said that some ppls hate for loli characters wasnt in the artwork itself but in how perverted it might make the person feel.

For me in most cases looking at loli / cute charters / artwork will only if anything make me think "this is a good drawing or piece of artwork". Its when i see sexy pictures of obvoiusly pre teen girls that makes me feel repulsive. Its also worth noting that many pictures arnt of young girls but are supposed to be young women.

In the end its only art in video games and if done well and even better is original then im all for it

edit: yea that high pitched voice acting is eather bloody anying or just plain daft hehe

[Kyle]

The direction of the art doesn't bother me as long as the game is engaging. Personally I would rather play something with a spark of creativity because the Raiden/Ikaruga art style doesn't do much for me. It feels 'too serious' if that's even a legitimate complaint.

[kengou]

I'm also not a fan of lolis. For one thing, the sexualization of young or young-looking cartoon girls just isn't appropriate in my opinion. I get that it's a cultural thing and in Japan it's not as big a deal, but I'm not Japanese and in my culture it IS a big deal.

For the lolis that AREN'T sexualized (if there really are any?) I still don't like them because I like spaceships and planes more than I like little girls in frilly dresses. As a kid I was mostly drawn to shmups in arcades because they had spaceships blowing up aliens and all that awesome stuff. Compare that to little girls flying around using magic and you'll see why lolis just don't agree with my tastes.

I'll put up with it if the game is really good, but I still don't like the aesthetic.

[TMR]

As a coincidence today i came across this wikipedia page that decribes lolita and its kinda funny that lolita in a fashon sense is the total oppersite of perverted since its all about dressing in victorian influenced dresses with the lifestyle been victorian like aswell (non sexual, modest, likes knitting, bakery etc). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lolita_fas ... hic_Lolita

To be honest, i've always assumed "loli" was a contraction of "gothic lolita" and was working form a similar definition... apparently that makes me either self delusional or dense (i'm going with the latter) so what would i know?

Looking at the Touhou series, either i'm still missing the cutscenes later in the game where everyone gets nekkid (i'm not looking i hasten to add, just pointing out that i'm a bit crap at them!) or that Wikipedia definition of lolita and particularly gothic lolita as in fashion fits rather well, lots of dark colours with white accents, mostly rather modest-lengthed outfits or religious symbols, nothing sexual is implied and there's certainly nothing overt to my mind.

You may not be able to see it, but it's often clear in the clothing the characters are wearing, the situations they're put in or the story/cutscenes. It's absolutely blatant in a lot of the promotional art for Deathsmiles, for example.

i have to ask because i've not seen it, is that purely the promotional art or within the game itself? i did a quick Google and a lot of what i saw didn't fit the "gothic lolita" mindset at all.

[lgb]

what in god's name is this doing in shmups chat

the only thing that makes a loli "bad" are opinions, we've been through this before

[SockPuppetHyren]

Looking at the Touhou series, either i'm still missing the cutscenes later in the game where everyone gets nekkid (i'm not looking i hasten to add, just pointing out that i'm a bit crap at them!) or that Wikipedia definition of lolita and particularly gothic lolita as in fashion fits rather well, lots of dark colours with white accents, mostly rather modest-lengthed outfits or religious symbols, nothing sexual is implied and there's certainly nothing overt to my mind.

They're talking about fan's universal tendency to draw porn of game characters, which really wouldn't be a big deal if the fandom didn't have the nasty tendency to over shadow the game series itself. Of course, I'm not been the type of person to judge a game based on it's fandom, so I'd still say it;s a silly argument.

[mdl]

The fact that they're not shotas.

[sikraiken]

i'm not asking this as a challenge to those who don't like/play loli-based games, but i want to understand the reasoning behidn their decision.

I think it wouldn't be so horrible if the games were shooters with a small amount of loli whatever in them. Instead what we have is a loli-based game with some shooter elements in it.

In any event, all this anime/loli/whatever stuff doesn't belong in shooters. Let's get the games back. I don't like it.

[system11]

what in god's name is this doing in shmups chat

Indeed.

Seriously this topic is done to death and it'll only be a few more replies before people are inevitably posting imagespam.