Sunday 16 May 2010

kira kira

It's tough, sometimes, being a liberal girl and enjoying "romance" games. As I previously mentioned about Kira Kira, I was bothered by the main character's weird reactions to women. And not entirely certain if the problem is translation or what.

I'm now paused in the middle of a scene that is even more disturbing.

The main character and some other students are spending the night at school in some unofficial capacity (there don't appear to be any chaperones). He hears a noise and peers into a window to see what's going on.

I'm now going to turn to EXACT QUOTES, although I'm leaving some words out in between, and the bolding is all my addition to draw your attention to what's bothering me here.


Hayashi-san[girl] is being pushed down by Yoshida-kun. She's on the floor and I can see her white knees moving a little.

...

"Ah, mm, no..."

Her seductive voice stops me.

Yoshida-kun, who's on top of her, covers her mouth with his own.

Then his hand runs through her clothes and exposes her breasts.

...

He closes her knees and takes her panties off with both hands.

...

Next he reaches to his own belt.

Wait, you're rushing too much. You only touched her a little.

Are you sure? Is there a chance of success? If she doesn't have much experience, then it's too dangerous to attack right now.

I'm cheering on Yoshida-kun[male] when...



... So, again. I don't know if this is an accidental nuance coming through via shaky translation. But the actions and the specific language used give the impression that the main character is actively cheering on rape. Or, at the very least, like he thinks that the correct way for a couple to have sex is for a girl to say no a lot and the guy to take off her clothes and penetrate her while she gives no sign of consent.

And the main character is not written like the author thinks he's a bad guy.

The above quote is the point I paused at to be boggled by the scene, so I'm not yet sure how it will develop from here...

5 comments:

dbliss said...

...so you're playing hentai and complaining that it's not a good role model? I think you may be a bit unclear on the point here...

Whiner said...

This is an all-ages game! :)

(Or at least, an all-ages version of a hentai game.)

And most h-games I know of are actually quite clear that rape is bad. They'll let you DO it, but it's still obviously a bad thing. I don't have a problem with playing an evil character.

What was going on there was not actually rape, no surprise. For it to have BEEN rape would mean the author recognising that the protagonist's view of women and relationships is really really bizarre.

It's not even a role model thing... it's jarring and throws me completely out of the head of the character I'm playing to see protagonist-thoughts and comments that make no sense to me. How is "he holds her down while she says no" supposed to be sexy? How is this "creating a perfect memory"? This is Greek to me.

Anonymous said...

It's a translation problem, really. I can pretty much work backward from the English and see what the original Japanese word choices probably were. There are a lot of words that get translated as "no", such as だめ, which is probably what she's saying here, but which actually means something more like "this will not end well" in this situation. It's extremely common in sex scenes, and usually is supposed to depict the girl's unease but not necessarily unwillingness. Notice that "covers her mouth" is followed with "with his own", meaning he's kissing her, not like gagging her or anything. "seductive" is probably an English rendering of a japanese word which doesn't indicate a seductive intent, necessarily, but perhaps that the narrator finds her voice arousing. "attack" is probably a mistranslation of a euphemism for "penetrate", i.e. the narrator is wondering if the guy shouldn't engage in more foreplay first. "dangerous" meaning that it will hurt the girl if she's not lubricated. "cheering on" here would mean that as a friend of the guy (I guess?), the narrator is feeling happy for him that he is getting to have sex (with the girl he likes...?), I guess.

Whiner said...

That makes more sense, thanks. :)

When I first read the scene I misread the line about covering her mouth (I was reading quickly and parsed it as 'with his hand') and only got it right when I was reading over the log to be sure I was quoting correctly in order to post. So by that point I knew it wasn't as bad as it had looked, but as the particular words had set up the wrong associations for me, I pointed them out anyway.

Anonymous said...

I'm also extremely suspicious of the translation too, which explains why I haven't bought the English version of this game yet.