![]() So Asellus had to make her way over to America, and she had to be as intact as she was in her original, Japanese release (we will get into the details of that shortly). It is only the turbo nerds that ever tried Final Fantasy Legend on the Gameboy, but I know quite a few people that bumbled around with Lute on their way to Metal Gear Solid.Īnd, like any trend, Square did not want to see SaGa Frontier delayed and missing that surge of Final Fantasy 7 love. ![]() I do not personally know anyone that was playing PSX games at that time that did not at least rent SaGa Frontier. SaGa Frontier did not receive the same marketing push, but it seemed obvious that, with its stark-white CD case and “40 hours of gameplay” bullet point, it was trying to ride the Final Fantasy 7 tide. Final Fantasy 7 had been promoted from here to the Earth’s core, and that gambit paid off, as Final Fantasy became a household name that sold more Playstations than Lara Croft. Squaresoft had a gigantic, once in a company’s lifetime hit on its hands with Final Fantasy 7. She is a woman with green hair in a JRPG! Happens all the time!īut even beyond her “stealth”, the most obvious reason other games did not make it while Asellus was able to be imported was simple… and it is the same color as Asellus’s hair. Her story starts gay and only escalates from there, but her appearances literally everywhere else do not trip any heteronormative alarms. And it is not like Asellus is out and proud on the title screen here. ![]() ![]() There are really good odds you could play through a significant portion of SaGa Frontier and never see Asellus. Additionally, Asellus is not required in any other story but Emelia’s adventure, so that means Asellus may not even exist for a healthy 71.4% of the game (completely missing for most characters, but at least optional for Red). Asellus stars in her own story, but she is one of seven stories available. Asellus is a gay main character, but she is not the main character. The idea of Japan being a gay utopia was eventually disproven by reality, but, when looking at all the imports that had to be “de-gayed” for American audiences, it is easy to see how the West looked so much more homophobic by comparison.īut SaGa Frontier had a rare opportunity to break through in 1997. In fact, any and all queerness was ironed out of any Japanese imports across media, so Japan appeared to be some kind of shining bastion of acceptance thanks to gay Sailor Moon characters being forcefully transformed into women and/or cousins upon localization. If something was remotely “gay”, it did not make it across the Pacific. Japan did have some significant, deliberately queer JRPGs in its past (Eternal Filena comes immediately to mind). So how did such a thing happen? Let’s take a detailed look at Asellus in the context of SaGa Frontier and 1997 in general. Is it any wonder that, in such an environment, an oblivious Goggle Bob would fail to pick up on context clues?īut, dang, even my dumbass younger self noticed that Asellus is gay as hell. It may be hard to understand now, but it took us a long time (and many awful Futurama episodes) to get to the point where a character could just “casually” be gay, and it not be the entire focus of their existence. And, to blame my environment and not my own ignorance, outright homosexual (or, heavens forbid, trans) representation primarily only existed at the time as jokes or characters that were designated as “the token gay”. This was true for nearly all media consumed, and, until roughly the release of Final Fantasy 13 in 2009, I consistently assumed gay characters did not exist unless they were starring in a “very special episode” of Friends. Or, put another way, I watched the entirety of Revolutionary Girl Utena, and picked up on exactly zero subtext. I admit that, in my teen years, I was frustratingly heteronormative. Given SaGa Frontier Remastered just came out this year, and you may have missed it the first time, just giving you a head’s up. This post contains a detailed look at one scenario in SaGa Frontier.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |