Final Fantasy Sexism Part IV: Lost Potential

[Raistlin]

I don't see why there's an argument with scantily clad clothing because in recent years the males have been exploited in such a way too. Zidane and Tidus are wearing friggin' belly shirts for christ sakes.

I'm really surprised you didn't bring up the hot spring scene in FF X-2...some how along the way they forgot Rikku and Yuna are cousins (or didn't care).

So a guy with his midriff showing is equivalent to a woman's victory pose being to bend over in her low-cut robes and shaking her cleavage at the camera? I just don't see how you even equate the two. Lulu is on a whole different level of fan service.

Also I didn't go into detail about FFX-2 because I haven't played the game (and, outside this article, have generally refused to acknowledge its existence).

As I said when you were drafting this I still don't remember Yuna being kidnapped - from what I remember she went along with the Guado plot to take her to Bevelle and play along with the marriage in an attempt to send the unsent Seymour.

Maybe I'm wrong and I need to replay it as, well, it has been 10 years now.

I agree with how Boobies laid it out. From my recollection, she was pretty clearly captured. She ended up choosing not to resist (at some point probably because she planned to try to send Seymour), but the Guado definitely captured her, and the party was definitely trying to rescue her.

Yuna never intended on abandoning her journey to get married to Seymour. She considered marrying him to make the populace happy and then trotting off and completing her journey anyway.

I never said she intended to quit, but that was the choice presented to her. After some deliberation, she ended up deciding that she would go on with her pilgrimage regardless, but that was unlikely the choice Seymour intended or how many of the other characters understood the original choice (especially given how dying during the pilgrimage is the desired goal).

I never understood why people disliked Yuna. I always found her devotion to self-sacrifice a good plot line to go in contrast to Tidus's self-serving plot. I always found that Tidus gets offed at the end and Yuna lives on to be a great irony.

Furthermore as for the kidnapping occurrences, there's an entire plotline in the game based around the Albhed nabbing the Summoner's (male or female) to stop them from sacrificing themselves on their pilgrimage. I'd understand punishing the writer's for including Yuna getting kidnapped a lot of it had nothing to do with a core part of the plot, except it does.

It's true that the Al Bhed capturing Yuna is a developed plot point (and, in their mind, not so much "kidnapping" as "saving"). I'm not sure what relevance that has, though. I'm not criticizing Yuna needed saving as kidnappings-for-the-sake-of-kidnappings. My point is that, when you look over FFIV through X as a whole, basically all of the playable characters who ever need saving after being captured are female. It's a trend that's difficult to ignore.

And I dislike Yuna as a character because, like Rinoa in FFVIII, she is a flat foil for Tidus to develop around. She starts off as an almost unattainable ideal: perfect, beautiful, and unreachable for Tidus, no matter his desire. The story isn't based on how she grows and changes and she doesn't do much of either; instead, you see how Tidus grows through his relationship with her. Despite how strong Yuna's backstory is and the potential for her character, her significance in the game revolves largely around Tidus.

Yeah, I honestly feel like some of the criticisms are a little weird. So, if a strong, female character falls in love with a male character during a game/book/movie/etc, then it becomes sexist?

Of course not. The simple act of having a relationship is not sexist at all. As has been the running theme of this series, context matters. The cold-hearted woman who just needs her Prince Charming to melt her heart is a trope that is difficult to ignore given how flagrantly FF writers had shoved female characters into love interest roles. I'm not trying to point to every little thing and say "that's sexist!" by itself. I'm trying to get you to look at everything as a whole, look at every little piece in the context of everything else surrounding it, and you can make your own judgments whether, in that context, that portrayal of a female character was innocently done or based on sexist stereotypes. In that sense, I think the Beatrix-Steiner relationship is worth considering. In another game in another context, Beatrix wouldn't even be worth mentioning.