Abstract
Glasspool demonstrates key differences in how the Japanese video game industry and game fans articulate gender, sexuality and Japaneseness through English localizations of RPGs. Focusing on Final Fantasy VII (FFVII), the chapter examines narrative and character design, suggesting that official game localizations construct ideals of Japaneseness that are intertwined with gender, specifically androgynous masculinity, and heterosexuality. It then shows how some RPG fans play with these ideals, creating transformative works in which “Japanese” androgyny is instead connected with same-sex desire. In machinima videos, this is employed to laud Western masculinity and heteronormativity. The chapter concludes that fan transformations of English-language Japanese RPGs may promote opposing ideals of gender and sexuality to official localizations.
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Glasspool, L. (2016). Making Masculinity: Articulations of Gender and Japaneseness in Japanese RPGs and Machinima. In: Pulos, A., Lee, S. (eds) Transnational Contexts of Culture, Gender, Class, and Colonialism in Play. East Asian Popular Culture. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-43817-7_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-43817-7_5
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