Board Thread:General BlazBlue discussion/@comment-26732688-20161112014400

 I have noticed a few discussions in this forum (and others around the net) arguing (both implicitly and explicitly) that BlazBlue is becoming too feminized. In particular, taking the position that BB is becoming too much like Arcana Heart, Aquapazza, Skullgirls and other games with nearly all female casts—or in the case of Arcana Heart all female. However, judging by character count and importance/strength/powers of the characters that simply doesn't appear to be the case. Even if it were the case, so what? There is nothing wrong with a bit of girl power. I digress, back to my main argument, consider the following information as of CentralFiction:



 -Number of Playable Female Characters*: 16

 (Es, Nu, Bullet, Celica, Litchi, Makoto, Noel, Izanami, Nine, Mu, Rachel, Tao, Tsubaki, Kokonoe, Izayoi & Lambda)

 -Number of Transgender & Dual Gender Playable Characters*: 2 (Mai and Platinum-the-Trinity)

 -Number of Male Characters*: 17 (Iron Tager, Hazama, Kagura, Valkenhayn, Relius, Ragna, Naoto, Susano’o, Yūki Terumi, Hibiki, Amane, Jin, Hakumen, Carl, Arakune, Bang, & Azrael)


 * Including artificial humans and beast-kin



 As you can see the gender ratio between male and female characters is essentially 1:1. And, good for BB including two “gender-non-specific” characters. So the cast (as of CentralFiction) is neither feminized nor masculinized in terms of shear numbers. Now what about importance to the storyline and/or strength/power? I argue that is essentially even as well. Of course, this list is my opinion but I think it holds true. The most important characters* and those with the greatest strength/power are:



 Female: 12 (Es, Nu, Celica, Noel, Izanami, Nine, Mu, Rachel, Tsubaki, Kokonoe, Izayoi & Lambda)

 Male: 13 (Hazama, Kagura, Valkenhayn, Relius, Ragna, Naoto, Susano’o, Yūki Terumi, Amane, Jin, Hakumen, Bang, & Azrael


 * Playable Only



 So, in terms of importance of strength, power and storyline the ratio again appears to be basically 1:1. I did not include either of the “gender-non-specific” characters in my list because Mai is just story filler and Platinum by themselves have really nothing at all to do with the story and are rather weak (they merely serve as a vehicle for Trinity). Again, this list is just MHO but I think a strong argument can be made in its favor.



<p style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:0px;font-size:11px;line-height:normal;font-family:Helvetica;color:rgb(0,0,0);-webkit-text-stroke-color:rgb(0,0,0);-webkit-text-stroke-width:initial;min-height:13px;"> So, I do not think BB is becoming too feminized—neither in terms of number of playable characters nor their power/strength. In fact, there is a great deal of gender equality among the playable characters. I would go as far to say that BB maybe the most egalitarian fighting game series. Now, if you want to discuss masculinity, femininity or exploitation, that is another issue entirely :). <ac_metadata title="Gender Equity in BlazBlue (numbers and importance/strength/power)"> </ac_metadata>