You might have heard of Marie, and Louis René. If you went to Malta, you may have heard of Emmanuel.
But other members of the Rohan family have fascinating stories as well.
This is a film and an animatic about two different members of the family, both named Marguerite.
The first was born in 1330 and died in 1406, and the second was born between 1412 and 1420 and died in 1496.
Asuka Tooyama
This blue-haired wunderfrau may play tennis, but she is not self-made. She plays tennis and can swim all because of the player character. She is obsessed with him and almost totally subservient except for when she gets flustered. Then she might put her foot down. Also has a dysfunctional relationship with her mother.
The way she reacts to being harassed gives young men the wrong idea about consent, and despite not having been spied on in the school nurse's office, the player decides to impregnate her, an underage girl.
Kaoru Saionji
A character who would be dismissed as "frigid". The player character spies on her while she's changing for an inspection from the school nurse and decides to impregnate her and twenty other girls, and yet she confides in him.
Like Asuka, Kaoru has a dysfuntional relationship with her parents.
Ren Kagami
A beautifully-designed character with wavy golden bunches. Fits into the "dependent" fantasy. Written with an older brother complex. Father is barely around, and her mother's affair with the player character, also her childhood friend, risks tearing apart her family. And they say her game has no plot.
Ai Ogitsu
Scruffy blue-haired bike-riding tomboy. Does obscene things to the player character and is brainwashed into sex. Is a punishment fantasy towards girls who disrupt the established order.
Irina Putina
Is part of the "taming the Amazon" fetish, deludes the player into believing any strong girl is "playing hard to get".
Ai Rohan
Like Irina, Rohan is characterised as a conquest, a "tamed Amazon". The most I can say about her is that she's definitely smarter than the Girls Book Maker version of Arsène Lupin.
Miyako Andou
Another punishment fantasy, this time for a girl characterised as a know-it-all loudmouth percieved as stepping out of line.
Touko Shiranui
Like Kaoru, Touko is a character who would be dismissed by a real life man as "frigid". The real twist in her character is that for some reason she wants to be trapped in that cabin in the woods. Or was it a temple in the mountains? This sends the player mixed messages "No means yes" messages. Furthermore, like Ai Ogitsu, she is subjected to magical brainwashing.
Nanako Kugayama
Same as Touko, but Nanako has the strange side job of doing voice acting for dirty cartoons, adding to the "asking for it" delusion. So much emphasis in the dialogue is put on her alleged "playing hard to get" personality that she's as much of a stereotype as the rest of them. She is also a victim of surprise harassments as part of the gameplay.
I've been working on this concept for a long time. I have only now been inspired to put a name to it. Right now I am working to build on it.
Pictured here are the silhouettes of eleven girls from visual novels, "erotic games" and "masturbation games", all reimagined in a feminist, empowered manner.
The pictures are inspired by the Diamonds' murals from Steven Universe because I like the ethereal, mysterious quality.
After all, these characters, with their diverged hair colors, are designed to have an ethereal quality. And since a number of these characters are forgotten about once their games are sold, they are mysterious.
We know how some movies and TV shows have latent antisemitic stereotypes. The Disney villains of today sing in a minor key, or have dark hair (a topic I might get to later). Then there was the unintentional blood libel metaphor of Jim Henson's 'The Dark Crystal'.
I would like to opine on something I've noticed: characters with big noses.
The coded Jewishness in portrayals of villains and jerks, no matter what their actual religion is or if they have one, is not intentional in some cartoons.
I noticed it with the antihero Squidward Tentacles from 'SpongeBob SquarePants'. His large nose singles him out as a naysayer. Then there are other Jewish and antisemitic elements (for a one-time mason) ; the large nose, the association with minor-key music, the fact that he plays the clarinet* and the fact that he's an octopus (a motif used in antisemitic cartoons). He's a great character, very funny and witty, but is based on latent, unconscious biases related to or conflated with negativity.
Then there is Sting-o, the naysayer of Fifi and the rest of the Flowertots. A wasp with a hooked nose, again singled out like some Nibelung.
Not all cartoon characters with big noses are Jewish-coded, latently or otherwise; Benson Dunwoody from 'Regular Show' is an obvious Gentile compared to his Jewish employee Muscle Man. But there are times where this feature is used to signify negativity.
* The clarinet is a staple of klezmer music.
Not all visual novel characters are bishojo games, dating sims or porn games, but there are a lot of them.
However, ever since animation companies in the 1970s started producing animated series for adults, such as Lupin III and Cutie Honey, there has been more permissiveness in objectifying women and even girls.
Why have I drawn and painted such characters for over a decade?
1. The concept of porn games is disturbing. Underage girls objectified or dressed like showgirls. This has been a trend since the genre's inception in 1982. The Girls Book Maker version of Tigger is dressed obscenely and has the appearance of a preteen. It's bad enough that the fictional women are subjected to the male gaze, but the girls are as well, despite the flimsy "Over 18" disclaimer tacked onto the games. Nobody is convinced that Ren Kagami is college age.
Animations such as Sailor Moon and Totally Spies are also guilty of sexualising minors and passing it off as glamor. Children become desensitized to it early or are made to think there's nothing wrong.
The way most of these characters are written is as a fantasy of male attention and female manipulation.
2. They are so obscure that AI will fail to recognize them and confuse them with a different character. For example, it would confuse Ren Kagami with Len Kagamine.
3. Some of them actually have visually appealing art direction. The backgrounds in Squeez and Yumemiru works are very opulent and detailed. However, the appealing colors in many of them make the characters look more inappropriately godlike.
4. If more people knew about Irina Vladimirovna Putina, who knows what would happen?
5. Because people are relying more on AI, it's remarkable that these characters are a product of human imagination. Especially the Girls Book Maker ones.
6. Companies are training AI by stealing artists' work, but in general things like dating sims and bishojo games are a line they won't cross. Furthermore character's name like, for instance, Asuka Tooyama or Koharu Hoshikawa won't show up in Google's AI automated search summary.
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| Angel's Afternoon (1985) |
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| Irina Vladimirovna Putina from 'My Girlfriend is the President' (2009) |
