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The story
A post on X (formerly Twitter) claiming that “the new Fire Emblem favors its female characters, who are all cute, while the male characters get treated badly” went viral and sparked a debate on a thread in 5ch’s Hardware/Industry (Geha) board. Posters tallied up the number of good-looking male candidates by name and repeatedly compared the new game to the earlier title Three Houses. At the same time, some pointed out that while the raw number of handsome characters has actually gone up, the proportion may look lower because the game also added more characters with strong personalities or older designs — complicating any simple “favored vs. snubbed” framing.
What people said
With four whole factions, you'd think at least one of them could've had a house full of hotties like the Blue Lions in Three Houses.
Kai, Io, Nadja, Diego, Gates, Sorel, Kiriku, Lysander, Sirocco
I count that as plenty of handsome guys — more than Three Houses, even… isn't your bar for "hot" set way too high?
Also, personally, Dietrich gives off way too much of an Alucard vibe for me to really call him handsome lol
I'm more of a Nathan guy than a Kiriku guy myself
The raw number of handsome guys has actually gone up, but the number of middle-aged dudes and oddball characters has grown even more, so the ratio of hotties has probably gone down
Maybe they drew so many hotties for Uta no Prince-sama (a idol-boyband otome game) that they're all out of ideas now
Come on, let it go
Though I guess it comes down to who the artist is in the first place…
Maybe they just put in too many beautiful women
This game's lineup has way more of that classic pre-Radiant Dawn kind of cool that guys actually go for, way better than Engage's men
He'd demand Nintendo let him allow his character designs to be drawn nude in doujin works
There's no way Nintendo agrees to that, so he's banned from Nintendo for life
Meanwhile there's nothing going on for the female protagonist's route
Leda is obviously gorgeous by any measure
Cool, dependable big-brother type
Young hotshot type
Dignified bearded hottie
Sultry, alluring hottie
Ripped, muscular hottie
Intellectual hottie
Battle-hardened hottie
Noble-pedigree hottie
Bard-type hottie
Sirocco betrays you though lol
And anyway, plenty of women are into the "hot older guy" type too
https://www.falcom.co.jp/sen4/character/rean.html
https://www.falcom.co.jp/sen4/character/lloyd.html
Even after these guys were officially revealed, people in the main thread kept grumbling about there not being enough hotties
In Three Houses, the ones handsome enough to cause a stir on looks alone were really just Dimitri, Felix, and Sylvain
For the rest, isn't it more about whether you grow to like them once you get to know them through support conversations?
Female otaku are way too allergic to young, pretty-girl characters
Male otaku are way too allergic to young, handsome-guy characters
Both sides are equally guilty here
If people were actually allergic to handsome guys, Final Fantasy wouldn't sell at all
Background and Key Points of This Debate
The Fire Emblem series has traditionally mixed in rugged, older-looking characters and characters built around strong personalities alongside its more conventionally handsome ones, meaning the bar for what counts as “handsome” varies widely from title to title and viewer to viewer. In the thread, opinions split even on the exact same characters, with some calling them handsome and others disagreeing — showing this isn’t an issue that gets settled just by counting heads. Some also pointed out that while the absolute number of handsome characters has actually increased, the simultaneous rise in strong-personality and older-character designs may make it look, proportionally, like there’s a “hotty shortage.” Whether the original X post was based on an accurate read of the actual character lineup can’t be verified from the thread alone. Debates like this over “favoritism vs. neglect” tend to recur across other games too, and part of the underlying cause may simply be that character-design preferences split along generational and gender lines.
※This article was compiled as excerpts and a summary from the 5ch (Hardware/Industry (Geha)) thread “X: “The new FE favors its female characters, who are all cute, and it’s frustrating how badly the male characters get treated.”“.
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