A female fan of Dynasty Warriors posed a question on a 5ch message board: why are the series’ female characters, without exception, always beautiful young women in their teens to early twenties, as if stamped out of a mold?
The thread saw a flood of pushback along the lines of “these are commercial products — if there’s no demand, they won’t get made,” while others pointed to counterexamples like Elden Ring’s withered old-woman NPCs, God of War, and Horizon’s Aloy, and still others argued the characters are modeled on real historical beauties, so it’s only natural.
What people said
1AnonymousAug 25, 2026 12:04
Why are the female characters in Japanese games always beautiful young girls???
I love the Dynasty Warriors series, but honestly I can't stand how the female characters in it are handled…
They're always, without exception, slim young women in their teens to early twenties.
9AnonymousAug 25, 2026 12:09
Come on. Why would you put an ugly character into something you're selling as a product?
Show me one snack company that deliberately throws a nasty-tasting piece of candy into an assortment pack.
38AnonymousAug 25, 2026 12:34
Re: #9
The way my taste buds see it, "young" and "beautiful girl" ARE the nasty-tasting candy.
10AnonymousAug 25, 2026 12:10
Korean games are all curvy, not slim, so I guess they're exempt then?
15AnonymousAug 25, 2026 12:12
Nobody buys a game because they're into old ladies.
Forget men — even female players won't pay money for a hag over a beautiful girl.
18AnonymousAug 25, 2026 12:14
Just look at how poorly Bayonetta-type games sell — there's no demand for a middle-aged BBA character (Japanese slang for "old hag").
19AnonymousAug 25, 2026 12:15
Aren't the male characters in otome games mostly young pretty boys too? Same thing.
21AnonymousAug 25, 2026 12:17
It's simply because there's no demand. If there were demand, they'd be making host-fantasy games too. That's just how it is.
22AnonymousAug 25, 2026 12:17
Nobody wants to play a game where the heroine is a wrinkled old BBA.
23AnonymousAug 25, 2026 12:18
Did "Hagturnal" sell well? Did "Geezerturnal" sell well? That's your answer. (A jab at the game Returnal, whose old-woman character is Selene.)
24AnonymousAug 25, 2026 12:18
Da Qiao and Xiao Qiao are historically recorded beauties, so that's a bad example — try Yue Ying, who's said to have been plain-looking, instead.
32AnonymousAug 25, 2026 12:30
Re: #24
The "Yue Ying was actually Indian" theory.
26AnonymousAug 25, 2026 12:25
I honestly can't even remember what "Hagturnal" was actually supposed to be called anymore.
56AnonymousAug 25, 2026 12:54
Re: #26
In Returnal, the old woman's name is Selene (´･ω･`)
Though honestly, I think people would get sick of controlling that character no matter who the protagonist was (´･ω･`)
28AnonymousAug 25, 2026 12:28
For guys like this, just chant "Grand Blue" three times. (A nod to the raunchy comedy manga/anime Grand Blue.)
29AnonymousAug 25, 2026 12:28
There are a few people here forgetting that games are a business.
33AnonymousAug 25, 2026 12:31
Re: #1
Does the person who made the original post really, truly believe from the bottom of their heart that video games should be packed full of ugly women and old hags? Not as some troll bait, but for real?
35AnonymousAug 25, 2026 12:33
Re: #1
What about Aloy from Horizon?
What about the old woman from God of War?
36AnonymousAug 25, 2026 12:33
The crowd that calls anime-style girls "vulgar" and the crowd that screams "political correctness" the second something isn't to their taste — how do we get these two to make peace?
37AnonymousAug 25, 2026 12:34
They're not ordinary women though — they're princesses, mistresses, or wives, so it kind of makes sense they'd be beautiful, well-proportioned, and youthful.
39AnonymousAug 25, 2026 12:37
Even the very first game, back when it was just a fighting game, had Diaochan, one of the Four Great Beauties, in it.
41AnonymousAug 25, 2026 12:40
Go play Elden Ring. The one who actually looks out for you the most is a shriveled-up old granny.
45AnonymousAug 25, 2026 12:42
Re: #41
In the early version you could summon her anytime, and she'd hold your hand while you leveled up… some self-proclaimed "heroine."
42AnonymousAug 25, 2026 12:40
Re: #38
That guy's taste is probably just off — that "flavor" is exactly what appeals to the general public.
43AnonymousAug 25, 2026 12:40
Given the time period these games are set in, basically nobody's overweight, so slim is the norm. And most of the beauties are based on actual historical beauties or the wives of great men, so it checks out. It's not like they made some grubby farmer's wife a playable character.
44AnonymousAug 25, 2026 12:41
Maybe she's a "youthful witch" (a woman who looks far younger than her real age). It's rude to ask a woman her age, after all. Ii Naotora looks like a minor, but going by how she talks about worrying over "Naomasa," she's apparently actually in her 30s.
46AnonymousAug 25, 2026 12:43
If we're talking Dynasty Warriors, aren't all the male characters handsome too?
68AnonymousAug 25, 2026 13:29
There's a ton of "mature woman" content in adult videos too… it's simply a matter of demand.
79AnonymousAug 25, 2026 14:08
Re: #68
Even a niche market can turn a profit.
73AnonymousAug 25, 2026 13:37
You're imagining things. If anything, Chinese and Korean games are drowning in beautiful young girls.
97AnonymousAug 25, 2026 15:12
Re: #73
So basically, it's an Asia-wide thing.
75AnonymousAug 25, 2026 13:47
Nobody would buy a game with a grubby middle-aged man as the main character.
77AnonymousAug 25, 2026 13:52
Re: #75
Apparently Western audiences hated Tingle (from Zelda) with a passion — it's just that everyone's specific hangups point in different directions.
93AnonymousAug 25, 2026 15:03
Go ahead and buy all the games packed with political correctness then. But you didn't, did you? That's the whole story.
95AnonymousAug 25, 2026 15:09
Games are basically the one place you get to control a young, good-looking avatar, right? Dragging in weird "realism" doesn't make it more fun. Imagine a light-novel protagonist with superhuman powers, except instead he's got a totally average body, no special abilities, no brilliant intellect to escape danger, isn't some reincarnated hero saving the world every other chapter — just a poop-producing machine who commutes to the office, has zero romantic encounters, works all day, comes home, eats, and sleeps. Who's reading that novel? Who's playing that game?
98AnonymousAug 25, 2026 15:12
Re: #95
There are plenty of popular dramas and manga about some middle-aged guy just eating a meal, so depending on how it's written, that could actually work.
Background and Key Points
Dynasty Warriors (Shin Sangoku Musou in Japan) is Koei Tecmo’s hack-and-slash franchise built on the 14th-century Chinese epic Romance of the Three Kingdoms, running since 2000 across dozens of entries. Its female roster — Diaochan, Da Qiao, Xiao Qiao, Yue Ying among them — draws on the “Four Great Beauties” of Chinese legend and lore, figures with almost no surviving physical description beyond later folklore calling them beautiful. 5ch, the successor to 2channel, is Japan’s largest anonymous forum network, and threads like this one are a regular venue for gripes about anime-adjacent character design. For readers unfamiliar with the genre, it’s worth knowing that “beautiful young woman” character design is not unique to this series — it’s the industry default across Japanese, Chinese, and Korean commercial games, which several posters raised as if it settled the argument.
The thread didn’t really split over whether young-and-beautiful characters exist — everyone agreed they do. It split over whether that’s a defensible design choice or a lazy one: one camp treated it as simple market logic (no demand, no product), pointing to Returnal’s aged Selene or Bayonetta’s poor sales as cautionary tales, while another camp cited Elden Ring, God of War, and Horizon Zero Dawn as proof that non-idealized women can headline successful games.
What nobody addressed is that the male cast gets the same idealization — handsome, youthful warriors — which undercuts the “historical accuracy” defense raised repeatedly, since there’s no more documentary basis for the men’s appearances than the women’s. It’s a stylistic convention being retrofitted as historical fidelity.
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