Video: Love Revo
Wow. Is this what the world has come to? Sure, Love Revo for the DS might look like your typical Japanese dating sim with a bunch of mini-games to play in between dialogue scenes (no boy-scrubbing, unfortunately), but it's not. The plot of this particular game casts you as a girl who has gained too much weight from eating sweets and junk food, and must drop the pounds through exercise, dieting and mini-games to win the love of the typically-androgynous Japanese schoolboys. Sigh. What kind of a message does this send to little girls? It's kind of appalling. Even if they're doing it with a sense of humor. At least because these kind of games never get localized for other countries, the message won't be sent to little girls across the world. So there's your silver lining, I suppose. I don't care how cute the androgynous schoolboys are — if they'll only like you when you've starved yourself into a size 2, they're not worth it!
Wootini
Posted to Video Games, Videos on 26 March 2008
· Comments (9)
Other stuff like this: dating sim, ds, love revo, nintendo, video
My Ludology sense tells me that fixing the character's sex as female might have been a design mistake.
To be fair, the girl IS 220 pounds at the start of the game. If she's an average-height high school girl, that's morbidly obese (a bmi of around 40). Hopefully they'll promote good eating habits and a healthy lifestyle instead of making you starve yourself.
I agree with Anonymous there. While I greatly respect overweight people as humans - many of my friends are like that -, it's without a doubt a severe health risk, and promoting healthier lifestyle through videogames is actually quite smart (if only they did it in a way that wouldn't make anyone feel guilty about themselves).
I'm in no way an athletic health-fanatic, I love my sweets and treats, but I still think people should think about their condition for their own sake, not for anyone else's (and certainly not for those carbon-copy prettyboys in the game!).
I think the problem with the game is that, rather than couch the weight loss in terms like, "she'll feel better about herself, get healthier, live longer," the game is saying, "the only way a man will want you is if you're thin." It takes advantage of the same fears that lead women (and men) to eating disorders.
Of course it's possible that the game ends with the girl realizing that she doesn't need any of those androgynous pretty boys and finds some guy who always liked her for her personality, which would probably redeem the whole thing.
If this is like the average Japanese dating sims, it'll probably have a combination of self-esteem attacks, and healthy lifestyle promotions mostly based on what guy you want to date.
Meh! You can complain about it all you like, but the fact is most people are attracted to relatively thin goodlooking people.
Why admonish the game for sending a message that is very much a reality?
In addition the boys in this one are all very cute. Far more to my tastes that most boys I see in dating sims.
"You can complain about it all you like, but the fact is most people are attracted to relatively thin goodlooking people.
Why admonish the game for sending a message that is very much a reality?"
In reality, there are people with a wide range of tastes. You don't have to be a Barbie-Clone to find friendship, love, or happiness. Sending the message that you are worthless if you're not thin encourages girls to starve themselves to death. Anorexia and suicide take vicious tolls on teenage girls who feel that they will never be 'good enough'.
There are actually more health problems with being underweight than overweight (as long as you're not at the Morbidly Obese level, which is dangerous), and dieting increases people's chance of death.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2005/jun/27/sciencenews.research
So how is this game more appalling than a dating sim in which you are already very good looking (as in all of the other dating sims). Don't attack one single game for simply existing in a genre that is already an exercise in fantasy.
Luckdragon - The difference is that in the typical dating sim, you don't start out being mocked by all the boys and told that you're gross and ugly and no one would ever want you?
A happy fantasy of being pretty and popular is different than starting out in such a negative place.
It really depends on how it's handled, though, and most of us can't read Japanese so we can't tell. Most dating sims have different characters liking different things, don't they?