So on Twitter (I know, I know), there’s yet another controversy been discussed, and that is whether to boycott Genshin Impact for sexism, pedophilia, and racism, the infamous trinity. Apparently, the game is allegedly problematic and fans of the gacha game are asking for change.
Normally, I would have ignored this, but there may be some merit to the movement so I’ll be highlighting and discussing them here. So the big discussion points are as follows:
- Accusations of Pedophilia
- Hilichurls Inspired by Indigenous People
- Racism and Colorism Claims
Let’s start with the pedophilia accusation, which I believe has been answered by the community. Gamers claim that there are elements of pedophilia within Genshin Impact because an NPC says that he will confess his love for Flora, who is a child in the game. Now seeing the dialogue and knowing who the NPC he was talking about does make it seem like the NPC is a bona fide Pedo, however, others have pointed out that Flora was an adult in the beta version of the game. They believe that while Flora’s character was rewritten as a child, the NPC’s dialogue was accidentally not updated to reflect the character’s new age.
Look, I’m willing to give the devs of this game the benefit of the doubt and say that they genuinely forgot to remove that line, but let’s not act like this is not something you will find very easily in anime-themed products. The reason why I say that I’d give them the benefit is that Chinese games are very strict with what type of content is allowed, and considering that China is a very censored-driven country, this seems highly unlikely that they’d support something of this magnitude. Had it being Japanese developers, however, yeah I’d have a different opinion. It is good though that the Genshin Impact community has spoken out thought!
The next point, however, seems to be the more credible one, and that is the accusation of racism in the game. Well, one aspect of the accusation anyway. The Hilichurls are the commonly found enemies in the world. They are described as:
The primitive wandering inhabitants of Teyvat’s wildernesses.
“They look very similar to humanity but seem to have lost both their intellect and spirituality. Their presence on the continent has been recorded for over a thousand years, and yet they have neither history nor civilization.
“Since the pitch-black calamity from five hundred years ago, they have begun to spread in large numbers across the land. They are not very strong, and they lack organization, but they nonetheless bring sizable trouble to humans every once in a while.”
Sounds like something you’d hear a Neo-Nazi say right? Now, had this been another “Orcs are Black people” nonsense, I would have looked past this, however, there may be some credible evidence for this accusation. In a video that I’ll provide, we can see the inspiration for their dance coming from what the backlash is claiming to be indigenous people. When adding that with the fact the Chinese have displayed clear and indisputable racism towards dark-skinned communities in the past, it doesn’t look good. Some will argue that they’re just using it for reference, but who’s to say that they stopped there. I’m just saying, it’s kinda sus if you ask me!
Now, the other accusation that fans of the series have claimed is racist or colorist is that there’s a lack of dark-skinned characters in the game. Duh! It’s a Chinese-owned game. What did you expect? It’s based in a country that took out the Witch Doctor in Diablo, shrunk John Boyega in the Star Wars poster, and speaking of which, replaced every Black character in Boyega’s personal ad for a product with Chinese people. Dark-skinned to them is not desirable and if they can control it, they will not add it to their games. I mean Cyno clothing is based on Arabic clothing, that would have been a perfect opportunity to add a darker-skinned character but nope. The darkest you’ll get are Kaeya and Xinyan. Any darker and he/she’s a villain. Trust me. Oh and the complaints about these two and how they are called ‘exotic’ and ‘scary’ respectively is a bit of a stretch if you ask me.
Truthfully the only complaint that has a leg to stand on is the Hilichurls. I honestly wouldn’t put it past the Chinese devs to do something like this. Anyways, let me know what you think of all this.
