Because Normal Guitars Are For Boys

Disney youngins Aly and AJ are here to rescue our tweens and teens from playing those icky normal looking guitar controllers that all the boys play with. Instead, they (with peripheral maker PDP) have designed something pinker for our young women to use so playing guitar on video games (which happen to feature predominantly male-created music anyway) won't offend their adolescent feminine sensibilities with masculinizing colors like black, or red, or sunburst.

Now, I'm not saying that people (PEOPLE, not just girls) can't have pink guitars. I have never personally had an inclination to buy a pink instrument (though I've owned two basses and a guitar), but I fully support people's basic freedom to buy whatever they want in whatever color they please. What I hate is that it's always girls who are marketed pink anything. And in video gaming, stuff made for and marketed for "gurlz" is almost always pink. It's sickening. It's this kind of novelty which continues to perpetrate the notion that gaming is for the boys.

A century ago (and centuries before that), it used to be that it was red (pink) for boys and blue for girls. Now, even though that's been reversed, we never see the "for boyz" crap happening where things that are usually marketed to women are made a pastel blue and then marketed in some obnoxious way to make boys feel like they are anomalies in that particular interest.

If this crap is going to continue, I want to see some male Disney stars create some obnoxious blue peripheral- like Wii-mote spatula attachments for Cooking Mama or something else I would find equally as ridiculous and objectionable.

*sigh*

Proof of Identity

Captain Rainbow was released for the Wii last week in Japan. The story revolves around a young man named Nick who has lost his popularity and goes to Minmin Island (where all your dreams come true TM) to gain it back. He also has the ability to transform in to Captain Rainbow and fight with a yo-yo.

But this post is about Birdo. Birdo is a character from the Nintendo universe (one of many) who is included in the game. In this context, Birdo has come to Minmin Island so she can be popular with the boys.

Some Americans don't actually know this, but Birdo (who originally appeared in Doki-Doki Panic! and what became Super Mario Bros. 2 in America) is male. I believe the American instruction manuals for games with Birdo tend to try to avoid the whole gender identity issue by making Birdo female, but Birdo is a male character who identifies as female.

In Captain Rainbow, Birdo is imprisoned (see above) for using the woman's restroom. You, as Nick, have to find evidence to prove that Birdo is female so that she will be let free. (After this, I think she declares Nick her boyfriend or something.)

I'm not sure how to feel about this. Birdo, to me, is female regardless of her actual biological sex if only because she believes she is female (she calls herself "atashi", the girly form of "I"). There is a distinction between biological sex and gender identity. So on the one hand I am happy that I get to help out Birdo in the game from being wrongfully detained. On the other hand I am slightly unhappy that I have to have tangible proof outside of Birdo herself to prove that she's female. This dismisses Birdo the "person" entirely and tries to find some "objective" proof of womanhood- and I ask you: what, essentially, proves womanhood? In the game video I saw it was "onna no akashi" which is "proof of woman" loosely, so it's not that the game gives any particular piece of proof, but just proof in some unspecified form. But still, the principal of having to find evidence for this propagates a notion that gender identity has to be proven through biological sex or through external means and it is not up to the person themselves what gender they identify as.

I'll probably be returning to Captain Rainbow in the future here to look at some other characters in the game and also just because I think the whole thing is really fun looking despite what issues I may bring up with it.

Dissidia: Equal Opportunity Heroes?

Shock and glee! Kefka is in the new Final Fantasy: Dissidia trailer! And he's just as crazy as I imagined.

Best part, the scene they show in the trailer hints at something even better! While talking to Cloud of Darkness, he stops her and basically tells her to play carefully because the woman she's targeting is a "very special friend" of his.

Does this mean we could have Terra or Celes joining the all male cast of heroes in Dissidia?

Trailer via GameTrailers.