Anybody else bothered by Jynx change?

@ jinsei I feel offended by that quote sir.

It's long been debated and, at this point, mostly proven that Jynx was never racist. If anything she resembles a Ganguro caricature or perhaps a mountain hag, the former fitting to her bizarre "fashion" and the latter fitting of an icy, magical creature. People have this tendancy to think that America is the center of the cosmos and our history is common knowledge to every other country, but let's be real about this. If you lived in another country, and had never studied anything about America, how the hell would you know blackface is offensive or even exists? Then again, I'm betting the vast majority of people who complain about such things probably still think Pokemon is an American creation. That said, I don't really care. Psychic type Pokemon are associated with the color purple, so the change was fine and nothing of value was lost. If anything, I think Jynx looks better this way. Now blue Mr. Popo? Fuck that. Mr. Popo is awesome, haters can go to hell.

Whether or not the Jynx character was intended to be racist or not isn't really important. I think it is good that the developers are taking into account a population of people that has been oft considered irrelevant to the gaming community. The U.S. is an important market for video games and companies will act accordingly. People like to make things like this an issue of "political correctness," but I think it is an issue of respect. If you disrespect people by accident, there's nothing wrong with going back and making a correction. Obviously you can't make everyone happy and shouldn't try to do so, but that doesn't mean you should say "hey, we have this game that lots of children play but it's okay if there's a character that appears racist in it."

so if an artist makes a painting that a few individuals find racist, he should automatically change a perception of art because some felt offended by it? And here I thought that racism was dead. People will often get out of their way to find racism where there is none. And jynx wasn't intended to be racist it just wasn't Racist. :/

If your question is a direct response to me, it seems like you didn't read my whole message...?

@ mario actually it is relevant if the character is racist or not. Who perceived and how many perceived said character as racist? Many more considered it as not racist entirely others agreed it COULD be viewed as racist if you so wish to do so. But the ones who felt offended what where they the majority or the greatly outnumbered minority? Also how is it a sign of respect to change something in order to not loose a piece of your market value? They didn't change it because they care about opinions in particular, it was all so they could avoid possibly loosing a piece of their market. To them there was no racial issue, it was profits and if anything this helped them with free propaganda. :/

Okay...let's try this again. First, I said it doesn't matter if it was "intended to be racist," not it doesn't matter if it was "racist." Big difference. For example, anime has a history of using swastikas which are usually edited out in western releases for obvious reasons. The swastikas aren't intended to be bad, but here that's how it is mainly perceived. If you create a character that looks like it has black-face, that's how it will be perceived by many people here. This rumor about Jynx being racist has existed since the time Pokemon first came over to the U.S. And it is easy to see why someone would come to that conclusion. That doesn't mean it's the right conclusion, but it's reasonable for people to come to that conclusion. Second, I never said it was a sign of respect to do something to avoid losing market value. I said I think things like this are an issue of respect. As in I think decisions should be made out of respect for people, not that companies actually base decisions on this. Really, I made this statement out of the blue and it probably didn't belong there. It was mostly me saying that I personally don't care about political correctness but I do care about respect. Third, you asked me "artist makes a painting that a few individuals find racist, he should automatically change a perception of art because some felt offended by it?" But in my original statement I clearly said "You can't make everyone happy and you shouldn't try to do so."

"People like to make things like this an issue of "political correctness," but I think it is an issue of respect. If you disrespect people by accident, there's nothing wrong with going back and making a correction." That was the intention of my point, The company didn't do it out of intention of either political correctness or respect, it did it for market value. Example: Mass effect trilogy ending, the fans literally hated how the game ended even when you had multiple choices. The company seeing it was losing its market added content outside its intended margin for the game, in order to keep the gamers happy. Because they are the people who buy their games, of course they make a statement of how its because the fans asked for different ending. But you don't need to know of economics to see what it really was for. As for the question, it wasn't really intended for you, it was in general if people really expect it to be like that always. That as soon as you "believe" something is disrespectful (not to use racism) they will want it banned and or modified. (Like with oh so many things already) As for the first part, if it was "intended to be racist", I never wrote for its intention. I wrote about it being racist or not, and what part of the fans (or maybe outsiders who just saw it that way) saw it that way. Seeing as the vast majority agreed it wasn't racist, and that most agreed that it COULD be viewed in a racist fashion. The truth is the problem became a PC problem, due to a small number of individuals who saw it as a race thing. And yes it wasn't the correct conclusion.

It seems we had some misunderstandings here. It's making it really hard to reply clearly. But I do want to know how you decided that a "vast majority agreed it wasn't racist."

it is what most of the sites talking about this had. Including about 45 polls in 23 different anime sites (2 of which are dedicated to pokemon only). Also what a lot of the younger fans where saying(writing), was that it was mostly people who didn't know about pokemon all that much that saw it in a racial manner. And if you search youtube you will find quite a few videos of people ranting as to how "blind" (to put it nicely) you have to be to see it as a race thing. I am not into pokemon but on other sites the biggest thread for a while was the pokemon threads and all dealing with the same issue. Even flame wars over something so~~~~ not big of a deal. The polls major concensus was neutral though ... it wasn't racist but it COULD be seen as such. but thats if you wanted to see it as that.