Mekuri Master
Yeah, um.
So back when Rose & Camellia was making the rounds, I saw a few people actually saying the game was sexist. This was nonsense, of course, just as it was when my mom tried to tell me that it was sexist to hit the women in Double Dragon who, let's not forget, are beating you with whips, Mom.
But... crud. What am I supposed to say about Mekuri Master?
See, according to Japanese Wikipedia, flipping up girls' skirts, or skirt-mekuri, was a fad in Japanese schools among boys (and girls), particularly from the 1960s through the 1980s. This was supposedly Marilyn Monroe's fault, or something. The level of societal concern over this varied depending on the age on the perpetrators and the exact nature of the incidents.
Around the '70s and '80s, this began to seep into the popular culture as well, with skirt-flipping and panty shots becoming a staple of certain gag manga and TV shows like That's Our Sarutobi, Maitching! Machiko-sensei (NSFW), and Scandal Campus (NSFW). Lest we fall into the (sometimes valid!) Japan-is-so-weird trap, note that even in Japan these were considered controversial and racy; the article for Machiko-sensei helpfully points out that "generally the teacher's breasts were exposed at the end of every episode," which "prompted concern from PTAs and other groups."
As Japan entered the '90s, continues our entirely unsourced Wikipedia article, the skirt-flipping trend more or less died out; theorized causes include earlier maturation in girls, more latent sexuality in boys, trends toward less enticing undergarments such as bloomers and tight leggings, a move in school uniforms from long skirts to miniskirts, and even a shift from male to female dominance in schoolyard social hierarchy. However, an entire generation of Japanese youth grew up with this phenomenon, and I'd imagine the manga and anime of that era carry as much nostalgia as He-Man and the Smurfs do to me and my peers.
So what I'm saying is, my latest translation, NIGORO's Mekuri Master (probably NSFW) is a parody of and homage to these old cherished anime and the social context that spawned them. And also it's a game where you run through a school flipping up girls' skirts. Yes, Mom, it's sexist.
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shihtzu) wrote,
