My long confusing thoughts on the bayonetta series and its confused thoughts on it’s own characters.
So i haven’t exactly played bayonetta from the first release of the first game or anything,
But i’ve had some thoughts over the past year on the series the first half good the second half lesser so, the two halves i will split this into is Bayo 1 -to right before the third games release and during said release and beyond (SLIGHT SPOILERS FOR B3 AND CEREZA AND THE LOST DEMON LATER ON IN HERE) Overall before the third game i assumed Hideki Kamiya (the creator of the series and creator of dmc and such) would be seen in a good light as a japanese creator who used lgbt characters right as in B1 and B2 cereza and jeannes “relationship” is subtle but can be noticed by the right person, and luka being just seen as some weird guy and as for bayo 1’s case a metaphorical father figure to help young cereza
I should say this whole thing did cause some toxic discussions in the community with shipping wars starting which i do not support harrasing anyone involved with the games or anything like that i’m just here to explain WHY cereza and jeannes relationship is still so much of a mess,
and it mostly has to do with japans still problematic arguments on LGBTQ people in general or at least so i thought then you have writers like oda and uchikoshi (read avery mendozas article on the AI the Somnium files current duology’s LGBTQ rep to find out about that) so my main question is why does kamiya keep Queer baiting his audience especially when it isn’t just down to “the couple making no sense” despite jeanne being the main relationship cereza could logically have that wouldn’t have her being like a succubi.
and heres the big problem it is VERY apparent that people in the games team wanted this more logical relationship to happen and all mari shimazaki (the game series main artist and known boundry breaker being a female artist making these and i don’t mean what i will be saying here “risque” designs while using these said designs to have a female character look more confident and less like a generic damsel) anyways long story short shimazaki was very obviously pushing towards breaking another by daring to involve a LGBTQ relationship in a action game a very straight womanizer male lead dominated genre but kamiya felt the stuff she offered art wise looked too much like “yuri content” or some other excuse even though I SHOULD SAY shimazaki got to put out a lot more content relating to specifically cereza and jeanne when the film bloody fate was coming out and from then on she could put out promotional pieces of the two paired together as long as it didn’t inherently hint at them being a couple
and stuff was mostly fine with nothing outright denying anything or generally fucking up the timeline after 2’s release just the occasional “thats too apparently gay” basically from kamiya here and there.
…………AND THEN BAYO 3 CAME OUT oh boy here i go my main problem wasn’t B3 getting with luka or (SPOILERS) having a kid and going to inferno with him it’s that at the same time jeanne as a character was this same weak character she was in the two past games even dying before the final boss again and this also started a bunch of really really gross discourse where people straight up mocked those who assumed bayo was Gay in anyway while i stand by the case that she can be bi multiversally being with whichever side of the coin that cereza pleases to be, but another issue rises when this games idea was the multiverse when most cereza/jeannes were just new designs for the same characters (tokyo jeanne being especially egregious with her clothes just being a recolor of jeannes B2 look and dying in a flashback)
and then we have the lost demon and the fact that DESPITE SEEING ALL THOSE BAYOS DIE THEY DIDN’T AND NEITHER DID B3 JEANNE? this definitely comes off as them trying to metaphorically fix the cracks they had caused so we wouldn’t have as much discourse as we had when the game came out/ got leaked on 4chan in my experience.
hopefully in conclusion my separate points make sense somehow and this isn’t a mess I’m tired as i am writing this and will make it more cohesive in the week ahead.
