azerik92 replied to your post: blackmoonbabe-nikolasdraperivey-ffvii...
Except that Barret was stereotypically Black and not a very good representation, and this art seems to be about flipping the entire desigh concepts on their head. If none of the white-looking characters had been racebent along with him I would consider this a valid complaint, but the fact that all of them were makes me feel its just stretching to find something to complain about. When you take nothing but the black guy and make him white, thats understandably angering, but this is equal.
Here’s the thing, though, Final Fantasy characters aren’t white or “white-looking” (unless you’re talking about what Tabata and co. did in Kingsglaive), they’re Japanese by virtue of their (original) creators intent. This isn’t a case of the Legend of Zelda with Link and Zelda, or Mario Bros. with Princess Peach and co..
I’m not arguing that Barret was good representation or that he wasn’t a huge hulking stereotype, but he was pretty clearly and explicitly created as the only non-Japanese character in the FVII (and one could argue the same for Rude), so when I’m saying I’m not comfortable with the idea of racebending an explicitly non-Japanese and Black (American-coded) character into a Japanese character (and without really changing the context of that character beyond his race), I’m not “stretching to find something to complain about”, esp. when I like what nikolasdraperivey did with piece as a whole. I’m literally not comfortable with that (largely because of what I remember about racebending’s original intent, however lost in translation it might be these days), even if it doesn’t bother other people or they don’t see the problem.
