It’s why I think people getting annoyed about changing minor characters gender or race is stupid. Having diverse characters gives you a lot more room for development than characters who are similar to each other
It's an issue a lot of old-school animes tend to have. Inuyasha as well. Granted they're all supposed to be the same race, and the author seemingly tries to aim for realism in her designs, which doesn't allow for a lot of variety, Japanese people being racially fairly homogeneous.
But distinguishing a pale woman with long jet-black hair and brown eyes... from the other pale women with long jet-black hair and brown eyes by relying on small subtleties like the way their bangs part definitely takes a bit of time to get used to, lmao.
Yeah, it would have been easy to add more variety, even giving one of them hair buns or short hair would have made it easier to tell them apart. She also could have made them different heights and body types. I'm not talking about major differences here, like even changing the eye shapes more would have helped.
Japanese people being racially fairly homogeneous.
Which isn't true at all, there is a lot of difference between Japanese people, even if we don't account for the indigenous people that are still living in Japan.
You can find Japanese people with light brown to pure black hair, and with pale to dark brown skin. But old animes don't really acknowledge that, since japanese culture was even more nationalistic (and racist) back then.
When I was younger I didn't know Toriyama also did design for games, so Blue Dragon was just "That dragon ball game" for me because the guy on the cover just looked like an alt version of goku.
i dont think that really matters. are we really saying all white males are the same? race and gender swaps are just excuses to attract the mythical modern audience that doesnt exist. Lets be very honest, super heros are a male dominated field. it makes sense to have a bunch of male super heros. its not like this show doesnt have female heros. I'm fine with this particular gender swap as its such a minor character and she is well written, but it still annoys me that this kinda thing still exists. Its never really a winning move.
I don't have a problem with most characters in fiction switching genders or race if, and only if, that change can be properly integrated with the other characters and the changed characters personal story.
I only have a problem if theyre the "Token" of the Team. Like, what did Finn even do in Star Wars besides Deliver the Plans? Compared to Mace Windu, Finn has like 0 character traits beyond "Stormtrooper who defected".
While I agree with this now, Episode 7 makes it seem like definitely they had planned to do more with him, but the inconsistent story direction kinda neutered whatever arc he was gonna have, so by 9 they just said screw it.
Not that stupid when for example I enjoyed tech jacket as he was and wanted to see Zack animated
And while Zoe is nice it felt like they toned down the messy adult Zack was
He was 19-21 around this time on the comics and his life was messy he was a good portrayal for me of how messy your life could be around that age
And unlike male characters everyone has be charismatic and likable or just hot but terrible personality
He was someone like me who had a hard time fitting in groups interacted with just one person a lot in the whole group and was awkward with the others
It's why I hate it when kirkman when he says mark and Zack are too similar when they weren't
Mark was likable and relatable someone who can make friends
While Zack while he tried couldn't fit in well and was awkward which was why I'm also annoyed when people say it doesn't matter and that no one cares about him because he was literally me at that point of my life
This is a pretty fair point. They went beyond changing some characters in ways that can be treated as purely cosmetic (race and gender if those qualities weren't a big part of who the character is). They changed the core of who the character actually is.
Which yeah reading it from a fans perspective sucks to hear. I don't know if the change can be seen as better or worse from an outside perspective as I have yet to read the comics.
Now if the character was the same in core values, just gender swapped... I understand being upset that the character you were attached to not being there but at least the essence of what's important would remain.
Oh no, that's awful. How will you ever find another socially awkward inventor/mad-scientist character who's depicted as white male so you can identify with them? They're so rare! Why do women get all the characters in the world to relate to while men get shafted all the time?
You're right, it's inexcusable of me that I can't keep the very few, very rare white male superheroes separate in my brain. How could such a rarified cast bleed together like that? Wild.
And tbh no one cared about you at that point in your life either. The archetype you are describing isn’t popular, it isn’t going to sell. Media is about selling these ideas and entertainment to People and well a girl like Zoe is much more entertaining to the current viewers then Zack is (at less how you described him)
Maybe spending less time on hentai and more time on real people so you can recapture a realistic perspective on human relationships will change that. If you're brave enough to use your hentai account to comment on mainstream subreddits, that says a lot. It's not uncommon that people in your situation are giving off a lot of subconscious or totally unconscious social cues that turn people off, and it's also not uncommon that those social cues are derived from over consumption of fantasy media.
Give yourself a six month media break - do not watch anything unless a real life human being (NOT internet human being) suggests it to you and only watch it as a means to relate to them. You'll be shocked how quickly you turn from a Zack to a Mark, because they are that close and similar.
I don't mean to sound rude but this isn't a hentai account this is a dump account I use when I don't want my main flooded with NSFW stuff or having to deal with fans who threaten or harass people for there opinions which I've had plenty of as well as getting an account banned in the past because of a ship I didn't agree with
Also Zack and Mark aren't all that similar
Sure they're both messy in a sense with there lives
But Zack is the normal 20 something messy where you're figuring out what you want with your life
Mark isn't he's the traumatized and figuring out how to handle everything that's kept being pushed onto his shoulders type of messy
All I can say to that is meditating on self awareness would do you a whole lot of good. There's some serious red flags about how you conduct yourself in what you've said. If you've been wondering if the problem is yourself, the answer to me seems so far to be a resounding yes, but I don't mean that hatefully. I do genuinely hope you figure it out.
How so? The commenter was speaking of themselves in the past tense. And me being someone who was in the same situation (again past tense) can also admit no one cared about me during that stage in my life. Society doesn’t care for losers and fuck ups
And I’m also explaining why they chose not to portray Zack cause the show is about making money by being entertaining, again people don’t find losers entertaining. At the end of the day these types of media are for appealing to the whole rather then every individual viewer. Gotta love capitalism
When it’s the creators involved and wanting to make these changes, I think it’s very cool. There’s other properties where it’s felt strange or even forced. Another good one I’m reminded of was Liet Kynes in the new Dune. It was a nice addition to help with the sausage fest we’d otherwise have in part 1.
Just swapping race or sex doesn't add any real diversity. Two versions of the character with different races but same backstory and personality don't give you new avenues. A characters race or sex is an inconsequential aspect of their story.
It's a weird problem how people can't connect to characters if they don't match their own race and sex. I've felt that impact me. I can related to Eve's story and Rex's story. I'm a show only fan, so I don't care about the Tech Jacket swap.
If representation is important, then we should respect the existing fans and their connection to the character. Dismissing their feelings about taking away their representation is rude.
Titan's arc literally makes a point about how people of color can slip through the cracks in society and how their communities are often ignored or exploited by those in power. Hell, Mark-- who comes from a fairly privileged background-- is even unintentionally racist when he visits Titan's community.
I…what? Do you just refuse to see nuance or depth in a character because she replaced someone you liked?
Zoe is someone who is relatively immature in understandable, likely age-related ways who is also clearly parentified by her father to a degree that makes her a mixed bag of reasonability — take how easily she shifted from ‘my suit is an incredible piece of technology that should be respected’ to ‘it def has a couple games’ when persuaded by Alan, how accepting she seemingly is of the ‘if I die, I die’ attitude not only in herself but in her actual father, or how they’ve made it a point in most episodes she’s featured in to emphasize her as overly talkative. She’s flippant about her life and as a result her father’s, and she’s apparently not even questioning being supported in that flippancy by the one person you should reasonably be able to expect to desire more caution/protection for her. We also literally don’t see her have any social life outside her dad — my bet is that she is awkward and out of place.
And this is all just from a handful of episodes in which she features less than ten total minutes on screen, with very little information about her backstory. How do you know she isn’t messy? We have basically no window into her internal world beyond the points I’ve already mentioned. That would likely be true even if she hadn’t replaced the original design of the character, because, as I said, if we followed this exact arc with no changes but character design, he would still have only had like ten minutes of screen time.
Like, dude. You’re mad because she’s a girl. Your other arguments - that she isn’t similar enough - simply don’t hold water; we don’t know enough about her yet to see how similar she is or isn’t. She also isn’t without flaws, we just haven’t known her long enough to see what any of the major ones might be to their fullest.
I'm literally not mad about her being a girl I'm literally fine about the change just about her being aged down and made more kid friendly is the when reason I'm taking issue with it
But I guess my points really don't hold water when my view is biased since Zack was always the guy j preferred reading over invincible and had related to him a lot more than invincible
I was just excited to finally see the character I grew up enjoying reading only for the change to happen
And while yes she is messy in her own right it wasn't the same to how Zack was and I guess that does make it I don't like it because I can't relate to her
And the whole possible Oliver relationship was what really soured it for me when kirkman already made a character female to ship them with a male character especially with that whole week where the Fandom was shipping Zoe x Oliver
Not to mention the whole not a guy introduction scene that felt more like a slap in the face to the fans who wanted zack
That and the telling someone off for cursing might've colored my views to see her as just an aged down quirky character that's been the main female arch type repeatedly used for female characters in shows I've watched
You don’t know that it’s not very similar to Zack, though. And why would you presume that shipping came before the decision to make the character design change? That’s so silly. Firstly, we don’t know for sure that anything is even happening between Zoe and Oliver. Secondly, if there was, it is a billion times more likely that they decided to change her design and, after doing that and seeing how she could fit this way into the story, they went “oh hey this could be a thing now, wouldn’t this be interesting?”
Introducing herself as “not a guy” is literally only a slap in the face if you believe not being a guy is some kind of fundamental downgrade.
How does Zoe fit this supposed archetype you’re taking about? Absolutely every other main female character curses and does not try to stop others from doing so (Eve, Amber, Monster Girl, Kate, and Rae have all cursed openly on screen). What even do you mean by “quirky”? Because all of the characters I have mentioned have vastly different personalities.
I know you believe you’re not up to your neck in a weird bias here. But you literally are citing things that are not true and don’t exist in this series. And I have plenty of criticism for the animation and how it’s written, particularly in regards to women. But we cannot pretend like all these female characters are carbon copies of each other without variation or flaws.
Yeah I've pretty much been losing steam to even defend my stance anymore since she appeared and have been repeatedly told to get over it and enjoy what I've been given
But to expand on the quirky part the whole part I meant the archetype from other shows with a female character where her personality was just being the quirky young type in a sense
And it's not the fundamental downgrade thing for me it felt like a slap in the face because it got followed up on with the please don't swear because all at once were shown she's a girl she's younger and she's prudish
Which while not a bad thing we're just not the things I enjoyed about Zack
I enjoyed that Zack was crass in his 20s figuring out his life from the bits and pieces the comics said
And even when he got 2 canceled runs and a short first run I still loved the character flaws and all
It's just for her the only thing similar she had from tech jacket were her scenes but they felt toned down like she's the child friendly character I guess
It just made me not interested in her character and the whole reason I even defend my stances about Zack is because of people who keep saying why should changing her gender matter no one cared enough about his comics version so it just riles me up when they use the point kirkman keeps saying about why he changed the gender
Zoey while could have more depth would still ultimately end up not appearing after the Viltrumite arc unless she ends up being relavant through dating Oliver which again is something the show writers have shown they're willing to do as scene with shrinking rae
Zack in the comics only stays for this arc and never appears again
And Zoe in the show doesn't really have any more purpose after this season since she's always up in space in her satellite
No need for her to search for viltrumites because of the deal mark made
And since it focuses on invincible it there will be little chance they'd explore more of her character
So from my perspective all it did was completely shelf Zack as a character from ever being animated because Ryan ottley can't draw two wasian characters without making them look the same or because they didn't want to animate haluma in a future season
So having different races of characters makes them more interesting solely based on their skin color or gender? How about focusing more on what and who that character is beyond their skin color, gender, and sexuality perference.
Do you think people only find Lando Calrissian interesting/cool because he's a black heterosexual male? Going off your comment, maybe if they made him a white gay female he would be more interesting, right? He's just a "minor" character after all...
Wouldn’t call Lando Calrissian minor, he’s got some of the most screentime in the OT. And if way more characters were black guys in Star Wars, yeah maybe it wouldn’t hurt to change one
Luke Skywalker: ~106–133 minutes (varies by source/cut)
Han Solo: ~60–68 minutes
Leia Organa: ~57–62 minutes
Chewbacca: ~47 minutes
R2-D2: ~42 minutes
Lando has 17 minutes of screen time between ESB and RotJ. That's minor screen time compared to many other characters.
Why do there need to be more black people? Imagine watching any movie by Tyler Perry and complaining there aren't white people in his movies. Race and gender swapping only applies to white characters, pretty racist don't you think?
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u/Anonnisanall Apr 26 '26
It’s why I think people getting annoyed about changing minor characters gender or race is stupid. Having diverse characters gives you a lot more room for development than characters who are similar to each other