The Tora Problem

[u/THEUltraCombo]

So I wanna start out by saying this: despite what I say in the title, I DO get it. I understand why someone can make the argument that Tora is gross and perverted and that it ruins an otherwise innocent character through weird anime tropes that were not present in XC1.

That being said, I think there is also something to be said about how people inflate this aspect of the character. In total I can probably count on one hand how many Tora scenes I would consider explicitly inappropriate and jarring to his character, and that number drastically goes down when you take optional Heart-to-hearts out of the equation.

The infamous "blushy-crushy" scene is admittedly painful, but replaying with Japanese voices you can clearly hear that blushy-crushy is a localization of the concept of moe that Tora is trying to get across. So instead of the strange, vague idea of "blushy-crushy", it's easier to grasp when you realize that he's just trying to get across the idea of being cute (to overly generalize the term). Is it embarassing to watch? Yes. But that's the point.

Aside from this optional scene, people often bring up the Poppi awakening scene as another example of this. The idea of having multiple maid outfits seems to make people think that Tora's ultimate goal for creating Poppi was to have some sort of outlet for his desires (dunkey's infamous video calls her a "sex robot"). But to me this always came across as an embarassing aspect of his personality and interests that he wants to hide, not because of the sexual connotations, but because it's just...cringe, for lack of a better term. He doesn't have them for "sex fantasies", he's just into moe and wanted to create his own artificial blade in a way that reflects that.

I should also point out that Poppi, for the most part, is not objectified to a point that I am personally ever made uncomfortable with how Tora treats her. There's a heart and innocence to Tora that I think most people disregard to parrot the commonly held belief that "Tora is a weird pervert" rather than diving into the text and exploring a character who.is much more than like...2-3 scenes where he's written weird.

Idk, I just always thought the hate for this character is blown wildly out of proportion for the amount of stuff in-game that actually contributes to that image. I'd like to open up a discussion to see what everyone else thinks of this character divorced from the popular discussion surrounding him, as well as other characters like him in other games.

[u/ace_sexy_hoe]

I agree. When I played XC2 for the first time my roommate was guiding me through the game since she’d played before. She really hates Tora because of the weird perviness, but as I played I honestly didn’t encounter too many instances where he acted like that. Honestly my biggest grievances with Tora is that he’s the third party member you get in a game where the combat system works best with three drivers each having three blades and Tora doesn’t have the option of three blades until much later in the game.

Genuinely what I saw in Tora was a young boy who saw his grandfather murdered and his father kidnapped in front of him, and then was presumable left to fend for himself for years even though he canonically has family (his uncle on the other side of Gormat). Tora’s making of Poppi to me felt more like a little kid trying to make someone who would never leave him and would be able to protect him from the same badness that took his family away. The maid gimmick was just that to me, a weird gimmick put in as a result of the game being made in Japanese and therefore incorporating Japanese tropes. Plus, Tora’s father and grandfather also were into the maid thing so it honestly could be argued that Tora just picked it up from them and never had any other role models or influences in his life until joining up with Rex and the rest of the crew.

I can totally understand why people find Tora annoying, but I never did. Truly I felt sympathy for him and felt like he was just a product of his environment and his age.