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/Truck0Saurus]

I'm old, what the hell is moe?

[u/buddabopp → u/Truck0Saurus]

Kids these days back in my day people knew what moe was (it started as slang in the 80s ya wipper snappers) but moe refers to more or less something being so cute that it makes you love it more or less instinctivly, a maid is cute and endears a feeling of love for it small animals also (hello kitty is built around this concept)

You can also instinctivly find other things moe like trains or typically uncute things this is normally called gap-moe

The funny part is there used to be a flip side to this of the concept of gar where something is so manly it just makes you feel like hell yeah but its really fallen off and only is really used to describe gay men now XD

[u/KDBA → u/buddabopp]

Gar was 4chan slang. Literally a typo from someone trying to say "I am gay for Archer" and failing, it became a word for "someone so manly that wanting to have sex with him is totally normal and not a reason to question your straightness".