this post was submitted on 12 Jul 2025
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I should have been more explicit, but part of the reason that I made the Hulk comparison is also that he's mostly naked. As it is culturally received, showing skin doesn't always have anything to do with sex appeal and there are many ways to do it besides being exposed (e.g. the example of the woman you showed me, who was in one of the portraits in a skin-tight suit but pretty much completely covered, with that being more sexual than the costume where more skin was visible).
My point was: a) the big lady's individual case isn't that significant, b) there are nonetheless not just incidental points of emphasis but genuine contortions in the design to favor sex appeal, and this costume generally does that above communicating anything else, c) you can point to many similar contortions across the cast in costumes and characters in this game about paying money to collect women and girls as pets and assets, and the confluence of these two thing is important to my interpretation.
You're relying on an inadequate rubric for this that I normally only see from comic fans trying to say that there is equality in how male and female heroes are designed (there is not) by completely misunderstanding the most basic concepts of what sexualization is. Nudity can be used to sexualize, but they aren't the same thing.
For example, Cornelius is a fine enough pretty boy, but he's not lewd at all, and for the same reasons that Dwarf mostly isn't, the king just barely counts with the emphatic V figure that, by cartooning standards, does not reach the point of deformity. Like, in the gallery, look at that picture of him with Vulcan, do you perceive the two of them to be on equal footing here? Do you believe that her stockings, by merit of covering her skin, are subtracting from her sexualization? How about the thong? The prince is the only male character you've shared that reads as a meaningful example (on account of framing), and even then he's barely past the acceptable bounds of a Disney prince in that regard. I suppose it probably reads a fair bit differently to some gay men (who are not the target demo, I'm pretty sure), but in terms of designs for appealing to a straight woman, this is all on a range from very mild to non-applicable. The same cannot be said for the designs of the women. Turns out male gaze is a thing.
Fully agree here. And yes I would basically agree that even at their most handsome character designing, Vanillaware is a male gaze factory. I should be clear, I'm not trying to argue that the sexualization of Vanillaware's men is on par with the women. Indeed, the sliding scale here (Dwarf is less sexual than Amazon even though they're both muscular to an obscene degree in large part because of posing and gender norms) is part of the point - what is or isn't gooner shouldn't be based on reception but instead the authorial/artistic intent. It's clear Vanillaware's artists are out to maximally sexualize their women and insert their men into very heteronormative gender roles (knight, pretty boy, hulking freak) that only get fully sexualized by fans (e.g. some fan artist going ham with Ingway and Onyx or something). Bayonetta is sexualized by the game (even as it tries to turn that into empowerment), 2B is incredibly sexualized and the game calls you out in the 9S storyline for it. However even calling out your own design's horniness doesn't absolve the author from the gaze. You might play/deconstruct it, but it's still there.
I'm not saying there's not an argument for the male gaze (or, in games with male characters, a "sexual" gaze - looking at the fans of pretty boys here) at play in Umamusume. Of course there is. But the same could be said of any media. Would we call Legend of Zelda gooner? The sexualization of Link by decades of fans is well documented. The thirst is real. But the most the game does is call attention to his femininity in the Gerudo towns. Maybe that's a nod to the many horny fans of Link over the years, but it's not "gooner". The same might be said of (to use a game with a woman protagonist for a moment) Horizon. Aloy is a conventionally attractive woman, I'm sure there's plenty of gooner shit about her (to the point we got the hilarious cringe tweets about her peach fuzz from actual gooners when Forbidden West came out). But the game isn't explicitly horny about her even if you could easily go down the sexualization path with her.
To return then to the horse girl game - I can totally see how the combination of gacha+character design can feel a bit cringe. But "gooner", for fanart that's explicitly focusing on a cute relationship for a game that in the grand scheme of games is probably in the lower half of horniness - it feels a bit misguided comrade.
Edit: I should be totally clear that I'm very bad at figuring what either my cishet woman or gay male comrades are into. I know there are many types - burly, pretty, twink, etc. - but aside from a gay enby comrade telling me of how they think Link's been twinkified over the years I'm really not equipped to say what is or isn't to the gaze of the gay man or straight woman. All I'm saying is the character designers can be real clear when the game/character is gooner (again, Vanillaware's entire output is what happens when horny guys create games. See also Gwyndolen in Dark Souls). Cygames in the horse game, so far, is not yet over the line. This isn't to say it's not free of sexualization, but I wouldn't suggest the character designers are gooners in the way that I would levy that accusation against Vanillaware's designers. Or hell, Kojima
's depiction of women is way more gooner than the cute horse game.