If you’ve been online since HoYoVerse released its “Ignition” trailer for Genshin Impact, then you might have seen the discussion around the multi-million dollar company’s issues of colorism and racism. People who were willing to give HoYoVerse the benefit of the doubt in Sumeru (myself included) were hoping that Natlan would be better. At least two characters with dark skin in a region that draws heavily from Mesoamerica and West Africa? Come on. But HoYoVerse managed to shock us all by doing exactly what it’s been doing for years at this point.
Before we begin, I’d like to get something out of the way. “Orientalism” and “cultural” appropriation are among some of the accusations I see people hurl at HoYoVerse. This dilutes the conversation we want to have. We can say HoYoVerse has a colorist and racist approach to characters. But when we conflate that to Orientalism and cultural appropriation, that’s where you’ll lose a lot of people. I do not tend to read through any post criticizing HoYoVerse when those words show up.
Cultural appropriation is “the unacknowledged and inappropriate adoption of the customs, practices, ideas, etc. of one people or society by members of another and typically more dominant people or society.” Native American headgear with eagle feathers and beads used for fashion by non-native people is cultural appropriation. HoYoVerse has always been open about its inspirations. Does it adhere to them or portray them accurately? No, but that’s not the point. It has never once claimed culture-specific items or designs as its own, meaning “cultural appropriation” is not the right term for what it’s doing.
Orientalism is, in the purest meaning of the word, “a Western portrayal of the East as exotic, mysterious, and inherently different from the West.” The “West” is the key point here, as well as the way Orientalism tends to appear in media. In terms of the lore and culture, it’s not as if Sumeru is particularly different from Liyue or Inazuma in its portrayal. They don’t oversimplify anything (like the way some people tend to do the whole “thing but Japan” shtick), nor do they portray Sumeru as this inscrutable enigma. If you want to accuse characters like Dori of having a stereotypical design, then do it. But to call HoYoVerse an Orientalist company is very bizarre to me considering it’s from a country that was itself a target of Orientalism.
I do get why people jump to those phrases. HoYoVerse clearly put in a lot of effort when it came to researching real cultural references and backgrounds for characters like Nilou. Showing its work through her animations and her clothing is great and all—for fantasy games that only draw inspiration from the real world, some creative liberties in fashion is fine, in my opinion—but then why can’t that same amount of research appear in character design beyond her outfit? I’ve seen some people argue that they know very pale Persian people. But you’re telling me that in a cast of thirteen playable characters (native to Sumeru), none of them are even capable of using a medium-toned foundation?
When discussing HoYoVerse’s problems with racial diversity in its characters, we can’t just focus on Genshin Impact. Yeah, it’s the easiest target due to Teyvat’s obvious real-world influences and its popularity. But we could see it happening even in past games. Carole Pepper in Honkai Impact 3rd is very pale. But in lore, she’s biracial with a dark-skinned mom and she’s very sensitive about how she perceives herself. She states in-game that she’s always been insecure because of her skin tone and claims that she is “as dark as dark can be.” She says this despite looking like a white girl with some bronzer on her face.
Even looking at Genshin Impact, it’s very clear to anyone with eyes and color vision that there is a serious lack of melanin in the characters. It’s not that HoYoVerse can’t design dark-skinned characters either. They exist in the game, but as enemies or NPCs. Darker-skinned characters who are playable—Candace, Cyno, Dehya, Xinyan—are all, frankly, horrible units. Kaeya is the only one who’s relatively good due to the fact he’s the main crutch for F2P beginners. Cyno and Dehya received a sort of revival, due to strong support characters like Furina, but it still never made them popular outside of their specific niche. Hopefully putting it in this light can help people better understand the colorism accusations people lob at Genshin Impact.
This issue persists in more recent HoYoVerse titles as well. Arlan is the only playable character in Honkai: Star Rail with darker skin. He’s frankly terrible as a unit. His Talents having names like Shackle Breaker, Frenzied Punishment, and Swift Harvest is also so strange. It’s one thing, I think, if these concepts were just part of his lore. Like, maybe Arlan used to be a prisoner or a criminal until Asta picked him up and gave him a job. Perhaps that is the case. But if that’s his past, we don’t know it because his lore and his appearances in the story thus far have never made any references to that sort of thing.
I will note that Nekomata has darker skin in Zenless Zone Zero, and she’s fine. No one draws attention to it in game or anything. No one in real life seems to pay much attention to it either. But I suppose that Zenless Zone Zero’s launch did become overshadowed by the controversy surrounding the Natlan characters and, as I predicted in my review for it, it’s not exactly a game that has the same general appeal as Genshin Impact does.
You might notice that I consistently refer to these characters as having “darker” skin rather than “dark” skin. If we compare the darker-skinned characters in HoYoVerse games to similar characters in other properties like Dislyte, Reverse: 1999, Fate/Grand Order, Goddess of Victory: Nikke, and Arknights, we can see that the darker characters in those games are significantly darker. They have the same skin tone that HoYoVerse would only ever give to NPCs or enemies.
One of the things I don’t think HoYoVerse is guilty of is lack of research. They know. To say they just “didn’t know” is very infantilizing. Lowkey, that feels Orientalist—to assume that people in East Asia are lack knowledge on societal issues or geography. Some Asians are also pointing out the lack of melanin in characters who, by all rights, should have it. But I also know there are a lot of East Asian players who don’t care and think that Westerners are being ridiculously over-the-top with their “political correctness,” much like how there are Western players who think the same thing. There’s no nice way to say this, so I’ll just say it straight: they simply lack empathy. They don’t care because it doesn’t affect them, because they’re already on the “winning” side.
Though not an equal comparison, if we take, say, Amaterasu and give her very dark skin for no real reason, I’m sure that would infuriate the same Japanese crowd who don’t care about the Natlan controversy. I’ve seen Japanese users state that they’re used to these sorts of character design choices thanks to Fate/Grand Order. But when Fate/Grand Order does things like turn Ganesha into a pale half-Japanese girl (Jinako), there’s usually some in-game reason for it. Whether you agree with this creative decision or not, there is some justification for it in the story, at least.
Because these users already want pale skin and don’t want to think about why blatantly basing a region off Mesoamerica, Latin America, and West Africa, and then having characters from said region all look like they’re typical white Europeans might make some people angry, they’re obviously going to react with exasperation. It’s the Yasuke nonsense all over again. Look, sometimes, I’m also irritated with the way the fandom talks about character designs and how accurate it has to be to a real-world influence. But if your issue is simply the existence of darker-skinned people (“black people” is the term these people tend to employ, even though black people aren’t the only ones with dark skin) in your game, which you play to “escape” from them, maybe you need to spend some time self-reflecting.
To return to my original point, HoYoVerse clearly does its research. Though limited to Liyue, it’s released videos in the past explaining the entire process of creating a character. Yun Jin, for example, had a video on Chinese opera and how the design team wanted to incorporate traditional costumes and movements into her looks and kit. Again, going back to Nilou, while I’m personally not familiar with Persian dancing, most of the comments I see specifically about her animations are very positive. Sumeru’s overall world and lore prove that HoYoVerse put in the time and work. So why does it always fail to deliver on a character design that makes people happy?
On one hand, we can argue that this is just how they are. HoYoVerse has always had this problem, even back during Honkai Impact 3rd. But if they want to go global and hit its international market—which they clearly do, by the way—then they can’t just keep catering to East Asian players. Lots of people love to bring up Dislyte and Reverse: 1999 and such when it comes to darker-skinned characters, and from what I can tell, none of those games experienced a significant dip in popularity or revenue when one appeared in the banner. I’m talking about overall sales, including sales from the Asians. The problem isn’t necessarily the market; it’s HoYoVerse. And if you truly are so angry at and tired of the colorism in Genshin Impact or other HoYoVerse titles, there is no need for you to continue playing them.
Honestly, I don’t think real-life beauty standards necessarily apply to fictional characters. Look at Amuro in Detective Conan and how popular he is with the East Asian fangirls. He single-handedly revived Tooru Furuya’s career before Furuya burned it all down to ground. While we can side-eye the anime for how Takagi’s newer design turns him as pale as his girlfriend, crazy popular Amuro and Heiji remain dark-skinned in both the show and the manga. Characters like Kaeya and Cyno in Genshin Impact are also well-received. Frankly, in all of my years in fan spaces, I’ve never seen any normal person dislike or not want to pull/use a character specifically because of their dark skin. Gender, though, yes.
Let’s go back to that Carole example from Honkai Impact 3rd again. Carole’s skin tone is, realistically, only a little dark. She looks like she’s tanned. Would Carole be better if she kept the same narrative and actually had dark skin? Yikes! Um, I don’t think so. But it would certainly be a bit more understandable and realistic. I used to work with a Filipino girl whose skin color was like a darker version of Dehya’s (dark enough by East Asian standards) and she was obsessed with whitening creams and lotions because she thought herself ugly. I’m not going to sit here and psychoanalyze my old co-worker. But Carole’s angst over her skin wouldn’t be as ridiculous if she actually had some melanin.
The reason I keep going back to Honkai Impact 3rd is because that is one of the oldest games HoYoVerse has worked on, showing that this whole colorism thing has been around way before Genshin Impact. There are so many layers to a company it’s impossible to pinpoint where the problem may be. Maybe it’s a creative design thing. As much as I hated the leaks and how it’s affected the general conversation around designs, those pieces of unused concept art still showed a majority of pale-skinned characters. Maybe it’s someone in the marketing department. Perhaps they tell the creative team that they can’t design any characters with skin too dark or else they can’t market them. In any case, whoever they are, they’ve obviously been around for a while that they’re a core member of the company.
If you’ve been on Twitter (X) these past few days since the Ignition trailer for Genshin Impact, you might have seen a trending hashtag calling for a boycott of HoYoVerse. I’ve seen Tweets from people encouraging other users to do things like sign a petition, leave player feedback, and, amusingly, call their local representative. Surveys aren’t going to work, petitions are useless, and what in the world is calling your local representative going to do? Review bombing doesn’t actually work either. A boycott is really the only way.
I agree with people who are so frustrated they want to do all that. HoYoVerse will only listen if there’s significant money loss, but how many of the people getting heated online are actually putting any money into the game? Like are they even paying for the battle pass? Genshin Impact’s groundbreaking popularity stems from it having reached the casuals during quarantine. Unlike a forced subscription service like FFXIV, there’s no real reason for these people to use any money on Genshin Impact. The ones who are putting a significant amount of money into the game might stop, but would it be enough for HoYoVerse to care?
Many times in the past, people called for a boycott. Some people wanted to boycott Star Rail due to Penacony. This was due to Penacony’s Jazz Age inspiration, yet it lacks any major or playable dark-skinned characters despite the African-American community pioneering that era. Aventurine was a lesser reason for this, as people were mad that the Avgin people draw inspiration from real-life Romani people (not Romanian; I saw users make this mistake a lot), yet he’s a pale, blonde boy. But the HoYoVerse fandom, due to its sheer size and general immaturity, cannot organize itself enough to make a difference. Maybe if enough voice actors or content creators come together to do something, though, they can. Voice actors like Zeno Robinson, Khoi Dao, Jenny Yokobori, and Valeria Rodriguez already made statements on social media about this.
I haven’t played Genshin Impact in a while now. However, I still want it to be better. It’s disheartening to see it put so much effort into its depictions of Inazuma and Liyue, only to do a halfhearted job for regions like Sumeru and Natlan. But if players are serious about wanting change via boycott, they’re going to have to really put in the work. Instead of organizing things like petitions or clout-chasing via engagement bait Tweets and videos, people need to actually organize themselves in a way that will be effective and make their voices heard.
Genshin Impact is readily available on the PS4, PS5, Windows PC, and mobile devices.
Published: Jul 19, 2024 09:00 am