The ‘Catherine: Fullbody’ Controversy & Why It’s Utter Bullocks
A moan and groan about the reimagining of Catherine and why I detest everyone who is moaning and groaning about it’s ‘controversy’.
WARNING: There will be spoilers for ‘Catherine’ and ‘Catherine Fullbody’ in this blog as well as a touchy subject that may piss off fragile/sensitive individuals. That, and I am far more offensive in my language than usual because I am somewhat miffed. Consider this your warning folks, for I am about to open a can of worms here and I don’t really care!
On 29th December 2018, I published a blog that gave an in-depth critique and analysis on ‘Catherine’. In it, I discuss it’s puzzling gameplay, truly flawed human cast and the deeply meaningful comments it makes on society, sex and lust. It is a blog that is genuinely close to my heart for a number of reasons. Part of which I will quote to you now:
I simply adore this game. It is actually one of my favourites, despite its questionable flaws and one of the most frustrating protagonists in video games. As a game, its puzzles are tough, yet repetitive. The challenges are exciting at times and rather stellar at other points, but ‘Catherine’ is far more than a puzzle game filled with scumbags and stereotypes from both genders. — Daniel Mayfair, 2018
Another reason for the fondness I have with the blog is that I took a lot of pride composing this blog. That is not to say I don’t usually take pride in my blogs, but my blog on ‘Catherine’ is a favourite of mine of some research that I did. I knew after my initial playthrough that I was left baffled by some of the artistic choices, and for a while, I did nothing about it until I decided I wanted to write that blog. I researched what was happening in Japan at the time (‘Catherine’ was developed by ATLUS, a Japanese game company) and see if such events had any influence. I believed I found something that may have influenced the developers a great deal, the well documented social phenomenon known as ‘herbivore-men’, which made a lot of sense for so much of the games’ themes and overall design. I felt proud with that small bit of research, as I felt like a proper critic for a time and had a better understanding of a game I love so very much.
In short, I did not understand something I saw at face value and not engaged. Instead, I sought out a potential truth, to further my understanding. This will be a constant theme throughout this blog, as my first blog about video game news is quite frankly, fucking stupid and shouldn’t be news at all.
‘Catherine: Fullbody’ is a reimagining of ‘Catherine’ that was released on Valentine’s Day 2019 in Japan, with a translated, western release expected to hit our stores on 3rd September 2019. In the 10 or so days, activists have gone onto social media and began spread negative things that they haven’t fully understood and gone onto attack Katsura Hashino, a director and producer at ATLUS, as well as changing his Wikipedia page to claim he is a homophobe.
On 16th February 2019, a post was made on the shitposting forum site ‘ResetERA’, that made claims about several of the narratives points about the game that led to the transphobic narrative belief which is entirely false. I will let you read the post so I don’t have to repeat myself more than needed.
This created an explosion on social media who decided to believe what they saw rather than investigate further. I should note that this site is known for spreading false rumours and lies, so this was obviously a reliable source of information for anyone who has taken offence to ‘Catherine: Fullbody’. Any information that suggested against this idea was dismissed by such activists, which is just obscene as the evidence is sitting right in front of you.
It is established that Rin is a male cross-dressing angel, as the user HylianSeven acknowledges in his post. He is not wanting to be female, soooo…this is not transphobic by any definition of the word. What you can see from any upload of the game is that Vincent walks on Rin in the shower, noticing and reacting to said penis in completely brilliant anime fashion before being told by Rin that he is a guy. When Rin attempts to comfort Vincent, who is clearly stressed and confused by the situation, he slaps Rin’s hand away, immediately regretting it and attempts to run after him, attempting to apologise.
Now, this could be considered homophobic, but not liking penises is not transphobic. If you are a straight male, had one drink too many and woke up next someone to discover they had a penis, would you not be a bit angry and shocked or, do I even say it, repulsed? I know I would be! I am not homophobic, I just don’t lean that way and don’t really want a penis in any orifice of mine. I am not transphobic either. I am very much straight. Oh, FYI, being straight is not transphobic either by the way!
That is only part of the story, however, as what most are taking umbrage too is Erica, who is a transgender character who I deliberately avoided mentioning too much about in my ‘Catherine’ blog because I knew whatever I was going to say about her would have pissed people off. I did not like her portrayal as a character, not because of her writing per se, but because she lied to her love interest about once being a bloke. If you don’t know why I don’t like this, read the above paragraph. After sex is not the correct point to mention that sort of thing to someone!
But I digress. What people are upset about involves a new good ending with Catherine that includes some time travel mechanic when Erica was still Eric. Whereas most of the offendees (and offenders actually) would have stopped there, giving ‘Catherine: Fullbody’ the transphobic award, what is actually happening here is that Toby says to Eric/Erica ‘Catherine is just like an angel, I don’t think I could find a cute girl like her’, and Eric/Erica responds with ‘There might be one closer than you think’.
With the addition of time travel, a new timeline has been made, with Vincent and Catherine being shown to have children, something that Vincent never accomplished in any of the endings in the original game. In the original game, Erica leaves her friends during high school and doesn’t return until she has fully transitioned and lies to Toby by omission about her past. If this new ending is supposed to be the happiest of endings, would it not make sense that Erica doesn’t leave her friends, meeting Toby earlier as a result? That way, she would never be alone during her transitioning and would not feel the need to lie to Toby about her feelings, for it is implied she is referring to herself as ‘a cute angel’. That is not me making any assumptions, it is literally what she fucking says!
The is no way you can argue that Erica is no longer transgender and there is no way one can argue that ATLUS is saying that trans people would be happier if they didn’t go through with it otherwise. Why the fuck would they bother including a transgender character in there, who is very happy being a woman? It is truly incredible how dumb the human race can be at times, who not only back down to crystal clear evidence that they are highly wrong about their warped take on this new narrative but trust ResetERA as a source of reliable news!
But this isn’t the first time I have heard people claiming that ATLUS are homophobic or transphobic, as they got complaints about Kanji and Naoto’s storyline’s in ‘Persona 4’, claiming that they were horribly written gay and transgender characters respectively. To do my bit to set the record straight, their storylines boil down to two things at their most basic forms:
- Kanji’s storyline addresses the fact that it is ok to like cute things if you’re a guy and that is ok like the best of both worlds.
- Naoto’s entire arc is about not having to conform to society. She doesn’t have to be a guy to be taken seriously as a detective. Being a woman is fucking imperative to her story! Surely that is a good thing? Besides, calling her trans misses the entire point!! She is not a transgender person!
I will never understand how people think Kanji & Naoto are badly written characters, when their storyline clearly states their struggles are with gender norms & societies acceptance towards women (and any sexual orientation other than straight) in the workplace. If you believe that these are issues that don’t exist anymore, you are probably a straight white male in the western world.
Coda
This sort of clickbait, reactionary ‘news’ is not common to games. It is everywhere and it pisses me off to no belief and I absolutely hate it that a bunch of ignorant asshats did not choose to do their fucking research as I and so many others have done. Why did I do this? Because I thought it was very clear that something was amiss with the claims of ‘Catherine: Fullbody’ was transphobic, given my knowledge and the great amount of thought I have given to the games and just life in general. If you want to moan about a game for what it is doing wrong, get your fucking facts right first and check your sources!
I am also incredibly angry (in case you couldn’t tell) that because of the consistent complaints and false statements that I have ruined huge plot points of the game for myself and anyone else who is trying to work out what the fuck is going on, trying to separate the good from the filth. I did not want to know anything about this remake when I got my Catherine: Fullbody Heart’s Desire Premium Edition on 3rd September, which is rare for me, as I like to know a bit about the game before I play it. I also don’t get why people would buy various collector’s editions, especially for new IP's, but I made an exception with ‘Catherine’ because I love (almost) everything about it. Sure, there will be loads of things for me to discover, such as how Vincent fucks up (again) and ends up in bed with Rin, how time travel will work in the game outside of cutscenes, as well as what is Rin’s purpose in the story, other than being a gay option for players, which again, adds to the argument that ATLUS are not homophobic as they would not encourage the thing they are (apparently) trying to destroy.
So to all those rumour spreading twats, thank you so very much from the place where my heart used to be, for ruining chunks of the story for me and so many others because you were easy to offend and didn’t put in any effort yourself to seek the truth. For my usual readers, I am sorry for the attitude and change in the presentation I have taken with this blog and I hope I haven’t offended or upset you, but I needed to sort this mess out, as I deemed it my duty as a critic/reviewer/know-it-all on videogames. Hopefully, I have cleared the air about what is going down, what isn’t and all shall return to normal…or as normal as the human race can ever get...
For those who are interested, I will leave a link for my Catherine blog below, to read at your leisure if you so wish.
