Final Fantasy - History of Whitewashing Black Characters

Channel:

Red Spirit Mask

Subscribers:

1,910

Published on April 11, 2020 2:00:12 PM ● Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TcuLladrPNI

Game:

Final Fantasy VII Remake (2020)

Duration: 13:04

686 views

42

Final Fantasy 7 of course has one of gaming's most well known black characters, Barret Wallace, but FF7 was not the first game in the series's history to have black characters. Final Fantasy 6 and even Final Fantasy 2 have dark skin characters but part of the reason many gamers don't realize this is because those characters, General Leo and Minwu, were whitewashed.
Yoshitaka Amano whose art has appeared in the Final Fantasy series painted these two heroes as black characters. Yet, despite that, when it came to the actual videogame sprites, they were rendered with light skin like the other heroes in the game.
In this video I show what General Leo and Minwu would look like if there character sprites were rendered with dark skin by change the sprite color palette.
I also briefly talk about a possible definitive remake of Final Fantasy 2.
Speaking of remakes. Barret looks pretty good in the Final Fantasy 7 Remake which I show off images of in the video. Apparently some people think Barret looks white washed in the FF7 Remake but frankly I don't see it. He still looks black to me so I don't address that in the video and instead focus on the more obvious cases of whitewashing in the series.



Today is video is mostly about the issue of diversity but many of my other videos teach about Africa and it's cultures and I do in fact briefly compare Minwu to the African Hausa people of Nigeria. But, the point is you may want to check out some of my other videos as well.



There are two main points to this video, one is too correct the record so to speak by showing you how these old Final Fantasy characters should have been depicted and point out the issue of whitewashing. The second point is basically, not just Final Fantasy but in general, games need more Black characters. Black characters have existed on the periphery for far too long and we need them to not just be side characters but main characters.
The Final Fantasy franchise started way back in 1987, and it's come a long way but it can still has room to grow.



P.S. other Final Fantasy games besides FF7, FF6, and FF2 are featured as well such as FF1 and FF3.


#FinalFantasy #history #diversity

By the way, I make art influenced by the arts of Africa.

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