Posted in: Games, Video Games | Tagged: Fuji&gumi, gumi, Phantom of the Kill

Phantom Of The Kill's Swimsuit Edition Is Why I Have Lost All Faith In Humanity

gumi Inc. and Fuji&gumi Games today announced that the global version of Phantom of the Kill is holding a nauseatingly sexist swimsuit-themed summertime event. Called "Phantom of the Summer," the event will consist of three parts. And it is absolutely nauseating.

The full description for all three event stages reads:

1. Limited swimsuit-edition units in the Lazuli Recruiter

Swimsuit-edition Tyrfing belongs to the new Ninja class and can ambush your foes from a distance with her Throwing Dagger! Swimsuit-edition Longinus and Shekinah have returned, and they now have 6-star forms. Units in swimsuits have special mobility over watery terrain, so use them in Event quests for a strategic advantage.

2. Lakefront Demon Returns with Bonus Stage
The hit event from last summer is back with a super-high-difficulty bonus stage! Defeat the boss at the end of the last stage to get powerful gear, and clear certain stages to get copies of swimsuit-edition Artemis!

3. Multiplayer War on the Water
Multiplayer Class Matches now have aquatic maps in this limited-time event. There are great rewards, including Dollies for enhancing units and their skills.

Aside from the units above, there are more gorgeous and deadly swimsuit-edition units on the way!

But, let's be real. These kinds of events are nothing but casual misogyny in game form. I get that Fuji&gumi is a Japanese company and there are cultural differences at play, but Japan's got a rather archaic system of gender roles and casual sexism and events like this are just proof of how slow things are to change.

Before you get upset that I called a swimsuit event misogyny, lets break down just what that event really is. Players are getting the chance to collect units for a character collector game, and all of those units are young women in bathing suits. You are literally collecting binders of women. That is objectification, pure and simple. And the casual objectification and commoditization of women's bodies belies a belief that women are somehow less. They are not people, or characters, but objects to possess. And that is misogyny. There are no events to collect scantily-clad men, now are there?

But furthermore, this even just builds on millenia of patriarchy. Both in the east and west, women have been historically treated as objects. So before you object, just think of how you would react if the event were to collect only characters of a specific race. That just sounds bad, right?

That the event is being brought to the world wide version of the game just makes me sigh. At one point in my life, Swimsuit events would have gotten me all up in arms and ready to storm the patriarchy's barricades, but after a lifetime of objectification, you just get tired. I'm less angry and more just exhausted. If I had any faith in humanity, it is now lost.

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