Girl in the Machine - The Flower Girl
While FFVII doesn’t have a job system per se, Aeris is clearly the party’s standard white mage, complete with staff and restorative Limit Break. While the conventional female character locked into the healer role tends to annoy me, this works in context. Aeris is balanced out by not one but two other women, neither of whom are magic users (Tifa as a monk and Yuffie as a thief). This is rarely seen in other Final Fantasy games wherein white mages like Rosa, Garnet, and Yuna also have magic-using female compatriots. More importantly, her “job” as a white mage works in tune with the plot. To rescue the Planet from Meteor, she uses the White Materia to cast Holy, a well-known high level spell in white magic.
A character’s appearance plays an important role, as always, and it’s great to see Aeris is not afflicted by a cheesecakey design (something that’s admittedly relegated to black mage women like Lulu or Fran). I’ve always liked her Dress And Hiking Boots combo, showing a measure of function over form.
Heroine Sheik - On Male Videogame Character Body Types
This recent (somewhat shoddy) list of the Top 25 Hottest Men in Gaming got me thinking about male bodies. The bodies of female video game characters have undergone a lot of male gaze scrutiny. They appear on the covers of magazines wearing skimpy outfits and become the subject of endless fanboy drool-fests. Male characters, while their bodies may be just as sexualized by design, hardly ever attract as many hungry eyes–or angry voices when they don’t meet standards of beauty. So I say let’s turn our gaze on those occasionally sumptuous male bodies and see what we find.
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