Here we go again with, "We don't mean to offend when we say dante is gay".
First of all, Dante was never mentioned as gay in DMC. So to call someone who isn't gay as gay is offensive. Don't defend it with bullcrap like being gay is okay.There is a difference between accepting someone is gay and to call someone gay when they are not. If someone is actually gay and if they are ridiculed by others calling them gay, then this response is appropriate with the message that "There is nothing wrong in being gay".
I think you're still on this bent that somewhere along the way NT called Dante, any Dante, "gay." They didn't. Not in that conference, and nowhere else.
It's a retarded implication people drew because of Dante being 'shopped into a photo of some "gay cowboys," when the entire purpose of the image had nothing to do with homosexuality, and everything to do with "Western ideals."
The entire point of that conference was that while classic Dante was always expressed as being a Western dude, his design was in fact
not Western at all, and was Japan's flamboyantly stylized idea of occidental elements (it being a game at all). As Acorn displays above, the conferences talks about how the Western idea of a hero, in this day an age, is not about how the character dresses, but their exploits. Images of classic Dante in very much Western movies (which deals with much more down-to-earth realism) shows that while even though Dante was originally intended to be a very American-like guy, he wasn't at all, even when displayed next to salt-of-the-earth, everyday working cowboys (homosexuality notwithstanding, and wholly aside from the entire point).
Even when put in more common clothing in DMC2 thanks to the support of the DIESEL clothier, that style of dress is
still incredibly not your everyday American. Seriously...who wears a zebra-print ascot...? A more important factor is that overall, Japan's style of dress is very unisex, or at least they have no qualms with menswear looking slightly more feminine. DMC1 Dante is wearing
his mother's jacket for chrissakes! And of course...dat ascot. Occidental clothing design puts a lot more effort into differentiating men and women's clothing - despite women looking pretty damn good in men's clothing anyway >.<
In that same conference, there's the Famitus discussion translated where the art director was tasked with making Dante more Western-looking, which confused Taini because Capcom had always designed Dante with a much more occidental style, so he was trying to figure out what they really wanted, or at least what they really meant by "Western," which sorta ends up being "gritty realism," so to speak. In the end though, looking at classic Dante's style of dress compared to the sort of style we see in everyday America, or punk culture, or anything else that's very distinctly "our side of the Pacific," classic Dante stands out too much because of that
very Japanese style (which by no means am I saying is bad).
