Why The West Sees A Child & The East Sees A Woman

[00:00:00]It has been a rowdy past few days in the video game sphere.

[00:00:04]From the God of War live controversy ramping up discourse regarding Western developers purposefully uglyfying their motion capture models to Nintendo hiring that guy for the Ocarina of Time remake.

[00:00:20]Can someone please tell me why the hell Link looks like a [ __ ] Well, there is one specific discourse that is still brewing on the internet.

[00:00:31]To this day, shooting shots from ALL SIDES.

[00:00:41]YEAH.

[00:00:42]IT'S STARBLADE AGAIN.

[00:00:44]SO, what could the controversy be all about? Is it another one of those sexualization of women things that early 2010s feminists have been yapping about?

[00:00:56]Does the protagonist have massive badonkers?

[00:01:00]Perhaps a big, fat, juicy ass.

[00:01:05]No, no, no, no.

[00:01:06]It's whether or not the main protagonist looks like a child.

[00:01:12]Before that, allow me to introduce myself.

[00:01:16]Hey there. The name's SensaDane. The up and coming commentary YouTuber who will rival the likes of more Pegasus, WestJet, and LeafyIsHere.

[00:01:29]>> Hey, what's [clears throat] up, guys?

[00:01:30]Wait, wait, wait a second.

[00:01:32]Literally, literally, literally jerking off. Literally, literally, literally, literally, literally, literally, literally, I literally just realized this. Literally >> It's actually insane that he has like a 2-minute compilation of him saying literally. A literal 2-minute compilation. Like, what the hell?

[00:01:51]You might be wondering, SensaDane sounds awfully like Sensodyne.

[00:01:57]And you'd be right. I originally opted for just Dane, but no freaking website wants to accept a four-letter name as a username.

[00:02:06]So, I had to think of something with two to three syllables that rolls off the tongue well.

[00:02:12]Also, yes, I want all of you to visualize me as toothpaste. So, this will be my official avatar from now on.

[00:02:20]Anyway, enough about me. Let's start.

[00:02:25]Just for a quick recap, Shift Up, the developer of Nikke and the original Stellar Blade, has unveiled its sequel and their new game, Stellar Blade: Blood Rain. Now, we all know what Stellar Blade is known for.

[00:02:42]It's cool and stunning gameplay.

[00:02:44]Okay, okay. It's known for its highly sexy and attractive protagonist, Eve.

[00:02:50]The game went through countless controversies during its time, after all.

[00:02:54]With Blood Rain, Eve is now out of the picture and has been replaced by Evie, a short, brown-haired, boyish girl who wears a white suit and seems to be younger than Eve. That's all we really know about her.

[00:03:10]The trailer was great, and everyone liked it. End of story.

[00:03:19]>> [music] [music] [music] [music] >> I'm listening.

[00:03:53]Scarlet Sun, that's the beginning and end of it all. How about you try taking a hit?

[00:04:00]>> You're acting a little strange today.

[00:04:03]>> Why does she Why does she look 12 and talk like she's 30?

[00:04:07]>> new character in Star Rail Blade, right?

[00:04:10]And a lot of people are really angry at me for saying this. They say woke individuals be like, "We love women as long as they're not children or dogs or horses or whatever."

[00:04:20]>> [music] >> And they hate women. And so I responded back to this. I was like, "I'm not going to lie. I think [music] this character looks too young and I don't think her voice actress matches her appearance either.

[00:04:30]Even the first [music] game was perfect.

[00:04:31]I just wasn't a big fan of it. Maybe I'm becoming an old man. That's just [music] my two cents. Still looking forward to the game though." So, this got a lot of people mad. It did. It got a lot of people pissed off. I'm Asian. My sister looks like that. She's 26.

[00:04:45]I don't know [music] any So, here's the way I see it, all right? Pick a side though. Let me see if I can show Where's the that one from?

[00:04:57]>> Right.

[00:04:59]Apparently, Eevee looks too much like a child for some people.

[00:05:05]And this discourse has been going on for a week now. So, in this video, I would like to get to the bottom of this >> [laughter] >> and find out if these concerns have any validity.

[00:05:24]First, we have to talk about neoteny.

[00:05:27]What is neoteny?

[00:05:29]Neoteny or juvenilization is a delaying or slowing of physiological or somatic development of an organism, typically an animal.

[00:05:39]Okay, but what does that mean?

[00:05:41]To put it simply, it is the retention of childlike traits well into adulthood.

[00:05:47]What are these childlike traits, you ask?

[00:05:50]Reduced muscle mass, large head, reduction of brow ridge, large eyes, small nose, small maxilla, small mandible. See where I'm going with this?

[00:06:00]Now, Scent Sedaine, if Evie has all these childlike traits, then that must prove that the developers intentionally made her look like a minor, right?

[00:06:10]Well, not exactly. You see, it's easy to hastily arrive at that conclusion if you forget the well into adulthood part.

[00:06:19]Regardless of whether an adult has childlike features or not, an adult is an adult.

[00:06:24]Otherwise, you would be condemning an entire sex in a certain half of a continent for being the P-word. That's right, kids. You'll be condemning all men >> [music] >> and the eastern part of Asia.

[00:06:38]And Latin America, too. Anyway, in a cross-cultural study done by Cunningham et al., they found out that Asian, Hispanic, and white male participants were similar in giving higher ratings to targets with the neonate features of large eyes, greater distance between the eyes, and smaller nose area. But what about black people, Scent Sedaine?

[00:07:02]Same thing. Study three examined the possibility that blacks and whites make similar judgments about faces and different judgments about bodies.

[00:07:12]But where do Asians and Latin Americans get into this, Scent Sedaine?

[00:07:17]Here.

[00:07:18]All groups of judges made more positive ratings of the Asian and Hispanic targets compared with the black and white targets. Further analysis indicated that the Asian and Hispanic targets happen to possess significantly larger eye height, eye width, nose width, eyebrow height, smile width, and upper lip width than the white and black women. Because the targets were chosen for their availability rather than randomly selected from their populations, and the absolute number of targets in each group was small, it would be incorrect to conclude that any ethnic group was more attractive than any other.

[00:07:39]So, what does this all mean?

[00:07:41]Simple.

[00:07:42]Men are attracted to women with neotenic features.

[00:07:46]Because neoteny is more apparent in Asian and Hispanic women, the multiracial judges tend to rate them higher in the attractiveness scale.

[00:07:55]But don't take this nerd [ __ ] study to heart. Let's do some real world testing.

[00:08:00]Do you guys remember that Jubilee video regarding female attractiveness?

[00:08:04]Yep, this one.

[00:08:06]Do you remember the results?

[00:08:08]>> That was ruthless.

[00:08:09]>> I'm a man.

[00:08:11]>> [music] [music] >> It's actually crazy how almost one to one the study is with this video. You could argue that the sample size is small. But this Cunningham et al. study isn't the only there is about neoteny.

[00:08:32]Just check the neoteny in humans page on Wikipedia and you can see the myriad of studies that support this sociological reality.

[00:08:41]That aside, since we're talking about the character of a game made by Asian developers, Kent a Bento made a great video about the neoteny in East Asians. So, if you want to learn more about the specifics, you can check it out.

[00:08:56]But when rewatching, one section has stuck to me.

[00:09:00]>> In Western society, the desirability of these traits is not exactly something that's encouraged [music] when it comes to physical attraction.

[00:09:08]But in East Asia, it's pretty normal and has been the case for a very long time.

[00:09:13]>> Why is there this cultural divide regarding the acceptance of neotenic features between the East and the West?

[00:09:19]Like what Kent a Bento said, Asians generally have no problem with it.

[00:09:24]But the West, well, we wouldn't be talking about this if nothing happened, do we?

[00:09:30]It feels like we have this discourse every week because a lot of Westerners cannot stop accusing everyone who's into characters like Eevee, the P-word.

[00:09:39]And I think I know why.

[00:09:45]On X, formerly Twitter, I stumbled upon this [music] post from SmashJT about Koreans commenting on his Stellar Blade video.

[00:09:55]Let's read it, shall we? Speaking as a Korean, that face could belong to someone in their late teens, 20s, and 30s.

[00:10:04]Especially since there are many idols and actors who are adults yet look incredibly young.

[00:10:09]I don't think it is a special case at all.

[00:10:12]However, in Korea, if you were to say that face looks [music] like a 12-to-14-year-old, you would probably look like you have a mental disorder.

[00:10:22]>> [laughter] >> No matter how you My bad, my bad.

[00:10:27]No matter how you look at it, that face simply cannot look that young.

[00:10:32]The next one. I am Korean.

[00:10:35]Every day on TV we see K-pop idols around the age of 20 who look like this.

[00:10:40]There [music] are no 12-to-14-year-olds with such mature looks.

[00:10:45]And then it hit me.

[00:10:47]Westerners most likely do not know about what Asian kids and teenagers look like.

[00:10:53]With that, I am reminded about this funny Tik Tok clip.

[00:10:57]>> I like your lights.

[00:10:59]>> Thank you. I like you.

[00:11:01]>> Thank you.

[00:11:02]>> How old are you?

[00:11:03]>> 14.

[00:11:06]>> You have the right to remain silent.

[00:11:07]Anything you say can and will be used against you in the court of law. You have the right to an attorney. If you cannot afford one, one will be provided for you. Do you understand the rights I have read you?

[00:11:14]Yes, sir, I do.

[00:11:16]Take me home.

[00:11:17]>> No wonder some Westerners think Eevee looks like a 12-or-14-year-old.

[00:11:21]They're probably so used to 14-year-olds looking like that.

[00:11:25]Personally, I would have thought she's nearing her mid-20s because there's no [ __ ] way a 14-year-old looks that mature in my country.

[00:11:35]Now, let's compare them to East Asians.

[00:11:39]Here we have Kanna Hashimoto, a popular actress in Japan.

[00:11:43]Here she is when she was 12.

[00:11:45]Here she is when she was 13 or 14, somewhere between the two.

[00:11:50]Kim Yoon-seok, a popular actress in South Korea.

[00:11:54]Here she was when she was 11. It was from a movie called Silence.

[00:11:59]Here she was when she was 14.

[00:12:01]It was from a movie called Murderer.

[00:12:04]I'll have to watch that.

[00:12:06]Now, let's see how they stack up to Evey.

[00:12:11]Like, do you get what I mean?

[00:12:14]Evey looks way more mature than both of them.

[00:12:17]And no need to worry, detractors. I won't be leaving out the elephant in the room.

[00:12:23]This shot. Yep. There it is. Everyone [ __ ] lost their minds when this shot came up. Like, I think I've illustrated it well when I showed that montage earlier. And it's not like I don't agree that she looks significantly younger in this angle. I can concede to that. But, I blame the Western modeling industry and Hollywood. We all got so used seeing actresses undergo a buccal fat removal surgery that we tend to correlate that lack of buccal fat to adulthood and having one as a juvenile. But, that's so far from the truth. Repeat after me.

[00:13:01]Adult women have buccal fat.

[00:13:06]Yet, somehow this trait that makes women more youthful is treated as undesirable.

[00:13:12]Let's have Kim Yoon-seok as an example again. How old do you think she was in this photo? I'll give you a second to answer.

[00:13:20]Time's up.

[00:13:21]If you have answered anything below 20, you are wrong.

[00:13:26]She's either 20 or 21 in this pic. While her buccal fat is not as prominent as Evie's, a big part of her youthful appearance is that. Take that away from her, and I assure you she'd look 10 times older, just like the Western actresses who had undergone this surgery. I've also seen this image comparing [music] Evie to Annelke and Anno, and I think it further supports my claim regarding buccal fat.

[00:13:53]These two do not look their age, that's for sure. And a big contributor to that is their prominent buccal fat. While I agree that Evie looks significantly younger in this specific shot, it really doesn't mean anything in the grand scheme of things, because we have established that women can actually look this young even in their 20s [music] and 30s. And to the genuine critics and detractors, I'm sorry, but you have to live with that fact.

[00:14:22]So, what did we learn today, kids?

[00:14:25]First, neoteny is a real thing, and men on average preferring neotenic features in women is a sociological reality.

[00:14:35]Second, the cultural divide between the East and West is most likely attributed to Westerners' lack of exposure to actual Asian children.

[00:14:46]Third and lastly, adult women [music] can have buccal fat, too.

[00:14:53]Now, we can finally put this controversy to rest.

[00:14:59]If you have made it to this part, comment >> [music] >> stop the pain, start the soothing Sensodyne. That's Sensodyne's actual slogan.

[00:15:09]But genuinely, from the bottom of my heart, thank you for sticking with me. I started this video project about 4 days ago, and I've been grinding at it ever since.

[00:15:19]Honestly, I did not expect it to take this long.

[00:15:22]Thought it was going to take like two days tops.

[00:15:25]Anyway, I want to ask you guys, how was it? This is my first video on my channel after all. So, any constructive feedback is highly appreciated. Be sure to like and subscribe though, so you can see your feedback manifest in the next video.

[00:15:41]Please follow my socials, too.

[00:15:43]They're in the description below.

[00:15:45]What? You saw a coffee link and you're asking why I'm already e-begging on my first video? Yes, yes. I'm hoping for a generous oiler who'll donate $40 so I can replace my shitty BM 800 mic with a fine one. Like, for real. If OpenVINO AI's noise suppression effect didn't exist in Audacity, I'd probably never even make this video.

[00:16:08]The background [music] noise is just that bad.

[00:16:11]Thankfully, it does exist. Thank you, some alt-right [ __ ] I'm joking.

[00:16:17]Even then, you can hear how in some parts, the audio quality is just piercing. And sadly, I couldn't do anything about it.

[00:16:26]That's what you get for a $14 mic since today. Anyway, this is getting too long.

[00:16:32]Once again, thank you very much for sticking it out to the very end. Always remember that when you feel scared or frightened, never forget times when you felt happy.

[00:16:44]When day is dark, always remember happy day.

[00:16:49]We are all going to make it.

[00:16:51]>> [music]