As a kid I assumed no one knew how old these two were because they were mysterious ninjas, but it turns out Tecmo just redacted their ages in the English translation for obvious reasons. It's funny they went with this route instead of just bumping both characters up to 18 years old. I guess Tomonobu Itagaki refused to tamper with the sanctity of his precious DOA canon 
spoiler
I'm sad to report the PS2 version of DOA2 seems to be one of those early PS2 games that's interlaced to hell and back and will look like a jagged mess no matter how much you upscale it in PCSX2 
Yeah, I was legitimately creeped out by Marie Rose and Honoka when they were added to DOA5. It felt like such an escalation from DOA's traditional
"woah boobies" sort of horniness to something that was too icky to be funny anymore. From what I understand, they also just immediately skyrocketed in popularity in Japan, instantly eclipsing old series regulars.
There's probably something to be said about how otaku tastes had changed so much from the late 90s and early 2000s into the mid-2010s that DOA's big-boobed pro wrestlers and ninjas didn't cut it anymore so Tecmo had to add moeblob children to keep up
Soul Calibur and most other fighters don't sexualise all of their female characters to the same degree. They have their designated sexy characters like Ivy Valentine or Mai Shiranui, but in DOA every female character is blatantly intended to be ogled. Sexy pinups of the female roster in bikinis were a big part of DOA2's marketing which is probably why they redacted the ages outside of Japan.
I sometimes have trouble clearing the arcade ladders on normal difficulty so I would presumably get turned to paste
What the fuck is going on? Pithy "material conditions" chants typically used to dismiss the content of entertainment under the banner of "let people enjoy things, entertainment has zero meaningful consequences for its consumers" fall flat here.
Other people with very similar economic situations elsewhere in the world seem statistically less likely to wake up every morning fantasizing about violating children. Treat defenders may not like hearing it, and they probably won't here, but ignoring the consequences of generations of increasingly normalized kiddie creeping in that region of the entertainment industry is ignoring a material condition, particularly the neurochemical consequences of the hedonic treadmill and the diminishing returns on dopamine hits tied to that. Also, neurons that fire together wire together, again a material condition of sorts, and an industry normalizing kiddie creeping as entertainment is facilitating that as well.
I mean like I said in my reply to the parent, I just dont process Marie Rose as a child lmao. I'm always blindsided when I see this discourse.
I strongly believe you are the outlier there; there's a reason the ages (and in many cases, the appearances and the voices/behavior/personalities) of those characters were made what they were in the first place. It's for titillation. It was intended to excite the targeted consumers. It sets a pattern and trend of further consumption.
It's only somewhat related, but the outrage when a Resident Evil remake aged up (and removed some childish traits from) a particular character and removed the creepshot gimmick as well, the usual hogs squealed with outrage about it too.
https://www.thegamer.com/resident-evil-4-remake-idiots-mad-ashley-upskirt/
Yeah I didnt process original Ashley as a child either, and in that case I was right because she was always canonically 20 lmao. I do prefer the remake changes though.
I do agree that theres a trend worth noting I guess, that the coomer stuff was originally characters that looked like Kasumi and now is characters that looke like Marie Rose. I just... wouldnt have noticed it that way because my brain doesnt process her that way. Namco is probably intentionally baiting for that though. I just didnt think of it. So it confuses me. Subjective experiances I guess.
Ashley in particular was an edge case where she wasn't labeled as a child but was given child-like dialogue lines and mannerisms (and to some extent, appearance), but it was the first one that came to mind where dialing back that particular setting of the dopamine treadmill in the remake was noticed, and caused outrage.
It's a numbers game for the corporations making these. The specific choices they make are often done with massive teams of marketing data researchers and the like, and what you may like in a character may not even be the intended appeal that they were going for when it came to mass appeal with an increasingly ravenous
demographic.
Yeah. Guess I'm losing the macro implications in the jungle of my micro experience with it.
Big corporations are all about the macro implications of every decision, even stuff that seems absurd like saving a few pennies by having a cheaper version of an essential part of a vehicle that can crash the vehicle if it fails... or something catastrophic like "no-knock" lead added to gasoline for generations or partially hydrogenated soybean oil added to food to somewhat extend shelf life at the cost of long-term human health.
Those are more extreme examples, but ones where it looks different when zoomed in, but when zoomed out enough, the pennies add up, especially if paying the fines or bribing the judges/congresspeople is cheaper than reverting the cheaper/more profitable choice.
There's a reason so many anime/manga/video game makers make demographic-targeted decisions to sexually objectify characters at as young an age as they can get away with: it's what they've already primed their primary intended consumers to expect, and that's reliable revenue.
underage on paper characters who look and act older was so kids could relate to the characters, idk what's behind the loli thing, 4000 year old dragon is a pretty old meme, feedback loops in marketing somewhat explain the proliferation but not the root social causes.
That isn't always the case.
Fire Emblem had some very questionable "4000 year old dragon" type characters as breeding stock that had child-like dialogue, for example.
I wasn't going there to begin with. I was talking about the proliferation and normalization of those trends and how they interact with the consumers that continue to expect more of them while also getting effectively trained for that expectation. It doesn't even truly matter anymore how it may have started as much as it matters how it happened, continues to happen, and in the case of kiddie creeping gimmicks in entertainment, how the trends demand more of the same whenever possible to maximize profit from the audience primed for it.
yeah i meant like shonen anime main characters
As far as I know, shonen anime main characters aren't typically sexually objectified as a primary marketing gimmick.
EDIT: Seems that apparently they often are. I didn't know; haven't seen enough of them.
My friend, what are you talking about? Have you seen the main female characters in shonen anime? Almost all of them are significantly sexually objectified. My Hero, Fairy Tale, One Piece, you name it.
Apparently not nearly as many as I should have. Not really my jam overall, so I didn't know.
OK I'll probably look obsessive by replying to every comment but I cant get over this. I DO NOT get this. People seem fine when its Bridget (at least now, in her current edition) and she's similarly petite to Marie Rose?
And Honoka? Really? I havent even thought about it with her. I mean I guess now that i look at images of her, she IS in a schoolgirl outfit lmao. But I wouldnt have processed her as any less than 19 based on apperance.
What is going on?
The problem with them is that they exist within the context of Dead or Alive, a series that objectifies its female characters and invites players to ogle them to a degree that exceeds the already horny standards of the fighting game genre. Many people consider the series just outright softcore porn because of it.
Before Marie Rose, every single Dead Or Alive character had basically the same body type, ie bodacious babe. Then Marie Rose comes out and she looks like a middle schooler and acts and talks like a little girl, all the while getting the exact same treatment from the game's camera and sexy outfits as the rest of the cast. (And naturally, she and Honoka got merch like boob mouse pads, so it is very clear she is intended to be jerked off over)
It's like slipping an image of a child in the middle of your sexy bikini babe calendar
The "looks like a middle schooler" is the part that I'm not getting here, because that doesn't come across to me. I just still see a petite adult woman. If anything, I'm a bit annoyed at the way it seems people think that like, adult women all look like Lara Croft, and there's no such thing as skinny ones with small boobs and babyfaces. When like, fashion models exist. But I get y'alls argument about how she was clearly designed with that audience in mind. The games having cutscenes where she acts young isnt something Ive totally been exposed to because Ive not played them and what little I have seen that hasnt really come across. But I've described elsewhere how the upbeat genki girl archtype never read as "acts like a kid" for me either. So I'm honestly not sure still if thatd come across.
Anyway I agree with your and Ulysses take that theres something going on with Namco adding her and Honoka for horny purposes at the same time, but I have to rely on others with the idea that they read that way to y'all lmao. I would literally never notice on my own.
idk what to tell you, this reads pretty young to me. I'm not saying you can't have diverse body types in fighting games, I'm saying that this character design and her mannerisms in the context of a DOA game give off
vibes
If they wanted to add a lady with a petite build to make the cast more diverse, they could have easily done so without also making her this child-like
Yeah, I dont disagree with this part. They definitely could have done more to do that.
Luckily this weird break in my brain where I dont read that as anything but a petite and youthful adult woman in a costume only applies to animated characters lmao. Otherwise I'd be in need of professional help.
As is though, yeah, looking at her I can at least see where youre coming from. But its still not how she reads for me.