Nothing brings a fan-girl tear to my heart like a good Shonen Jump crossover event.
During E3, many trailers were dropped and shall continue to fill our gamer hearts with glee (I’ll believe Kingdom Hearts 3 is real when it’s in stores). One that immediately made me jump for joy was the trailer for Jump Force, a Dragon Ball, Naruto, One Piece crossover fighting brawl with one special shinigami thrown in.
Not that one.
I’ll admit I’m enough of a sap that the idea of seeing Naruto and Luffy help Goku fight Frieza, the second-best DBZ villain (#1 Cell don’t @me), makes me want to own this game. According to Polygon, Bandai Namco has confirmed that Jump Force will be a 3-on-3 tag-team fight, and characters will be able to team up.
That being said … where are the ladies?
My biggest problem with shonen is that it tends to really badly sideline its female characters in games. DBZ games only ever include two female fighters, Videl and Android 18 … well, sometimes you get Pan, who no one wants. Even though the series is mostly male, is it really too much to ask to throw Chi-Chi a bone? I mean, she’s the one who trained Goten and got him to reach Super Saiyan. Not to mention, even if they have to be non-playable, I’m sure there is a way to get Bulma to at least fire a laser at someone. Launch maybe?
Even though I don’t care for Sakura, it only feels fair that if it’s going to be Naruto and Sasuke, she’d be there as well. It’d also be great to see YuYu Hakusho get brought in so we can get Genkai, or some of the ladies from Bleach. There are plenty of awesome women in manga, and since we aren’t getting a magical girl version of this (even though we should), it would be nice to get some representation for the female characters that do exist in the franchises.
I love fighting games, but I love playing them as ladies, which then becomes a problem when I want to play Dragon Ball Z: Extreme Butōden and my only option for a female fighter is Android 18. She’s amazing, but like … gimme more?
What female shonen character do you want to get justice for?
(via The Verge, image: Screengrab)
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Published: Jun 11, 2018 02:32 pm