If ANYthing about this discussion should be considered offensive or racist, it's Li Mei's face. I am not even joking when I say they took a caucasian face, and made the eyes narrow and slanty. That's ALL they did. That's something I would do when trying to draw an asian in SECOND GRADE. Does beautiful Reon Kadena back there have narrow slanty eyes? Does even horseface Sandra Oh look like that? No.

I can see how asians would be offended by that. Given that Liu Kang's face looked good in MKDC and MK9, I know they can (and hopefully will) do better than that when they reintroduce her to the game, but from what I've seen, no, Li Mei does not qualify as a respectful representation of asian females.

Because Asian women have such dramatically different faces from everyone else? What?

Umm.. Yeah they kinda do. Especially when we are talking about computer graphics and millions of pixels and so forth.

Not really, just because they have slanted eyes does not make them THAT much different.

Look at Reon Kadena on page 6, now look at the pretty polish girl below her, now back at Reon Kadena. Sadly, Reon Kadena is not in Mortal Kombat, but if she was, NRS would mangle her face so we wouldn't be able to tell WTF race she was, but from the pictures, one can see obvious differences between the asian and the caucasian that don't amount to narrow slanty eyes.

This post is now diamonds.

Its not just that though. They have smaller features in general. The way the facial bones are shaped and so forth is actually significantly diferent, especially when your drawing them or pixelating them like they do in game design. This girl for example: Has fairly large and circular eyes, but is clearly asian because of the other facial diferences.

Ugh, you know what, fuck this, Australia needs to get MK soon so Unseen ceases these threads.

lolwut? Wow, man you keep on digging that racist hole deeper and deeper.
I think you need to get out more and see some other Asians and not just the ones that are in Gravure Idol videos.

Li Mei is one of the best looking characters of the last generation in terms of modeling and texturing. The costumes were tastefully done for the most part and there's definitely an Asian influence in the attire, particularly the MKDA primary. There's absolutely nothing offensive about her.

I think this is relevant to the topic:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JKTvFhRbBt8

Wombat aint being racist yall. He's saying that Le Mei is just not clearly ethinic enough to represent asians. She looks like a very european-ised asian person, and lets look at some renders:

This render looks reasonably asian, though still IMO and the opinion of wombat, a very caucasin perception of asian:


In this render she looks even less asian and more like a pirates of the Caribbean extra:

WTF. Good, so lets just give all the asian MK characters narrow slanty eyes maybe big buck teeth too like in a cartoon from 1942. That's obviously a good representation that asians will be proud of.
I'm not saying she didn't look hot (well, her face was kinda "uncanny," but given the technology of the time, I can forgive them for that), and her attire is very tasteful, (for sexist mk standards, not that I'm complaining mind you), but her face is one of two things, it's either like zero said, a caucasianized form of asian, or it's a bad stereotype of asian. In that render someone posted before, her eyes were narrow and slanty. There's no denying that. That's a caricature of asians, not a realistic representation. Liu Kang, on the other hand, (in MKDC and MK9) really looks asian, Chinese to be specific. I'm not saying, like some people accuse me of, that they should completely ignore the pinays, indonesians, indians, or southeast asians, but Li Mei doesn't look like any of them either. She looks like a caricature, or half white.

I really can't tell if you are being sarcastic but yeah, it's pretty racist.
According to you, you would have to be SUPER Asian looking (as dictated by people who aren't Asian) in order to represent Asians. God forbid you're 3/4 Asian or you don't look Japanese because clearly you aren't Asian enough.

Naw its not like that at all. The problem is that the mortal kombat games rarely represent minorities with more than 1 or 2 characters. Knowing this, if there is a minority you want represented and you know your only going to get one or maybe two characters to do it with, you want that character to be a very clear representation of that race rather than a Caucasian with minor alterations.

If there is a walking stereotype in Mortal Kombat, its Nightwolf all the way, and noone is raising hell about that.

I seem to recall someone, Garlador I think it was, saying he's either part or full Native American and he's actually a huge fan of Nightwolf.

I'm the same.

Im a white guy that was raised in Nebraska, which has a very deep Native American history, most of our cities and counties, and even the State name itself are native American (Examples; Omaha, Nemaha, Sioux City, Newaka, Red Cloud, Blue Hill, ect.) so they teach us a lot of about Native American culture in elementary schools, and you can actually go and see Native artifacts and such. I am also a giant Nightwolf fan, but if you dont think that he embodies nearly every stereotype about that culture, you are in deep denial bro.

Maybe a character can be sterotypical without being offensive, and also be cool at the same time? IMAGINE THAT.

I'm a firm believer that if the actual members of an ethnicity aren't offended by the way their culture is represented or possibly stereotyped in a piece of media, than anybody who's NOT part of that culture who IS acting offended on their behalf out of "white guilt" is being a complete douchebag.

I agree, and if that was directed at me, Im not offended by Nightwolf, I like Nightwolf a lot. However he is a walking sterotype. Im just saying an orange is an orange. I like oranges too.

Even if characters like Nightwolf and Li Mei have stereotypical qualities to them, the characters themselves are very strong. I don't see how anyone could be offended by them. Nightwolf is a powerful and proud leader who kicks a bunch of ass. It's not like they portray him as a simple minded fool or something.

Not directed at you, just at the thread in general I guess.

Thats what Im sayin bro. A character can have sterotypical qualities and be cool. Nightwolf does this very well.

I guess it was directed mostly at me then. I'm not personally offended by Li Mei. I'm not even offended by Mr Jap in the Popeye cartoon. Me and my wife could probably sit down and watch it together. I'm mostly just disappointed in Li Mei. They had an opportunity to put the first asian female character in the game, and instead of making her asian, they made her some kind of gypsy pirate, who sometimes cosplays as a girl samurai.

Anyway, back to the original topic. I think it's time they put in another asian female, whether they bring Li Mei back or not. Maybe Liu Kang's long lost sister. Or Sub Zero's. (And hopefully it's not Frost).

I looked at Ashrah's face once again. She looks Hispanic without that giant stupid hat.

+ I think that Sareena was going to look like a hot black girl in Armageddon (like Tanya).

Li Mei is 100% Asian.

How to put pictures here BTW! :P