Because the roster of VsDCU was specifically designed to be "the most iconic characters" and they could only fit 10.

Which means the ones casuals recognize best, only characters from the first movie and MK2, the most popular of the arcade games.

I was clearly talking about race, not origin. And Li Mei looks asian. The fact that she's from outworld doesn't mean that she can't be of certain race, unless you believe Mileena, or Motaro are of the same race as Li Mei. I mean, the fact that she was originally going to be from earthrealm says it all, she was created to look asian, at least in DA.

Well you should have said that she looked asian, not that she was.
I get you now.

The strange thing is, though, the similar, alpha design "martial arts club girl" was named Siobhan, which is one of the most Irish names on the planet.
That said, I don't recall anything in the Krypt saying Siobhan was an early Li Mei. I think they just had a similar design.
Regardless, she was probably scrapped because 9/10 people wouldn't know how to pronounce her name.

The funny thing however is that 90% of the characters aren't even from Earthrealm, so they don't have a "race" because, well, they're not human, or at least our kind of human. Some of course may be used to represent players, for example, Darrius is obviously meant to represent that of a black man but technically since he isn't from Earth -he has no Earthrealm "race".

I might can see if we're talking racial diversity amongst the Earthrealm based characters, then fine, but Edenians, Outworlders, and people who aren't even from Earth shouldn't be the topic of discussion. Not to mention the only "white looking" females in the series anyway is obviously Sonya and now Cassie(who are...well...white), I MIGHT also give you Skarlet, but every other female have a very ethnic look to them to me. The females look diverse enough to me.

Well... we have a yellow woman. So there's a start in heading into that direction of making non-white females.

I don't know why people are always so obtuse about fantasy races in video games. Yes there are characters that come from other worlds/realms/whatever but they usually have some kind of real world connection. You can say Tanya is Edenian all day long but it doesn't change the fact that she codes as black. YES Li Mei is from the fictional Outworld but she's clearly heavily influenced by general kind of Asian themes.

Y'all really like to show your asses with this topic.

And I assume you are here because you like to look at asses... I know a better site for that though, so feel free to poke me if you need a link. *wink wink*
;P

I'm a professional booty watcher tbh.

I could have swore Kira was from afghanistan or somewhere in the middle east... She's definitely not white just from looking at her.

Living in the mountains of Afghanistan, Kira disguised herself as a man, and sold weapons to terrorist organizations. During one such transaction in a cave, her gender was revealed, and she had no choice but to fight her way out. Emerging victorious, she encountered Kabal, who had been waiting outside to behold the victor. He had decided to reconstitute the Black Dragon, and observing how Kira conducted herself in executing her misdeeds in a cold and calculated fashion, he was reminded of the Red Dragon, the organization from which the Black Dragon split. Since the Black Dragon did not have this presence, Kabal offered to make Kira his first recruit. Accepting, Kira devoted herself to her new organization.

Kira herself isn't from Afghanistan.

Agreed, even if Kira's not from Afghanistan she definitely doesn't look like Sonya, Cassie. She has an extremely ethnic look imo. And Frost looks Asian to me.

What about Kira's face makes you think she's something other than white? Keep in mind NRS bad facial rendering as well.

I always assumed Kira was Russian or something tbh. That's still white though.

Kira screams Romania to me.

All those gymnastic girls on the Olympics look pretty much like her.

Yeah I could see her being Eastern European.

To all these people who think female minorities could only be added for diversity, what makes you think that? Is it because you wouldn't trust NRS to make such characters anything but stereotypes? Or maybe it's because you're too used to them being nothing but stereotypes to imagine them being compelling characters like Kitana and Sub-Zero.

People really get sensitive about race. "Race doesn't matter dammit, so stop suggesting characters of specific races!" like we live in some post-racial world where developers, filmmakers, producers don't still have race in mind when designing a character. Like the MK roster isn't filled mostly with white human characters, or aliens who look like white people, followed by asians (mostly male ones).

Do you truly think, when they designed Frost, for instance, that they only made her white (or made her look white, if you're gonna be nitpicky) by complete accident, that at no point in the creation of that character did they decide that she'd be white (looking)? Because tell me: was it really essential for a female cryomancer to look like a white woman? Or a female vampire?

Chances are, Nitara was designed to look like a white human female, because many people, including the developers at NRS, are used to white female vampires more than they are Native American (looking) ones. You could probably name more important white female vampires in fiction than you could important female ones of any other ethnicity.

Kitana used to be the Latina one until her surgeries in MK9 fucked her up.

I think that race has been treated the same way in MK as it was in the Harry Potter series, in that ethnic characters are persecuted for things other than their skin color.

Interestingly, Dairou always struck me more as Occidental than straight-up Asian in terms of his facial features, not unlike Sub-Zero.

I find SOME of the messages in THIS thread to be VERY offensive and insulting AND I think maybe some you people should take a minute to THINK before you post about how your comments might be hurting someone else's feelings!!

Welcome to the real world. But keep in mind, being offended on itself does not constritute an argument.




Arguing about race is pointless, as the definition is pointless. Obama is the same amount of black as he is white genetically.

And the whole Outworld schtick. Put it to rest, Edenia and all the other shit is a fantasy mashup equivalent of real world cultures, so yeah, Jade looks mid eastern. Wether she is, is an irrelevant technical question with no purpose.

Dairou's concept was that of a samurai which is Japanese.

This.

Characters from other realms other than Earthrealm, were just inspired by a race, but that doesn't make them black, asian, latino, etc.

For example: Dairou isn't Asian. He isn't even from Earthrealm, so why would he be considered Asian? The name? The look? He isn't even from Asia, he is from another realm.

The only characters that should be classified by race are those from Earthrealm.

No welcome to the internet :P

Maybe the internet is the real world to Chrome...