Genshin Impact: Is Sumeru orientalist? / video essay

Don’t be afraid to comment, especially if you disagree. I love reading comments and it’s very good to start a conversation
Also, If you have any criticism about my video I would like to hear it because this is actually the first time I made a KZbin video so if there’s any mistakes or issues I’ll gladly hear it as long as you’re respectful :D
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If you want to only talk to me and not in a public comment section
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Chapters
0:00 Introduction
2:28 Culture In Genshin
3:06 Dori is Turkish
3:54 Dori’s Turkish music
5:45 Note
6:12 How Is Dori orientalist?
8:53 Nilou Is Persian
9:32 Is cultural mixing bad?
11:18 Why is orientalism In media bad?
12:46 Conclusion
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Tags (Ignore)
This is a commentary video on genshin impact fandom, art community, white washing, art rant, fixing art, Sumeru, orientalist, racism, video essay, artist, Turkish Dori, Persian Nilou, Tighnari, Culture in Genshin Analysis
#genshinimpact #genshin #nilou #sumerun

[@zuzuscatheavenarts]

Timestamps: 0:00 Introduction 2:28 Culture In Genshin 3:06 Dori is Turkish 3:54 Dori’s Turkish music 5:45 Note 6:12 How Is Dori orientalist? 8:53 Nilou Is Persian 9:32 Is cultural mixing bad? 11:18 Why is orientalism In media bad? 12:46 Conclusion

[@Xelluse]

Dori is inspired from "One Thousand and One Nights" - "Tale of the Trader and the Jinn" (on older version, there are more than 20 versions, if exclude modern interpretations), but White Man from a tale became a white Girl in Genshin (we do not know her age, so will say girl, cos she looks childish), music is not Turkish, but Kurdish... Also Dori's roots are not from Sumeru. Nilou and God of Flowers herself, who is the image for Nilou, is literally inspired from goddess Astarte (Ishtar in East Semitic culture), who had "Marble White" skin by original legend, so please learn bout our culture first before talking about it. I'd like to see how Xenomorph in Alien is a bad representation of Black people, cos he is also Black, so it badly represents reality and people after watching Alien will start doing something bad in real life......... Or about that how racist is Rambo, cos he was killing Asian people in movie, so White man is killing Asians.... Definitely a bad representation of reality, what if people will try do the same in reality after watching Rambo ? That's even ironic, that people who are talking much about representations in games, do not represent our culture properly themself...

[@Aquilegiaaa]

Hello! I can see that you truly did do tremendous amounts of research to create this video and I thank you for that. Although I do have a question and a bit of a disagreement regarding one of your points. One of the reasons you stated that made Sumeru bad is that the characters cannot be immediately recognized as the ethnicity that they are supposed to portray. But as I watched I wondered. In what way is that a bad thing? The examples in this video Dori and Alhaitham. You said that it is bad that they could not be easily identified. I think that is GOOD. For one, their ethnic ambiguity encouraged you to do research about their characters in order to find out what they are. And I’m sure many other people searched it up too, wondering about them due to curiosity. Because it is not obvious, people looked deeper. They looked at their clothes, their mannerisms, what they say, and what they do. And ultimately, they learned about the more intricate details of the characters cultures. I’m from Hawai’i (Not Hawaiian tho btw) and I’d think that myself along with many other residents would absolutely love a character that subtly resembles more of the unknown customs/traditions of our islands rather than a character that IS easily recognizable but only displays the popularized parts of our culture. TLDR: I think that characters that are not as obviously the ethnicity they represent is a good thing that makes people curious and encourages learning about the ethnic groups. I feel like making those characters let their people know that their cultures more intricate parts are being appreciated rather than them being known for by stereotypes.

[@1mol831]

Well, Genshin is made by a Chinese company, the probably aren't representing anything irl, they probably just ran out of ideas and took things from real life and put it into characters because they don't know much about the different culture.

[@zuzuscatheavenarts]

@@1mol831 "the probably aren't representing anything irl" They literally just posted a short film today about real life culture on the official genshin impact youtube account.

[@ElaborateTerrace]

I am so sorry but I thought Dori was Jewish because of her obsession with money (please don’t be offended I am Jewish)

[@drpaimon2369]

2:32 Just a little additional info: Mondstadt has beside Germany also Dutch, English and some Nordic influence. Not to mention the City itself is based completely on a city in Austria. Liyue also isn't China only. The best example is the Chasm, being based on Mongolia. Tsurumi island borrows ideas from Ainu culture. This comment isn't meant to discredit anything just some fun little info.

[@jj6287]

Yup, in this sense, All region have a mix of cultures, not only sumero.

[@iri783]

@@jj6287 while that is true, sumeru is a mix of a very large amount of wildly different cultures, like pakistan and algeria, while the rest are somewhat similar cultures, cultures that have colonized one another (like japan & okinawa, which is what kokomi is based off), or cultures that are just geographically near each other. sumeru is a problem because it mixes over 30 ethnic groups, varying from desis to amazighs, and balkans to persians. what i personally think they should have done is either make sumeru two very obviously separate sections (like the forest being desi and the desert being north african) or just settle for one culture/country, like iran or desi culture, which are large elements in sumeru as it is rn. i say this because what they have created mixes too many cultures, and can lead to harmful assumptions about said cultures by people who aren’t from those regions who aren’t previously educated on how these are separate things, or can lead to people saying/doing things that are offensive in one place while a normal thing in another! for example, the word “harami”. in the middle east, that means someone who does sinful things in islam, while in south asia, it’s a cuss word. or, another word is “nikkah”, which means marriage contract in urdu, and means s*x in certain arabic dialects. it’s small differences that really make a large difference !!

[@iri783]

oh my god that’s an essay frfr

[@runimcomingforyou.4505]

@@iri783 Nikkah means contract of marriage Arabic. It's not an Urdo word. Honestly u gotta worry about reality instead of video games. I don't even know why ur using the word desi, just say South Asia or India.

[@Mimi-mq2wj]

@@jj6287 yes but sumeru is TOO borad. North africa, west asia and south asia being mixed is crazy .

[@c.5095]

As a Turkish person,I never actually realised that Dori was based on Turkish culture. But after you explained it, I did see it, especially the music, Turks love their music. But honestly giving her at least a Turkish name and dish would’ve been so much better (also the Bey in her name means ‘Mister’ in Turkish so I’m not sure whether that was intentional)

[@zuzuscatheavenarts]

Yeah, part of the reason why some Turkish people were complaining about Dori’s rep was because they claimed they “didn’t even know they were Turkish until other people mentioned it” which could be part of a flaw on how the representing wasn’t the best since the group of people it was representing didn’t realize it was related to them. Also you’re right about the Bay in her name being Mister since some people were complaining that certain parts of her didn’t match her gender, like how her traditional Turkish clothing they put the version that men wear, rather than the female traditional Turkish clothing which is an odd change.

[@Jumpoable]

Yeah cuz she's not "Turkish." LAAAAWL. Ridiculous.

[@Jumpoable]

@@zuzuscatheavenarts "Turkish" like what? Like an Ottoman Turk or the nomadic tribes from Central Asia known as the Turks? She from Constantinople or Istanbul? Cuz uh, the swathe of land known as modern "Turkey" now used to be ROME. Ridiculous. Turkish people pls take several seats & calmly STFU claiming a FICTIONAL CHARACTER in a FANTASY WORLD to be "Turkish."

[@vqlora6578]

Same i would have never noticed if i didnt see this video

[@LetLeviCook]

Fr me too

[@ishik0r004]

As a Persian I never thought Nilou is THIS Persian until I watched videos on her. I also never thought any media would ever make any actual intended Persian representations cause idk, I guess political reasons? but anyways I loved your video and you are such inspiration for me to make videos one day... hopefully. Also one more thing I think Nilou is better pronounced like how "ou" in "you" sounds like.

[@zuzuscatheavenarts]

I apologize for the pronunciation I searched up videos beforehand to make sure I get names like Tighnari and Nilou right, but it seems like I still made a mistake 😅 thanks for telling me! Also yeah it’s really upsetting that there’s barely any Persian rep because in my opinion it’s a very beautiful culture and people need to separate the people, culture vs the country and political aspects as separate. - For example, I’m chinese and I find it really annoying when people make jokes or mention political incidences on a regular Chinese video, especially during that “nothing happened on june 4 1989“ and “social credit score” meme, it was very annoying that a person’s identity can cause someone to relate them to the government and blame them for things that they never even did, just cause of their ethnicity.

[@Jumpoable]

Is her name Persian? What does it mean.

[@whatever5401]

@@Jumpoable lotus

[@watching_u744]

Exactly my thought

[@yasrs2350]

@@Jumpoable There is a name of a flower which is the lotus .in Persian we call it niloufar flower

[@ukiyo8909]

Here is something I think a lot of people have missed. There are many cultural influences in Sumeru, yes. The important distinction to make here is that Sumeru takes inspiration from the four major Arab Caliphates. "Caliphate" is the name of the Muslim government that ruled the Islamic Empire during the Middle Ages. Under the rule of the Umayyad Caliphate, the Islamic Empire expanded rapidly to include much of northern Africa, western India, and the Iberian Peninsula. It was a multi-ethnic trans-national empire and at its peak, it was one of the largest empires in the history of the world. In Genshin Impact, Sumeru is renowned as the centre of learning, and is home to the highly respected Sumeru Acedamiya, right? This fact is essential to the story of Sumeru. Well the Islamic Golden Age refers to a period in the history of Islam during which science, economic development, and cultural works flourished. This period is traditionally dated from the 8th century to the 13th century, with the inauguration of the House of Wisdom in AD 830, in Baghdad, where scholars from various parts of the world with different cultural backgrounds were mandated to gather and translate all of the world’s classical knowledge into the Arabic language. In addition, the name "Tighnari" is derived from Al-Andalus (Muslim occupied Spain) while the name is "Dehia" is originates from the Maghreb region of North Africa. So I wouldn't consider the addition of various different cultures into Sumeru's aesthetic as orientalist. If you think Hoyoverse could have done better and made that fact more clear, I can understand that. Anyway, I think its important to remember that Hoyoverse is doing what artists typically do, they're stealing from somewhere and making that into something new. Mondstadt, for example, isn't just based off of Germany but also Switzerland and even Austria. Some of the names used are even of English or French origin, for example Amber, Lisa or Jean.

[@mirmations7407]

interesting!

[@heloise.]

On the topic of Mondstadt, 'Germany' is a relatively new concept anyway. The territory has been ruled and divided so many ways throughout its history 😅

[@YeetusTheFetus]

@@heloise. mondstadt is more closely the Holy Roman Empire, with the church being a key component of role

[@CarlosAnglada]

HYV is cherry-picking the elements that could be considered "admirable" or "interesting" for use in their "Sumeru". Dark skin is excluded simply bc China (at large) is deeply racist and, therefore, colorist. It's as simple as that.

[@sxrt]

I love how u mentioned north Africa being part of it as well. I don’t see that many people talk about sumeru being also inspires by part of North Africa

[@erizamisorafujoshi7002]

I am just waiting to see the mix they gonna make in Natlan... It´s gonna be a CHAOS

[@punchline1729]

I hope Nilou's design encourages people to learn more about Persian/Iranian culture

[@zuzuscatheavenarts]

Definitely! Persian culture is so beautiful

[@punchline1729]

@@zuzuscatheavenarts Glad there are people eager to experience more of my culture thank you

[@VeGohan]

it will not

[@mitsume_slay]

@@VeGohan it will like Japan

[@Turquerina]

I certainly hope to learn more about Persian history and mythology, especially as it pertains to the Qajar dynasty and Peri. It's so fascinating to me and I can really hope to eventually see how impactful this area has worldwide. While I detest orientalism with a burning passion (especially the conflation of cultures and offensive inaccuracies), I love each cultures individually! What Sumeru is to a lot of West Asians is what Kumandra (RaTLD) is to me, a few nice perks but too many misses to ignore.

[@OckiR]

I think there's a pretty big flaw in the whole one country per Genshin region claim Saying Liyue is based on China is a really broad statement, since China is countless cultures that were sort of forced into a single box. The customs that are in Beijing don't all come from the same place. They added in music which seems heavily inspired from the North/Mongolia to the chasm which is an entirely different culture than what's in Liyue harbor Also, when talking about Fontaine, people really only mention France because it's what google suggests when you translate its name, but the whole "steampunk" and "circus" aesthetics are very clearly English + "loch" folk which are Scottish. (Liben also calls Fontaine people tea drinkers, and we all know the UK is big on that stuff) And the region isn't even out yet so it's entirely possible other Western european countries will be referenced Also.. Did Dori ever really scam anyone? She overprices things but I don't remember any out right scams. In the archon quest where we buy the overpriced "travel" pack we are "surprised" by how high quality the contents are so we definitely weren't ripped off There was one situation where Paimon called Dori a scammer after the traveller tested the canned knowledge, but it's much more likely that Dori had no idea traveller would be as experienced as they are (which is why the canned knowledge basically did nothing, for anyone else it's implied it would've worked) I do love Dori as a character and want to acknowledge her faults but a lot of the hate on her seems so unnecessary

[@zuzuscatheavenarts]

Thanks for the input of the cultural countries in Genshin, but I want to talk with your one point where you ask if Dori ever scammed anyone. It’s very heavily implied that Dori scams people because there’s a scene with Collei for her voice lines explaining this one time where she was with Tighnari, and then Dori comes to sell her stuff but then Tighnari takes Collei back and no joke quotes “saved her” from using all her mora for Dori In the game Tighnari is a forest Ranger that is more suitable/understanding of Sumeru compared to Collei. So it’s interesting that Tighnari, the person who guides people and helps the locals would be against buying things from Dori, which is why Collei claimed he “saved” her lol Also that time you explained the Archon quest, you’re actually right, we do buy the overpriced pack but in the dialogue, what happens is that she gives a deal with us to buy another capsule that’s worth double the amount we spend if we buy again. So we accept, but then she leads us to a completely different pile, and Paimon complains how come we can’t pick from the pile you advertised to us when we bought it which is a good point But we find out it’s because using elemental sight we realized the majority of the capsules were not in fact worth double our mora it was less. Except one was worth good which is the one we pick But here’s the thing, Dori didn’t know we had the ability of elemental sight Meaning if we did in fact buy the capsule that is not worth what we paid, she wouldn’t have been like “oh no, pick the one that’s worth more” she would have just been like “ok” lol Showing that she’s clearly pulling strings in scams which is why people say she’s a scammer

[@deductionsdiary105]

I'm pretty sure Dori hired Kaveh to build the Palace of Palace Palace but when he build it, he was forced to use his own money and went broke because of that. I don't know about you but that sounds like a scam

[@graceli6886]

@@zuzuscatheavenartsfor the Collei story, I have an alternative understanding. If I know you’re a kid having little experience on gacha game, and just got a chunk of money from your parents to save up, I may dissuade you from playing Genshin, at least for now. That doesn’t make Genshin a scam game. Besides, Ningguang the head of Liyue government would be a dubious scammer by your standard. And Yelan and Itto are thieves, Beidou a canon pirate and law breaker. Have you complained about those out of social justice? The problem of Dori is just that, the sole playable representative of a culture in the whole game is not fully positive, not how bad she is comparing to other not-fully-positive characters. She can be an ancient Egyptian/Sumerian/Hattian/Philistine or Arab(which has more than one representative) inspired, and no one will complain. The (maybe) good news for Turks is, I’ve never seen any comment linking her to real life Turks (unexpected effect of visual design deviation from the culture?). You must have experienced worse.

[@Xelluse]

Dori is inspired "One Thousand and One Nights" - "Tale of the Trader and the Jinn" (on older version, there are more than 20 versions, if exclude modern interpretations)", but white man became a white girl in a game, who tricked a Jinnie. That's why she was called Dori (دُری) means - "Shining", "Glowing" in Persian. And yes, she never scammed anyone, vice versa, she is very Capitalistic in core, but yes, some people do see Capitalism as a Scum.

[@Xelluse]

​@@zuzuscatheavenarts But the thing is that Capsules are prohibited to sell, what you say is like saying that someone is "overpricing" the Drug prices in Black Market.... And as Alhaitham said to us in Archon quest later, that the capsule we get from Dori was worth the price she said in Black Market, so she said no lie there, the Traveler was powerful in the first place (and if you will dig the lore, it was kinda obvious, that no capsule can give Traveler much more, than he/she have already)... Btw, same Beidou is the Pirate, she's not only a contrabandist, but as her crew mentioned they also scummed people and even destroyed ships in the middle of the ocean, which means almost 100% death to whole crew of the ship(s)... Thoma uses personal information to force people to do what his master wants and it is literally a Blackmail and Kamisato clan have even personal Assassins, who murder people and not just because they were "Bad guys"... Keya literally tortured people, and the same with Yelan and Morax is literally a Mass Murderer tbh... What to say about Beelzebul, how many souls vanished because of her actions.... Also we have sexually dressed nun who in night time goes to MURDER EVERYONE who she sees as a threat to the "Peaceful Life"..... And we are not even talking about Harbingers who portray the whole region, Slavs and Italians are the ones who really should be upset... Hoyo need to say that Snezhnayan people love to drink Vodka and the whole package of Stereotypes of Russian people and East Slavic culture will be all together in the game... Oh yea, Slavs are not black, so it's OK.... So if begin complaining, then we should begin from the Mond and The Lesser Key of Solomon, Nordic Gods, Roman culture, Buddhism and all types of Christian religions and then step by step.

[@moonlighteevee777]

I understand the anger and all for Sumeru's misrepresentation but what rubs me off the wrong way is the fact a majority of people try to pass off past regions as accurate when in reality they really aren't. Mondstadt, Liyue, and Inazuma weren't free of stereotypes either. Mondstadt stereotypes German people as alcoholics and a lot of the pronunciations of names were butchered. Many Chinese players complained that Liyue was stereotypical (esp the architecture) and the outfits don't look like real Chinese outfits, bc they were either playing into stereotypes or looking too Westernized. With Inazuma, a lot of Japanese players complained that Raiden is dressed like a pr0stitute. Going by the representation of past regions, it's clear that Genshin is LOOSELY inspired by irl places and it's unrealistic to expect each area to be a 1:1 match.

[@nathanielmorey2800]

Exactly and honestly it’s better that it’s loosely based, in game these regions are much closer and the world naturally has many differences than ours that would change things

[@snailwhale6673]

People getting butt hurt about 1:1 representation leaves no room for creativity. I think people are just reading in too deep.

[@notimetolive12]

The butchering of names happened for literally every nation. It wasn’t just the names tho. Other words also faced mispronunciations.

[@f.b.lagent1113]

also eye/hair colors for NPCs in Liyue/Inazuma besides black are even the norm, aside of course from obvious anime hair/eye colors like green, blue, pink etc. not the natural brown, gold(blonde), red(Redhead) for hair color and for eye colors blue, light blue, grey etc. when irl it’s incredibly rare for those places, also look at Barbara and Rosaria’s “nun” outfit etc. yet we never heard anything about these “misrepresentations” from the complainers

[@frug7432]

@@f.b.lagent1113 heavy with this. The 'nun' outfits are very very far from reality but no one bats an eye because Rosaria being more alternative is 'hot'. Whilst it'd be nice to have less whitewashing, 1:1 representation can't be expected for sumeru because it hasn't happened for other regions.

[@poffydaisy5134]

As a Turkish person the amount of research and effort you put in made me geniunly so happy I'm gonna cry thank you

[@poffydaisy5134]

remember me when you're at hundred thousand subs! been here since 423

[@zuzuscatheavenarts]

Aw thank you so much I really appreciate that 😭🙏

[@eliotanderson6554]

@@zuzuscatheavenarts cultural mixing is good but in genshin impact it is bad becuase u can't be biased to show only japan europe and chinese culture land as seperate When u did it to the 3 major civilizations of asia combined india egypt and persia Where indian and Egyptian civilization is much older than Chinese Indian subcontinent aka South Asia has 25 percent of humanity in it and what genshin impact has done is cultural digestion of it (refer sham sharma show global video of how indian culture is stolen by west) When south asia middle east already don't get enough representation in pop culture or Hollywood it is quite frustrating and when u showcase them with stereotypes mainly south asians as janitors and on social media as well There is an thirst for representation of such cultures and respecting them Genshin could have done showcasing these mainly 3 cultures as separate lands Because as a person from indian subcontinent (south asia) I can say that a lot of diffrent types of architectures art styles music traditions dances 💃 are there left and not being represented But it is all about digesting it in best way possible by west or east Example naruto noragami and many other anime doesn't even show directly but just south asian cultures

[@Pavme]

An an Arab, I was very happy when I met some Sumerian NPC's with Arab names or clothing, and even more Sumeru came out, mainly because we Arabs get very little representation especially here in the West. Just hearing Arabi POV names, such as Dar Al-Shifa (which means house of health), and character names such as Tighnari (الطغنري) and Al Haitham (الهيثم) which literally means young eagle makes me feel closer to them and like I'm somewhat represented I hope we get more/better representation though

[@spellcheck5393]

They don't wear Arab cloths

[@Pavme]

@@spellcheck5393 who said they dont? Many NPC's wear thobes, or abayas

[@lola-simp7563]

I think this is a good idea to analyse. As an Indian, i could identify quite a lot of connections to our language, for example Sumeru in itself is a Sanskrit term, along with Kusanali, Gandharva, Avidya etc. While there is not much of a people representation of Indian culture, the entire idea of success in Sumeru Academiya is quite a common misconception regarding Indian studies because of competitive examinations. While misconceptions have been made regarding not only Indian, but Arabic and various other cultures, what i do appreciate is the very fact that they've tried.

[@kiwi288]

im honestly craving for more indian representation in genshin, like i literelly jumped when i heard sumerus music and all the sanskrit names and most of the npcs have indian names like wuuttttt?!!!!! there was this immense happiness that i cannot explain.

[@aanyasrivastava9652]

@@kiwi288 Tbh, the entirety of the Aranayaka questline is HEAVILY based on Hindu mythology and epic. Nayak literally means Protagonist. So many of the aranara names are literally taken from Epics and religious texts. Arama, Arakunti, Aranakula are the ones i can think off the top of my head. I dont thinki have to remind you about the Aranara festivsl literaally meaning "festival festival". I really liked that quest because of those refrences.

[@lupoyo]

@@kiwi288 SAME!!!! I want some Indian characters too!!

[@clu691]

also adding onto this to say that Sumeru in the original chinese is "须弥" and most likely does refer to Sumeru/Mount Meru (which is called "须弥山" -- literally "xumi mountain")

[@lola-simp7563]

@@aanyasrivastava9652 right? Here i could pick out names like 'Rama', 'Kunti', and 'Nakula' which respectively coincide with Lord Ram, Kunti, the mother of the Pandavas which are a group of protagonists in the Epic Mahabharat, and Nakula who is a Pandava himself!! It really excited me!! I literally did a double take on the names

[@nemnemi111]

To be fair it's not surprising that Hoyo is going for the marketable version of these cultures. They did the same with their own culture (Chinese myths) where Qilin are not represented as they should. This goes both for Ganyu and Yanfei, because if you compare the mythological creatures they're inspired to they're completely different (you can see that already from the horns). Another big problem is how they treated Watatsumi, Narukami and Tsurumi in Inazuma, all inspired to specific cultures like Ainu culture but either there's no focus on it or there's no addressing the fact that Inazuma literally forced them to be part of the Inazuma nation in the Lore. Everyone thinks Watatsumi is all about the resistance, but no, Watatsumi is about civil war because it's ages they're trying to battle for their own freedom and this is inspired to irl things but no one talks about it. Monde is a complex case, where slavery is not as much pointed out in the Chinese version of the Lore but it's extensively defined as such in the english version of the Lore. Mondstadt is generic, its story more inspired to Roman stuff than actually German things (some say this may be because Mondstadt is supposed to represent the Holy Roman Empire which is different but I think it's another case of "Enkanomiya is Greek" from Genshin, where Watatsumi culture, Japanese and Greek myths are mixed to give an exotic flavor to the player). Khaenri'ah it's a mix of Norse myths, Germanic myths and some dubious stuff like their motto being "Of iron and blood" (Bismarck??) (The English version is "Steel and blood" but the Chinese one is "Iron and blood" - From Dain speech btw). It's not like I dislike the game but it constantly goes from being super accurate in terms of history/world building etc to being a very weird mix of stuff, which confuses me on what approach they were aiming for, mix of cultures or accuracy with a bit of fantasy elements added to it? No answer on that part.

[@goldenrequiem7533]

I think the reason for that is due to the fact the it's still fiction and that they aren't trying to create a 1:1 historical copy of a real life world. They use real life inspiration and add something different or a twist to make the nation of teyvat not the same real world equivalent.

[@nemnemi111]

@@goldenrequiem7533 It's more complex than that, actually. From the geographical disposition of the places (Liyue is almost a 1:1 geographical copy of China itself, Monde's One thousand winds temple matches perfectly with one of the most important Greek temples of which I forgot the name of [sorry]) to the history (Liyue's history is literally a mirror of China's New government, for example. This reflects even in their fashion where Ning and Zhongli dress with more modern outfits to symbolize this) they are very accurate to the real life story. They do add twists related to Elemental Powers but most of times even the inspiration for characters is a 1:1. (Take Sumeru characters, for example. Most of them are inspired by real life people, with lots of references to their history, life and legends. The most brought up example is Candace with the Nubian Queen inspiration but there are many cases like Tighnari from Al-Tighnari, Kaveh and Kaveh, Al-Haitham and Al-Haitham...) And even the Lore is extremely accurate if compared to real life stuff: an example? The legends of Odin which in Genshin became Irmin which then connects to the Abyss magic runes etc etc. Which is why I get extremely confused by the way they approach things. If you know history, architecture, art and geography Teyvat seems to be a 1:1 of our world with a thin of colored plants and magical power to change a bit of it (oh but that's not even true as most of Teyvat's landscape are inspired to real life sceneries and the plants you see in game are some specific kinds that can only be found in those regions. I remember we had a discussion about this in the past, Liyue is full of a type of plant that actually smells super awful and it's present all over Liyue like it's present all over China. These are the *background* plants, the one that cannot be picked up. For the picked up ones, I think it's clear they're the same as the ones of our world, like Cecilia are actually lilies that are poisonous to cats - hence why Venti is allergic to them). All this to say that it really takes a lot from the irl world which is an interesting approach to me since I usually see fantasy worlds to have a history of their own. But then again, thinking about the leaks on the history of the Desert of Sumeru... Well yeah, fantasy is strong with that one.

[@Xelluse]

Cos they never said, that they are making Documentary game, but take inspirations to create fictional regions and fictional world.

[@Xelluse]

@@nemnemi111 Yea, especially when "China" and "Germany" are neighbors.... Very accurate... 😂 And that's what means Inspiration, they never said that they are making documentary....

[@nemnemi111]

@@Xelluse Yeah, I didn't mean to say that their purpose is to make a documentary on the regions, I'm just criticizing what people call "originality". Because for how much I love Genshin it doesn't stray much from taking a lot from already pre-existing stories and mixing it up to give you the feeling the idea is new. If you've been a lot in gacha communities/anime communities you can see that many characters (like Razor or Klee) comes from anime archetypes. In the end, I find other Fandoms to be more original than Genshin, even tho Genshin isn't super bad on originality.

[@yee3960]

I feel like when people say they want more south Asian rep that doesn’t mean eliminating or erasing other middle eastern rep such as Turkish or Persian culture it just mean that we want some more accurate or more respectful representation of that culture when it comes to other characters like candace that’s supposed to be inspired by an African queen I feel like Genshin or hoyoverse has a problem with colourism cause places like Asia or east Asia has a colourism issue in beauty standards and in marketing colourism is also a thing in South Asia where lighter skin tones are more favoured and marketable It’s sad to see that they lighten her skin I find it a bit ironic that they would put so much effort into chiniese culture maybe cause their a Chinese company but I feel like that’s not enough excuse to go and change and mix cultures together for sumeru I wished they gave middle eastern culture or any other culture they could’ve choose the same treatment as other places like liyue or inuzuma

[@zuzuscatheavenarts]

That’s true, I didn’t mention skin tone in this video that much because I understand that there are in fact a lot of Turkish and Persian people with pale skin. However, let’s be honest with ourselves, Hoyoverse did not decide to give Dori and Nilou pale skin because they wanted to represent the people with lighter skin, but rather they did it because it fit the Beauty standards of their country. When people say “___ can’t have darker skin because they’re ___” I think they don’t realize that they’re making an excuse, since almost every ethnicity has people in it with darker skin. My problem is NOT that specific characters like Dori and Nilou have pale skin My problem is that Sumeru as a whole, the majority of the characters have pale skin, and when they finally did include more npcs and characters with darker skin, they decided to add a plot in the story about segregation and racism. Like with Dehya said that the people of Sumeru (rain forest) said that they just see “the Desert people as cheap labor” and that the wall separating them isn’t to keep them out.

[@eliwhite6159]

@@zuzuscatheavenarts It's really disappointing because they had no problem with Xinyan and Kaeya's skin colors being inserted without much comment (you could argue Kaeya being seen as "exotic" or Xinyan being seen as "scary" could definitely hint towards this, but for the most part they are accepted as a part of their respective cities without anyone questioning their race or ethnicity). In fact, it might be worse bc I'm like 80% sure Xinyan and Kaeya are considerably darker than Cyno and Dehya, and Candace is only marginally as dark as them. The fact that the two confirmed five stars from the desert are much paler than their 4 star dark skinned counterparts as well as the rest of the desert NPCs is extremely telling, and I think people who pretend that there's a reasonable explanation to it that's not rooted in deep colorism are deluding themselves. The people who actively excuse such design choices because "China is colorist so of course they'd do that" are worse and actively enabling the decisions. Just because you've decided an entire playerbase is colorist doesn't change the fact that it is still aggressively colorist.

[@norwegianboyee]

I mean Mondstadt is an ridiculous representation of Germany, a Chinese company isn't going to go out of it's way to make European-Middle Eastern countries super accurate, it would rather focus on the territory it knows such as China and to an slightly lesser degree, Japan.

[@smolly_z7739]

@@zuzuscatheavenarts hm? Your wording implies that there's something wrong with the segregation/racism plot line

[@piiewithtwoeyes]

@@zuzuscatheavenarts yeah when dehya said that the people in the rain forest said that the people in the desert were outcasted because they were "cheap labor" i was like.... wtf?

[@GearOFFBlack]

My perspective on this is mixed. First of all, this video is good to point out criticism about Genshin and how accurately they use culture in the real world for their game. On the other hand, I really like that Genshin is trying to represent many cultures. I know that they makes many mistakes in representation, but at least they are trying to make it good. If you look gaming landscape as a whole, not many companies dare to use South Asian and Middle Eastern cultures as their reference. The game that I see use it: like Shantae, Prince of Persia and Assasin Creed Origins, for example, have inaccuracy here and there. But seeing only Genshin get so much hate and backlash, makes me feel mixed. I'm not defending Genshin mistake, but when I see a group dunking hard on Genshin but not the other game, makes me rather disappointed. I just feel that many only dunk on Genshin for the cloud because this game has a more large audience. So when they do defend representation, they only show it to mostly get likes. This is just my perspective tho. Genshin and other games need to do better, but the backlash for this game about representation is also overblown in some areas. I hope Genshin get better in the future when touching other culture. But also, I hope the community does not get too toxic when talking about it.

[@zuzuscatheavenarts]

I get what you mean when you say you think the community gets “too toxic” when talking about it, since I have seen some people hate on a character solely because of their skin colour, which isn’t a very good mindset to have even if it’s done towards people who are not oppressed. You’re right that some other games do this sort of mixing of cultures but do not get as much hate, except it’s important to note that those are different communities with different people. The majority of the people in the Genshin Community are individuals that like anime (including me), in this community, no offence it has a lot of racism especially in the cosplay community side. So because race was already discussion in this area, it was a lot more alarming and noticeable when people talked about representation in Genshin. Since Genshin had colourism and racism in their other games. Whereas in your example, a lot of them is just solely cultural mixing, which can just be summed up as people trying their best but not doing the best job. However, in Genshin they have already had a reputation of being colourist/preferring super pale skin over dark skin. I personally believe if colourism and racism was not that rampant in the anime community, I actually don’t think this would’ve been that big of a discussion because most people wouldn’t think of Mihoyo like that if the ONLY issue was them not separating the cultures correctly. It was more of a situation where things just kept building up. Since even before the Sumeru launch, people already had problems and disliked Mihoyo ether for being greedy or representation reasons.

[@GearOFFBlack]

​@@zuzuscatheavenarts Yeah, I agree that anime communities have these kinds of problems a lot. I just want people to demand more in other games or other media. If big and small media always get flagged doing colorism and problematic representation, I bet this kind of thing will drastically decrease in media industries overall. Edit: Of course by demand, I mean in a good constructive way, not death threats to VA or claiming the dev is racist like with the Genshin communities.

[@raihanrusli2720]

I am on the side of what we currently have in game is pretty much fine. But its because how these people overly react on how "unrepresentative" the game is. I am not from swana region, but I still have brown skin, and I am fine with how the game try to represent the skin color. Even swana people themselves are mixed with this (and funnily enough I even saw egyptians fighting each other in a comment). If hyv can make it better, then I am fine with it either. But on the other side, the way they try to force this representation is really uncomfortable. Well espescially topics in comment section can be heated extremely fast too. I just hate this "forced representation"

[@zuzuscatheavenarts]

@@raihanrusli2720 How exactly is this forced representation? The majority of the cast in Genshin impact is not white anyways, 2/3's is poc since most characters are Japanese or Chinese. Every region, for example Mondstat, Inazuma, and Liyue is mostly inhabited by people from that country. Genshin impact's Teyvet is inspired by many countries in real life, it is not "forced representation" to say that Sumeru, a nation inspired by Middle eastern countries should have middle eastern characters

[@raihanrusli2720]

@@zuzuscatheavenarts I dont have any problem with the game regarding this representation though. I have my own reason with this. But if they make an attempt to fix to it, I dont have any problem either. And tbh, pretty much people from swana region arent either. Of course idk exactly how many, but the same goes to the opposite side. What I meant with "forced representation" is the way the angry mobs express their view. I dont have any problem to those with constructive criticism but at the edge of the spectrum, there are people who went as far as being toxic. Swearing, telling someone to die, etc just because they think they are on the right side. And the worst part of it is fixing arts, either towards the official or fan arts. And tbh this wont achieve anything. Well we can only wait for Natlan to come out....... or even Fountaine for some reason

[@eliwhite6159]

I think the conversation about orientalism would have been significantly ameliorated if Genshin weren't so blatantly colorist when their money was on the line. Yes, people would have still gotten mad about the belly dancer costumes, and yes they would've still been very mad about the greedy merchant stereotype, but the crux of the entire argument is very simple: Genshin Impact is a game that is willing to borrow inspiration and designs from different cultures, but only when it is appealing to their target market of young Chinese casual mobile gamers who jack off to exposed thighs and stomachs and harem animes. They can flex the strength of their research into the cultures through their stories and minor design choices, but they're not brave enough to put their money where their mouth is and actually do something challenging and interesting with their character design choices--that would threaten their bottom line. It is not only appropriation, it is appropriation in it's most cynical and corporate form, and I think whether people realize it or not that is why everybody has gotten so pissed at Sumeru and not mishmash nonsense like Mondstadt or Inazuma. Germany and Japan are considered "safe" targets, already being seen as ideal and beautiful and therefore naturally being "more marketable"--any of the cultures Sumeru takes from are not considered that, and will never be considered that, especially with how game companies treat them.

[@books2438]

EXACTLY if there were more than- what, 5? darker skinned characters, no one would give a fuck. I mean, yeah, a little bit, but nowhere near what people say now

[@MJ-zq9zg]

perfectly said

[@alraunam]

well said. especially when you consider that some sumeru npcs DO, in fact, have darker skin tones. in theory at least, it should be perfectly logical to give the playable characters the same treatment - until you realize that they are products that people are willing to purchase. colorism at its finest

[@sawgames8623]

How do you feel about Sumeru's music?

[@CarlosAnglada]

Strong words, but deserved.

[@marginal1.1]

“It’s just a game/movie, it doesn’t affect the real life” “Yea it does” FINALLY SOMEONE SAID IT THANK YOU!!! It doesn’t have to be 100% accurate since it’s fiction BUT STILL destroying one culture with mixing another one to create a new one and call it “it was based on real life” yet clamining “it’s just fiction” fandom is clashing with their own words. Splatoon mixed the cultures without damaging any of them and created a new world with harmony while Genshin just threw everything they learned and hoped for the best. People are also very angry about skin color being lighter and not accurate but when we said the names and the clothes are not accurate they called us “sensitive”. Middle Eastern skin tones vary (like my mom is much lighter and my dad is dark brown) and people here do not wear revealing clothes (some countries like Iran banned showing any skin and hair) and belly dances are show women of nights. If a game reveals too much skin and gives every female character a belly dancer clothe, that will mislead foreigners and they will turn a blind eye to real life. It’s not just one aspect that is problematic. Fiction’s impact on our lives is much more important than people think.

[@spaceman6742]

It doesn't affect nothing.

[@mitsume_slay]

@@spaceman6742 it does!

[@spaceman6742]

@@mitsume_slay nah it doesn't, u western people are just salty about everything.

[@arturintete2461]

@@spaceman6742 true.

[@arturintete2461]

@@mitsume_slay they used a double negative!

[@Lunarvienna]

as someone who really enjoys genshin impact, i think you worded some issues i had with it regarding representation super well and i agree completely. thank you for making this and taking the time to make this a super informative and interesting video :)

[@1ryb360]

Great video! I am planning to write an essay on this issue but from a Chinese-historical perspective myself and maybe turn it into a video too, and this definitely gave me a lot of new ideas to work with. Thanks for speaking out about the issue, we really need more videos like this in the video game community.

[@zuzuscatheavenarts]

I’m glad I could help a bit :D thanks :)

[@interrgalatic]

it makes me so happy that this video exists, i’m arab & perisan (yemeni and iranian) and ive already seen so much people (WHO ARE WHITE) saying that “it’s fiction why are you guys so mad” well maybe bc our rep isn’t good. the only thing i hate about dori is her ‘genie in a bottle” stereotype which is the westernized version of a jinn, a ‘spirit’ . i don’t know why she’s mixed up with so much cultures ,, Nilou was DEFINITELY made better in comparison to dori I really like how you used splatoon as a example, how splatoon’s culture that was represented was very clearly distinct, even though multiple cultures were made together , of course clearly genshin squashed them all together where it wasent clear what area/country the characters were, in conclusion, this was super great!! this needs more views, thank you for adressing this :D

[@zuzuscatheavenarts]

Oh my God thank you so much for the review I really appreciate it! :) Also I get what you mean, there was a huge debate whether or not Dori’s “genie in the bottle” was a Jinn or not, so I didn’t mention that part in the video because it’s not 100% confirmed, whereas I said Genie because in the Genshin Dori trailer where Alice is talking about Dori’s elemental skill, they confirm the pink slime is a genie. I’m glad you liked the video 😁

[@poumybeloved]

Dori was supposed to be Turkish but she also also looks like an Arab. Her special dish isan Indian dish. Even tho its fiction i wanna see good represention, its our right. I see people making chacters black edits and calling it represention(!), i dont have a problem with that but what about us? We also wanna see good represention, so I will make redesigns of some characters, its entertaining. (Im Turkish🇹🇷🇹🇷)

[@silverhawkscape2677]

​@@poumybelovedThey are Chinese. Make your own.

[@poumybeloved]

@@silverhawkscape2677 I already did :))

[@spellcheck5393]

Bruh none of these cultures even exist now in middle east. Anyone dancing for goddess like nilou will be arrested like done by sages.

[@analiieseamaria9057]

I am POC but not part of any of these cultures, and the way you conveyed information in this video made me understand orientalism and the problems with Sumeru much clearer. I appreciate the flow and format of the video and I was surprised this is your first video, it’s so well made😳.

[@zuzuscatheavenarts]

Oh my god thank you so much 😭 I really appreciate that, I’m glad that you were able to understand the information a lot better, also this is my first long video But I have been making Tik tok videos for a few years lmao, about stuff like certain situations on the internet, politics, or random history facts such as like the differences between Japanese traditional wear Kimonos, vs Chinese traditional wear: Hanfu. I meant first video as in KZbin video :D it was kind of difficult because it took a lot longer and I never wrote a strip this long but the video did much better than I thought so I’m pretty happy with it :)

[@AnshikaPandey121]

As an Indian, I found sumeru absolutely beautiful (city, map, music and characters designs except skin tones)even though characters don't look like they belong to there except Candace and Cyno, but it's somewhat justified as they are sheltered and living a fairly colder and humid area due to the trees etc. Still the characters should have been darker skin toned. I love the music of sumeru the most.

[@xxsoulshine]

i'm indian too and i think the issue w some of the characters isn't necessarily the skin tone itself, but the combination of other colors of their features and the undertone of their skin... what I mean is by looking at a character like zhongli's skintone in game, it's a bit warmer/olive, and even slightly darker... he's still pale, but the blush he has is more orangey than pink. I think for someone like nilou or the other "forest"/lighter characters it would make more sense... turkish people for example are lighter skinned than like south asians but they still have warmer undertones, but nilou is literally pink... same w tighnari., if tighnari was just a shade or two darker (like maybe somewhere between bennett or cyno's skintone) he could be more believable to the culture he is. I really don't like Nahida's design one bit, she's based the most off india from all the characters and is paler than mondstadt and even inazuma characters who are very pale ethnicities. Like, nahida is so pale in game that she reflects light! her clothes do not look indian at all, they just threw a couple of swirly leaf patterns and called it a day, and her design is so plain it looks like they didn't try. She should be a bit darker like even cyno and she could still pass for indian, and I think if her hair started out an ashy grayish brown, then went to glowing white and green, they'd still be able to incorporate her lore of being born from irminsul there... something cute could be like white freckles (other characters have freckles too so it wouldn't be too far off) which could look like spores of a plant. a dupatta would tie her design together and maybe some shinier pieces and some jutti like shoes... i'm really going on a tangent lol but collei, faruzan, layla, and nahida literally do not look vagely desi/middle eastern/north african lol

[@AnshikaPandey121]

@@xxsoulshine for me I love nahida's desgin, but if we see it culturally, they represented Indian culture horribly with her design, same for almost all things in sumeru, they are very beautiful and rich to me, but if we see it historically and culturally they did a horrible job into representing that, the only things I can say in which they did an amazing job was the music for sumeru and did a nice job on the architecture, but still in the architecture that added a bit of modern twist which is ok, but they completely missed the mark with the characters (and again, the characters, in itself are very beautiful but culturally and historically they messed it up)

[@AnshikaPandey121]

@@xxsoulshine exactly, sumeru characters should have warmer undertones, plus I think pink undertone is ok, cuz Ive seen many people in india with pinkish skin.

[@AnshikaPandey121]

@@xxsoulshine for me I love nahida'a design cuz I like to associate it with some ideas, for example nahida's white color (her skin, hair and clothes) representing purity (of knowledge and judgement, clarity and untainted-ness of the pure knowledge and information in Irminsul), and green representating nature, wisdom and connection to one's natural self (as green is the color of nature) and abundance (of vidya and depth), her childlike appearance match with innocence (of thought and ideas, pure and unbiased, not tainted with the world, pure unadulterated knowledge) so overall I love her design, but again, culturally her design is ass.

[@lisamona6208]

I really like your explanation, your really open minded and give good reason as to why the game can improve in some areas. This is much better conversation than “your racist if you like this game” or “there’s nothing wrong with the game” I play genshin impact and I can agree with these improvements as said and explained. Not only that but open criticism like this can make the company pay more attention and not mix it in with hate.

[@zuzuscatheavenarts]

I hate it when people make fun of someone for enjoying something that is deemed as “cringe”. An example would be like fortnite, there’s nothing wrong with enjoying it but when it came out everyone made fun of people who did which is really stupid because it’s just a game and there’s nothing problematic about it ethier. In fact I think the represention in fortnite it pretty good lmao. People make fun of Genshin a lot cause people say it’s “cringe” but I don’t really care if something is cringe, as long as you enjoy it it’s okay

[@mochizukin]

I completely agree with you about Dori (though I found it quite fitting that she was a merchant, despite the stereotype? She brought the sellers in the bazaars in Constantinople/Istanbul in mind a lot). That being said, I'm Greek but have part Turkish ancestry, and my dad, though fully Greek himself, was raised in Libya. We had quite the interesting discussion about Genshin and orientalism recently and sort of touched on some of these aspects so it's funny I stumbled on your vid today. I would also like to point out, though, that this is nothing new for Genshin and people are only making a fuss for it now. I didn't see people being offended over Mond being a mismash of different western European cultures, or the standardized erasure of the Ryukyu and Ainu cultures under the umbrella of the 'Japanese' in Inazuma. (not to mention the 'exotification' (?word) of said cultures, Watatsumi island being depicted as mermaid fantasy-land and Tsurumi island being, well... what it was, both complete with characters that looked nothing like said people.). Also though people are used to thinking of the Japanese as 'white' because of anime... yeah, no, caucasian the Japanese are not. I'm also pretty sure that though Chinese culture is firmly represented in Liyue it also lumps a lot of people under a similar 'umbrella', I just don't know nearly enough about China to speak in that regard. So, in my opinion, that's just their modus operandi in general. They are going for a feel rather than 'this is Germany/ Japan/ China/ India/ Turkey but in Teyvat'. Not saying if it's good or bad, just saying what it is. Personally I would just like to see characters that represent their particular culture in more depth (as you said, for example make Dori's dress more explicitly Turkish feminine fashion) regardless of where these characters hail from. I am not bothered by the fact Sumeru represents different asian cultures, as long as they are distinct... and yes, I would also love more skin colours (though in Nahida's case her skintone is on point considering the inspiration.) because the lack thereof is egregious, please.

[@zuzuscatheavenarts]

For Dori, I didn’t say that she’s racist or a stereotype because she’s a merchant, that’s fine, anyone can be a merchant, it’s just a job. I meant the stereotypical part about her was being a scammer, which was very unnecessary. She can still be a merchant and it would fit the story, except she doesn’t need to scam anyone. Also I agree with you about Mondstadt having a mix of European cultures. That’s why I didn’t say in the video Mondstadt was good representation, I mostly just talked about Liyue as a positive. There’s not much I can say about you saying you don’t care about cultural mixing cause that’s your opinion Nahida is not pale in order to better represent the tale she’s based off. People are just using that as an excuse to say Nahida can’t have darker skin. If Genshin actually wanted to best represent historic tales, poems, or people. Then they would have given Candace a darker skin tone, and/or give Layla a darker skin tone (because Layla means Dark/Night in Arabic, so it would be cool if she had darker skin, of corse it’s not necessary because it’s just the name. I just thought it would be cool because it would match the origins of her name lol, but once again I don’t think Mihoyo actually cares about making the skin tone accurate, so people need to stop making excuses saying that they made Nahida pale “out of respect”, when in reality they just did it cause pale skin is seen as more beautiful in many east Asian countries sadly. Also did you draw your profile? It looks so good :0

[@Stinkypipi]

@@zuzuscatheavenarts but nahida has been locked inside for 500 years? Of course she’s going to be pale af

[@samuraijosh1595]

@@StinkypipiNo 500 years isn't enough for that to happen.

[@Stinkypipi]

@@samuraijosh1595 what?

[@samuraijosh1595]

@@Stinkypipi your skin colour won't become paler if you're not exposed to UV light in the span of 500 years. Not how mutation, genetics work.

[@seansgaming]

this litterally combines everything I feel into one place, I find it so hard to express these sorts of things especially when its about dislike of my special interests thank you sm

[@A_keo]

The cultural mixing in Sumeru is actually quite interesting where they’ve got the representation right. Even in Mondstadt there was a little bit of cultural mixing going on, albeit on a much smaller scale. Like with Eula’s style of dance being a flamenco, which is Spanish and has no relation to Germany as far as I can tell. Some of the designs of the Mondstadt characters also aren’t traditionally German in style so much as they are just Western European; I actually mistook Mondstadt as being inspired by England at first because of the characters’ appearances. And in terms of naming, the characters’ names seem to be mostly from Germany, but there’s also some French, Italian, Greek and Nordic names. So the mixing of cultures in Sumeru totally isn’t a bad thing in and of itself, but when you have characters like Dori, who are said to be Turkish and then have influences from all over the place, or AlHaitham and even the GOD of the nation, Nahida, who don’t really have any explicit cultural references in their designs, _that’s_ when I think it becomes an issue, because then it seems like the devs were just cherry picking parts of the cultures they wanted in the game, and especially when you bring in the erasure of POCs from their own cultures. Credit where credit is due, the music, environment and themes of Sumeru are stellar, I think the majority of the personalities of the characters are great and the designs have grown on me a fair bit once I looked into the cultural influences, but it’s clear there are a lot of things that could have been done better

[@zuzuscatheavenarts]

I agree with you for Mondstadt that it isn’t fully German, which is why in the video I mainly just mentioned Liyue and Inazuma because I personally think Mondstadt could be done a bit better. Overall, the design of the scenery in Sumeru is in my opinion one of the best in Genshin, so it makes me disappointed that the cultural for the people doesn’t match as well, especially Nahida. Everything is perfect, her burst and attacks are good, and her personality is very caring. If only they at least made the archon have some sort of cultural accessories, outfit, or in general more rep it would have been great. Idk, it just makes me disappointed 😭 I love Genshin, so it really sucks that Genshin has such a bad rep when it comes to the fanbase and the overall game misrepresenting people

[@A_keo]

@zuzuscatheavenarts Oh tell me about it, I was so excited for Nahida and I ADORE her personality and role in the story, but if you just showed her design to me with no other context, I would _not_ think she was from Sumeru

[@zuzuscatheavenarts]

​@@A_keo Honestly, in my personal opinion Layla and Faruzan do not look like they're from Sumeru ethier, they look like they're from Fontaine. Objectively wise they're pretty, but kinda disappointed there's barely any dark skin characters. literally I really wish Layla had tan skin or dark skin, I think it would fit her aesthetic as well as her origins of the name. There's nothing wrong with some Sumeru characters having pale skin, I just don't like how the majority* is all pale. There should be a bit more variety. That's my input on when you said "Nahida doesn't look like she's from Sumeru" because I agree, a lot of the character's in Sumeru look out of place. If someone did not play genshin and had to guess which characters would be middle eastern without any before knowledge, it would be difficult for them.

[@A_keo]

@zuzuscatheavenarts I *totally* agree with you. I was talking with a friend about the Sumeru characters a few months ago and they pointed out that a lot of the colour schemes and outfits seem like they were made for dark skinned characters. Even if we're talking from purely an aesthetic point of view, the characters being so pale means that their outfits completely wash them out. It's not like pale skinned south Asians don't exist of course, but for a game that prides itself on being based on real life cultures having the darkest skin tone be a mid to light tan just isn't believable, even in a fantasy world

[@fishy8560]

genshin’s outfits really only have pieces and bits and patterns of the respective regions that it represents and it never really is completely accurate; a lot of it is ‘modernized’ , like the music, inspired from the said regions. (overall): this applies to all regions and not just sumeru. though sumeru does have more regions mixed into its inspiration than other nations. but still, the other regions have different countries’ inspiration which is why i refer to them as regions rather than countries since Hoyo typically chooses a particular region than area, like mondstadt, inspired by germany, france, italy, etc. (a very fantasy-like inspiration at that) and liyue, mostly representing china, but has the chasm with mongolian references and inspiration. im pretty sure inazuma is only japan inspired but it may or may not be due to their isolation period that they had or smn im making shit up rn but yeah hoyo mostly takes inspiration from a region but they just made it “modernized” in their own way. inaccuracies are sure to arise due to their own touch. basically people need to stop assuming regions in teyvat are supposed to be solely based off of one country because it’s not and that claim would disregard the other cultures’ representations they add in the other regions which is kinda sorta uhhhhh not good? im not saying the weird generalization of cultures they grouped together in sumeru is okay but people have to understand it’s inspirations taken from these cultureS and will never be 100% accurate like the music. it’s inspired and played with a culture’s or some cultures’ traditional instruments but the music itself may be inaccurate from what is traditionally played since it is modernized. im pretty sure even yunjin’s opera singer said the music was a little funky for opera, modernized and whatnot. (dont take my word for it, im pretty sure she said that but i have no solid proof on my hands rn bc i watched a video of her interview months back) but yeah. theyre inspirations and SUPPOSED to give you an overall FEELING of cultures in a region and does not accurately sometimes mot even 80% of what is ‘represented’. they inclusive but not that inclusive akjabehehe

[@fishy8560]

also im pretty sure people are better with deciphering between other cultures and east asian cultures like japanese since people are more used to japanese culture online due to anime and more people are exposed to this particular culture so it’s way easier to tell between a japanese character and a character of a culture with not as much exposure on the internet like persian or indian which will still cause confusion of what a character is representing so the japanese example for the splatoon character is not that convincing… also another two examples may be brazillian or mexican culture which are also not very much exposed in media so it’s not necessarily obvious representation unless one is familiar with it- if you are familiar or ethnically match with the culture represented it’s also more obvious especially looking at the patterns on a genshin character’s outfit.

[@xxri]

true, it doesn't have to be accurate (otherwise it would simply be ancient china and not liyue) but sumeru character design is so all over the place it's very hard to tell where they're from - layla and nahida straight up look like theyre from mondstadt. each nation so far has its own identity apart from their region of inspiration and you can clearly tell where everyone is from since they all have shared design traits like patterns, knots, tassels, etc but sumeru has such a large pool of cultures to reference that nothing is cohesive. at least in the environment design their references are a lot narrower, primarily islamic and egyptian architecture with the rainforest resembling india. everything has an overall look and feel that is distinctly sumeru, if they only chose one or two places as reference for the characters it would be much better

[@books2438]

I think people wouldn’t be so off-put by it if the other regions were more clearly inspired by many places. Because no one knows that the Chasm has Mongolian inspiration. No one knows that there is Italian inspiration in Mondstadt. It’s all very subtle, and you really need to know it. So people are used to seeing it as “one region=one culture” and they’re not wrong to think that as that’s what it seems like. Whereas, for Sumeru, you don’t need to know much to see that Al-Haitham’s and Nilou’s designs are clearly not inspired by the same culture.

[@Astrophel24]

@@xxri IMO I don't see layla or nahida as anything like the german character designs in mondstad. Sure they have white primarily in their colour schemes but nothing beyond that. Nahida's design just doesn't... belong anywhere? I hear a lot about "westernized" designs but... Nahida is not fitting for either a western OR the region it's based off of. Layla, I can see being westernized, heavily. However Nahida just.. doesn't belong. You mentioned shared design traits and I agree, hoyo did not do enough. I saw this one fanart/ redesign of collei with a historically accurate turkish archer design and it was just.. so good, better than the current design even! Hoyo always takes 5 steps forward and 20 steps back when it comes to representation.

[@xxri]

@@Astrophel24 yeah i agree! i just thought since nahida reminds me more of a little grass fairy from european folklore she would be from mond before i realized she was the archon 💀and now that they're back to really cohesive designs with fontaine i think sumeru is just the least favorite

[@novapebble375]

this vid highlighted alot of representation issues that I didn't even realise were happening I'm really glad someone in the fandom is addressing this stuff! i haven't done too much research so I was only really aware of the blatant avoidance of darker skinned characters

[@zuzuscatheavenarts]

Most people already know about the fact Genshin doesn’t have that many dark skin characters so I didn’t mention that a lot in the video because I wanted to add new info thanks for you comment! 😁

[@aponia8604]

This was a good example on how to bring up a problem and respectfully discuss about it without feeling disrespectful, you have such a good way of arguing keep on slaying girlboss

[@aponia8604]

Also I hope u make more vids these discussion like videos talking about the pros and cons of genshin impact really do make me happy

[@snudoooftheweafwings2707]

The only thing I want to mention is that while characters like Dori might be Turkish, she isn’t *really* Turkish. She is Sumerian (idk what the word for this would be). Because Sumeru itself is a mishmash of multiple places, it makes sense that Dori has references to different cultures.

[@ki-ni28]

Not rly. A quick history lesson on turkic / turkish history: turks originate from central asia but started to settle in Anatolia during the period of the Great Seljuk Empire in the early 11th century for multiple reasons (exmaples:Turkic peoples were too tribal in the steppes of Central Asia which allowed the Mongols to defeat them in brutal fashion and for opportunities) while some stayed in central asia. This also explains why many turks while being in the same ethnic/language family have a hard time or do not understand each other at all. I as exmaple listen to Azerbaijan rap while being a turkish turk almost every day and have little to no problems understanding it while when it comes to kazakh rap I have a very hard time to understand the full lyrics but understand certain words But enough about languages dori is very likely just a turk who settled in Anatolia

[@snudoooftheweafwings2707]

@@ki-ni28 oh that’s interesting! I meant it more like while Dori is primarily Turkish, because Sumeru is a mishmash so like ig they added in stuff from like other cultures because the Sumeru culture is a mishmash. But if Dori is a mishmash because Turkish culture is quite diverse that would make a lot of sense. That’s actually really cool! And-just like a question- when you say you have a hard time understanding Kazakh rap, is it because of a different accent and different pronunciation of words or because the languages have changed so much it’s difficult to understand?

[@ki-ni28]

@@snudoooftheweafwings2707 Tbh I'm kind of confused? With your comment did you mean the ACTUAL Sumerians that really existed throughout history or the genshin Sumerians (which would be a mixture of turk persian and arab?) And to your question with the rap part: simply because we had diffrent influences . Both languages have been influenced by different linguistic and cultural factors. Kazakh has been influenced by Russian due to historical reasons, while Turkish has been influenced by persian / Arabic because religion and ottoman empire in short. As exmaple when listening to proto-turkish some turks find it shockingly easy while others barley undeestand anything.

[@snudoooftheweafwings2707]

@@ki-ni28 OHHHHHHHHHH no I meant in game Sumerians oh my gosh I’m so sorry that must have been confusing And thank you for answering my questions!

[@ki-ni28]

@@snudoooftheweafwings2707 NO NO IM SO SORRY OMG HAHAHA Anyways have a great day

[@lid5870]

This is extremely well made! I hope to see more of your work in the future!

[@zuzuscatheavenarts]

Oh my god that means so much to me, thank you :D 💕💕 I wasn’t sure about making a KZbin channel ngl, because I didn’t know if the amount of time I spend would be worth it if nobody wanted to watch, but luckily my first video did a lot better than I thought it did, and it started a discussion, which makes me happy 🥰

[@lid5870]

@@zuzuscatheavenarts it makes me so happy that you're getting recognition for all the hard work that went into making this video. Keep going! It won't be a smooth journey, but your ideas deserve to be shared.

[@justamuffin9725]

This video and it's comments were a good learning experience and interesting to hear and read many points and counterpoints. :D

[@mintmoon5653]

I saw this video on tik tok and can I say its really damn good to finally have someone compact and explain majority of the issues we’ve been talking about. Im not Turkish but I am Lebanese and Brazilian and I was raised primarily by my Arabic side of the family so when Sumeru came out I was so excited that Id get to see some characters that looked like me represented but that didnt happen. With both middle eastern and Latino countries we always get mushed in together with no respect for our individual differences and its always been infuriating as someone whos both. But everytime we voice this we get verbally harrased by these primarily non-SWANA/white genshin fans who cannot accept that their favorite game is problematic. I love genshin I adored exploring the rainforest and the desert but the dread i feel everytime i have an archon quest because having the epitome of Orientalism and the over-generalization/sexualization of these cultures right infront of you is like a gut punch. Since you used Splatoon 3 as an example whats wonderful about it is you can gleam alot of inspiration from Brazil and we’re very very diverse due to immigration so the mesh of these cultures works simply because we’re already a melting pot and those individual cultures get represented in Frye and Shiver and Big Man. Genshin on the other hand seems to mistake each culture for another and while Nilou as a character is wonderful, shes held back by her design representing an over sexualized version of belly dancing outfits and in general Sumeru’s lack of skintone diversity despite the varying degrees of skin color in these regions it has meshed together. It can be done, take Yun Jin or Ayaka for example but simply because Hoyoverse is incredibly colorist and caters to an incredibly racist and Xenophobic audience, they opted to put little to no effort into truly representing these cultures that their target demographic has no interest in caring about only wanting to profit off of the Orientalism they perpetuate and leave all of us in the dust.

[@linthunder2678]

Wow I‘m Turkish and I haven’t realized Dori is too until this video 👀 thank you for your explanations, not everyone can explain what they find „wrong“ about an issue like this when asked and all they feel is that they‘re being mischaracterized. Thank you for putting these feelings into plausible words, I‘m happy this landed in my recommended!

[@zuzuscatheavenarts]

Aw thank you so much I really appreciate that 😭🙏 this was my first KZbin video so I’m glad people liked it

[@Xelluse]

Dori is inspired from "One Thousand and One Nights" - "Tale of the Trader and the Jinn" (on older version, there are more than 20 versions, if exclude modern interpretations), but White Man from a tale became a white Girl in Genshin, and Dori in Perian means "Shiny", cos she loves "Shiny Mora"... And she is not Turkish, she lives in Sumeru, but she is not even Sumerian, more likely, from her lore, her roots come from Fontain, as many people living in Sumeru, especially in city, cos there is Accademia where people from all over the world are coming to study, like Nilou, Alhaitham or Layla, who are also not Sumerians, like Lisa also was studying in Sumeru and living there before she left.

[@obnoxiousavian]

This video was great!! I have one suggestion on the video production side of things and that is that I’d recommend adding some soft, royalty-free ambient music in the background and having it fade with you introduce other tracks, as it can be kind of jarring to go from frantic, loud music and cut to silence. Overall, this was a great video, and I loved the points made

[@zuzuscatheavenarts]

I’m gonna be honest with you, when editing the video I thought the fact that it changed from loud music to my calm voice was funny lmao, but you’re right 👍 I’ll adjust the audio next time so all of it is the same volume level :) Also I might find some music to put in the background so it’s more entertaining to watch instead of silence

[@aggersoul23]

Extremely well done and without a doubt... a masterpiece. Legit 10 outta 10. Appreciate the work ya have put into it and the complete process and editing.. literally just everything is perfect down to a T.

[@lorihime]

Holy shit this was amazing!!! I'd love to see more analyses from you. The way you explain things is really easy to process. I'd always been a little on the fence about this debate because I conflated the first point (about characters being a mash of different cultures) with the point about cultural mixing. I always liked the latter, but I didn't realize how the former could have bad consequences. Thanks so much for your explanation.

[@cowsonmars9168]

5:56 I can confirm this is true, I am Germanic and I love Mondstat because it represents someone like me. I feel a connection to Mondstat's charecters because they are German like me.

[@zuzuscatheavenarts]

Most people say Mondstat is their favourite region since it's the first that we see so it gives the sense of Home, which is why everyone always teleports there for the crafting table instead of other regions. Not to mention nothing majorly bad happens, in Liyue and Inazuma there was a major crisis with the god's (the "geo archon" dying, and Raiden trying to kill us). But despite that my favourite region is Liyue because I love the lantern rite and the Chinese cultural references in that nation, it's my favourite, and would also make sense since I'm also Chinese, so I really like it. Of corse im not saying that if you are this ethnicity you have to like the same thing, just saying that most of the time I've seen that people tend to feel more connected with it's related to their own culture, so I agree with your thought process lol

[@yunqb1519]

I couldn't have summerized it better. I am from the middle east and while running through sumeru I actually get excited everytime I see a name I know from my actual circle. I saw quite a few names of my family members in the game which is fun! For western name this might be common but as someone from the middle east it really rarely happens in media. But then you turn around and suddenly there's for example an indian name and not because they intended several people from different cultures to gather but rather because in their eyes our cultures were one and the same

[@f.b.lagent1113]

expecting to see your culture in medias made from other places is a huge entitlement in the first place, this kind of tendency to feel attacked when audiences don’t see themselves in media accurately or at all is only really possible in modern culture, if they want representation then they should expect their own people to make those medias

[@hungryforpaint]

Love how thorough this video is!

[@mikansuki69]

I was watching the video it was really nice how you explained it so calmly and respectfully I wish my culture was more recognized

[@magnusneilson533]

amazing video. I am an indian and i do feel like they can be a little better at representing other cultures... and yes you are right the music and sceneries really do make us connected with game whenever your culture is represented in it.. BTW i really loved 💞❣💓that turkish music where can i find it plzz tell me....yes the dori's theme music LOVE FROM INDIA

[@zuzuscatheavenarts]

Wow thank you so much 💕I can send the link to the Turkish music I put in the video, it’s Halay kzbin.info/www/bejne/fJWxnWuBrdqMaJY And Dori’s theme without her voice lines is here: kzbin.info/www/bejne/el6afWx_greho8k Thanks for your comment!! :D 😁

[@magnusneilson533]

@@zuzuscatheavenarts thanks.. i subscribed your channel and now i m seeing that i diidn't press the like button.😂

[@Jumpoable]

The music for Sumeru was so lacklustre. They should've asked to collaborate with Indian musicians. So not desi LOL.

[@greatloverofkrishna]

bruh ever heard the port ormos theme?? ​@@Jumpoable

[@knox273]

I personally am from India and the music that I heard seemed very close to bengali style of music. Plus the vegetation and the swamps with the roots of the trees out in the air kind of reminded me of sundarban forest or breathing root forest around the Deltas of Bengal. Personally I felt an inconsistent feeling of representation. At first I thought it was indian based but then as I discovered more I found it more far from what i would call Indian. I felt fooled by mihoyo into thinking it was indian. Personally I won't mind if they made specific cities for each country and show diversity as sumeru is already geographically diverse.

[@zuzuscatheavenarts]

Yep you’re right I was talking to an Indian person about what they thought about Sumeru and they shared your same thought, they originally thought it was going to be about India, especially since Nahida, the archon of Sumeru’s name is Indian. In addition she is also based on an Indian god which is one of the Buddha. Yet other than her name and such there isn’t really much correlation to Indian culture. I felt like it would be hella cool if Nahida had like multiple arms to represent the Buddha she was based off of. Like how Raiden’s puppet boss had 4 arms, it would have been so cool if Nahida had 6 arms of something, it would be so unique. I hope they make another Indian character because Indian culture is so beautiful I can imagine how much jewellery or accessories the character would have! Of corse I know Kaeya is Indian, but it’s not highlighted about his culture since he grew up in Genshin’s verison of Germany. When I mean an Indian character that broadcasts Indian culture I mean like Nilou, Ayaka, and Yun Jin, that sort of stuff. But Kaeya is one of my favourite characters tho :) Not to mention they gave Dori, a Turkish character, for her signature dish be an Indian dish. Where as I felt like Butter Chicken should have been reserved for a different character if they’re ever going to make an Indian character for Sumeru. Of corse that’s not a big deal for Dori’s dish to be Butter chicken, I’m just kind of disappointed because I think they could’ve added more Indian culture if they’re going to already take the route of mixing so many cultures in one country

[@kaoru9829]

great video, i have nothing of value to add to this conversation right now so i just wanted to leave this comment :) you presented everything very clearly and it was easy to understand

[@jamehh1237]

Thank you so much for making this video!!

[@Bebebebe22-]

Dam I've been trying to judt be neglectful of the whole thing and your video just took the words out of my mouth. Aa I wish more people would see this 😭

[@zuzuscatheavenarts]

Aw thank you! I’m not expecting it to blow up because I just started this KZbin channel so that makes sense, but it would be nice to have more people watch it :) because I know a lot of people don’t really want to think about representation. Or they think that if you talk about it that means you hate the game/can’t play it, or that you’re immediately toxic but I want to change the perspective and make it more okay to be able to talk about these things in a nice and respectful way instead of people immediately getting upset at those who talk about cultural aspects in Genshin not being correct because “you’re toxic why don’t you just enjoy the game instead of complain” 😅 I try my best to think about characters besides their skin tone, like for example I won’t hate on Nahida because she’s pale, but it wouldn’t really stop me from being disappointed that they could have done such an amazing job with her design. Her lore is amazing, so why can’t I wish that her design gives representation too? It would have been so cool if she had those multiple arm/hand re-designs I’ve seen from the community that are similar to Indian deity. Not to mention it would have been super unique! Or just having a few accessories that related to her culture (that I still do not know what culture she’s supposed to represent but some people said it was Middle Eastern or Indian or Arab, I know... that’s a concerning amount of choices which shows that the fandom isn’t as sure as what cultural inspirations that Nahida have, whereas for another Archon like Zhongli, we know is Chinese) Thanks for the comment! :)

[@anime_freek0994]

You did make it very much understandable I don't interact with genchin cominity much and just try to play it by myself cause I'm not too far along the game

[@zuzuscatheavenarts]

Yep, don’t worry you don’t have to rush when playing a game, since in my personal experience if you rush a game like Genshin, you wouldn’t have that much content to play in the future. It’s better to be a causal player :) I’m glad you like my video :D

[@anime_freek0994]

@@zuzuscatheavenarts the viedo vas very educational i myself am far from sumeru but i have dori even if i dont use her and as much as i heard the comunity can be toxic so i just play by myself and talk to a friend about it and i am interested in hearing out what other people have to say about it so i fount your video to be very interesting

[@zuzuscatheavenarts]

You can use Dori if you want, cause whether or not you use her doesn’t change anything. The problem is more so people whaling (spending a lot of money) in order to get the character, which basically supports the company. I get that people are going to whale for Nahida cause she’s the Dendro Archon, but it’s not going to prevent me from being disappointed that if there’s any character that should represent the culture of the nation, it should be the Archon/god. I wish they could have at least included a few cultural accessories on her, it’s gone to the point where the Genshin fandom originally thought she was Indian cause she’s apparently based off a poem (turns out she wasn’t), but then now people are saying she’s middle eastern or Arab cause of her name. That is awful. Like Imagine if we couldn’t tell if Raiden shogun was Japanese 💀 that’s essentially what happen with Sumeru’s archon. Nobody knows what culture Nahida’s suppose to represent

[@yamansonmez782]

A pretty good video I would say you explained well. Tbh when I heard sumeru music for the first time it instantly remind of my country and our somewhat close neighbors either in the past or now and also this is why i liked Dori's theme more then herself as char lol

[@rlperrin7307]

I'm commenting for the algorithm, And just wanted to say good job on doing all this research ! It's bringing up points I didn't even consider before. Have a nice day !

[@not_theghostface9046]

I recently started playing and as a person from iran I loved the references in sumeru city and felt like they were pretty accurate. It was nice to see as I haven't seen a lot of persian references in video games.

[@whiterei1340]

Well as a Turkish,i never thought Dori was Turkish,only her clothing and the "bay" in her title kind of spoke to me But yes,sumeru has felt like home to me because of all the south asia theme and i find it nice how different parts of it are all mixed up,and so generally seeming as one.And this is why i love sumeru the most,i also hope everybody feels/will feel comfortable wth the in-game region that their culture and familiar cultures to theirs will be designed of.Thank you for the awesome video,you've really put what everybody struggled with into words so hats off once again!

[@gyrosriver3527]

I loved this video tbh, I feel like you made your point. I really wish you all the best in your content creation journey!

[@notraidenshogun8324]

Dayum. Lemmi just say that THIS VIDEO ... Made me interested in that specific style Turkish music. ITS SUCH A BOP!!

[@greatnesshereiam3146]

Thank you so much for making this!!! I’m south asian, and ever since I saw the word ‘purana’ in the travail trailer I was looking forward to Sumeru. And then when Yae miko mentioned that the dendro archons were named ‘Kusanali’ and ‘Rukkhadevata’ my excitement and anticipation towards the nation’s release increased ten fold. But after seeing the playable characters in game, especially the design for Nahida and Rukkha I couldn’t help feel so very let down and disappointed… Nahida is the archon!! She’s supposed to be the face of Sumeru and yet she doesn’t look one bit like the two cultures (Persian and southasian) she’s supposedly taking inspiration from!!! It sucks!! Even if her character and personality is compelling I can’t seem to get past the design. Another thing that has me in the dumps about sumeru is that there isn’t a single playable character that’s inspired by south asian culture… considering the fact that a good chunk of sumeru, from the music, food, landscape and themes take from it… Like so much of sumeru reminds me of home but at the same time how they’ve dealt with the character designs is a blow And it’s honestly so scary to see so much of the fandom react so dismissively and aggressively when orientalism is brought up by the SWANA and south asian members of the community… So this issue being acknowledged in this essay and seeing other commenters share similar sentiments made my day so much better!! I hope going forward hyv can change the way they approach character design. Once again, thank you and hope you have a good day!!

[@zuzuscatheavenarts]

Thank you so much for the comment, yeah I was talking to someone about Nahida and they’re Indian and they were explaining how they originally thought Nahida was going to be Indian inspired which she is, but despite that I feel kind disappointed because design wise I was expecting more cultural connections. Yeah sure the other archons weren’t the *best* but they had SOMETHING, like how Zhongli can turn into a dragon which is Chinese cultural from the whole Chinese new year etc. raiden shogun had a fantasy verison of a Kimono and the Shogun being a real thing in Japanese history. For hell sakes even Venti who in my opinion wasn’t even good representation and is very stereotypically, but he is a bard which played the Lyre and that’s a real thing in their history. But for some reason Nahida has?? Nothing. So strange, I was expecting maybe Indian jewelry or it would be cool if she had flower patterns using Henna but there’s not. And the standards aren’t even that high, cause the archons weren’t the best representation to begin with (except Zhongli, Zhongli was perfect but all the other archons are a bit meh) yet Nahida put the bar even lower

[@licarsmeth6890]

Idk if it counts but Alhaitham is wielding "Kukri", a weapon native to the Gurkhas (Nepalese warriors)

[@ayush8529]

@@zuzuscatheavenarts i think she has got peepal leaves near her ears which is related to Indian Buddhism. Because as you know Gautam Buddha achieved enlightenment under a Ficus religiosa located in Bodh Gaya , India. Besides the fact of riding on a plantish like swing or let's say swing designed with flowers and leaves has got deep connection with indian Hinduism and Buddhism in my opinion , which can be witnessed in her idle animation.

[@Purpelspy]

Are any of the playable characters supposed to be south Asian? They’re all central asian/african inspired. Maybe someone in the future… honestly don’t even know what place Nahida is supposed to represent

[@ayush8529]

@@Purpelspy she perhaps is representing the Buddhism (kusanali is literally a mythological figure in jataka tales originating from Indian subcontinent) which includes both the south , south east and East Asian countries. Her talents to have sanskrit names like "akara". And besides there is a term called "shrine of Maya" , and Maya here is the sanskrit word which means supernatural powers. But since we don't have much evidence, we can't jump to conclusions.

[@cutestdude]

Amazing video!!! Though one thing I'm pretty sure that xinyan art at 11:46 is fanart but I might be wrong!! Other than that wonderfully done video!!!!

[@zuzuscatheavenarts]

I know it was fan art :) I wrote that it was fan art in the text in the video, the reason I added it was because that artwork was put on the cover of a Live stream Mihoyo hosted, therefore they promoted/used the artwork for their stream, meaning they supported it. Thank you very much for asking tho!

[@cutestdude]

@@zuzuscatheavenarts OHHHH OKAY!!! My bad then! Thanks for letting me know!!!

[@scar8o284]

I really enjoyed this video and I was thinking of making more poc Oc’s myself and this was actually very helpful for things not to do when it comes to character design

[@annabethmoo1213]

I really enjoyed your fairly unbiased and objective assessment on this. A lot of people seem disproportionately angry or apathetic while talking about this, but you struck a good balance. Video quality is great too

[@brewingtigbeebtb899]

- this was really informative- and I’m really greatful for that this could help me in my understanding and education- I’m currently working on an Animation and written project - and I currently don’t no the ethnicity of my OC - I take so much inspiration from everywhere and as an autistic person who has a strong sense of justice didn’t want to get anything wrong - although the fear of that will never outweigh the responsibility I have to educate myself - With this specific OC- and the story line that gose with them - it’s based on the foster care system and vigilantes - I’ve done a lot of research into the foster care system and a problem that is continuously talked about in further research is about how people are taken away from specific cultures and don’t have any understanding link between understanding more about there own heritage - and I wanted to slowly explore this with my OC- about the disconnect - and then finding connection - it is solely my responsibility to educate myself but I wanted to know if you had any advice going into this topic more - and also just to thank you

[@zuzuscatheavenarts]

That’s so interesting and is actually based off things in real life. If you’re trying to make a world related to vigilantes, and some of the characters are ones that come from an ethnic background who feel as if they’ve gotten whitewashed in a sense, or not as connected to their ethnic background. Not only does it happen towards people who are orphans, but also those who have divorced parents. The parent who takes custody of them, The kid would still be tied to those cultural origins and participate in that culture but they wouldn’t in the other culture, which could be interesting especially if you’re trying to do something related to discrimination. Of course you don’t have to include racism or anything bad in the story, actually most of the time people like it better when a character just so happens to be a certain race, instead of their race being related to the plot, because sometimes people like to read fiction to get away from their life rather than reading it and then seeing struggles they see in the real world But if you have things like that in your story, a character can also struggle with it because one side of their ethnic background face is discrimination while the other doesn’t. For example, I remember this one friend who was half Chinese and half Japanese, and during covid when it was the highest, they would only say that they’re Japanese rather than say that they’re Japanese and Chinese because their Chinese identity didn’t have a very good representation at the time and may have people assume bad things about them. That’s also a good way to make a character feel more distance toward their culture or ethnic group, by making them scared to be profiled or stereotyped

[@Danny-mp8dq]

It's scary how after nearly six months later Sumeru still has no darker skinned playable characters. Keyword playable because the clearly African inspired Eremites actually do have darker brown colored skin. I really dislike how people say Sumeru is just "inspired" by Southern Asian and is supposed to be fantasy game like if that somehow means that dark skinner people suddenly can't exist in fantasy like? However I do like how characters like Tighnari and Cyno have so much African influence in both their design and kits. And then there's characters that Mihoyo completely and utterly dropped the ball on like Dori and Candace As a Latino guy I know me and my friends are no longer looking forward to whatever Mihoyo handles Natlan from now on Edit: Thank God Sumeru is finally over Jesus this entire region was such a shitshow

[@Xelluse]

Cos it's stupid. Btw, Candace skin is darker, than Eremites, but she is playable character, therefore the light precast effect and AO graphics are active on her model (NPCs do not have that effects, cos it requires resources, so game system requirements will increase, especially enemy NPCs, their model are much simpler, cos of resource consumption of effects that are used on playable characters), that's why she looks brighter in action, same happen with Xinyan, when her stand model looks darker, than a playmodel, but they are exactly the same model....

[@gokigenyou9524]

CCP don't want brownies, cope, seethe and cry, westoid!

[@skyrunnerblake1481]

I agree. I don't have roots in any of the nations featured so far but it felt pretty strange to go from Imazuma (a nation based only on 1 nation, and having every character, enviornment, and music track be based on Japanese culture, food, myths, political history, etc even using the same names for things in the society as irl Japan and giving Japanese names to playable characters) to sumeru, a nation based on multiple irl cultures/regions and not having a lot of direct influences from each one.. they also went for a lot of the more commonly depicted/westernized concepts for characters as well... like Dori being a genie. And the mixing of different inspos is often not thought out as well. (Dori again being 'Arab' and 'Turkish' which I didn't even know before now) I really like sumeru as a nation and several of the characters, but I don't think it was really right to mix so many cultures into sumeru when so many of them (in my country anyway) are seen as similar or confused with each other. Especially after just having Chinese and Japanese regions, which are also homogenized with each other in my country unfortunately. Maybe they could have done two irl regions (one for the desert and one for the rest of sumeru) but the way they did it just missed out on so much cultural details.. Also yeah regardless I don't think it's cool to make every character be so pale.... it was more acceptable when we only had two asian countries and one generic european country, but its frankly kinda yikes to lift everything but skin tone from irl cultures.

[@Xelluse]

@@skyrunnerblake1481 The thing is that saying that Inazuma is based (it's not even Based of, it's inspired... but OK...) only 1 nation is a huge disrespect to whole Oceania and East Asia cultures, even in Facade decorations Inazuma have Japanese, Indonesian, Filipino, Korean inspirations, and it's just a surface of a lot of layers upon layers upon layers of different inspirations of different cultures, up to South-East Arabian and Hindu btw. Do not get it personally, but even by looking on a surface, just on Facade decorations, then only an ignorant person will say that Inazuma (or any other region in Genshin) is "Based" on only 1 nation and it's a huge disrespect to other, at least East Asian and Oceanian cultures too. It's very like saying that Mexian and Argentinian cultures are the same, or Polish and Russian, Chinese and Mongolian, English and Franch, Turkish and Iranian etc... they are close and have taken some things one from another and adopt it, but they are not the same to call them a "1 Nation"... it is very inaccurate, very ignorant and very disrespectful.

[@gokigenyou9524]

@@skyrunnerblake1481 I agree! I think Sumeru should be actual Middle East culture where women have to wear burqa, get beating up if they caught cheating, men can have several wifes, the constant extremism, being carpet bombed by foreign nations, having a Turkish tier prison system (one of the most violent in the world), having death penalty for drug offences, throwing LGBT people from roofs... Why they have to change all of that??? I want realism in my fantasy game because I'm a westoid!

[@PaulKapow]

Thank you for your art analysis and critique. I enjoyed the video and subscribed. I would definitely watch more of your content about orientalism and colorism. 👍

[@carrotking5377]

You just earned an automatic subscribe for me. This video was amazing and I hope in the future genshin can a bit better in Natlan😅

[@KJ-bu9uc]

I personally love this video so much and I really appreciate how educational this is for me to better understand the culture and tradition of a country! My personal believe is that it might be difficult for genshin(since it is a game created by a Chinese gaming company) to make a character to fully and completely represent their own tradition, since China does lack diversity within it's country, unlike America or Canada. But this doesn't mean that genshin shouldn't take healthy and useful criticisms from people who are from that culture or people who has experience that tradition. Stereotypes however does effect Chinese people and their way of portraying another culture, as Chinese myself who has lived in China before, I have first handedly experienced that and it was NOT fun. But this is only just my own opinions and I will leave this open for people to discuss. I want to thank you again for creating such a good video and gived me more information on cultural diversity!!!

[@zuzuscatheavenarts]

Thank you so much for your comment :) your input is pretty interesting! You’re right a lot of the time people say that since it’s a Chinese game they wouldn’t add diversity, but it doesn’t hurt to still critique and give your own thoughts and research on how you can make a character in a game you like better. In the future I want to visit other countries like China, and America because I want to see what the citizens believe, it’s interesting to see the beliefs differ between countries, especially when the country is considered controversial. Since usually the people who live there are not like their political leaders and are separate which is something some people forget. Which is why I don’t like it when people genuinely believe an entire majority, like Russian, Chinese and American people are the same. Because I think it’s rude, since there are definitely some people there who disagree with colourism and discrimination.

[@asami1910]

Love your commentary. I have to move the comments I put in your TT video to here because of the word limit on comments there. Sorry about the long comment you will be reading here. I am just all for positive representation and wanted my SWANA/Middle East peers to get that kind of representation they deserve in media. . . I have seen people brought up how there were no complaints the clothing on Inazuma playable characters when the topic of Sumeru and orientalism comes up. The thing is there were people who have critiqued especially on the Inazuma women characters, but those critiques get drowned out because “the game is anime-inspired, so there’s bound to be fanservice”. Even with that in mind, it is clear how Genshin was able to display inspiration of Japan in Inazuma compared to Sumeru which is an amalgamation of regions of the SWANA/Middle East. People of SWANA/Middle East who have critiqued about Sumeru are concerned about the region because of the company’s history with colorism and racism and how the company would handle with representation which unfortunately the company chose to use light skin as majority of the people of Sumeru when in the SWANA/Middle East region there is skintone diversity that reflects on the multiple cultures existing region. Orientalism doesn’t just happen just on the SWANA/Middle East but we just see it too often on the SWANA/Middle East. Orientalism is the Western perception of the Eastern cultures, and we definitely see the negative impact it has on people when they perceive the SWANA/Middle East regions.

[@zuzuscatheavenarts]

Thank you so much for your input and don’t worry I love long comments like this! To add on to your point, I believe the reason that people didn’t mention that much about Inazuma’s sexualization was because Japan in the anime community is more of a country people idolize, not hate. Not to mention people tend to sexualize Japanese culture, so it wouldn’t have been seen as a big deal if Mihoyo did the same. So people weren’t very concerned about the Genshin fandom potentially being racist towards Japanese people, because most of the English fandom thinks of Japanese culture as a positive, NOT a culture to mock. That’s the reason why for Inazuma, there wasn’t that much need for “localization of names” like what they did for Sumeru. For Sumeru, everyone complained how the voice actors don’t *need* to say their name correctly and that apparently the fandom was overreacting about Tighnari’s name being pronounced wrong. Yet for Inazuma and Liyue, people were pretty on board with learning to correctly pronounce their name, or at least try to. In addition, people also used Japanese or Chinese culture as a means to be racist towards SWANA people, such as saying “well because it’s a Chinese game, of course there wouldn’t be characters with darker skin, the beauty standard is being more pale”. They were able to use it as an excuse The creators of Genshin themselves said that they made Genshin because of their love for anime and Japanese culture. So the chances of them being racist towards Japanese people are slim These are the reasons why people are less inclined to say that Mihoyo is racist towards Japanese people, any criticism against Inazuma is going to go by deaf ears, because the Fandom doesn’t think of Japan like that. But for Sumeru, that is a different story. Those are the reasons why Sumeru’s representation is way worse treated by Mihoyo than Inazuma is. Hoyoverse’s history towards Japan is way more positive than it is about SWANA individuals.

[@asami1910]

@@zuzuscatheavenarts I’m sad that what you said makes sense because I have seen a lot of times of people bringing up Japanese or Chinese culture to shut down SWANA/MENA people who have legitimate concerns for how their own cultures are being represented. With how Hoyoverse represented SWANA/MENA cultures, it makes me wonder if they really want to connect with all of their global audience. Oh yes, the name pronunciation. I know that voice actors have to follow what the voice directors tells them how to pronounce names especially in the English dub, but it would have been nice for players to learn directly from the game how the names are pronounced.

[@novrinkov0053]

@@asami1910 Those countries have introduced their culture with difficulty.Despite criticism racism, they spread japanese culture to the world. Foreigners made fun of karate and anime at first.At first everyone thought sushi and sashimi was disgusting,But now everyone likes sushi anime karate.That's because Japan appealed to the goodness of its culture without giving up. Do you think Japan got all the attention for free?no criticism?no cost?no effort? Japan made great efforts to spread the culture.sacrificed a lot.

[@novrinkov0053]

@@zuzuscatheavenarts Japanese culture has always been treated badly by westerners and chinese even middle eastern indian south east asian.Nowadays, more and more people like Japanese culture, but in the past it was terrible. Do you think Japan got it for free? At past World people Said sushi and sashimi were disgusting.Anime and manga are pedo for nerd people. Japan has made an effort in spite of a lot of discrimination and racism.Japan made a lot of sacrifices to turn it into a positive. It is still often spoken negatively.Don't think that Japan always got attention for free.

[@HyenasandGin]

Fantastic video. I got into Genshin fairly recently and given the elaborate and well done allegories in Liyue and Inazuma, I was surprised how miss-mashed and haphazard Sumeru was. This video was great. Keep up the good work, you have good wit and editing skills, I’m excited to see further videos

[@zuzuscatheavenarts]

Aw thank you very much I appreciate that greatly 🙏🙏💕

[@randommfk]

wonderfully made!

[@zuzuscatheavenarts]

Thank you very much! ❤️

[@gayratkidfromiowasomehow5584]

I’m actually redoing a lot of the different areas in Teyvat. So, here’s what I’ve come up with: Mondstadt: Germany, Belgium, Netherlands, Czechia, and a little bit of Denmark Liyue: China and its territories (Hong Kong and Taiwan), Vietnam, Laos, and maybe Thailand Inazuma: Japan and South Korea (maybe North Korea if I can squeeze it in) Sumeru: Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Oman, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, and a bit of Egypt. I’m doing my best to research and have everything make sense, so wish me luck P.S. Sumeru is both being condensed and having a minor overhaul. It’s to many countries that are to far spread (Turkey to India) with many different cultures. Trying to make one culture with many different ones is incredibly hard, so I instead chose countries that were very close and somewhat bleed into each other.

[@zuzuscatheavenarts]

Yeah I agree it makes more sense to have the nations be based off of one country, OR if they are going to combine multiple countries, at least make the countries be close by and have some similarities 😁 +make sure it’s more obvious which part is which

[@valentinamarino5511]

Hi! I wanted to add that I saw in a video that the chasm is also based in Mongolia

[@chickennoodlesoup9512]

sumeru is also based on India why do people skip it

[@chickennoodlesoup9512]

so many names and dishes from India, even some of the story lore is derived from Hindu mythology

[@syaiffudinsalleh4464]

U forgot manchuria for liyue, iirc qipao is actually machuria outfits, traditional han chinese are hanfu

[@kx2174]

I agree with most of your points and I'm glad you didn't harp on Nilou outfit, because if you look at characters like Raiden (sexy Kimono), Yanfei (sexy lawyer), Yae (sexy shrine maiden), and others like Jean's original design (showing half her chest), Noelle's design, etc. You'll see a theme here, and I'd say Nilou is more modest than Raiden. Even Aether wears a belly shirt XD and he's one of the main characters. Very little in Genshin is historically accurate (they are not trying to be, it's fantasy and they want to sell cute/attractive characters). That being said I do think Sumeru went too far with the mixing. They could have at least done something like have different characters based more on different cultures like they did with Nilou and like you suggested with Dori. I would also like to add that Mondstadt isn't just Germany, it's broadly Germanic with other European stuff mixed in. Venti's name is Italian. Ragnvindr is norse, Jean is french (a male name at that), etc. We're just so used to seeing fantasy medieval Europe (especially in anime/jrpg) that we don't even think about it. IDK how much Europeans care though and as an American I feel plenty represented by the "Freedom" aspect of Mondstadt XD Liyue has the most accuracy as the devs are Chinese, however I doubt any historic Chinese ladies dressed like Yanfei or Yelan. Inazuma is just anime fantasy Edo/Meiji Japan. Anime is very popular and the devs are Otaku themselves, no further explanation needed. For Sumeru maybe there were just too many ideas and they weren't sure what they wanted to do or different teams wanted different things? We'll have to see how Fontaine turns out. As it is we are looking at Industrial/Steampunk France/Europe with some Spain mixed in (Npcs like Garcia and Belén have Spanish names). Snezhnaya is clearly based on Russia, but also Italy to an extent as the Harbingers names are from the Commedia dell'arte.

[@julia-nu4fj]

Mondstadt is based on the Holy Roman Empire, that’s why it may seem like a mishmash.

[@Yumemiru_Kumo]

I have never realised how much Turkish dori was unil you showed the elemets used in her design and the analysis you have made about her.. I guess you are correct about everything about her, as a Turkish person myself I agree with you %100

[@KB-jr9bd]

Thanks for saying this and posting this video. I’m so grateful you did. You’ve not only put out such a well-constructed argument about this underrepresented topic, but you’ve also created a space for people to freely express their own thoughts about it. I’m relatively new to this game and I haven’t played through Sumeru yet, but it makes me sad that its cultural aspect was handled this poorly. I had loved how nuanced and in-depth Liyue and Inazuma were, and I was hoping Sumeru would get similar treatment. It really sucks to find out it didn’t, but still I think it’s better to acknowledge that fact rather than fool myself into thinking it‘ll be better than it is. I’m definitely gonna try to approach Sumeru a lot more critically once I play the quest, thank you!

[@Sakurakitto]

Really interesting and informative, I feel like a learned quite a bit from the video! I feel like the biggest mistake Mihoyo made with Genshin was depicting large areas to clearly represent one culture from the beginning, then suddenly mashing a whole bunch of under-represented cultures into Sumeru with some questionable stereotypes and lack of variety in skin tones. If they had been combining cultures from the start to create unique new places, Sumeru might not have been so jarring. Ultimately, they will not have enough locations to cover everyone, so I feel like there will be more culture mixing in the future and people are going to be annoyed either way. The very least they could do at this point is give us more variety in skin tone.

[@Anna-rt2cx]

A nice video! Thank you for explaining the elements being used and merged into the Dori. It’s a really informational video. I have better understanding of that Turkish style music and other clothing culture. I saw people mentioning this video under a discussion about the architecture of Fontaine. It’s a short essay about the architecture styles used in Fontaine isn’t quite quite French style but a mixture of elements. L As this video and that discussion both pointed out one opinion. The design of Genshin probably based on real elements of cultures, but there is always room for improvement (especially when it comes to the combining the elements).

[@Duhgel]

solid video, I'm a little worried about Natlan but let's hope it goes... decent

[@punchline1729]

I want to comment on this video again after 8 months and thank you again for your efforts in representing Persian culture and showing that Iranian culture has nothing to do with Orientalism. please keep on making such videos

[@zuzuscatheavenarts]

Wow it’s already been 8 months? It feels so much closer to that date, but it’s really been a while. I still play Genshin and I’m surprised at how close Fontaine is. Thank you so much for the comment, I really appreciate it :)

[@Kornelmiumiu]

Genshin is good at making stereotypical designs. For example Venti. He’s german and he’s almost only personality trade is being drunk. I am half german and NO NOT EVERYBODY IS ALWAYS DRUNK HERE 💀

[@zuzuscatheavenarts]

Yeah I definitely think they could have done better with Mondstadt, which is why I only included Liyue and Inazuma as the positive example in the video. But I really like Fischl’s English voice actor cause I thought it was really cool how they actually took German lessons in order to better pronounce the words! Of course I understand that all words in a different language are difficult to non native speakers which is why I’m not actually too upset when it comes to people accidentally saying it wrong. I think the bigger issue more comes with people making fun of an ethnic name, or refusing to correctly pronounce a character’s name after being corrected. But I think it’s really sweet of them to do that extra mile and learn German pronunciation for their character as that’s pretty respectable, it’s very hard to learn a new language :)

[@bhavya5692]

Also the way they butcher fischels name 😭

[@xxri]

ppl just love to water him down to being a drunk since it stands out the most ig, he has much more to his character than that

[@Xelluse]

See Russians always represented that way, but that stereotype about Germans ? First time hear that....

[@Xelluse]

@@bhavya5692 Oh cmon, she is cute and exactly cos of that reason....

[@noname-lb3sg]

You explain everything so perfectly

[@alphanightfury1416]

Im really surprised on how well done this video is especially the fact that you're not even from said cultures but still managed to get everything right!

[@goktor5507]

4:10 damn i caught myself boppin sagol tbh me personally idrc about this whole representation argument as long as people are civil about it. my problem with it is that the genshin fandom isn't. i'm just happy my culture is recognised through dori but that's about it. i especially get mad when the argument is ab skin tones as i find that shallow. im more concerned about the culture represented. when sumeru is based on the middle east as a whole including south asia it can get really toxic. which is why i like to chalk it up to "ottoman culture" + south asian cultures. since the ottoman empire was too vast to just chalk up to turkey Persian cultural elements are also ottoman imo. thats all i really care about. also the reason i find the skin tone argument shallow is because skin colour doesnt represent culture in any way. unless its absolutely bigotted like how black people were portrayed by road dahl, i do not care. which is why it annoys me. and about dori i understand the arguments about her design: persian names are also turkish. i know many turks who are names nilufer which is just the turkish spelling of the persian name niloufar. the signature dish annoys me admittedly and so does the genie in the lamp. and i dont mind the middle eastern scammer stereotype cause, as a middle eastern, i find it funny lol. however i recognise that other people are not me and id say none of my points "debunk" yours as it is all personal. but im still dying on the hill defending my skin tone argument. thanks for the vid nevertheless and recognising us :)

[@zuzuscatheavenarts]

I didn’t mention skin tone in my video because I felt like the Genshin Fandom already mentions skin colour in the majority of their criticism, if not all when it’s against Sumeru. So I wanted to talk about mostly culture cause that’s something people weren’t focusing too much on. And I agree what you mean by skin tone doesn’t represent culture, because someone can have dark skin, and be East Asian such as Vietnamese or Japanese. I believe skin colour representation is important tho, it’s just not the same as culture representation, it’s important to distinguish the two. However, If I’m going to be honest, I don’t think Mihoyo choose the characters to mostly be pale because they know skin colour isn’t the same as culture, or that they thought it best represents that culture. I think they just made them paler since of colourism and beauty standard reasons. But thanks for the comment! 🙏 I found your perspective pretty interesting

[@goktor5507]

@@zuzuscatheavenarts thank you! I feel like I've disregarded skin tones too much. Especially for characters like nahida and candace. At first I hated nahida's design but as time went on I didn't really mind it because she's adorable. But at the same time I find it hilarious that with all this orientalism in the game hyv decided to make nahida completely pale with white hair. Especially knowing middle Eastern cultures particularly Turkish, because obviously, I'd have expected the dendro archon to be a typical wise old sultan. But now I don't mind much. As for candace I didn't realise how bad it was until I saw who hyv took inspiration from. It's a shame middle easterns don't get proper representation in media. But tbh I'm just happy for fade from valorant and dori. Btw imo fade is a perfect representation of Turkish culture. Riot nailed everything. From the henna to the nazar eye I love the design and I love comparing the cultural references between both games. As a matter of fact I recommend u look into cultural representation in valorant as well! Sorry about the essay and thanks for reading.

[@goktor5507]

@@zuzuscatheavenarts also I'd like to add that "Bay/bey" is a term of respect used primarily for men it basically means mister. For womenthe equivalent would be "hanim". It's in my opinion, a common mistake made

[@Seblak]

While i can agree that Dori's design can be problematic, i feel that the main issue comes from 2 things: The worldbuilding and base playerbase. With the playerbase, representation gets problematic fast precisely because of the pushback: Both people that are simply racist and complains about any representation, and the chinese Mihoyo playerbase, the biggest part of the playerbase that can be quite... whiny. I can see Nintendo getting away with things that Mihoyo can't, it's a completely different context. While i don't share the choice they made, i can understand why Mihoyo isn't very eager to lean too much on representation. A simple mistake can hit very hard when it comes to this point, more so with a toxic community. 2nd is the worldbuilding since while they're using inspirations from real world nations, they're not going too hard on realism. I say this because while Liyue and Inazuma are clearly based in 1 nation (And maybe Fontaine), saying that with the rest is the same minus Sumeru is simply not true. While Mond and Snezhnaya are based on Germany and Russia, it's not the only inspiration. Mondstadt is based on the germanic nations, but it's arguably more Switzerland than Germany, and it also includes Norway, Austria and even UK. It's more clear on the OST, where it's a mix of several places and era periods. Snezhnaya is mainly Russia, but we don't know yet if they will add more Slavic or even other Asian nations, but we do know that it's a mix of Russia and Italy due to the Fatui. Also, i'm pretty sure all of this will be a problem again once Natlan come around, since it's inspiration is mainly South and Hispanic America, and likely add both Spain, Portugal or even Andorra.

[@ellalinko]

I would love to see more video essays about things like this, your video was very well written! I love the comparison you made between how Splatoon displays culture and how Genshin does it, a very good contrast I agree with you that genshin could improve, and take criticism to action As a middle eastern, I was only slightly upset that there is little darker skin representation, I guess because this is a thing that can be changed, like different characters with different skin tones coming out in the future What I felt really upset me though is the lack of representation to my culture. All of Sumeru feels very familiar but nothing feels like home. It all feels like one mix of ‘middle east’ but nothing specific. I’d love to see some clear representation, more like Shiver and Frye, more like nilou

[@vote_nate]

very good video!! thank you!

[@tupperduck]

honestly as a turkish person I kinda like that they call her bay and she wears male clothing I think its quite cute the issue is that it doesnt represent turkish culture very well even tho dori is my fave child model character I was really surprised when ppl said she was turkish. That said Im not actually mad abt her design but rather mad abt two things 1st they gave her a genie and a lamp which is arabic and Im so fed up w ppl mixing us up w arabic ppl the only thing we have in common is the fact that we have muslim majority ( and like turkey is secular lmao) 2nd her name and her signature dish my guy u put baklava in the game and didnt give it to the only turkish char you have likee bruuhh oh also abt the scamming part there is a scamming issue in turkey where taxi drivers charging tourists a lot more than the actual prize and we kinda make jokes abt it too bc it is a big issue just now my friend was like "she is turkish bc she scammed the traveler who is a tourist" as a joke but like most of the turkish ppl are against it so idk I dont mind the scammer part its kinda funny how she is the reason kaveh had to live w haitham LMAO

[@Xelluse]

She is inspired from "One Thousand and One Nights" - "Tale of the Trader and the Jinn" (on older version, there are more than 20 versions, if exclude modern interpretations), but White Man from a tale became a white Girl in Genshin, and Dori in Perian means "Shiny", cos she loves "Shiny Mora"... So she is more Kurdish then, or Syrian, than Turkish. Also her roots are not from Sumeru, she came there, probably from Fontain, but no details game gives us about from where exactly, and she lived there for a long time, then the Jinny thing happen and here she goes, became one of the richest people in whole Teyvat. Scamming problem is everywhere, believe or not, I lived in many countries and Turkey is not the worst, US, Brasil, Japan (Especially Tokyo against tourists) and Indonesia were worst, also heard about Cuba, but was not there personally. Arabian countries have not more scum than European (of course depends, as lower is the economical level in the country, then more often you may meet scummers as a tourist especially). But in Antalya had some problems, when some people tried to sell things for doubled price, but it's nothing in compare to Las Vegas or Rio. Also scumming is a personal issue, not a cultural, I do not even know if there is any culture, that somehow may justify scumming, so bad people are everywhere, no matter from where they are.

[@tupperduck]

@@Xelluseye well that's why I said I wasn't offended by the scamming part of her cuz it's not a Turkish stereotype other than that idk man ppl been saying she is Turkish but she doesn't seem that Turkish to me as well lol

[@Xelluse]

@@tupperduck I was not agruing, just add some details, so do not understand my comment as opposition of yours.

[@tupperduck]

@@Xelluse didn't think u were lol thx for the information 💛

[@Xelluse]

@@tupperduck The thing is that Sumeru is inspired by multiple Arabic cultures and from different periods of time and Turkey also was part of that world and always many cultural aspects, stories, legends, dances, songs etc... were adopted from one cultures to another and versa, it's a natural process, so of course there will be a lot of parallels, especially in close cultures of the world, but I personally doubt that they based Dori on Turkish culture specifically.

[@celinecore]

sadly us turks get mistaken with Arab and Indian culture frequently. I loved the video and suspected that dori might be turkish but now I'm sure. It might have been better if Doris skin tone was a little darker. Thank u for the vid

[@Jaeho4ever]

This was a very good video thank you for explaining it very well. I wondering if you could make another video explaining where the other Sumeru characters are inspires from.

[@AbysmalRae]

Great video!!

[@zuzuscatheavenarts]

Thank you!

[@ashishitD]

I just love the "for riddles for wonders"......as well as "enchanting bedtime stories" These 2 OSTs sound the most accurate to the music of mid Indian region While the desert OSTs sound more like western region of India 😌😌😌😌

[@jeongyeonshi]

i honestly think that the skin tone problem might have some roots in the colorism of some east asian countries since there the beauty standard is to be pale and they wont be able to make that much revenue in china because of that... ofc that doesn't excuse it. also since i saw someone say something about kaeya and xinyan, kaeya might be called "exotic" cuz he's from Khaenri'ah, even tho that's considered a secret and xinyan might be called "scary" cuz she sings a genre that is considered weird in liyue... idk its just a theory, but they can add more variation is terms of skin tones for sure

[@Bubblegum-cv7bw]

Right east asia is a very colorist region, but like no one forced hyv to depicts brown and black ppl in their games, but they did and whitwashed or lightened the shit out of them anyway, imo if they don’t want to make proper black and brown characters then leave them out of their games, their cultures included not the ppl themselves

[@Purpelspy]

The game is extremely fishy when it comes to colour beyond just average East Asian racism. One thing that struck out to me was them describing blue eyes/blonde hair as ideal of beauty somewhere, and especially whitewashing Kandake, an African goddess (which I thought would invite much much more outrage). Other Chinese and east asian games are not so bad as this. I guess only Natlan will tell but overall the company is …

[@novrinkov0053]

@@Purpelspy These are not depicting white people Blondes exist, just as pink and purple hair exists in the game.There is blue eyes, just as there are yellow and red eyes.Why do you only pick blondes and blue eyes? And don't lump all East Asia together The situation is very different in each country.In japan, some people even pay to tanning their skin in tanning salon.Japan is the only Asian country that pay to tan skin. and south asian bleach their skin. Ex colonies like india prefer white skin because colonial mentality.

[@knoleleahviolet2909]

Excellent video! Your topic, examples, and thoughts were very well put together and your editing was great. The music sections were just a tad too loud, but overall great work! I noticed that this kind of thing is far more common with South Asia and the indigenous cultures between China and Russia which is really sad because each culture has it's own amazing things to offer. Something that I've been working on as an artist is to get better at diversifying the sources which I take inspiration from and not reduce any design elements I use from this inspiration into mere features of a basically western or mix mashed design. And that includes creating characters with different skin colors. This has vastly improved my art and designs and added diversity in a way that felt very natural to me. I've also been working on not labeling things as ugly. I realized that when I used terms like ugly, especially with something that I'm not familiar with or don't know the significance of, it devalues other culture unfairly. Instead, I say things like I personally don't love this design element because of the color combination or shape. I have found that this avoids putting down others. I love sumaru more than the rest of genshin, but I feel like they could have done better on the representation front if they had a mindset more like mine. I know that I still have more growing to do as an artist but I truly believe a different perspective from the design team would have helped.

[@HikasCorner]

i rly like how your little character png thing looks

[@xMirukanis]

Hi! As a half-Iranian, I love your video! Do you have the name of the artist’s who drew ”accurate” redesigns of Nilou? I loved those so much and a link for credit would be nice!

[@razputinfp]

everytime i remember thus video i get giddy and smile so wide and start clapping like a cocomelon baby thank you (comming from a turkish person)

[@samiam7327]

Hi i like this video. Thanks for making this video, its nice. Have a nice day :)

[@zuzuscatheavenarts]

Aw thank you very much!

[@esaualfaro3447]

This is a very good video!

[@bobothefool3909]

small note abt nilou's design, some iranian ppl ik (and online too) seem to have an issue with the fact that her outfit shows skin bc that's kinda frowned upon in iranian cultures n whatnot also my pov on the whole cultural mixing thing as a brown (south asian) person is p simple: it'd be okay if it were done better bc swana is a huge, diverse region with interlinked history, languages, and cultures. mihoyo had the chance to accurately showcase a beautiful mix of middle eastern, west, and south asian cultures (maybe even central asian?) in sumeru, hell, they could've even stuck to now-sumerian cultures (iraqi, iranian, etc etc) but they messed small parts of it up. i'm disappointed but not surprised in the slightest majority of the characters are paler than the racially white ones from mondstadt bc colorism is a big thing in basically every region of asia, especially east from what i've heard (conveniently where mhy is based), but it's still pretty disheartening to think abt what they could've done vs what they did (but it's also pretty funny to see random white characters named "ahmed" or "maryam" and stuff like that, it's just so out of place you can't do anything but laugh). that being said, i do really like the little bits of representation in sumeru city, like the food, the names, the language, etc., and how they incorporate different words from different languages spoken in swana like hindi/urdu (sanskirt by extension) and maybe even farsi? correct me on that if i'm wrong. i also really like how the actual plot of the story reflects that of different countries in the region too, like the political corruption in the akademiya, the rewriting history, and the foreign powers using the akademiya like a puppet. even tho playing through it hit too close to home, it still felt nice to see the generalized history of a linked region be shown so well all in all sumeru could've just been done better, specifically the characters, but it wasn't the steaming pile of trash i anticipated from the leaks 🤷

[@felyndiira]

So, watching this video to the end, I disagree due to how Western-centric some of your arguments are. I'll address Dori being a scammer first. Did you know that scammers are a beloved archetype in China? She even has the iconic mini-glasses that are used to identify this archetype in Chinese media. So, knowing this and the fact that Genshin is a Chinese game made for a majorly Chinese (and Japanese) audience, of course they want to use the archetype in-game. With this in mind, how would you implement her to be "inoffensive"? The obvious route would be to put her in Liyue...but we both know which other East Asian ethnic group gets portrayed as scammers by Western media. Inazuma? Well, with China and Japan's relations that's going to lead to an outcry. Mondstadt? We both know people will riot over a Chinese company calling Europeans scammers. There's basically nothing that they can do to not offend any Western stereotypes without just axing the archetype altogether. At which point, your argument basically becomes "doesn't matter that it's a Chinese archetype in a Chinese game, it offends a Western stereotype and thus it has to go." You can't get more ethnocentric than that. Even worse, "Turkish scammers" was never a stereotype. You had to broaden it to India for the argument to even make sense; and you're basically shutting down her entire character, without actually looking at CHINESE culture and asking why Dori even exists as is. Heck, the entire origin of Orientalism is that it's Europeans looking down on Asian cultures, not "inadequate representation by not having everything a character do shout one culture". Also, the Splatoon argument - Splatoon is a terrible example here because...well, just take the Japanese inkling and imagine all Inazuma characters with the same slit eye and stereotypical cover-one-eye hairstyle. How is that anything but an insult on Japanese people? Splatoon gets away with it because it's behind a heavily deformed artstyle, but try to apply the same principles to anime art and we have a walking bad stereotype in the making. Splatoon also has the most basic representation possible; putting tiny bits of every culture into a city soup rather than telling a complex story with half a dozen mythological references interacting with one another. It's really easy to do "representation" if it's only a signpost and some decorations in a city. It's something that isn't even applicable to a JRPG-ish game. Instead, it's a BAD thing for layman with zero familiarity with a culture to instantly be able to recognize that culture's representation without research, since that means you are relying on stereotypes on purpose - the one thing you've been arguing we should avoid. Sure, skin color's fine and I sympathize with that argument, but how are you supposed to communicate to someone who knows nothing about Ethiopian culture, say, that a character is Ethiopian? You have to rely on the little things they do know, which...tends to just be stereotypes that just harms the culture even more. Ultimately, characters need to be characters first, and representation second. While small things like specialty food I agree shouldn't be a big deal to change, things like character archetype, design, and role in the story are major things that trump things like "100% representative of Turkey" or "100% representive of the Chinese". Going back to Dori, Sumeru derives pretty heavily from Persian culture and mythos, and Persian culture is pretty vast. If Mihoyo forces themselves to a strict "one character one culture" philosophy, they'd either have to axe 90% of it or make like 12 characters just for Iran and co. alone, which leaves no room for everyone else. The best choice, then, is to keep characters mostly to one identity, but mix things up here and there to assure that all the elements they want to represent are represented at least a bit in the game. So, having a character like Dori that pays homage to one culture while mixing a little of another due to limited character space isn't an issue, as long as it's not done with malicious intent. Culture representation is like Bechdel Rule. It's a good thing and an important metric for the general media scene as a whole, but wielding it as a bludgeon to force everything to some exact metric turns it into a bastardization of itself. Just like you don't want to force every movie to satisfy the Bechdel Rule, you also don't want to force representation to a point that you lose sight of everything else. Especially if that "representation" is from a heavily Western pov and used to judge media from a completely different culture that you don't fully understand.

[@salceds]

The scammer archetype for a Turkish character isn't exactly the most tasteful thing to do considering in East and South East Asia, SWANA people being scammers is still a pervasive stereotype and does not mesh well with the entire character considering everything else about her was lumped together with neighboring albeit vastly different cultures.

[@felyndiira]

@@salceds You didn't read the entirety of my post. Dori was a scammer because THE SCAMMER ARCHETYPE IS POPULAR IN CHINA, so they wanted to put that archetype in the game as well. There isn't a single culture that will mesh positively with that stereotype for obvious reasons (and yeah, I gave reasons on why it would be bad in any of the other three nations), so they had to insert it somewhere. Sumeru just happened to be the best place since it fits the best with the story. And yeah, my whole point is that you think of Dori as nothing but a cultural representation when, like all fictional characters, she is necessarily character first and cultural representation second. It's not about whether her being a scammer is representative of culture or whatever. It's because a scammer character is desired at this point in the story owing to it being a beloved archetype in the game's home country, China. And if you go out and look for negative stereotypes, every region has them. Even Liyue - the country of origin for this game - has manipulative merchants, a secret police that spies on its people, Ningguang literally scamming Liben, overworked adepti, a ruling council of seven that collectively controls most of the nation's economy, and a bunch of other things that are actual negative stereotypes of China. Why? Because characters SHOULD and WILL have negative traits, and somewhere in the world every negative trait is going to implicitly hit some stereotype if you squint hard enough (especially in your case, where the SWANA scammers stereotype refers more to Iran/Iraq than Turkey). So, the only way to avoid them completely is to make every character all positive with no bad traits - to the detriment of the game.

[@Bubblegum-cv7bw]

Bro shut the fuck up, I promise dori isn’t that significant to the overall story, the game would be fine without her, also the scammer merchant is both an arab and an Indian stereotype, and until now everyone thought dori was arab cuz of the major aladdin inspiration. Why are you trying so hard to defend ppl liking a fucking offensive stereotype that has been going on for half a century

[@K.G444]

Lol that doesn’t excuses colorism and negative stereotypes, but okay…

[@salceds]

@@felyndiira You said all of that just your point to be that Dori's just had to be Turkish in order for them to make the scammer trope make sense? And Liyue's tropes were handled with more grace and awareness than in Sumeru so that doesn't even apply either.

[@fishtherifk]

this is the first youtube video you made???? wow its so well made that i thought you were a long time user!! the video was put together so well and the amount of research you put is astounding!! you have a massive potential, keep up with the good work!

[@galaxy_kicks7911]

Great video! Idk if I really want to play the new area because I really thought they were gonna be accurate since they were in the past!

[@zuzuscatheavenarts]

You can still play the new area cause in newer updates you’re probably going to have to go across Sumeru to reach there anyways. Hopefully in the future, like in Nalan, I heard a lot of speculation it was going to be based off of Indigenous America with Spanish and West Africa influences which is quite a concept ngl. Of corse I don’t like that they once again mashed so many different cultures together, but at this point I hope they at least portray the cultures they do put in Natlan correctly 😅 so there can still be culture to represent or appreciate at the minimum I don’t know if it’s rude but I honestly don’t have the highest hopes but maybe they’ll make some improvements, who knows.

[@zuzuscatheavenarts]

Thanks! 🙏

[@galaxy_kicks7911]

@@zuzuscatheavenarts god I’m Latina and of Native decent. Idk if I could digest that.

[@1ryb360]

I personally am very bothered by this Orientalist aspect while playing, but I think it's still possible to enjoy it from a gameplay perspective because all things considered, miHoYo is still just really good at designing video games. Just keep your critical mindset while playing it, I think you will still get a lot of enjoyment out of it without giving up cultural sensitivity

[@talisa222]

Were they really accurate in the past...

[@bobrokrot0111]

Well made video but one thing I want to point out is that although representation matters it shouldn't harm the ingame logic and worldbuilding. People of Sumeru are not supposed to be Middle Asian, they are supposed to be Sumerians. If you look closely then you'll notice that east Sumerians are all light-skinned whereas desertfolk are all dark-skinned. In Aaru village the only light-skinned people are merchants and scholars that are not native to this region. So the absence of black people is understandable and consistent with the internal logic within the game. And being consistent is a good thing. And that's why Candace is the way she is. The real problem is why they set up their world in this way, where is a region with black people? Well, there probably is, we just haven't seen it yet. We'll have to wait for the future release of Natlan then, we haven't seen any character or NPC from there yet. Personally I trust mihoyo to not disappoint in that regard seeing how they are committed to represent lots of cultures, although not without problems, but still. Either way personally I won't make any conclusions until they release all 7 regions.

[@talisa222]

I feel like it's meaningful to remember that MHY is a Chinese company, so of course Liyue will be more specific. They are probably also Chinese weebs, so that explains Inazuma kind of (even though Inazuma nonetheless feels like a more stereotyped, less nuanced region to me). Research is available to everyone, obviously, but developers don't have unlimited time and energy. My first reaction is just...obviously Chinese people are going to be way more scrappy in their depiction of cultures that aren't Chinese? Of course they're more likely to mash those cultures together? They have enough cultural lore in their brains of their own culture to spare for a whole region's worth of content when it comes to Liyue. With others, they have to do much more research. It's not ideal, but again...priorities. Majority of player base clearly prefers them spend more time writing and developing than researching cultures. Thus we have what we have. For Sumeru, MHY hired a bunch of voice actors from culturally similar backgrounds to the playable characters. The music is done by musicians from these cultures and not some Chinese guy who learned an "ethnic" instrument for the gig. That's real world stuff that matters way more to me than some anime designs in a game. I think the "this region is orientalist" was so overblown. There are stereotypes all over the place in this game, but only when it's a specific subsect of cultures are being mashed together that people complain. Where was the outcry that certain Scandinavian cultures were being fused with Germany? None, because white people aren't allowed to have opinions anymore. Honestly, and the fucking pronunciation shit. I'm Chinese and I had to listen to the English voice actors call it leeway for an entire quest and beyond. Did it matter to me? No, because not everyone can pronounce every foreign syllable. This Chinese company doesn't even care if their English VAs are pronouncing their own culture's names wildly wrong. I assure you they're not being racist against Sumeru-related cultures.

[@pizzalord88]

does not excuse the stereotypes and racism, a simple search can fix everything but people are ignorant to, I seen chinese companies (creators of distyle) do better than hoyoverse when it comes to representation and diversity. Even Liyue isn't represented that culturally well (like yelan's qipao) but the worst case to showing representation is Sumeru since so many characters are stereotypes and the colorism.

[@pizzalord88]

i seen many people complain about how the VAs don't pronounce the languages right (German, Chinese, and the languages in Sumeru) but it seems HYV isn't interested in fixing it sadly, but of course it is hard to pronounce them, the VAs have at least tried i'll give them that

[@mitsume_slay]

@@pizzalord88 ya like a game identity v they made the dark skin tone characters white in the art but they fix it I love genshin but they not fixing anything

[@justinle8170]

I agree with your statement @a w

[@winterdreambell]

"White people aren't allowed to have opinions anymore" please go outside white supremacy is still going strong in the entire world, white people get more privilege than the actual natives in my country. Do not compare the mistreatment and appropriation of non-european cultures with european cultures, both do not share the same negative impact that can actually harms people's daily lives.

[@ecivon5314]

“Comments, questions, or death threats” noooooo 😭😭😭 In all seriousness though thank you so much I really loved ur video!! U explain things very well

[@anthon7532]

This was such a good video. Thank you so much for putting the time and researching about persian culture.