Project 1 - IKEMEN dating game
Click for the IKEMEN dating game!
For my first project, I decided to create a flash game. I chose to present the information in a dating game format, where the player chooses a certain male to follow and learn about based on certain stereotypes. The game is slightly interative, where users can watch videos/picture explanations behind the famous men. It ended up more like an archive of information that I collected during and before the project.
For the subject, I tackled Japanese Boys in the media (in Japan). I continually hear people speaking that Japanese/Asian men are becoming more and more feminized, and such is seen in a negative light over in the States (often, asian men are stereotyped as weak and femimine.) However, girls overseas enjoy it so much; the contradiction was very confusing. Since I often consume these kinds of media for entertainment, I was hoping this project would lead me to an answer about understanding if the men were really transitioning into a more feminine state on their own will, or if it was mostly a facade.
Although the men did various feminized acts, such as stereotypical styles of clothes, fashion, makeup, and relationships with males and females, they still seemed to keep a small ground that they were still heterosexual men who enjoyed being men, and not transgendered females. There was a bit of discussion about it in class after my project, but essentially, the male society overseas probably does not approve of mainstream transgendered below the fantasy level.
I've only worked with flash twice previously, compared to all other forms of digital media, so I was hoping to improve my skills in it. I did get to work with videos and dealt with more buttons and some coding, so it was enlightening on how flash works (with the many crazy keyframes). Most of my research came from sources such as wikipedia and youtube, as well as reading on online communities. All in all, I'm glad I did this project because now my recent job invovles a lot of flash that I use skills that I picked up in this project.
I found my answer of "WHY??" after the project, when interviewing my "expert" on Japanese Rock media. See the explanation to why pretty boys are pretty in Japan here: