Despite character designs always being relevant in the gaming industry, as long as the player has been able to see their character, this has reached a new head within the last couple years. Female character designs in particular have been a point of contention. For the sake of simplification, the beliefs surrounding this can be split into two groups. The first group believes that, when designing women, too much emphasis is put on their sexuality and bodies. In addition, traditional attractiveness and and specific body types oversaturate the market and become unrealistic after a certain point. The contrasting group, however, view gaming as escapism, and thus all characters should be attractive and desirable. They also point to male characters mostly being tall, rugged, and strongly built as a counterpoint to show that men are also given unfair body standards. Finally, they want the former group to acknowledge that women with body types normally seen in games do exist in reality.

This reached a particular breaking point when Koei Tecmo announced Dead or Alive Xtreme 3 would not be released to the western market due to fear of controversy surrounding the game. Because of the nature of the game, they believed that the volleyball title would cause too much drama and this would hurt sales. This was not met with much fanfare.

However, it is my belief that Transistor skirts the lines between both extremes to create the ideal design. It manages to be both sexy and admirable without being typical or distracting. It’s also realistic for the situation Red finds herself in.