Once again, playing and following Genshin Impact has brought me psychic damage. The English community for developer HoYoverse's open-world action RPG was surprised to see two of its best-known characters, the Anemo Archon Venti and male Traveler protagonist Aether, abruptly examined in a recent news segment from Turkish channel Ülke TV. Needless to say, gacha gamers did not take this lying down.
In a November 21 broadcast (about 72 minutes in), Ülke TV hosts and apparent panelists discussed Genshin Impact as part of a segment on (according to machine translated descriptions) "children's exposure to digital games," screen addiction, and "digital identity issues." YouTube's auto-generated English subtitles line up with translated clips circulating online, suggesting the segment boiled down to a conservative interrogation of the gender politics of the game and the masculinity of Venti and Aether.
Voiced in English by veteran voice actor Erika Harlacher of Persona 5 (Ann) and Demon Slayer (Shinobu) fame, Venti is not beating the femboy allegations with his androgynous build and cute voice, not that he needs to. The Ülke TV speakers appear physically rattled by his appearance, described as "nonbinary" at one point, in the brief moment Venti appears on-screen – that is, when they can be asked to stop talking about Aether's exposed belly button as if it were the Antichrist.
The whole thing comes across as bizarre and backward, but I don't want to linger too much on the content due to the lacking translations available. It's the response that really interested me. It was remarkably easy to find this particular YouTube archive because it has significantly more views and (plugin-revealed) dislikes than most Ülke TV videos, and translated comments make it clear that Genshin fans showed up to defend their kings.
Aether remains a central part of Genshin Impact's storyline (don't tell these panelists, but I play as the female Traveler Lumine, so in my game Aether is essentially the main foil), while Venti is one of the best-written, most-loved Archons. Not only that, more than five years after his release, Venti is getting some long overdue buffs in an upcoming patch that will hopefully make him more fun to play in modern teams. A strange news segment won't be raining on that parade, Genshin fans have decided.
Several self-described Turkish Genshin Impact fans have joined others questioning the validity of the channel, the purpose of this video game segment, and generally what the heck is going on in the world.
"How dare they mock my cutie patootie like that," writes Saahil_08 on Reddit.
"This is [a] modern day version of 'Teletubbies are satan worshippers,'" adds Shizuna03.
"They hate him because they ain’t him," argues Venttea.
"The second-hand embarrassment is crazy," writes Elek7 in the dedicated Venti community.
"They think he is a girl lmao," another comment says of Venti's cameo.
Comments on the YouTube video itself, some posted by users with Genshin Impact characters as profile pictures, sing a similar tune. "We won't let Aether be eaten by people like you," one translation reads. "I had no idea that adults and mature people could make such childish comments about non-issues," another translated user replies. Several comments also single out a passing remark senselessly comparing Genshin Impact's normal attack symbol to the Star of David.
My favorite response may be this: "Don't let them find Lyney," writes verybadbackpain on Reddit, referring to Genshin's flamboyant Pyro magician. But even that is thinking small. Instead, show them that one HoYo-official illustration of Heizou.
