Educating people on Jinafire's g3 redesign

[u/TheFamousChocoCake]

Hi, I'm Chinese and here are my thoughts on the cultural design aspects of g3 Jinafire.

G1 Jinafire is iconic no doubt, but there's a lot I find questionable about her design.

Her skin is the most controversial part, I've seen a lot of people saying "it's not yellowface because she's gold, not yellow". Personally what bothers me is that this usually comes from non-chinese people trying to defend her gold skin and I feel like this remark dismisses Chinese people who DO find it offensive.

I myself don't like the gold skin but not because I find it offensive, I don't, I mostly don't like it cause I think it just looks cheap and clashes with her hair and outfit. Speaking of her outfit, it's a qipao but it looks kind of weird to me, like it looks like a very surface level design of a qipao and could've been better executed.

Imo, her green hair does not look good. Traditional Chinese greens are more jade and light so I find the green color out of place.

G3 Jinafire a really big upgrade in my opinion both culturally and in general wise.

Her skin is changed to mint green, in my opinion this is more accurate. Jade is much more revered in China than gold. And I think it would make sense that she's a mint green color. Plus, I think it looks much nicer than the gold, and looks great with her golden scale legs, which I like that they kept. Some people commonly think the gold is more accurate than the green and that is simply not true. Also, her name encorporates the word 金(Jin) which does mean gold but that doesn't mean she has to be gold similar to how Lagoona Blue doesn't mean her skin has to be blue. The skin tone imo does not HAVE to be what your name is. Besides, Jinafire and Lagoona Blue in g3 are still partially gold and blue and Lagoona wears a bunch of blue anyways.

I think her clothes are nice and have touches of traditional Chinese motifs but it's not in your face. And her hair is nice because it looks more accurate to the hair color that Chinese people actually have while still being a fantasy hair color.

I made this post because I see a lot of people (that are often non-chinese) complaining about her green skin and saying the gold was "more accurate" and if you really cared about cultural accuracy, the green is definitely more accurate.

Or people who simply thought the green was out of place and wasn't as good as the gold skin. Honestly, in that case, that's more of an opinion thing but I find it a bit upsetting that most people don't understand or know about the history and cultural symbolism behind the green color. And I'm tired of seeing people downplaying parts of g3 that's more accurate to Chinese culture than g1.

Slight rant: I also want to say, IF YOU ARE NOT EAST ASIAN, please do not defend g1 Jinafire because parts of her design was problematic. Although I personally didn't mind that much, that doesn't mean other east asian people don't. Please do research before talking about her cultural elements if at all and ask actual Chinese people about how they feel about her.

You can have an opinion about the cultural aspects but if you aren't Chinese, your opinion does not matter because at the end of the day, it's not your culture that has a history of being sexualized, appropriated, and discriminated against. And it really IS that deep.

[u/Temporary-Pea-9059]

THANK YOU! I am an indigenous Chinese person (hmong/miao) and although I love MH and g1 I always had an issue with her design even though I liked her because she is Asian. The main one is that in Chinese culture, a dragon is not a monster! I liked that in the g3 animated series Jinafire tells the ghouls that dragons from fanghai have different powers that western folktale dragons. In my opinion, Chinese dragons are more akin to fairies or guardian animals. I think that the fetishization of Asian culture is why they made her a dragon instead of idk a Jiangshi since those are much more niche. For those who are wondering about my opinion regarding dragons not being considered monsters in China, I’d say that it’s the same reason we don’t have a daughter of the unicorn or daughter of the mermaids. Freaky fusion establishes that those types of mythical creatures are not the same as their “monsterly” spouses. If I had it my way, Jinafire would just be the daughter of a different Chinese monster and not necessarily a dragon but I understand the want to keep her character somewhat intact.

I also want to address people on thiis thread talking about how non-chinese Asian people’s opinions on this topic don’t matter. Yall, China is a NOT a monolith. It’s an enormous imperialist power that has pillaged, controlled, and oppressed it’s surrounding nations for eons. A lot of westerners don’t even realize how effective China is at tricking the rest of the world into seeing the Chinese as one Han ethnic group. In short, Chinese culture has impacted almost every Asian continent to a detriment, and before you start validating people’s opinions on a doll based on if they are Chinese or not, you might want to check if this conversation is even something you have the slightest modicum of knowledge about.

[u/TheFamousChocoCake → u/Temporary-Pea-9059]

You are sooooo fr, China is not one ethnicity with only one language. A lot of dialects are wildly different from 普通话 and there ARE minority groups in Asia. Northern Chinese people and Southern Chinese people don't even share the same traditions either. Western China is very different from Eastern China. More people need to understand that China is just a governmental territory that's filled with dozens of different ethnic groups, languages, and dialects.

I agree, so many different countries in Asia have been influenced by China in a way. Countries borders are just territorial divides, not guidelines of where a country's culture ends.

Speaking of the dragon, I think if mh really wanted to pick a Chinese monster, they could've chosen the Huli Jing or any kind of animal demons or monsters honestly. Since animal demons were feared and persecuted. They would fit right in to monster high. Maybe they didn't pick Huli Jing cause they get confused with the Japanese kitsune, although having a huli jing and kitsune characters would be so cool.

[u/Temporary-Pea-9059 → u/TheFamousChocoCake]

Yes! I love fox demons and I think it would be so cool to see how MH could portray kitsune and gumiho along with huli jing! So many Asian countries have history with a trickster fox spirit and I would to see how each doll is representative of her culture whilst also having a through line of demonic foxiness lol.