DaCostaBR: Have you ever felt that way about something?
I am not the type to care at all, which is why I'm really surprised that I can't help but feel this way while playing the recently released Yokai Watch on the 3DS.
In case you don't know it, it's sort of a pokémon clone where you befriend these ghosts called Yokai and they fight for you. My problem is that in this universe you see Yokai influencing people to act in certain ways, to the point where it seems like no one is responsible for their own actions. Most side quests involve people doing something bad, such as saying mean things to someone else, and what do you know? A Yokai made them do it after all. Every. Time.
Now this game, like pokémon, at least in part aims for a young audience. It even has an anime that I think is coming out soon. Whenever I do another quest I can't stop thinking about what a terrible message this is for children, if you tell them that no one is responsible for anything, then how are they supposed to address their own flaws and try to be better.
The worst case I can think of is one in game moment where the main character's parents are at each others throats. Why? You guessed it, a Yokai made them fight. So here I can't help but think of the little 6 year old child with problems at home who blames himself, because if he could only fight the bad Yokai like the kid in his game and the anime he loves so much, then his parents wouldn't fight so much.
I'm probably overthinking this way too much, I'm sure it's fine, and like I said I usually don't care about this kind of stuff. So, have you ever felt this way? Where you watched or played something for kids and thought it was, though probably well meaning, a bit problematic?
I just read the first post here and that is all I need to read.
You are not only overthinking but overlooking a different culture.
First of all any rational aprent would teach its child to differe reality from fantasy so that no child ever comes up with such an absurd belief.
Second, maybe you know nothing about Japan, but that is exactly what Yokai do and represent, they are spirits, most of them evil, and the evil ones possess and corrupt people and places. They make crops die by posessing the soil, they turn a normal and honest citizen into a criminal, things like that. Basically this game makes you play the role of a Shinto exorcist, controling good yokai and stopping the bad ones.
Look, this is basically a childlish Japanese version of The Exorcist, and the only reason you are worried is because western people shelter children so much from reality that their children may even believe something fictional because they are weak minded.
Saying this will influence children in any harmful way is like assuming a child would put on a red cloth as a cape and jump from a window believing he could fly. Guess what, that only happens with poorly educated and misguided children whose parents never remind them that what they see on TV, film, and video games is not always real, and that specially when there is magic or monsters in it then it is completelly fictional and that is not how the real world works.
Your argument is just lke saying that a child will atomatically decide to talk to a random bus on th street just because of Transformer.