League of Legends has its fair share of sexualized champions.
Many of these sexy sirens and strongmen are very deliberately made to be so based upon the lore that defined their character before entering the Fields of Justice.
Some of them are just sexy as an afterthought, more an effect of simply being attractive than any actual conscious choice on their part, standard appearance rather than making an effort or a desire to be desirous.
Katarina has always been a champion in the latter category of good-lookin’. She is attractive, but she’s also definitely an assassin first and eye candy second. The fact that she is one of the champions receiving one of Riot’s Christmas skins this year doesn’t change that facet of her personality.
So what’s the problem?
Riot has announced that it will be removing the recall animation on the Noxian blade mistress’s Christmas skin. The animation as it appears now on the PBE, which you can see in the video at the top of the page, involves a giant candy cane appearing from nowhere so that she can do a quick twirling poledance around it. This is hardly risque for League of Legends, as it has had a champion who does a poledance for one of her animations since well back into the first Season of the game. The issue is that while Nidalee has a spear to dance around and is already a more sexual character, Katarina not only isn’t a sexual character but had to have extra props added for the animation to even be possible.
Looks like Optimus told someone where his trailer comes from.
Wat do?
Riot has responded to the outcry from people pointing out how out of place the animation is on Katarina by actually agreeing with it. Morello was quick to be clear that they are removing the animation for thematic reasons, not because the animation was sexual.
I need to be clear about something here: the reason we’re removing it (and make no mistake, we are) is because there’s a lot of places where we’re happy to do that, as you guys have noticed, but this skin was not the right place for this sort of thing.
This seems like the perfect response. Riot makes it clear that they aren’t worried about people thinking the game is sexualized and that they actually care about the personalities of the champions. It’s rare nowadays to see a company showing its own creations such respect. Consider my hat tipped.
