...The hell?

How about if the guys who do the graphics just make Jade look like Jade, and not like a picture you found on google image search of some...singer or dancer or whoever, okay?

I'm not referring to her costume or outfit, but her face and body shown in the above pic & video.

This debate has been around for as long as the character has existed. It has not ever been concluded one way or the other what her nationality is but, people have claimed and declared left, right, up, or down since the beginning.

Jade is the darker skin-toned ninja female...Just like Ermac was back then. And that's just that.

Jade:


I think it was simply their attempt at making a couple ninja's of different ethnic backgrounds for the sake of having variety. Hence, the whole concept of a palette swap in the first place. Clarification would be nice but, that's just where I've resolved to leave it in my mind.

So, she's not Black, or Arab, or whatever else....she's simply Edenian.

No. I've actually seen better looking middle eastern chicks. So I think If she was middle eastern she would be sexier than her. But Tanya is the Middle eastern chick of the bunch.

And damn, can't y'all just answer the question without sounding like assholes?

If it helps, the leaked casting sheet said they were looking for someone either African-American OR Middle Eastern to voice the character, and gave Halle Berry as Storm as an example of how the voice should sound.

Anyway, her skin is pretty dark in Deception, darker than the chick in the first post anyway. They should stick to that instead of dicking around with the characters' looks. It pisses me off when in most games, say, Kano is a balding guy like Rich Divisio and in vsDCU all of a sudden he looks like Trevor Goddard. Pick a face and be consistent for fuck's sake.

I always got the impression that what people who start arguments about what race Jade is supposed to be are trying to do is convince people, for some weird, potentially racist reason, that the developers shouldn't color her skin brown.
Jade is brown. She's always been brown. She was brown in MK2, she was brown in UMK3, she was brown in Deception, the only time she was ever not brown was a really awful movie. So I don't see the point in arguing that she's anything but brown.
And I doubly don't see the point in posting a picture of a real life person and saying "character A should look like this!" That's not really how art direction works. Characters should be designed to have their OWN faces, not some real person's face. Unless if they're literally supposed to look like the voice actor playing them, like Jack Black's character in Brutal Legend. But MK isn't a celebrity vehicle game or a game intended to look like a movie or anything, it's just a game. The characters all have their own identities.

Look at the facial resemblance below, I even think the real one is better looking than Jade, so make Jade look like her:



I also advice you to watch the whole above video of the real girl, you can have an overall look of her.

No, because simply the real girl and Jade look alike. And Sonya was originally based on a real girl in MK3 and it turned out to be her best looking model ever.

I agree that most of the characters appearance should be unique but it's ok if they make few of them resemble some real persons, it actually works well.

Okay first of all, when I'm talking about faces looking like people, I'm talking about the 3D games because we all know they used photography of actual actors to make the 2D ones, there's no point getting into that. In the modern era, with 3D modeling, they can make eyes, noses, jawlines, etc. any shape they want and create unique human faces not based on any real person.
As for the rest of it, I'm not gonna argue with you, bro, 'cause I've seen the way you are in the Kratos topic and I don't need to be dealing with that talking to a brick wall feeling at 10 in the morning.

But I recommend to the mods that this topic be closed because it's completely pointless.

Even with 3D like in 3D Max software you can take the person's several face angles pics (front and side) and make the same proportions/features in 3D.

Anyway, I'm not arguing here. I'm trying to have some fun that could be related to MK9 and it's everyone's right to reasonably defend their opinion.

HAIFA !!! imagine the possibilities

I don't see any problem with the developers drawing inspiration from real life people. Now to copy directly? Well no, like Razor, I don't really see the point in doing that in this day and age.

I don't want to see Sonya and see Kerri Hoskins or Elizabeth Malecki. Back then? Sure, that was fine then, but now, Sonya should have her own appearance and her own identity.

But if you were to say "I'd like to see Jade look similar to the woman in this picture" then yeah, I might agree. I think she's pretty, actually, and she has facial features and hair (not necessarily in that style) that could work well with Jade.

I don't care what race Jade is in terms of her skin color. As others have said, she's Edenian anyways, so there's really no need to put her in the box of being African American, Middle Eastern or for that matter, Latino, Hispanic, Southern Italian/Sicilian, Native American, Innuit or a variety of other cultures/races in the world that can have a tan to relatively dark skin tone.

So I don't see the harm in someone saying "I like the way this woman looks, she kinda reminds me of how I'd like to see Jade looking." Without actually saying "Jade should look exactly like this," I'd be inclined to agree, at least in regard to the first picture, or the second for that matter.

I just hope that they can make women's faces a bit softer this time around. Some people might assert that the whole "man face" issue of the past is gone but comparing how rough that picture of Jade looks compared to the picture right above, there still seems to be something missing.

I mean its pretty fuckin simple to figure this out:

- Find out the ethnicity of her 2D actor. There you'll to have an idea of her real life inspired ethnicity.
- Then recognize that the character of Jade belongs to a fictional race from another dimension and so describing her as Lebanese-Canadian-Pennsylvanian Dutch isn't taking this into account. As has been said already.... Jade is Edenian.

Unfortunately, no one is going to understand that Jade is Edenian for those who constantly believe that Jade is from a different race. They're not going to understand that.

I can't believe we are actually having a race topic. I don't care if a character is brown, white, asian, purple, pink, or mr hankey.. In this video game there is only one character that is "african american" he is Jax. Jade has a race in the game. Her race is edenian. EDENIAN. Just like Baraka is Tarkatan and Reptile is Zaterran.
in real life we have white, asian, and brown americans. Jade, Kitana, and Tanya are all Edenian. That's their race. Just because they are a different color then Kitana doesn't make them brown or middle eastern. They are just Edenian.
EDENIAN

Great response, thk u

It's not absurd for people to bring race into the subject. Human beings see things through a paradigm and perspective that we can understand. Edenians aren't real for many of us. But we can completely understand what a Black, Middle Eastern, Asian, etc. woman might look like. It's not something people should get worked up about IMO. I think she has African facial features for me personally. Disregarding the green eyes and the bone straight hair. Being that I'm of African descent I can pick them out clearly. Others might contend that and that's fine, it's not that serious. I don't think a discussion about race is something out of the ordinary. It's America, we're surrounded by it. Whether or not "race" is a societal construct or something real is another point...but why can't we discuss it? And for the record, I think Jade looks a lot like this woman and NOTHING like the woman posted earlier lol. That woman is way too light. Stick with the dark skin. It's beautiful and it differentiates her from Kitana and Mileena. Also, before anyone starts flaming me I don't think this is how Jade SHOULD look but is more of a representation what she currently looks like to me. That is all. :)

I have no problem discussing race, but there are racist people on here, and I'm just worried those people will be drawn to the thread and we'll end up with a flame war.

I agree with the people above. Jade is Edenian...a black Edenian. Because there are clearly black people in Edenia. They might not technically be "African-American" but yeah. Actually I always thought Jade was supposed to be Indian.

I understand, that's legitimate. I hate those people as well, but whatever. Ignore them and keep the legit conversation going. The only reason they have power on forums is because we give them power by even acknowledging them. Ignore them and they go away like pimples.

Yeah, that's true. I've just always thought of her as Edenian lol. Color never even came too mind.

Those who become racist on here, become banned... They only come out when they realize that they cannot handle a topic.