With Apologies to Sena Bryer

[Thaciscokidd]

I actually like Smile a lot but I mainly like it because of AKINO
I don't know though why Sena is saying it's black gospel music because AKINO, the vocalist is literally Japanese.

Because it's inspired by it. Which makes no difference, people sample and are inspired by different cultural music all the time (just look at this games music in general). This, sadly, is just goalpost are being set and moved to try to make people look bad and try to rally more people to join Sena's side.

I mean The greatest Mazinger theme is inspired too and not once when someone said they preferred The Guardian did I immediately think they were racist (maybe they just like JAM Project). I grew up with this type of music in my church and do not even see what Sena is even getting on about. This is a truly horrible take.

[Nebelheim]

Now I'm starting to think sena is unhinged and should be let go and her twitter taken away and not represent any company going forward. First she was calling for people to step down from roles because she thinks she can do a much better job at certain roles then more experienced cis woman who do a much better voice acting job. Now she is making claims if you don't like the Disney trash smile than apparently now she thinks your racist for not liking it.

[Papayatar]

I didn't even know there was such thing as black gospel music. My family would just call it gospel for obvious reasons, lol ������. It was definitely the best part of church though, it makes me sad that all it takes is a few judgmental religious people to completely ruin something that should be so positive.

Off topic but like same tbh. It was just Gospel to me for the longest time. Though I will say around when Kirk Franklin and his choir started getting radio plays on the pop stations or any non gospel or religious radio stations back in the 90s there seemed to be some more dialogues about specifying the genre under “black gospel” and not just gospel. And I think part of that was for being able to win music awards a tad bit more fairly, I think.

[Batbrat]

Omg lmfao. Like how absurd-I cant. This is so stupid its funny omg. Now its RACIST if you dont like the stupid smile song. I'm sorry. Is final fantasy all people like this have??? Why on earth is it being defended this hard. What next. If you dislike the new country housing walls, it's actually because hobbit-phobic?! We're just gonna attach races and phobics to every single thing in XIV so that THAAT waay no one can eevvver say ANYYTHING criticizing our favorite game without them looking like a terrible person


-Except that's clearly deranged, and anyone who thinks like this literally needs all of their electronics destroyed right in front of them for the sake of their spiraling mental health. The song sucks. It has nothing to do with any race-they need to just fire wuk. I'm so sorry. Yoshi, are you reading?? Do us all a favor real quick

[Thaciscokidd]

Off topic but like same tbh. It was just Gospel to me for the longest time. Though I will say around when Kirk Franklin and his choir started getting radio plays on the pop stations or any non gospel or religious radio stations back in the 90s there seemed to be some more dialogues about specifying the genre under “black gospel” and not just gospel. And I think part of that was for being able to win music awards a tad bit more fairly, I think.

Yeah, also i remember growing up that a lot of local christian radio stations in NE texas, NW Louisiana, and SW Arkansas wouldn't play Kirk Franklin's music either because it was "too hip hop".

[Thayos]

What an odd and unfortunate situation. Sena is throwing away a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and best of luck finding a different job in the gaming industry after this. There's no way she hangs onto her job.

I'm guessing there is a sizable segment of gamers who don't like Wuk Lumat simply because the VA is trans. That's just reality. But, no, Smile is not black gospel. This whole thing is just weird.

[Magikazam]

I saw that on 4chan, but don't believe anything there, especially Twitter screenshots as they're easy to make. I don't have a Twitter so I con't confirm if it's real or not, but considering what Sena has previously posted, it wouldn't be hard to believe that it is real.

Not only is it real, but she doubled down on it

[lolnotacat]

What an odd and unfortunate situation. Sena is throwing away a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and best of luck finding a different job in the gaming industry after this. There's no way she hangs onto her job

See, that'd be the case in most industries, but I work in gaming and I can say it's filled with nutjobs who will read that and go "YAAAAAS SLAY QWEEN". The only upside is that studios and publishers that support this garbage are slowly dying. Unfortunately that means that by the time this is all said and done, some of our favorite studios and IPs will go with them. If you look at Squenix's financials, it's mostly XIV propping up a lot of their other projects which keep selling "under expectations". We'll see what happens now that Dawntrail scored so poorly.

[kyzy]

Can she stop... trying to be at war with everyone? It's crazy. I'm black, and my mind didn't jump to black gospel at all. The presence of chorus singers doesn't make something 'gospel'.

In my opinion, I may be wrong because I'm no expert... it sounds like a poor or loose imitation of it, but I would honestly call it a 'musical' piece, and yes, its very... Disney-esque. It lacks funk (slap bass, rythmic bass), and the singer is great in other places, but not here. Gospel has a lot more 'off base' singing, as in, the singer singing over the chorus at more random intervals. I think the singers pitch is too high as well. Shes not a soul singer, and thats not her fault at all. (I love Scream lol)

It's funny because Disney actually did REAL gospel way better. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T0eCoI87PZs

[flipwizardmagoo]

It’s funny, isn’t it? She’s trying to call people racist for disliking a song, but I think her insisting the song is “black gospel” is actually very racist.