Andreas J. Pratama

It was no surprise that when Resident Evil 8 (RE8) first shed its light on to the public. It tried, like any other sequel in the series to play safe. Resident Evil, or known as Biohazard, in the Japanese domestic market is always starting off its charm by showing castles, intimidating buildings of grand proportions along with its blood thirsty inhabitants. For the last 2 decades Resident Evil franchise has always been focusing on posing masculine terror qualities steep in dominant, repulsive monsters on the game’s front cover or trailers but that impression took a different turn in RE8.

RE8 started off by introducing a certain lady Dimitrescu. A sublimely tall female figure, dominant, and charmingly terrorizing. Towering over the player’s avatar, her character quality emits a sense of female invitingly courteous charm yet confusingly terrifying at the same time. Her character fills in the gap of what previously filled the peak culmination of terror from the previous Tyrant models (Tyrant: main antagonistic monster figure archetype in the game). The slow moving, claw wielding, bullet absorbing brutes were nothing but pure masculine terror in the face of player’s ludic option and leaves little to no room for sexual attraction to the beholder. Their presence instils survival instinct in the player, as the visual character design of Tyrants are made to heightens sense of terror – putting the player’s livelihood in a position of being threatened.

Tyrant models from previous games compared to Lady Dimitrescu
[https://thedailycobblestone.com/we-do-not-deserve-resident-evil/]

A very different sense of terror came over the player when first encountering lady Dimitrescu’s character design. Her positioning as a “mature” mother figure plays a very important role in dampening terror but not omitting it entirely. The audience witnessing her presence is led to a sense of confusion to flee or not to flee? Various Youtube comments stated something in the tone of “I don’t want to run, I want to get caught” “punish me, my lady” this tongue in cheek comment is a strong indicator that there exist a strong sexual attraction, of surrender, and submission towards the character; with a hint of kink – as a result of its successful character design to deliver a simulacrum of strong mature lady of royalty with a vampiric twist.


Lady Dimitrescu and Her Daughters during early game

It is also not a surprise that the fan base of RE franchise consist of predominantly male gamers. Japanese made games have the tendency to cater to the taste of their domestic demand. Some of the mentioned taste consist of hint towards fetishism and gender specific objectification, which in this case, is strong enough to hint and being welcomed by the customer who are into female domination and giantess fetish. Given the last 2 decades of development in Vampire-related film the idea of a vampiric femme fatale suddenly became well embraced by the public (compare: Underworld’s Kate Beckinsale, Bloodrayne, Twilight Saga). This is evident in a lot of memes littered all over the net during the moment of the game’s release. Some of these memes are proof that repressed sexual urges represent how the consumer responds to the Lady Dimitrescu’s character concept. Despite there are other more menacing, repulsive, and macabre characters in the game, Lady Dimistrescu remain the front “face” figure of RE8.