D.Va’s Black Cat gothic lolita skin misses the mark

D.Va is one of the most iconic characters in Overwatch. Even if you don’t play the game, you’ve seen some iteration of D.Va or one of her skins in art online, cosplay, etc. She’s everywhere.

It’s no surprise that she’s one of the most popular Overwatch characters and typically she gets pretty good skins, but with the release of the new core collectible skins, D.va’s new legendary kind of ... stinks.

D.Va and her mech are both decked out in a matching gothic lolita theme, she’s turned blonde, and her mech is sporting ears that are similar looking to a certain brand of headphones (no, not the official ones, the knock-off ones). All in all, the design seems to really miss what makes D.Va, well, D.Va.

For one, D.Va is wearing gothic lolita, a style that isn’t big in Korea ... at all. Gothic lolita is more from Japan, though based off of European Victorian styles. This isn’t Korean. We’ve seen well-researched skins, like Hanzo’s new Kabuki skin or D.Va’s Palanquin skin, this one just seems like they saw something “cute and Asian” and slapped it on D.Va.

All of the other newly announced legendary skins are representing some part of the character’s heritage. Something about gothic lolita representing South Korea just seems like an unresearched kick to the face. If everyone else just got zany and wacky core collectible skins, I probably wouldn’t be writing this, but this is what specifically seems off about the new skin.

If they wanted to give D.Va an iconic Korean look, there are tons of designs they could have done with Korean street fashion or even styles from big K-pop music videos. Just about everyone would have whipped out their wallets if Blizzard put D.Va in sailor uniform from Girls’ Generation’s Genie.

It just sucks that D.Va was reduced to a generic Asian character in a game where different cultures make up such an important part of every character’s backstory and personality, but everyone gets a bad skin once. I mean, Pharah has her Native American Raindancer and Thunderbird skins, despite being Egyptian. (Though apparently Blizzard went back and also said she has Native American blood from her dad! What a coincidence!)

A lot of people don’t like Black Cat D.Va, but that doesn’t mean you have to feel the same way. The mech itself is pretty cute, though it just doesn’t make sense to me (and a lot of others). Sometimes you can have differing opinions on the internet.