Armored Core 6: NSFW fan art overwhelms community despite characters barely being shown at all 

Due to the widespread popularity of ARMORED CORE VI FIRES OF RUBICON, tons of fan art being created and spread across social media comes as no surprise. However, the fandom has seen such an influx of NSFW contributions recently that a moderator of the /r/Armored Core Subreddit has had to take action against such displays of lust with a post reinforcing the rule against NSFW content. For a game that doesn’t show any humans on screen, fans certainly have displayed their passion for the title’s characters. Please note that this article contains elements that may spoil the game, as well as derivative artwork based on fan interpretations. 

The Armored Core series has always featured memorable characters beloved by players, giving birth to characters such as Patches, who first appeared in Armored Core: For Answer and went on to be reimagined in FromSoftware’s other games such as the Demon’s Souls and Dark Souls series, as well as Bloodborne and Elden Ring. 

The countless other unique characters of the series have likewise become the subject of memes and fan art, and it is no exaggeration to say that each character has their own devoted fans. In this series, there are close to no depictions of the characters themselves, but this hasn’t stopped fans from growing deeply attached to them. After a ten-year hiatus in the series, Armored Core 6 has once again brought forth such passion, but in some communities, it seems to have gone too far. 

On September 7, the moderators of Reddit’s /r/armoredcore community posted a thread titled “Regarding recent fan art posts” in which the community was strongly reminded of the Subreddit’s no NSFW content rule. According to the moderator, their message box was “blowing up” with reports of NSFW posts for about a week before the announcement. 

Indeed, the community has recently been seeing a number of risque character illustrations and similar images, along with thirstposts and memes expressing affection as well as sexual desire for the characters, with basically no character being an exception. 

Once again, the most interesting aspect about this phenomenon is that there are no characters visible in Armored Core 6, except for very limited in-game materials. There are no 3D models or even character portraits in the game, so it is impossible to get a clear idea of what the characters look like. In some materials, vague appearances of the characters can be seen, excluding their faces. Other than that, players have only dialogue, voices and occasional background information to go off, and in the case of the AC pilots they may analyze how they assemble their ACs and their moves in combat. Basically, only the level, mechs, and enemies are shown on the screen – the game is all about big mech action, as was the case with previous titles. Despite this, players are still keen on finding out clues about what each character may look like and illustrating them. 

As mentioned previously, Armored Core series characters have always been popular, and fans have a history of drawing them. However, up till now there were very few sexual fan works that did not have a meme or parody aspect to them.  

With Armored Core 6, however, things have escalated greatly. Even characters that would never have a body in the first place have been reimagined with quite generous endowments; such as the mercenary support interface ALLMIND, whom many players have been drawing as the same figure in a collective fan-canon. Even Megumi Han, who did the Japanese voice for the ALLMIND, had reposted a piece of fan art on her X account (now deleted), showing that the fan-canon has become so widespread that it has even reached the voice actors themselves. 

It must also be said that the fan art for Armored Core 6 has been exceptional among the series, both in quality and quantity. In addition to the fan art shared by long-standing fans, newcomers to the series have also been attracted to the characters, resulting in an increase and diversification of fan art. With this influx of art, the posting of sexual content on /r/armoredcore has also risen so much that the moderators have had to put a stop to it. 

In addition, some players reported being “sexually aroused” even before the game’s release, and someone even personified Shotguns as a tsundere anime girl (Related Article). Then again, considering Armored Core is a FromSoftware title, fans finding bizarre ways to express their affection may actually just be business as usual. 

Written by. Connor Lawless based on the original Japanese article (original article’s publication date: 2023-09-10 11:34 JST)