Excellent read, and gives the exact message everyone needs to hear regarding this issue. I love how the simplest answer is often the right one — in this case, make sure we sell enough copies of this to a broad audience so we can make cash. It’s easy to understand — these are businesses who could care less about global politics and obviously care a LOT about their bottom line.
So I have read your translations without knowing it!
I think Horii (or someone from Square-Enix) said the (hopefully) upcoming Dragon Quest XII would be, unlike the others, for adults. Maybe that means putting back in some of these lost elements… except not in Japan after all? 🤔🤔
Thanks for reading! The DQ series is really driven by nostalgia in Japan, but they need something else to pull in foreign gamers who didn't grow up with it having as visible a presence in their lives. I'm looking forward to seeing what they come up with!
SE doesn’t work very hard on promoting DQ outside of Japan. Even their email ads, which don’t cost them outside of their internal costs, are about 90% for Final Fantasy (my estimate).
The e-mail ads push DQ pretty hard when there's an English game near release. I count a couple dozen just for Infinity Strash, not to mention the ones for DQ11, Builders, Builders 2, Treasures, and Dark Prince.
Maybe… but throughout the year I get tons for FF, which I don’t play so don’t follow if they’re popping out new games every newsletter, or if they’re promoting the same ones over and over — plus merch, which I haven’t seen for DQ.
Great article, this helped clear up a few misconceptions about this controversy and I appreciate that. I've been trying to get more info on this, so thank you. You are quickly becoming one of my favorite subscriptions on Substack.
I haven't played much of Dragon Quest (I have the original on my switch and plan to get the new one), but I can appreciate how important and influential it is. Its a series I really want to play more of. I'm a huge fan of Alira Toriyama's art style, which drew me.to.it originally.
I agree that the culture war has hijacked this conversation. There is a lot more nuance to this and Twitter/X doesn't seem to leave much room for it.
One genuine issue I think these changes represent is that the pressure to pursue modern audiences can lead to older media and creatives suffering a form of self censorship. It's not formal censorship, since no government organizations are involved. But, companies or ratings boards can decide that certain things about older works need to be changed, either because of changing cultural norms, or to pursue more profit. This in turn leads to creatives being pressured to do things like change art work, lines, or character designs.
This issue is not just limited to games. About a year back, there was some controversy over new releases of Road Dahl's books being edited to have certain passages changed or removed. It's a similar situation to this. No government mandated it, but the company who held the rights to those books felt it would help sell more copies to newer audiences. It's not the exact same situation, but there are similarities.
Controversies like this have a lot of implications for the future of media preservation and creative expression. Self censorship can be just as restrictive as regular censorship in some cases. I think a lot of people are genuinely concerned about the future of freedom of expression and the continued preservation of their favorite games, movies books and so on.
Unfortunately, others online are willing to prey on those concerns by jumping on any hint of controversy and farming it for clicks and likes. It helps feed into this culture war, but distracts from the more nuanced conversation that should be happening.
For what its worth, I still plan to buy the game. I think it looks really good, and I'm excited to play more of this series.
I do agree with the general sentiment here; the culture warriors throwing a fit about "DEI" or "wokeism" are delusional. They're railing against imagined boogeymen and blaming marginalized groups who have no connection to the actual forces at work here.
But I also feel the need to point out that while you repeatedly say this isn't censorship, you don't actually provide any argument for that. Self-censorship is still censorship. If a studio decides to change their content on moral or political grounds in order to appeal to a wider market, that is absolutely still censorship.
I think it's worth taking a look at the classic case study in this area, the Comics Code Authority from the 1950's. It was an entirely voluntary, non-governmental organization that rated comic books based on their content, and so many comics stores refused to carry non-CCA-rated comics that it effectively killed adult comics in the USA for decades. It is held up as the de facto example of historical self-censorship, and that's basically the exact same situation that video game publishers face today with the CERO and ESRB, whose increasingly tight regulations are driven by conservative religious groups, and game developers are faced with the choice of either following their regulations or going out of business.
And, to be clear, in some cases I think these changes are good things; I don't want to be hit by surprise racial slurs in otherwise innocuous video games. But it absolutely meets the definition of censorship, for better or worse.
There is a very real discussion to be had about ratings boards and their criteria and whom they are really protecting. Unfortunately, it isn't happening because of all the outrage, finger-pointing, and projecting going on. Probably much to the relief of ratings agencies.
I plan to explore localization in more depth on my YouTube channel in the very near future. By all means feel free to subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/@altmattalt
I don't know about this. Like are panty shots allowed or not, some say it is not allowed due to the ratings in Japan, like in Ryza 3. But then there is the recent game Kai no Kiseki, who also has the same rating is allowed this.
So what gives? Is the rating system in Japan inconsistent?
"...and it doesn’t have anything to do with American evangelizing. It has to do with locals protesting and lobbying for change"
I would very much like to see something thar firmly substantiates such a broad, sweeping claim. I have watched in Tokyo while a US State Dept-funded pink bus cruises areas looking for "rescue" targets, girls they believe have no right to capitalist endeavour themselves. (Or *however* one decides to portray the motivation of the rescue industry)
Do you have sources? OTHER than the Japan Times, that is?
This idea that Japanese only take action when Americans say-so is infantalizing and incorrect. It wasn't Americans who drove manga artist Go Nagai into hiding during the panic over "Harenchi Gakuen." That was school PTAs. It wasn't Americans who got sexy softcore shows off late-night TV. That was complaints from Japanese viewers. It wasn't Americans who demonized animated pornography; that was legal crackdowns after the Miyazaki Tsutomu incident. It wasn't the Americans who led the campaign to get sexy manga off the shelves of stores. That was Tokyo Governor Ishihara. The list goes on and on. Japanese are more than capable of launching moral panics themselves. The United States isn't the center of the world.
I am certainly not as conversant as you with the 'Japan-based' events you refer to here (which is why i was basically hoping for links). Would you be good enough to outline the timeframe within which these occured? Lke when exactly was the very first 'outcry' you recall arising within Japan itself, one apparently independent of all 'globalist' influence? And how would one be able to *determine* such an absence of all influence or pressure?
Why would "globalists" (what does this even mean?) care about local manga / shows / films distributed only in Japan at the time?
The panic over Go Nagai's Harenchi Gakuen (ハレンチ学園 / "Shameless school") was early Seventies. The complaints about softcore late-night TV (お色気番組) began around then and crescendoed in the Eighties. The run on video stores after the Miyazaki Tsutomu murder was late Eighties/early Nineties. Ishihara's 2010 crusade against erotic manga with the controversial Bill 156 is well documented. All of this is easily searchable, and none of it had anything to do with appeasing foreigners. There are plenty of Japanese aggravated by portrayals of sex in the media for reasons other than religion or foreign infuence.
By globalist i think i'm meaning those who, at base, conceive of the whole world event-u-ally remade in Ametica's image, and we all know how conflicted one must be regards the sexual to be a Murrrkin!
Right now i will defer to your greater knoeledge of 'the field' here. Your very last sentence greatly intrigues. If not religious *or* mimetic (= now sharing an object of desire with America). then for what "reasons" are these Japanese "aggravated"?
You'd have to ask them, but there are any number of non-religious reasons one might be opposed to depictions of nudity or sexuality. Some may simply find it vulgar. Others may see it as sexist. Others as exploitative. Others might see it as inappropriate or harmful for children. Etc., etc.
Are not all of these you list though concepts inextricable from Western culture and invention? And all of them judged in their origin to be obscene, thereby 'breaching' a collevtively imagined scene i am suggesting has root in the Romantic erotic ideal, before it does any Japamese one?
Horii may have said that the changes were due to religious attitudes he was not wrong, you just have to ask yourself which religion?
Today's wokeism is a secular offshoot that inherits a lot from the culture of american protestant puritanism from which it came. I like the way that Tom Holland has put it on the final chapters of Dominion.
The guy is probably old enough to have lived through the times when the american demanded the changes to match their sensibilities for explicitly christian reasons during the satanic panic, today the changes are demanded so that media can be consumed safely without challenging liberal doctrine. The hegemon that portrays itself as the bastion of diversity but can only accept different cultures as long as they reduce themselves to commodified superficial elements that can be safely consumed is the same. My guess is that a lot of people understand this intuitively, but we have not been able to articulate it properly.
It was Torishima who brought religion into the conversation. But his comment about puritianism doesn't make a lot of sense, coming from a country where the portrayal of nudity can get you thrown in jail. (See, for instance the Rokudenashiko case.)
Horii is the one chuckling and saying, and I'm paraphrasing, "I don't really get it, but that's how it is these days."
If the creator of the game isn't angry about this, why are you? Just some food for thought.
I am not angry about it. I am pointing out that wokeism is a secular religion that borrows from its predecessor: american protestant puritanism. Thats why it would not be invalid to say that the changes are due to american religious attitudes towards sexuality.
Your reply feels like a deflection at my main point with nitpicks about who said what, or "they also did this that one time", or trying to decide what the "proper" amotional reaction should be based on what you assume are my feelings about the situation.
I felt the need to clarify because Torishima, and this is telling, wasn't actually involved with making the game. He's an absolute legend, but he's a retired manga editor, not a game director. Meanwhile, the game's director, equally tellingly, seems to have a much more sanguine attitude about the whole thing. I actually sympathize with Torishima's frustrations about American religious fundamentalism -- I just don't think they have any bearing on this topic.
Excellent read, and gives the exact message everyone needs to hear regarding this issue. I love how the simplest answer is often the right one — in this case, make sure we sell enough copies of this to a broad audience so we can make cash. It’s easy to understand — these are businesses who could care less about global politics and obviously care a LOT about their bottom line.
So I have read your translations without knowing it!
I think Horii (or someone from Square-Enix) said the (hopefully) upcoming Dragon Quest XII would be, unlike the others, for adults. Maybe that means putting back in some of these lost elements… except not in Japan after all? 🤔🤔
Thanks for reading! The DQ series is really driven by nostalgia in Japan, but they need something else to pull in foreign gamers who didn't grow up with it having as visible a presence in their lives. I'm looking forward to seeing what they come up with!
SE doesn’t work very hard on promoting DQ outside of Japan. Even their email ads, which don’t cost them outside of their internal costs, are about 90% for Final Fantasy (my estimate).
The e-mail ads push DQ pretty hard when there's an English game near release. I count a couple dozen just for Infinity Strash, not to mention the ones for DQ11, Builders, Builders 2, Treasures, and Dark Prince.
Maybe… but throughout the year I get tons for FF, which I don’t play so don’t follow if they’re popping out new games every newsletter, or if they’re promoting the same ones over and over — plus merch, which I haven’t seen for DQ.
Great article, this helped clear up a few misconceptions about this controversy and I appreciate that. I've been trying to get more info on this, so thank you. You are quickly becoming one of my favorite subscriptions on Substack.
I haven't played much of Dragon Quest (I have the original on my switch and plan to get the new one), but I can appreciate how important and influential it is. Its a series I really want to play more of. I'm a huge fan of Alira Toriyama's art style, which drew me.to.it originally.
I agree that the culture war has hijacked this conversation. There is a lot more nuance to this and Twitter/X doesn't seem to leave much room for it.
One genuine issue I think these changes represent is that the pressure to pursue modern audiences can lead to older media and creatives suffering a form of self censorship. It's not formal censorship, since no government organizations are involved. But, companies or ratings boards can decide that certain things about older works need to be changed, either because of changing cultural norms, or to pursue more profit. This in turn leads to creatives being pressured to do things like change art work, lines, or character designs.
This issue is not just limited to games. About a year back, there was some controversy over new releases of Road Dahl's books being edited to have certain passages changed or removed. It's a similar situation to this. No government mandated it, but the company who held the rights to those books felt it would help sell more copies to newer audiences. It's not the exact same situation, but there are similarities.
Controversies like this have a lot of implications for the future of media preservation and creative expression. Self censorship can be just as restrictive as regular censorship in some cases. I think a lot of people are genuinely concerned about the future of freedom of expression and the continued preservation of their favorite games, movies books and so on.
Unfortunately, others online are willing to prey on those concerns by jumping on any hint of controversy and farming it for clicks and likes. It helps feed into this culture war, but distracts from the more nuanced conversation that should be happening.
For what its worth, I still plan to buy the game. I think it looks really good, and I'm excited to play more of this series.
I do agree with the general sentiment here; the culture warriors throwing a fit about "DEI" or "wokeism" are delusional. They're railing against imagined boogeymen and blaming marginalized groups who have no connection to the actual forces at work here.
But I also feel the need to point out that while you repeatedly say this isn't censorship, you don't actually provide any argument for that. Self-censorship is still censorship. If a studio decides to change their content on moral or political grounds in order to appeal to a wider market, that is absolutely still censorship.
I think it's worth taking a look at the classic case study in this area, the Comics Code Authority from the 1950's. It was an entirely voluntary, non-governmental organization that rated comic books based on their content, and so many comics stores refused to carry non-CCA-rated comics that it effectively killed adult comics in the USA for decades. It is held up as the de facto example of historical self-censorship, and that's basically the exact same situation that video game publishers face today with the CERO and ESRB, whose increasingly tight regulations are driven by conservative religious groups, and game developers are faced with the choice of either following their regulations or going out of business.
And, to be clear, in some cases I think these changes are good things; I don't want to be hit by surprise racial slurs in otherwise innocuous video games. But it absolutely meets the definition of censorship, for better or worse.
Censorship comes from a government or other body telling you not to do something. There is no such thing as 'self-censorship', it's a dog whistle.
There is a very real discussion to be had about ratings boards and their criteria and whom they are really protecting. Unfortunately, it isn't happening because of all the outrage, finger-pointing, and projecting going on. Probably much to the relief of ratings agencies.
Do you not think this line-of-inquiry worth continuing, and, if i may invoke yet another western concept, deepening??
I plan to explore localization in more depth on my YouTube channel in the very near future. By all means feel free to subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/@altmattalt
I don't know about this. Like are panty shots allowed or not, some say it is not allowed due to the ratings in Japan, like in Ryza 3. But then there is the recent game Kai no Kiseki, who also has the same rating is allowed this.
So what gives? Is the rating system in Japan inconsistent?
CERO's inconsistency is one of the big complaints, yes.
"...and it doesn’t have anything to do with American evangelizing. It has to do with locals protesting and lobbying for change"
I would very much like to see something thar firmly substantiates such a broad, sweeping claim. I have watched in Tokyo while a US State Dept-funded pink bus cruises areas looking for "rescue" targets, girls they believe have no right to capitalist endeavour themselves. (Or *however* one decides to portray the motivation of the rescue industry)
Do you have sources? OTHER than the Japan Times, that is?
"US State Dept-funded pink bus cruises"! LOL.
This idea that Japanese only take action when Americans say-so is infantalizing and incorrect. It wasn't Americans who drove manga artist Go Nagai into hiding during the panic over "Harenchi Gakuen." That was school PTAs. It wasn't Americans who got sexy softcore shows off late-night TV. That was complaints from Japanese viewers. It wasn't Americans who demonized animated pornography; that was legal crackdowns after the Miyazaki Tsutomu incident. It wasn't the Americans who led the campaign to get sexy manga off the shelves of stores. That was Tokyo Governor Ishihara. The list goes on and on. Japanese are more than capable of launching moral panics themselves. The United States isn't the center of the world.
I am certainly not as conversant as you with the 'Japan-based' events you refer to here (which is why i was basically hoping for links). Would you be good enough to outline the timeframe within which these occured? Lke when exactly was the very first 'outcry' you recall arising within Japan itself, one apparently independent of all 'globalist' influence? And how would one be able to *determine* such an absence of all influence or pressure?
Are you simply assuming it?
Why would "globalists" (what does this even mean?) care about local manga / shows / films distributed only in Japan at the time?
The panic over Go Nagai's Harenchi Gakuen (ハレンチ学園 / "Shameless school") was early Seventies. The complaints about softcore late-night TV (お色気番組) began around then and crescendoed in the Eighties. The run on video stores after the Miyazaki Tsutomu murder was late Eighties/early Nineties. Ishihara's 2010 crusade against erotic manga with the controversial Bill 156 is well documented. All of this is easily searchable, and none of it had anything to do with appeasing foreigners. There are plenty of Japanese aggravated by portrayals of sex in the media for reasons other than religion or foreign infuence.
By globalist i think i'm meaning those who, at base, conceive of the whole world event-u-ally remade in Ametica's image, and we all know how conflicted one must be regards the sexual to be a Murrrkin!
Right now i will defer to your greater knoeledge of 'the field' here. Your very last sentence greatly intrigues. If not religious *or* mimetic (= now sharing an object of desire with America). then for what "reasons" are these Japanese "aggravated"?
You'd have to ask them, but there are any number of non-religious reasons one might be opposed to depictions of nudity or sexuality. Some may simply find it vulgar. Others may see it as sexist. Others as exploitative. Others might see it as inappropriate or harmful for children. Etc., etc.
Are not all of these you list though concepts inextricable from Western culture and invention? And all of them judged in their origin to be obscene, thereby 'breaching' a collevtively imagined scene i am suggesting has root in the Romantic erotic ideal, before it does any Japamese one?
Horii may have said that the changes were due to religious attitudes he was not wrong, you just have to ask yourself which religion?
Today's wokeism is a secular offshoot that inherits a lot from the culture of american protestant puritanism from which it came. I like the way that Tom Holland has put it on the final chapters of Dominion.
The guy is probably old enough to have lived through the times when the american demanded the changes to match their sensibilities for explicitly christian reasons during the satanic panic, today the changes are demanded so that media can be consumed safely without challenging liberal doctrine. The hegemon that portrays itself as the bastion of diversity but can only accept different cultures as long as they reduce themselves to commodified superficial elements that can be safely consumed is the same. My guess is that a lot of people understand this intuitively, but we have not been able to articulate it properly.
It was Torishima who brought religion into the conversation. But his comment about puritianism doesn't make a lot of sense, coming from a country where the portrayal of nudity can get you thrown in jail. (See, for instance the Rokudenashiko case.)
Horii is the one chuckling and saying, and I'm paraphrasing, "I don't really get it, but that's how it is these days."
If the creator of the game isn't angry about this, why are you? Just some food for thought.
I am not angry about it. I am pointing out that wokeism is a secular religion that borrows from its predecessor: american protestant puritanism. Thats why it would not be invalid to say that the changes are due to american religious attitudes towards sexuality.
Your reply feels like a deflection at my main point with nitpicks about who said what, or "they also did this that one time", or trying to decide what the "proper" amotional reaction should be based on what you assume are my feelings about the situation.
I felt the need to clarify because Torishima, and this is telling, wasn't actually involved with making the game. He's an absolute legend, but he's a retired manga editor, not a game director. Meanwhile, the game's director, equally tellingly, seems to have a much more sanguine attitude about the whole thing. I actually sympathize with Torishima's frustrations about American religious fundamentalism -- I just don't think they have any bearing on this topic.