By Nelson Schneider - 10/28/18 at 02:56 PM CT
Just when it seemed like Weeaboos, self-proclaimed Otaku, and the handful of normal people who just happen to like modern Japanese games had achieved victory in receiving non-Bowdlerized localizations and releases of niche titles that would otherwise not see the light of day outside of Japan, another Nintendo-in-the-90s-calibur crackdown on content that could be seen as “offensive” in the West is underway. In a stunning victory for both Social Justice Warriors – who hate the idea that women could be sexually appealing to men – and for fundamentalist Christians – who hate the idea of non-procreative sex – (normally two groups on the opposite side of everything) one large American console-maker has expanded their content approval process, making it impossible even to release fanservicey Japanese games in Japan
“GRRR! Microsoft sucks for doing this! We should boycott all Xbox products until they reverse their decision!”
But wait, I never said it was Microsoft! I said it was an American console-maker doing all this.
“GRRR! Microsoft is the only American console-maker! Get the nooses!”
No, alas, Microsoft is not the only American console-maker, nor is it the guilty party in this situation. Lest we forget, Sony moved their headquarters from Tokyo to California in 2016, officially becoming an American company, with some sort of bizarre obligation to conform to ever-shifting American social norms and political correctness.
Yes, Sony, the less-strict, non-oppressive, laissez faire competitor that nearly destroyed Nintendo in the late ‘90s due to the latter’s heavy-handed “family friendly” censorship and localization denials, has decided to one-up their old foe and take censorship to a whole new level, even affecting Japanese games on their home turf, where social norms – while weird – have no compunctions with many things that the regressive Left and the fundamentalist Right in America want scoured from existence. Specifically, anime boobs and panties.
Not all is lost, however. Sony isn’t the be-all, end-all of videogames anymore. While in the ‘90s, Nintendo dominated the market, and in the ‘00s, Sony did the same, ever since the tumultuous 7th Generation, market control has been fairly fractured and videogamers have plenty of compelling alternatives. For example, Steam. Valve Softworks’ PC gaming hub experimented with censorship for a while before ultimately deciding to do nothing and allow even X-rated content on their store. Xseed Games, the Western publisher for the ‘Senran Kagura’ series of busty kunoichi Beat ‘em Ups even went so far as to mention that both the Steam and PS4 versions of “Senran Kagura Burst Re:Newal” will release at the same time and that the PS4 version will be censored while the Steam version won’t, obviously advertising the fact that gamers do indeed have a choice to those who might not otherwise be aware of it.
The idea that the West is suddenly more pro-censorship than Japan is, frankly, mindboggling. Japan is a nation where even full-blown pornography is censored, with pixilated boxes over actual genitals. Japan’s bizarre tentacle rape phenomenon was a direct response to this long-running censorship due to the fact that tentacles are NOT genitalia, and thus do not need to be pixilated. Yet here we are in the 21st Century in the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave, censoring ‘Senran Kagura’ titles and seeing ‘Dead or Alive’ titles voluntarily skipping Western releases due to the Japanese developers not wanting to deal with blow-back from the Thought Police in Western gaming media. Pathetic!
