A Nostalgic Adventure Awaits in Dragon Quest
Ahead of the November release of Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake, series creator Yuji Horii spoke about the updated look for the female characters. In this version, they’ve been given less revealing outfits compared to the original game.
In an interview at the Tokyo Game Show (translated by Valute News), Horii shared that he’s also confused by the changes to the late Akira Toriyama’s artwork. However, he explained that if there’s “too much exposure, the age rating goes up”. This means the game can’t be sold to “all-ages”.
He mentioned that the game’s character options used to be “male” and “female,” but now they’re labeled as “Type A” and “Type B.” He then added, “I honestly wonder who’s even upset about this?”. It seems to point to how Western game developers are trying to include more gender diversity in their games.
Former Shonen Jump Editor-in-Chief Kazuhiko Torishima shared his thoughts on censorship in the same interview. He pointed out that the issue seems to come more from Western markets, “especially” America, rather than Japan’s rating system. Here’s what he had to say (courtesy of Time Extension):
It’s like an absolute god. An evil disguised as good. There’s no such thing as content which that doesn’t make everyone uncomfortable. Because beauty and ugliness, good and evil, are different for everyone…
There’s a religious concept from the West, especially in America, that influences their approach to sex education, right? Their approach to compliance is really narrow-minded. When selling manga in America, everything had to be categorised by age groups. Because there’s a risk of lawsuits, the company also has to get insurance.
Doing business with such a ridiculous country is really frustrating. Because of that, Japan also gets negatively influenced.”