2040: Perhaps We Should Stop Insulting Fans of Japanese Games

Earlier today (or possibly yesterday, I think), a former colleague posted a piece on a site I used to work for bemoaning, not for the first time, the amount of “ecchi” content in modern Japanese games, particularly dungeon-crawling RPGs. (I’m not going to link to it.)

The piece did have an interesting point to make, which was to conjecture that many creators are interested in making sexually explicit — outright pornographic — games rather than just flashing the odd pair of panties like they do nowadays, and that it’s the current strict censorship laws in Japan coupled with the platform holders’ stranglehold on what sort of content does and doesn’t get approved for sale that is holding this back from happening. I’m not sure I entirely agree with this — the nature of ecchi as opposed to hentai is to tease and titillate rather than be outright explicit, erotic, masturbation material — but it was an interesting point to consider.

Unfortunately, he then went off the deep end with accusations of games like Dungeon Travelers 2 — a game that, by all accounts from people who have played it and not pontificated for thousands of words about How Bad And Wrong Anime Panties Are, is very good indeed — being “borderline child pornography”. When called out about it on social media and in comments, he then took to his personal blog to wag his fingers and make some snide remark about the current situation with former “Face of Subway” Jared pleading guilty to numerous child sex-related charges and how, given that situation, people really shouldn’t be defending games that “advocate child molestation”.

For fuck’s sake.

I feel like I have written this post a thousand times over by now, but it seems that I need to write it again, if only to blow off the steam I’ve had building up inside my head all day. So this may get a little bit angry, and for that I make no apologies whatsoever.

For fuck’s sake.

The “child pornography” line is one that is usually trotted out by people who want to criticise Japanese media without knowing anything about it. Yes, Japan has plenty of morally questionable material — to Western sensibilities — readily available. Yes, Japan was somewhat “late to the party” when it came to legislating against this sort of thing. Yes, Japanese creators still produce media that would simply be illegal in Western countries. But Japan is also a different culture. And this isn’t excusing any of the things that I personally find morally repugnant — because there are plenty of things I want nothing to do with, just as there are plenty of aspects of Western culture I want nothing to do with — but it is worth considering when contemplating whether or not you should tarnish an entire country’s cultural output with as scathing a brush as “paedophilia”.

The assumption that “if you’re into ecchi games, you’re a paedophile” makes — mistakenly — is that people who enjoy this sort of thing cannot distinguish between fantasy and reality. I can guarantee you — speaking from experience — that a considerable proportion of people who like to take a walk on the ecchi side of life are doing so because it entertains them, not because it arouses them. Ecchi games are refreshingly frank, honest and open; ecchi games often have strong characterisation and realistic depictions of how relationships progress — including sexual encounters (or implied sexual encounters at the very least); ecchi games are completely up-front about what they are, and unashamed of that fact. More often than not, ecchi games are having fun with sex. They’re using it in a cheeky way, or in some cases as a means of exploring characters. (Criminal Girls is a great example of the latter, with the characters’ reactions to the light S&M scenes throughout changing as they grow and mature as people, and their relationship with the protagonist changes.)

What these games are emphatically not is a means for people who want to abuse children to get their rocks off. And this also means that people who enjoy these games are emphatically not paedophiles, or “advocates for child molestation”. Do you seriously fucking believe that because someone made use of a silly game mechanic in Omega Labyrinth that they’re going to go out and start squeezing the tits of random girls on the streets? Do you seriously fucking believe that someone finding a hand-drawn character in a game — with nothing whatsoever real about them except their voice actor, who is inevitably an adult — attractive in some way means that they’re going to be pulling up a dirty old van outside schools and kidnapping children?

In other words, if you must acknowledge them at all, how about you criticise things you don’t like without fucking insulting the people who do like them? That would be simply lovely.

I am absofuckinglutely sick of having to defend my hobby against people who take the lazy, “moral majority” approach and decry something they don’t like as being “sleazy” or “skeevy” or, as we’ve seen above, far worse. In my experience, the Japanese games and anime enthusiast community are some of the nicest, most articulate, most friendly, most passionate people I have ever met. Through my coverage of Japanese games back when I was on USgamer — I’m sure fucking glad all the time and effort I spent on that wasn’t a complete fucking waste of time — I’ve made some great and doubtless lifelong friends. And, moreover, I’ve been exposed to some really, genuinely great games — and not one of them has made me want to go out and fuck kids. Not even a little bit. How about that?

Compare and contrast with these puritanical fuckwits who just want to brand everything not on their Pre-Approved List of Things That Are Super-Rad!! as somehow Bad, Wrong and Problematic, and, well, I know which side I’d rather be on. I’ll be over here with my fellow deviants, thank you very much.