Almost about a year ago, I have written against the ban on eroge games and had a poll on it. A vast majority was against this ban. What caused it? Some controversial game called Rapelay appeared on the UK Amazon store that sparked outrage. Now like with some people, they like to butt into other countries business and extremist groups like Feminism Now, which I put the full blame along with news organizations like CNN overblown the whole situation putting the pressure on Japan to try and create anti-loli legislation that is clearly unconstitutional and having a group of creators in Japan speaking out against the legislation.
Along with it, minori, an eroge and visual novel maker decided to bar everyone in the west from their site. Just recently, they launch an assault on a popular visual novel translation wiki with an editing war saying the fans are not allowed to translate a clean, all ages visual novel eden. This obviously outraged a lot of minori fans accusing them of being betrayed even after importing the games legitimately from Japan, thus dubbing the whole situation as “minorigate.” Two blogs, Omonomono with the article titled Open the Minorigate” and another from The Nihon Review with the article titled minorigate, or, How to Piss Off Otaku Without Really Trying both produced very convincing arguments, but I’m not going to focus on Minori in this opinion piece. I want to show my opinion why I am against this whole eroge ban and why people who want to dictate how Japan should control their culture really need to stop now.
The Rapelay incident is just like the Hot Coffee incident that happened in July 2005, around the same time the Rapelay incident occur. Like Rapelay, Hot Coffee was a mod in Grand Theft Auto San Andreas that was a minigame that featured a sex simulator. This drove controversy and the game was rerated Adults Only and drove controversy. Jack Thompson arose from this incident and wanting to ban all video games with nudity and violence. He targeted violent games and also Sims 2, a popular life simulation game. Thompson’s attack on video games made gamers angry saying that what Thompson’s attack on gaming and his “Modest Proposal” was going to ruin freedom of expression. There were video game laws that were passed in California and Florida, but eventually these laws became unconstitutional and were shot down and Jack Thompson eventually lost his attorney license.
Why am I mentioning Hot Coffee Mod? In relation, Rapelay is the same, except that instead of being a western game, it is a game made in the east. Now we get into different cultural values and stuff and being Asian myself, I know how different these cultures are. The problem is that like with Hot Coffee, it is going to be like trying to ban violent video games. It’s not going to work because most free countries have laws that protect the freedom of freedom, expression and media. So what Japan is lax on stuff when comes to sexual stuff. The problem is, some westerners no matter how much they hate eroge or not, they have no right to tell another country how to dictate their culture. It is Japan’s culture, not yours. Say if another country said that they were offended by the stuff in Grand Theft Auto and want the game banned. Then the United States Senate creates legislation trying to ban every game that have violence in it, would you like it? For most people, they will not and complain over it. If people in the US don’t want violent games to be banned, then like with Japan, they don’t want their eroge banned. How do you think they will feel if the anti-eroge bill gets passed in contrast with a bill banning violent games used in my example… do you think they are going to be happy as you going to be happy with violent games being banned? The answer is most likely no.
As with violent video games, they do not equate to gamers who play these types of games to commit violent crimes as a Japanese person playing eroge and doing the same. Video Games do not influence people in practice. People should already know right from wrong and not to copy what happens in the video game.
Another thing I blame is news organizations and radical groups like Feminist Now. News organizations had overblown the whole situation when it didn’t need to. We get those radial groups that want to ban Eroge and then we have this massive chaos going around. Just last month, CNN tried to fuel the fire and go on and bringing up Rapelay again when the incident was several months old. This causes minori to do what they have done and I don’t blame them. I blame media organizations and radial feminist groups. The problem with them is they disregard what other people think about them and go ahead and start this holy war against Eroge games and ruining it for everyone else. People easily get offended over everything. If they get offended already, they should practice self-censorship and do it now. Why? It is a great practice so that you don’t have to go around and ruin it for people who wanted to play that sort of content.
In conclusion, it is more of the media organizations, politicians and radial group’s fault for letting this crusade to ban eroge games for going so far. They don’t care about what other people think or what they think about them. As long they are satisfied, fans of these games not only in Japan, but also outside of Japan are going to get hurt badly because they can’t practice self-censorship. Also, it is not their business for them to dictate what other countries should do with their culture. It’s the countries responsibility. I for one, think this crusade needs to stop and everything needs to go back to the status quo. Even if I don’t play Eroge games that often, I don’t want people have to suffer the fate of not being able to play the next Eroge game from minori they want to import. As some said, people should stop complaining about Anime Dying, but Eroge Dying because of these groups that want to put an end on Eroge.
