Dragon Quest creator Yuji Horii has asked people not to “arbitrarily extract parts of comments for the purpose of reinforcing the legitimacy of your own opinion” after he was accused of blaming Western ratings board for having to put more modest clothing on characters in Dragon Quest 3 HD-2D Remake.
Initially, it was reported that Horii was irritated at the missive to make the outfits less revealing, allegedly saying in a TGS interview that he blamed America’s “religious” and “narrow-minded” approach for the changes, adding: “Doing business with such a ridiculous country is really frustrating. Because of that, Japan also gets negatively influenced” (thanks, Time Extension
The changes received significant attention, not least because X/Twitter owner Elon Musk shared mistranslated information to his millions of followers with the misleading caption: “Japanese Game Developers are frustrated at the forced ridiculous UN driven Globalist agenda compliance they have to include in their game”.
Since then, however, Horii and podcast host and former Shonen Jump Editor-in-Chief Kazuhiko Torishima have confirmed the comments were not only mistranslated, but taken out of context, too.
Saying the word “puritan” had been mistranslated as “sex education”, the pair then said they were “very sorry” that their words had been used out of context “outside of [Japan]”.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the TGS interview was swiftly deleted.
The HD-2D Remake of Dragon Quest 3 features updated character designs that formed the basis of the original discussion, not least of all the female Warrior character (pictured above) who now wears additional underclothes instead of just a bikini.
For more on Dragon Quest 3, find out why Ed thinks Dragon Quest 3’s new Monster Wrangler vocation is yet another welcome addition to the HD-2D remake.