Japan's popular music idol Hatsune Miku, given birth to by Vocaloid's singing synthesiser
technology, has naturally spawned a wide range of games.
Fans will know that not all of the idol song's can be as cute and innocent as her persona
though, with some depicting some pretty brutal, sexual and even political stuff.
Today we'll be talking about the different ways that the series has had these provocative
elements toned down for various regions around the world, and even by the creators themselves.
To begin with the song Senbonzakura, which translates to "thousand cherry blossoms".
Whilst seemingly very upbeat and cheerful, the track was deemed far too controversial
for one region.
Not only does the song make many references to war, slicing heads off in guillotines and
firing missiles, but its whole premise revolves around the revamping of the Japanese nation
towards the end of the 1800s.
Why was this be such a problem?
For those out of the loop, during this time, and even still lingering on somewhat today,
were a lot of regional tensions between Korea and Japan.
Due to this, the track as been removed from every single Korean version of the game.
Next up is the song Kageou Daze, from Project Diva F 2nd.
When the game was brought over from Japan, ever single song was given an English translation
with the exception of this one.
The track is actually very violent, being about two characters who go through the same
two days over and over again, repeatable dying every time.
This has arose suspicion from some that the violence was the reason for it being untranslated.
However, important to point out is that it's impossible for this to be due to rating-related
reasons.
As you can see in the first game's rating, the ESRB takes into account what is said,
no matter what language it is in, and so, despite the lyrics being in Japanese, they
would be evaluated as if they were in English.
For example, the rating summary offers lines such as "I'm showing too much cleavage?
You know you like it" as an example of the provocative Japanese dialogue that played
a part in the game's Teen rating.
The only official explanation we have had for this is from the game's forums, where
the localisation producer explained they were unfortunately not able to talk about it.
Other than this though, the English localisations have been very faithful to the originals,
even when it seems like they might not be.
You see, despite the just mentioned saucy lines, there exists some extremely severe
acts of toning down sexual content, but done for all versions of the game, including over
in Japan.
Probably to prevent things like THIS happening again, the first Diva F game, as well as later
releases, made changes to the edit mode to stop you from angling the camera in ways that
could lead to some naughty shots of the girls.
To top things off, here's what happens when you tilt the camera a bi 'too much' in the
photo mode.
Yep, it seems much time and effort was spent making sure no incriminating panty shots would
be possible.
As mentioned though, this was done for all regions and the same can be said for a lot
of other stuff that, at first, may not seem like it.
This is the happiness and Peace of Mind Committee tells a tale of some kind of brainwashing
cult, ordering the population to be happy and smile no matter what, or else face death
via a wide range of gruesome execution methods.
The song's English translation leaves most these gory details in, but, when the final
line comes around, something strange happens.
The last line translates to "If you're not happy, you're dead", however the English script
replaces the word "dead" with the number "34".
This is not censorship though and is just copying what's found over on the Japanese
side, where the word, whilst sung in the vocals, has been changed to a random circle in the
subtitles.
Similar 'pretend censorship' is seen in the track Paradichlorobenzene.
At multiple points in the song, words will be replaced by asterisks, with these hidden
words being the chemical compound benzene and the censorship being used as a sort of
symbolic representation.
This is exactly the same in the Japanese version, where the words have also been replaced with
asterisks.
So again, just because it seems like censorship, it, of course, doesn't always mean that it
actually is.
Thank you for watching.