Ten years ago, Japanese video game publisher Tecmo had a brilliant money-spinning idea. It decided to take the female characters from its successful fighting game series Dead or Alive and put them into a beach volleyball simulation set on a tropical island. There would be a lot of bikinis and thanks to a then cutting edge graphics engine, a lot of bounce physics. Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball sold hundreds of thousands of copies. A new gaming franchise was born.
But now that same franchise is in trouble. Kind of.
It seemed to some that Koei Tecmo’s decision not to release the game in the West was due to fears of a feminist backlash
In November, a community moderator on the Dead or Alive Facebook page was answering questions about the possibility of a western release for Dead or Alive Xtreme 3, the latest title in the series. The staff member informed fans that an official release was unlikely outside of Japan and Asia, and when pushed on the reasoning wrote: “Do you know many issues happening in video game industry with regard to how to treat female in video game industry? We do not want to talk those things here. But certainly we have gone through in last year or two to come to our decision. Thank you.”
Unsurprisingly, the minor revelation was leapt on both by fans of the series and by libertarian cultural critics, who quickly blamed “social justice warriors” for inhibiting freedom of speech (and bikini wear) thanks to their incessant hand-wringing over sexism in the games industry. Internet forums and gaming subreddits enthusiastically linked the “announcement” with Nintendo’s recent decision to change some of the skimpy outfits in Wii U titles Xenoblade Chronicles X and Fatal Frame: Maiden of Black Water for western release. To some, it was a sure sign that authoritarian lefties were imposing their killjoy values on the industry.
But of course, things aren’t quite that simple. For a start, Japanese publishers have always edited explicit video game content for western audiences. Back in 1991, the original version of Final Fantasy IV featured a semi-naked dancer who was fully clothed for the US release, while popular Mega Drive brawlers such as Streets of Rage III and Mystic Defender saw scantily clad female characters dressed more modestly in western versions. This is not a new phenomenon.
It’s also not one guided purely by fears of a moral backlash. There is a historic awareness that western markets aren’t as exposed to the mass of anime and manga that heavily inform gaming content in Japan, and which comfortably embrace many seijin – or adult – subgenres that often seem weird beyond the domestic market. Indeed, when we appraise games like Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball in the west, we tend to do so beyond the context of Japan’s wider otaku culture. “The women in DoA belong in a particular niche – it’s the characters themselves that are popular,” argues sociologist Casey Brienza, who has written extensively on manga and anime. “There’s a huge culture around what are called ‘character goods’ – things like Hello Kitty – which become multiplied across different media, from comics to action figures.
“There are fetishes around physical types, like girls with big breasts, or around particular clothing or personality types, like the girl next door; there’s a fetish around girls who wear glasses (Meganekko), and blue hair became popular after the success of the anime series Neon Genesis Evangelion ... That’s why these video games are made - they cater to particular fans of very specific tropes. People who write academically about this in Japan focus on the way that [in otaku culture] the symbolic is often reiterated outside of any narrative frame. DoA is a good example of that: unlike, say, the Final Fantasy adventures, there’s no real story, it’s just about the characters – that’s the appeal”.
According to Brienza, this kind of introverted, compartmentalised sexuality has its roots in the vast sociological changes that have taken place in Japan over the last 30 years. “I think it’s about how unequal the country has become, gender-wise,” she says. “Women are still expected to quit their jobs when they get married and become full-time home makers – however, the concept of lifetime employment has broken down and that puts pressure on both men and women; the stereotype of man as sole breadwinner and the woman at home taking care of the kids doesn’t work financially. And because the country is still so rigid, it just means that young people don’t have serious relationships. They can’t make it work.”
The effects of this sociocultural crisis are manifested through pop culture. A popular manga genre for young women, for example, is Yaoi or “boy’s love”, in which young male characters indulge in homosexual relationships. “What’s appealing about it is that there are no women in the story,” says Brienza. “If you want a romantic fantasy, the culture is so rigid that a lot of young women cannot imagine a truly equal heterosexual relationship with a romantic partner.”
The equivalent for young men is the “moe” subgenre in anime, manga and games, where the focus is on sweetness and innocence of the protagonist and the protective feelings they engender. It is, according to Brienza, a direct response to the rise of the career woman, who doesn’t necessarily want to marry or have children. “That sort of femininity is threatening because the expectation is that you, as the man, will be the sole breadwinner and if you’re not, you’ve somehow failed,” she says. “In moe, we’re seeing the characters becoming younger and younger, but the attraction is not sexual, it’s sort of like the feeling you get when you see a puppy – that ‘oh my god it’s so cute’ appeal – but for guys. These characters evoke care and cuteness; it’s as though sex itself has become too threatening.”
