The Gamer's Quarter

[SuperWes]

Over the weekend I was in the Japanese bookstore in the Japanese Mall in Japantown in San Francisco and I bought the English version of a manga called Ral's Grad. I wouldn't have bought it, but there was a big standup in the corner for the Japanese edition, which was clearly labeled as "the manga for Blue Dragon, hit videogame for the Xbox 360!" The US edition had no-such-label, and I was really curious why they would abandon such a clear and obvious way to get people to buy your book.

When I got it home and took the shrinkwrap off I found out why. It's basically softcore porn, lossely based on something that was heavily marketed to grade school/middle school kids America.

Ral's Grad is the story of a 15 year old boy named Ral who has been trapped in a giant coccoon his whole life because his shadow manifests itself into a powerful dragon that could destroy his entire village. His only contact with the outside world is his tutor, who is an attractive glasses-wearing girl with insanely large breasts.

Anyway, the village gets attacked, so he's got to be let out. They let him out and the second thing he does (don't want to spoil the first!) is rip the shirt off of his tutor and demand to know what it's like to be with a woman.

Yeah...

The story goes on to reveal that the main bad-guy is a queen who sends her minions out with the promise that, should they fulfill her wishes they will be allowed to "plant their seed" in her.

What the fuck, Japan?

It's not a small-budget affair either. The artist is the same guy who did Hikaru no Go and Death Note. It's very pretty actually! At any rate, this should probably be in the general section, but I want to bring this back to games by asking, how do you think something like this gets made, given that Blue Dragon is essentially Dragon Ball? Does it have something to do with Microsoft throwing their money at whatever will get their name out there in Japan, or is it pretty standard to have officially licensed demon sex joke manga?

-Wes
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[Harveyjames]

Well, it's a different culture with a different attitude to sex... a running joke in the original Dragonball is that young Goku has never seen women before, and doesn't understand that you're not supposed to touch their boobs. There are tons of naked breasts and penises in it, but I don't think it's supposed to be pornographic. It's nothing a baby hasn't seen up close.

Can't speak for Blue Dragon since I've not read it, but I imagine you might possibly be misinterperating the tone. As for the queen and her minions... similar systems occur in nature, like all the male bees want to fuck the queen bee. It's amusing to imagine such a society enacted with humanoid characters! I think this comic sounds funny!

Japanese are mostly pervs, though, so I'm not ruling out the idea that the artist may well have been getting off on it when he was drawing it.

[dessgeega]

i think i'd prefer a game that was clearly hardcore porn.

the thing that makes me uncomfortable about anime and jrpgs is not how things are sexualized, but how the subject of their sexualization is danced around. there's this sense of self-loathing, this aversion to self-reflection, that i find deeply unsettling.

i want more undisguised lust in games.
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[dhex]

have you met the witcher?
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[Harveyjames]

[daphaknee]

man japanese people are SO ashamed of their privates

like that one time i was in a japanese store and i accidentally wandered into the loli/moe/PEDOPHILE CENTRAL and i picked up a magazine at random, looked at the cover and went EWWWWWWWWWW

and the six men with noses buried deeply in child porn quietly slinked out of the store

maybe they would be less embarrassed if less six foot tall screaming girls were grossed out by their perversions!

[Harveyjames]

You're six foot tall?

[daphaknee]

well half an inch short of, but six feet tall is so much easier to type than five eleven and a half