Thick Thighs Save Lives
NeoGAF's Physical Games Advocate Extraordinaire
Via Automaton West
In celebration of the official PC release of Shift Up's action-adventure Stellar Blade, a live discussion featuring directors and producers of Stellar Blade, Goddess of Victory: NIKKE and the NieR series was broadcast on June 10. In the livestream, NieR producer Yosuke Saito made a comment which got misinterpreted and shared on various news sites and social media, causing both him and Yoko Taro to publicly deny the rumors of Square Enix imposing character design restrictions on them.
Following the broadcast, news articles misinterpreting Yoko and Saito's comments about NieR's design conventions started spreading among English-speaking fans – causing many to believe that NieR publisher Square Enix was putting restrictions on the developers in order to comply with global standards. However, when asked to confirm this rumor, Yoko Taro commented on his X account: "I've never heard of such a thing happening"
Furthermore, Yosuke Saito commented that the things he said in the livestream were largely mistranslated, because the NieR team doesn't have any restrictions at all when creating their games. He also mentions that he'd like to clarify the situation in a future livestream.
In the livestream, former Sony executive Yoshida Shuhei asked the developers about their approach to character design and visual presentation, to which Yoko Taro replied that he was aiming to create characters that would not overlap with the ones already existing in the market. "Our concept is always to do something that's 'not like anything else' […] If Western sci-fi is filled with marine-like soldiers, we might go in the opposite direction and use Gothic Lolita outfits, for example. We tend to take the contrarian route."
Yosuke Saito then chimed in to clarify. "There are certain things that are ethically or morally inappropriate – even if they're just aspects of a character. We try to draw a line by establishing rules about what's acceptable and what's not." The nuance of this statement seems to not have been properly understood by the audience, as he was referring to general rules that most Japanese companies must abide by – rules about representation of various forms of cruelty, discrimination and age-inappropriate content is something that most media companies enforce to a degree.
His follow-up statement was mistranslated in the English subtitles: "While certain things might be acceptable in Japan, they could become problematic in certain overseas regions. These are the kind of situation we usually try to avoid creating." This translation could lead to his words to being easily misunderstood as "If the content is okay in Japan, but viewed as problematic in the West, we'd have to change it in compliance to Western standards to avoid it getting the content banned." However, what Yosuke Saito actually said in Japanese is that, if the content is acceptable in Japan, they will try their best to push it as it is, without any restrictions from overseas publishers. The "situation they try to avoid" is, in this case, censorship by overseas publishers. It is, though, understandable why his statement may have got mistranslated – the original phrase in Japanese is [ダメにしないようにしている], and as a double negative, it could be a little tricky to translate, even for an advanced Japanese speaker.
In celebration of the official PC release of Shift Up's action-adventure Stellar Blade, a live discussion featuring directors and producers of Stellar Blade, Goddess of Victory: NIKKE and the NieR series was broadcast on June 10. In the livestream, NieR producer Yosuke Saito made a comment which got misinterpreted and shared on various news sites and social media, causing both him and Yoko Taro to publicly deny the rumors of Square Enix imposing character design restrictions on them.
Following the broadcast, news articles misinterpreting Yoko and Saito's comments about NieR's design conventions started spreading among English-speaking fans – causing many to believe that NieR publisher Square Enix was putting restrictions on the developers in order to comply with global standards. However, when asked to confirm this rumor, Yoko Taro commented on his X account: "I've never heard of such a thing happening"
Furthermore, Yosuke Saito commented that the things he said in the livestream were largely mistranslated, because the NieR team doesn't have any restrictions at all when creating their games. He also mentions that he'd like to clarify the situation in a future livestream.
In the livestream, former Sony executive Yoshida Shuhei asked the developers about their approach to character design and visual presentation, to which Yoko Taro replied that he was aiming to create characters that would not overlap with the ones already existing in the market. "Our concept is always to do something that's 'not like anything else' […] If Western sci-fi is filled with marine-like soldiers, we might go in the opposite direction and use Gothic Lolita outfits, for example. We tend to take the contrarian route."
Yosuke Saito then chimed in to clarify. "There are certain things that are ethically or morally inappropriate – even if they're just aspects of a character. We try to draw a line by establishing rules about what's acceptable and what's not." The nuance of this statement seems to not have been properly understood by the audience, as he was referring to general rules that most Japanese companies must abide by – rules about representation of various forms of cruelty, discrimination and age-inappropriate content is something that most media companies enforce to a degree.
His follow-up statement was mistranslated in the English subtitles: "While certain things might be acceptable in Japan, they could become problematic in certain overseas regions. These are the kind of situation we usually try to avoid creating." This translation could lead to his words to being easily misunderstood as "If the content is okay in Japan, but viewed as problematic in the West, we'd have to change it in compliance to Western standards to avoid it getting the content banned." However, what Yosuke Saito actually said in Japanese is that, if the content is acceptable in Japan, they will try their best to push it as it is, without any restrictions from overseas publishers. The "situation they try to avoid" is, in this case, censorship by overseas publishers. It is, though, understandable why his statement may have got mistranslated – the original phrase in Japanese is [ダメにしないようにしている], and as a double negative, it could be a little tricky to translate, even for an advanced Japanese speaker.
