Legendary game developer Masahiro Sakurai, the creative force behind Super Smash Bros. and Kirby, has taken a bold stance in defense of Japan’s gaming identity. In a recent interview with Entax on March 11, 2025, following his receipt of the prestigious Art Encouragement Prize from Japan’s Agency for Cultural Affairs, Sakurai urged Japanese developers to stay true to their roots.
He emphasized that the industry’s future depends on crafting games that resonate with Japanese audiences rather than conforming to globalized ethical standards or Western sensibilities. According to Sakurai, Japan’s distinct cultural voice should be preserved, not diluted to satisfy foreign expectations or financial pressures.
Over the past decade, Japanese game companies have experienced substantial pressure from financial investors and major corporate entities, including BlackRock. With significant holdings in companies such as SEGA, Capcom, Bandai Namco, Square Enix, and Koei Tecmo, these influential investors have played a key role in shaping their industry decisions and creative direction.
Japanese game companies have been pushed to implement Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) standards, especially regarding diversity and inclusion. This has often led to the self-censorship of traditional Japanese gaming aesthetics, favoring more toned-down character designs.
Additionally, there has been a deliberate effort to appeal to LGBT audiences through both in-game representation and the hiring of drag queens and transgender figures to promote titles in international markets. This strategy is often accompanied by broader diversity and inclusivity initiatives, including public endorsements of events such as Pride Month and Black History Month.
This desperate kowtowing to Western standards didn’t just pop up out of nowhere, it’s the direct result of relentless social activism, especially the all-consuming LGBT agenda that’s wormed its way into every industry, including Japan’s.
Capcom, for example, ditched male and female labels for soulless “body types” and slapped unisex armor into Monster Hunter Wilds like it was some great innovation, allowing players to dress their male hunters up like women while subsequently female hunters can now be covered head to toe to eradicate nasty “sexualization.”
Similarly, Square Enix has explicitly stated that Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, one of many recent Square Enix releases that bombed commercially was developed with “globalist ethics” in mind, reflecting a conscious effort to align with these regressive and obtrusive standards.
Bandai Namco’s Freedom Wars Remastered has also removed male and female terminology, aligning with the industry’s broader trend of erasing traditional sex distinctions. Meanwhile, Koei Tecmo actively removes thousands of NSFW Dead or Alive fan creations each year, asserting that its characters should be treated with care, despite the fact that both the Dead or Alive and Ninja Gaiden franchises have long been known for their emphasis on exaggerated sex appeal and fan service.
Ultimately, this shift is not a matter of ethics but rather an assertion of control.
Meanwhile, localization teams such as XSEED and NIS America who collaborate with Japanese developers to bring their games to English-speaking audiences, have been known to deliberately alter dialogue, localized translations have been known to abruptly force themes of transgender identity upon Japan’s distinctive character archetypes where they do not belong.
It goes without saying that localization in this context is not merely translation, it is a deliberate act of rewriting to cater to Western perspectives, altering the original work to the extent that it begins to resemble a domestically produced product rather than a faithful adaptation.
Additionally, derogatory lines may be removed or altered, while developers themselves scale back fanservice and modify provocative character designs under the justification of modern accessibility and inclusivity. The shift away from attractive female characters, revealing outfits, and prominent cleavage in favor of more androgynous aesthetics has sparked criticism, despite consumers arguing that it diminishes traditional femininity and dilutes the unique appeal of Japanese games they continue appealing towards radical globalist ideologies.
A prime example of this trend is Niantic’s overhaul of Pokémon GO avatars, where female trainers were redesigned to look more androgynous, making them nearly indistinguishable from their male counterparts. This change, influenced by ESG objectives and partnerships with organizations like GaymerX, isn’t about innovation, it’s about conforming to specific standards.
At the same time, financial giants like BlackRock use their influence to push for self-censorship, particularly when it comes to “problematic” depictions of attractive women, revealing clothing, and fan service, key elements that have traditionally defined Japanese media entertainment.
Today, Western feminism has shaped the narrative that cleavage is sexist, panty shots are oppressive, and femininity is a weakness that needs to be replaced with gender ambiguity. The ironic part? These companies are losing money hand over fist.
The failures of Bandai Namco’s Unknown 9: Awakening and the gaming industry’s disastrous 2024, filled with layoffs and financial failures, reveal that gamers aren’t looking for Japanese games shaped to suit Western tastes.
In fact, they’re not keen on any game that’s weighed down by extreme ideologies, empty queer pandering, and reducing attractive women to unrealistic, hypersexualized objects and replacing them with ambiguous looking men with vaginas, plain and simply if gamers wanted a Western experience, they’d buy a Western game.
Sakurai’s message is direct and clear: “Japanese people should keep doing what Japanese people enjoy.” He dismisses the growing trend of making “Americanized works” to meet market expectations, emphasizing that international fans are looking for the “uniqueness and fun of Japanese games,” not a watered-down version of them that adheres to BlackRock’s diversity criteria.
His words highlight a simple truth: it’s Japan’s culture, its distinctive art, and its unapologetic creativity that have made JRPGs and other Japanese games so special and loved across the globe, in contrast, Square Enix’s emphasis on action-oriented RPGs, coupled with censorship and a focus on LGBT and racial representation has led to the alienation of long-time fans.
Yet, Japan’s most prominent players in the gaming industry seem indifferent to this wisdom. Square Enix deflects criticism of its “woke” releases by implementing anti-harassment policies, while Capcom re-releases its back catalogue of classic games, now tainted by censorship revisions.
Meanwhile, Atlus has removed offensive “transphobic” scenes from Persona 3 Reload to avoid controversy. Localization teams further exacerbate the issue by inserting outdated American sitcom references into Japanese games like The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy and by co-opting otokonoko identities in games like Guilty Gear, Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door and Granblue Fantasy to push transgender ideology.
This attempt to cater to Western sensibilities has resulted in the simplification of fundamental gameplay mechanics, designed to coddle and guide braindead players through progression, while the character designs and narrative themes that once made these games unique are being censored and sanitized.
Titles prioritizing inclusivity over creative freedom have faced backlash from fans, resulting in declining sales and a disillusioned player base. The blockbuster failures seen from Bandai Namco and Square Enix demonstrate the dangers of abandoning traditional Japanese gaming values in favor of Western approval.
Rather than revitalizing the industry, the adoption of ESG policies has alienated both domestic and global fans, resulting in underwhelming releases and shrinking profits.
To preserve their cultural legacy and maintain industry success, Japanese game companies must reject Westernization and return to their origins. As Sakurai suggests, developers should focus on creating experiences that reflect their artistic vision rather than yielding to external pressures.
One way to achieve this is by dismantling Western-influenced localization teams that impose censorship under the guise of ethics. The removal of Japan’s unique fanservice elements, traditional character archetypes, and provocative storytelling ultimately strips away the core aspects that once fueled the industry’s success.
This means eliminating “ethics departments” and foreign branches, even for smaller Japanese companies like Arc System Works, whose American division redefined Bridget as transgender in Guilty Gear Strive, and Cygames, which has expanded to American and European divisions. These companies don’t need foreign teams that exist just to screw with the creative decisions of their Japanese parent, like a damn cancer it spreads and ruins everything.
If Western audiences desire games tailored to their values, they can choose Western-made titles. Japanese developers should not feel obligated to conform to global trends at the expense of their cultural identity.
Smaller indie developers in Japan, such as Qureate, who understand their target audience, are thriving in an industry plagued with layoffs. Even large Japanese development studios are not immune to the global layoffs sweeping the industry. Companies like Square Enix, SEGA, Capcom, and Bandai Namco are losing veteran staff, including Capcom’s Hideaki Itsuno, famous for Devil May Cry and Dragon’s Dogma, who left the company in 2024 to found his own company, LightSpeed Studios, and Kenji Ozawa, formerly of Ouka Studios recently founded his own development studio, Sasanqua.
The commercialized giants of the gaming industry, such as SEGA and Capcom, have drifted too far from their roots. They refuse to regain control and resist external pressures to adopt global ethical standards, thereby compromising their original vision in pursuit of wider audiences and financial investments.
As a result, they are hemorrhaging finances and their esteemed veteran employees, many of whom, seeking creative freedom, strike out on their own to form independent studios.
These emerging companies focus on creating games tailored to their domestic audience, thriving while AAA companies like Bandai Namco waste millions on failed Westernized projects and studios and evidently, once the games industry undergoes yet another crash many of these Japanese tyrants will also go bust in solidarity with the globalist ethical practices they now cherish.
Japanese gaming stands as a unique form of art, unparalleled in its ability to fuse tradition and innovation. Its allure lies in its refusal to conform, until now. When even a titan like Sakurai feels compelled to make such an obvious statement, it signals a troubling crisis within the industry. Companies must heed his message, break free from the grip of ESG and DEI standards, and reclaim their cultural identity before it’s lost entirely, but this will likely never happen.
With Nintendo’s foreign branches increasingly restricting the release of Japanese games on the Nintendo Switch in America and Europe, particularly those featuring fanservice or suggestive content, while allowing AI-generated furry dating sims, Nintendo of Japan has also blocked foreign customers from purchasing Japanese games to bypass geo-restrictions.
Additionally, Mastercard and VISA continue to scrutinize Japanese eroge developers and retailers distributing erotica or self-published doujinshi. This has led to platforms like DLSite removing the “lolicon” tag for international customers to regain their patronage. These actions pose significant challenges for small-scale Japanese developers, as targeting foreign markets becomes increasingly unfeasible due to the risk of censorship and rejection by platforms like Steam and Nintendo’s American and European branches.
Gamers are not seeking Japanese games tailored for Western tastes, they want authentic Japanese games free from censorship and radical fanfiction-esk “translations.”
To retain its dominance as a global leader in the gaming industry, Japan must resist corporate and ideological pressures. The future of Japanese gaming should be determined by its creators, not by investors, activists, or external forces attempting to reshape it to suit their own agendas.
