Writer and game designer Yuji Horii is largely considered the father of Dragon Quest, the long-time Final Fantasy rival up until Square Soft and Enix merged in 2003. So when he says something about the franchise, fans take note. And that’s what happened recently when he weighed in on a very small but very charged tweak to Dragon Quest III in the upcoming remake.
Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake, the first of three visual overhauls of the original games, changes the description for the starting hero choices. Instead of male and female, the two options are Type A and Type B. Largely seen as an innocuous update by many, it’s nevertheless prompted outrage in certain groups of very online gamers. Coupled with tweaks to the female Warrior vocation art, originally designed by Akira Toriyama, to make it less revealing, some fans see it as an attack on the game’s artistic integrity in order to appease progressive values.
The topic was recently broached in an extended conversation last weekend between Horii and former editor-in-chief of Weekly Shonen Jump, Kazuhiko Torishima. The stream was hosted by DJ Naz Chris in full Dragon Quest III cosplay and took place during Tokyo Game Show 2024 but was separate from the official onstage panel discussion for the game. As RPG Site reports, the group, led by Naz Chris, started talking about the changes from the original game to the remake, including character outfits and gender descriptions.
Naz Chris says she doesn’t understand the need for the changes, according to RPG Site’s translation of the exchange, and Horii appears to agree. Torishima then starts to talk about content ratings abroad, and the difficulties of getting stuff approved in the U.S. “It really came from the West; a way of approaching sex education with a religious concept exists in America, doesn’t it?” Torishima said according to RPG Site. “Their way of thinking on compliance is really very narrow.”
Then Horii, who is contributing new story elements to the remake, seems to bring the conversation back to Dragon Quest III. “You can also choose a male or female [version] of the protagonist, but we cannot write it as ‘choose from Male or Female;’ it became ‘Type 1 & Type 2.’ he says according to RPG Site. “I wonder who the heck are going to complain about ‘“Male and Female?’ I don’t understand.” That part of the extended conversation was immediately clipped out on September 29 and spread like wildfire online among critics of the Remake changes.
That’s when Elon Musk found it. “This is insane,” the tech billionaire, who has become like a moth to the flame for anti-woke engagement bait, wrote on X (formerly Twitter) September 30 in a quote of the clipped conversation. It was unclear which part specifically he was referencing, but it helped the soundbite break containment. Two elder statesmen of manga and video games (both Torishima and Horii are in their 70s) seemed to be vindicating the quiet outrage on certain forums and YouTube channels about the Dragon Quest III cuts, and a broader conspiracy about quiet censorship of Japanese games and entertainment.
So far, all of this was as predictable as the sun. It’s what happened next that got weird. Naz Chris, the original interviewer, posted on October 2 accusing the clips of mistranslating part of the conversation and taking it out of context. Valute News, one of the X accounts that originally shared translated remarks of the footage, deleted the post and apologized.
“I would like to sincerely apologize for the incorrect English subtitles created for Mr. Kazuhiko Torishima’s statement,” a statement from the account read on October 3. “In the scene where he mentioned ‘Puritan,’ it was mistakenly translated as ‘sex education.’ This error was due to my mishearing. I deeply apologize for any inconvenience caused to all parties involved.”
The Twitter account for the radio program Horii and Torishima host together also responded, putting out a statement calling on people to stop spreading clipped parts of the conversation and suggesting the content had been mistranslated and misconstrued. The substance of the dispute seemed to hinge on the use of “sex education” instead of “Puritan.” It’s unclear what meaningful difference that would have made to the overall meaning, however, especially Horii’s remark about the remake changing the gender labels.
For anti-woke gaming conspiracists, this reaction is the best of both worlds. The initial conversation seems to validate their original criticisms of the changes while the apparent damage control efforts after the remarks escaped into the wider internet are now being treated by some as evidence of some kind of coverup. What does Square Enix think of all this? The publisher declined to comment.
Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake is out on console and PC on November 14. In the meantime, here’s a time capsule interview between Hori and Shigeru Miyamoto about making video games from from 1989.