In just over a month, Persona 5 will return to the PlayStation 4 to take players' hearts once more, in the updated re-release of Persona 5 Royal. The game, which already launched in Japan last October, is slated for a March 31st release in the west, where it has been confirmed that it will have two scenes edited from its original version. The changes revolve around two minor cutscenes in the game, where two "stereotypical gay men" approach the player characters as a gag, In the game's original western launch, these scenes were met with mixed reception, with certain players finding the content offensive, which has lead to Atlus USA believing that the release of Royal is the perfect time to "update it for the current generation".

In an interview exclusive to IGN, Atlus USA's Communications Manager said that these two scenes would be changed, as to not cast the men in a "negative light".

We actually were able to go through some of the lines that players may not have received as well, look at that feedback, and then [update it] for the current generation.

In a separate exclusive interview with Gamespot, localization manager Yu Namba commented the following, regarding the content in question.

As a localization manager, I really cannot do too much about what has already made it into the game. Our team members felt a little bit of awkwardness about when working on it. And with Royal, we were determined to see if we could do something about it at least localization-wise. On our end, it took a lot of effort consulting not just the production department, but talking with our marketing, and how they would feel about it if we changed how things were in Persona 5 to this new way--what would the public reception be, what the company would think, whether it would be okay if we do make the change.

If you're curious to see the original Persona 5's version of those scenes, they both have been linked below.

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[FGFlann]

What I've come to realize from the slog of the so-called culture war is that many of us wouldn't agree on what the concept of "social justice" actually is.

 

[Dr.Hacknik]

Surprised that people are mad about the revision of two scenes that depict harmful and reductive stereotypes of homosexual men. If anything, I'd expect people to be glad. Instead, people are slinging the word SJW around left and right and acting as if it's a personal attack on them and that this instance of censorship ruins the integrity of the game. First of all, is social justice a bad thing? Is it wrong for Atlus to change a scene so that it doesn't encourage homophobic stereotypes? Second of all, it's barely 4 minutes' worth of content, and not everyone's gonna see it anyways. It's not like your world's going to collapse because two scenes have been edited. Grow up.

From what I have gathered there are three types of people in this thread so far.

1. People like me, who think the scene is just cringe and we don't particular care or would rather just see it gone
2. People who wanna say it's a overly used stereotype, and very very exaggerated. Making the scenes homophobic.
3. People who wanna slap SJW and PC around like it's a pillow. Because they believe everyone here is just a pussy ass bitch who should not get offended.

Personally, I believe the scenes are unnecessary and just overall. They provide very little if any comedy, and overall just make you cringe no matter what side you're on. You can argue they're homophobic, but you can also argue that it's nothing to get mad over. There are by far, more worse instances out there; and not just in video games, but media as a whole. Japan is the worst when it comes to making jabs at LGBT stuff, and it shows often. At the end of the day, I would rather see garbage like this gone and not come back. It causes drama from both sides of the argument and it's tiring.

Tldr; horrible comedy, cringe and overall distasteful. It's unnecessary to have in the game, provides to comedic benefit or benefit to the plot beyond just describing gay men with stereotypes that shouldn't be used or exaggerated.

 

[FGFlann]

Japan isn't even close to the worst. Consider the media put out by certain other countries in that region alone.

 

[Dr.Hacknik]

Japan isn't even close to the worst. Consider the media put out by certain other countries in that region alone.

I mean yeah. They're not certainly the worst. There's far more that I could name off, but I don't wanna point fingers. Mostly because there's too many snowflakes here but y'know, whatever.

 

[FAST6191]

Surprised that people are mad about the revision of two scenes that depict harmful and reductive stereotypes of homosexual men. If anything, I'd expect people to be glad. Instead, people are slinging the word SJW around left and right and acting as if it's a personal attack on them and that this instance of censorship ruins the integrity of the game. First of all, is social justice a bad thing? Is it wrong for Atlus to change a scene so that it doesn't encourage homophobic stereotypes? Second of all, it's barely 4 minutes' worth of content, and not everyone's gonna see it anyways. It's not like your world's going to collapse because two scenes have been edited. Grow up.

I am still not convinced that there was malice or that harm is being done by these scenes (you assert it is harmful, please do tell me how) to warrant the effort, and if you invite censors into your world just once you have an awfully hard time getting them back out.

As for social justice we would probably immediately get flung into a definitions debate. As with most things there is probably some kind of merit to something in there, however there is an awful lot of absolute shit, awful logic and worse arguments floating around in there and worse for this debate is not everybody believes every aspect. It would be wrong for Atlus to kowtow to an outrage mob without good reason. People say about the amount of content and while amount can play a role that tends to be passing element vs core feature of the story when amounts properly come up. Nobody was saying the world was going to collapse or the game would be ruined -- it is called having principles and standing up for those principles. We have seen it in games for decades when people come up and if you just remove that blood, that gun, that death animation, that phrase, that story beat, that thing that might be a religious symbol and so on and so on and learned it best to tell that sort to fuck off and go make your own game if you want that sort of thing.

That said I think I have a new reasoning and for that I have a nice clip

 

[Seliph]

I am still not convinced that there was malice or that harm is being done by these scenes (you assert it is harmful, please do tell me how) to warrant the effort, and if you invite censors into your world just once you have an awfully hard time getting them back out.

As for social justice we would probably immediately get flung into a definitions debate. As with most things there is probably some kind of merit to something in there, however there is an awful lot of absolute shit, awful logic and worse arguments floating around in there and worse for this debate is not everybody believes every aspect. It would be wrong for Atlus to kowtow to an outrage mob without good reason. People say about the amount of content and while amount can play a role that tends to be passing element vs core feature of the story when amounts properly come up. Nobody was saying the world was going to collapse or the game would be ruined -- it is called having principles and standing up for those principles. We have seen it in games for decades when people come up and if you just remove that blood, that gun, that death animation, that phrase, that story beat, that thing that might be a religious symbol and so on and so on and learned it best to tell that sort to fuck off and go make your own game if you want that sort of thing.

That said I think I have a new reasoning and for that I have a nice clip

Regarding your first point, I agree to an extent. I doubt the original scene was created maliciously, and I doubt Atlus is homophobic, but it's still a harmful scene. It uses stereotypes for gay men (feminine body language, predatory behavior to young boys) and uses that as humor. It's the same thing as depicting black people with big lips eating fried chicken as humor. The second example is clearly offensive, why? Because it simplifies and caricatures black people, it reduces them to those traits and removes their humanity. Likewise with the gay stereotypes. It reduces gay characters to feminine predators, which is an inaccurate and harmful depiction of gay people because obviously not all gay people are like that, and making the only gay characters in the game predators is pretty homophobic to me.

Regarding your second point, what principles are you standing up to? The principle to have 2 homophobic scenes in the game? I understand that you're scared that this will lead to more censorship, but it hasn't happened and for the foreseeable future, it won't happen. You say "We have seen it in games for decades when people come up and if you just remove that blood, that gun, that death animation, that phrase, that story beat, that thing that might be a religious symbol and so on" but is any of that happening? No, not really. Is it blood? No. Is it a gun? No. Is it a death animation? No. Is it a phrase? Kind of, but is the phrase relevant or important to the game? Do you lose anything by not hearing the homophobic dialogue? Not really. Is it a story beat? No, this scene is entirely inconsequently and has no relevance to the story. Is it a religious symbol? No.

So I don't understand what you're worried about. Atlus is simply changing a small, inconsequential, irrelevant scene because (as I previously established) the scene is homophobic and insensitive to gay individuals. It's not like they're removing all the guns in the game, or making Ryuji gay or putting the Succubi in burkas. It's just two scenes, and they aren't even being removed, they're being edited to (hopefully) remove or depict the gay characters in a more humanizing way.

 

[FGFlann]

To be perfectly frank, caricatures are something you will have to get to grips with. The notion that you could ever eliminate such things or prevent them from being funny is ridiculous. The entire basis of comedy is that it presents an exaggeration of observed reality. You say that they strip the humanity from actual people but that is a reflection of your own beliefs and should not be projected onto anyone else. You are essentially advocating the end of comedy as a concept by going down this route because it might have a negative impact on someone, somewhere, somehow.

I can't stress that enough. In this situation projection is a huge problem.

I refer you back to my earlier post; The scene, despite containing exaggerated stereotypes, is not observably anti-gay. It is the belief that you have that causes you to think that it will lead others to think badly about homosexuals, but in reality others observing this scene are not a reflection of your beliefs and will not make the same logical leap that two characters with a bad personality trait are reflective of an entire identity group.

At the absolute maximum, you could argue that *perhaps* Ryuji, as a character, is homophobic. Since he never does anything other than seem uncomfortable, the odds of proving that are very low.

 

[PZT]

oh my god who the hell cares

 

[FGFlann]

If nobody cared the topic would not exist. Divesting yourself of an opinion doesn't make you cool, either. If you can't stand up for your own principles why should anyone else?

 

[Seliph]

To be perfectly frank, caricatures are something you will have to get to grips with. The notion that you could ever eliminate such things or prevent them from being funny is ridiculous. The entire basis of comedy is that it presents an exaggeration of observed reality. You say that they strip the humanity from actual people but that is a reflection of your own beliefs and should not be projected onto anyone else. You are essentially advocating the end of comedy as a concept by going down this route because it might have a negative impact on someone, somewhere, somehow.

I can't stress that enough. In this situation projection is a huge problem.

I refer you back to my earlier post; The scene, despite containing exaggerated stereotypes, is not observably anti-gay. It is the belief that you have that causes you to think that it will lead others to think badly about homosexuals, but in reality others observing this scene are not a reflection of your beliefs and will not make the same logical leap that two characters with a bad personality trait are reflective of an entire identity group.

At the absolute maximum, you could argue that *perhaps* Ryuji, as a character, is homophobic. Since he never does anything other than seem uncomfortable, the odds of proving that are very low.

I never read your previous post, you make a good point that I hadn't considered. Very well said. I can't even think of a valid counter-argument to support my point.

 

[FGFlann]

You have no idea how gratifying it is to think I may have actually convinced someone of something instead of just endless circular argument, lol. This almost never happens, I'm not sure how to react.

 

[Seliph]

You have no idea how gratifying it is to think I may have actually convinced someone of something instead of just endless circular argument, lol. This almost never happens, I'm not sure how to react.

It's okay I was surprised too lmao

 

[banjo2]

You have no idea how gratifying it is to think I may have actually convinced someone of something instead of just endless circular argument, lol. This almost never happens, I'm not sure how to react.

It was just getting good

 

[UltraDolphinRevolution]

The fundamental question is this:

Are you for or against people - who are often not even fans of the product - having a restricting impact on the product of the creators.

For some reason Marvel movies are very big in China. A new one allegedly was supposed to have a character who looks like a TIbetan monk but the creators changed it into a completely new design due to their fear of backlash. I for one support this decision. I also like the changed Fire Temple theme in OoT and the new unlockable clothes in the European version of Fatal Frame 5. And just as a warning, I´m going to call you a sinophob, islamophob or sexist, if you disagree.

 

[Deleted User]

The same people praising Atlus, are also accusing Nintendo of white washing, and changing a character to more appeal to Japanese viewers.

Who cares? She's just a minor character inside of a 1000+ episode anime!? Plus, I like the new change, she looks a lot better now.
https://kotaku.com/pokemon-anime-accused-of-whitewashing-1841805403

I thought Bea was Korean cos of her handshake.
Her name in each language is based on bean in that language, idk what her Japanese name has to do with anything.

 

[NyaakoXD]

The same people praising Atlus, are also accusing Nintendo of white washing, and changing a character to more appeal to Japanese viewers.

Who cares? She's just a minor character inside of a 1000+ episode anime!? Plus, I like the new change, she looks a lot better now.
https://kotaku.com/pokemon-anime-accused-of-whitewashing-1841805403

It's just Kotaku once again relying on bullshit and clickbaits, as usual. Actually watching the short, a lot of the "white-washing" is literally just lighting in various scenes where it's literally sunlight shining radiantly hard.

 

[Seliph]

For some reason Marvel movies are very big in China. A new one allegedly was supposed to have a character who looks like a TIbetan monk but the creators changed it into a completely new design due to their fear of backlash.

What's your source for this? All of the Doctor Strange characters look like Tibetan monks but they haven't been removed or changed.

 

[DJPlace]

i just noticed something. why are people offended by this? i mean it's a video game. who the fuck cares. sure there's some censorship i'm pissed off about.... (looking at the last senran kagura game on PS4) i mean people who are offended by this are people who are true church people who follow the lord of not gayness or whatever. i find sex talk very offense like my one guy i know said something really nasty that i'm not going say and hell it's really bad for EOF.... i thought this was not the 90's.... but has i said if there's a way for hacked PS4's to swap out the cut screen's that would be great but if not deal with it.... also i know all the MC's and friends are underage but still it's not like they get hurt/raped or anything like that.... i mean hell i recall one show in the 90's that allowed a couple of gay guys kissing and they showed it. all right i'm done if you can't read this welp.... whatever....

 

[UltraDolphinRevolution]

What's your source for this? All of the Doctor Strange characters look like Tibetan monks but they haven't been removed or changed.

It´s about an upcoming movie [Edit: correction: It is a 2016 movie]. A white middle-aged woman was cast for the role. She represents a sort of celtic Doctor Strange.

 

[Seliph]

It´s about an upcoming movie. A white middle-aged woman was cast for the role. She represents a sort of celtic Doctor Strange.

But like

What's your source? Where did you see this?