This Is Why We Can't Good Stuff, Concerning Monster Monpiece
The internet seems to be in an uproar over the announcement that roughly 40 cards in the game Monster Monpiece will be censored. Well, we here at the Grotto hate censorship as much as the next guy, but given cultural differences between the US and Japan, it does seem like a necessary evil.
As any fan of anime can attest to, sometimes, the fan service in anime will sometimes include minors or young-ish looking women as well as hyper sexualized women or situations that get as close to nudity as posible without crossing over. While this seems to be well accepted in Japan, how often do you see something similar on broadcast or pay TV in the US? Not often. Also anime, while to the anime fan, seems like a huge business, in reality, it pales in comparison to other segments of the market such as TV, movies and games. If this were not the case, some companies would probably still be around like Geneon (Pioneer) and ADV.
Now before you say, game like "God Of War had nudity", Anime for some reason doesn't get the same pass from the general media. This will continue to happen as long as anime is just considered a "cartoon".
See some of the censored images and the press release from Idea Factory after the break
(Possibly NSFW)
Idea Factory International is fully aware of the concerns expressed by fans, so we would like to inform everyone about the censored images in greater detail.
Monster Monpiece is a card battle game, in which players summon various “Monster Girls” onto the game’s battlefields and then fight their opponents. These cards—meaning the “Monster Girls”—are able to be powered up by exposing themselves (taking off their clothes) via the level-up features called First Crush Rub and Extreme Love. We kept the same number of cards in the game as the original Japanese version, but replaced some of the higher level Monster Girl images with the “less exposed” lower level versions of the corresponding Monster Girls due to some intense sexual imagery. The number of censored cards is about 40 out of the approximately 350 card images available in the game. This means that over 300 cards are left untouched from the original images. That said, each card that has had its image removed will still have the same number of levels for the player to increase, but the higher level card images will be the same as the lower level, even though they have leveled up and have become more powerful. We would like to emphasize that the game’s playtime, the game’s system, and the game’s features are all the same as the original Japanese release, and players can level up their Monster Girls to the highest levels as well, again, matching the Japanese release.
This was a very difficult decision since we work very hard to satisfy our fans and want to bring the same content being offered in Japan. However, Western society is not as lenient as that of Japan when sexual images are involved—especially images of humanoids that appear to be younger than a socially acceptable age. The borderline of what is “acceptable” will always be extremely gray and vary from person to person, but as a responsible company working in the U.S., we had to make the difficult decision that we did. We sincerely apologize for those who do not agree with any level of censorship, but we greatly appreciate your understanding with the decision we have made.
About the rating differences between North America (ESRB, Mature) and Europe (PEGI, 12): The reason for the difference in these ratings is simply the difference in the rating system between ESRB and PEGI. We received a Mature rating for Monster Monpiece from the ESRB with the censored material we submitted. However, for PEGI, and with the same material assets for their review, they rated it 12+ because of the minimal amount of violence shown in the game. We appreciate your understanding with these rating differences.
Idea Factory International, Inc.
And an image collage of censored images, curtosey of some random 4Chan poster
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