Forum - View topicINTEREST: Square Enix Responds to Dragon Quest Composer's 2015 Anti-LGBTQ Statements
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Valjean Lafitte
Posts: 62 |
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I would hope that internet outrage culture wouldn't deny him work in the twilight years of his life. No matter what one may think of his views, he has not directly harmed anyone with his opinions and is still one of Japan's greatest composers. |
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AnimeLordLuis
 Posts: 1626 Location: The Borderlands of Pandora |
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As long as his beliefs/views do not affect the work that he makes and continues to make he can say whatever the hell he wants it’s a little thing called freedom of speech and everyone has that right regardless of what side you are on.
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Arale Kurashiki
Posts: 774 |
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Historical revisionism like comfort women denial is not a minor political view that people are just mad at on the internet for no reason. The actions of these politicians is a bit worse than even this article implies, i.e. they don't just dismiss concerns about higher lgbt suicide rates, they laughed at them. When someone openly admits that they find you killing yourself to be funny to them, that's not something that anybody should be expected to just brush off or ignore. |
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InimitableUman
Posts: 99 |
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Does he even still make music for the games, or do they just reuse his famous themes? The historical revisionism is effed up, this is just the icing on the cake. Square should lose this fool. No need to be concerned for his well-being, no doubt he's got enough saved for the rest of his life.
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lostspacecowboy
Posts: 1 |
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Unfortunately, hate speech exists and shows how intolerant and ignorant someone can be. I don't even know if he's still working on the games or not, but even if Square Enix doesn't share his beliefs, it's normal for some people to be taken aback and think before buying the games.
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NateSelwyn25
 Posts: 141 Location: Seattle |
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1. "Freedom of Speech" means the US government cannot censor you for anything you say unless it violates national security standards or is intended to incite violence. Key word is "government." You have no such protections against corporate entities. Even with employment contracts or union membership, most of these have a provision against you using language that harms the public image of the company re: Google firing a racist programmer for espousing his racism and sexism via official company products. 2. I know very little of Japanese law, but as their Constitution was co-created by the American government, I would assume their own laws concerning censorship parallels our own. |
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Arale Kurashiki
Posts: 774 |
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He does still make the music. He also (according to a big DQ fan I follow) makes the orchestral versions of his soundtracks only available in Japan, with foreign releases of the games using lesser versions, for no reason. There's quite a few reasons to let him go at this point. |
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AiddonValentine
 Posts: 2351 |
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Goes to show that the villains in Persona 5 are not far fetched at all.
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whiskeyii
 Posts: 2271 |
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Yeah, like others have said, freedom of speech is freedom from government censorship (and only applies to the US). It has zero standing on "freedom from consequences", which is how I typically see it misinterpreted as. On-topic, I can really only see this becoming an issue because the composer spoke out on it; likely if he'd just kept his personal thoughts private (seemingly very much in line with Japan's cultural norms of public face vs private face) or at least not aired them in a public venue, this wouldn't be an issue. I seem to recall even as recently as 2010, a YouTube couple did a Q&A session where they fielded English comment questions to their Japanese audience, and by and large the Japanese response to "What do you think of LGBTQ+ people" boiled down to some variation of either "I don't care" or "I don't care so long as they don't make a stink about their rights". Obviously the bigger issue here is that if LGBTQ+ folks don't "make a stink" about their rights, they may very well never get them, so it feels to me like they're caught in a cultural Catch-22--which seems to be changing ever so slowly for the better, which is nice. |
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xBTAx
Posts: 189 |
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Nope. Honestly, if he was just laughing at gay people committing suicide on his own time, it would still be abhorrent enough that people should be calling for him to not work again. It is absolutely directly harmful to people to be normalizing that, and the same goes for the statements on the program about whether or not it is actual discrimination to treat gay people badly. But that’s not all this guy does. He’s directly funded and campaigned in favor of revisionism of war crimes. He helped pay to try to get an ad in the New York Times denying a war crime happened. He is not just some random celebrity saying something horrendous; he actively works towards these things and throws his money in support for them. To be absolutely clear: he is a bad person who has put money and effort towards making the world a worse place.
The Japanese release also uses the MIDI soundtrack in the case of 11. One could even say he funds his horrible campaigns by making people pay for the better versions of his soundtracks, so I see little reason for even those who are grossly apathetic to what he does and only care about the games to think positively of him. Last edited by xBTAx on Tue Aug 07, 2018 2:19 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Eddy564
Posts: 340 |
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It’s unproductive to not have kids? That’s rich. It’s almost as if ANYONE could choose to do without having offspring huh?
What a dense statement. It’s not even necessarily appalling to me, it’s just very very idiotic. Whatever happens to him is not my concern though but I hope it’s warranted. |
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Minos_Kurumada
Posts: 1186 |
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Cookie cutter PR answer that actually doesn't mean a thing, they obviously were like "What do these gaijin care? Just tell them whatever".
No surprise, Japan has suffered a critical insufficiency of damns to give for years. |
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Ryuji-Dono
 Posts: 1239 |
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It was mainly addressed to the Japanese LGBT community, so it can mean something. No need to be cynical. |
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MasterKingJC
 Posts: 380 |
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Oh boy. Another one throwing around the freedom of speech stance without knowing what the (US-centric) original context of freedom of speech actually means . |
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GNPixie
Posts: 320 |
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I'm kind of shocked people are only just realizing and hearing this about Sugiyama now.
This has been known for yeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaars. Like, early 2000s at least. For people that'll probably suggest just dumping him as composer, that would mean every single piece of DQ music to date wouldn't be able to used ever again as those are owned by Sugiyama, just like how Toriyama owns the art and (I believe) Hori owns the scenario works and all that. That's part of the reason why Hori/Toriyama/Sugiyama are all listed separately under the copyright. The main theme is more iconic in Japan than the FF Prelude theme too. The guy's always been kind of a slimeball to be honest but given how much pull he has with Japan's music industry, I'm not expecting it to change until he passes away from natural causes or retires sadly. Last edited by GNPixie on Tue Aug 07, 2018 3:26 pm; edited 3 times in total |
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