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INTEREST: Story of Seasons: Friends of Mineral Town Western Version Changes 'Best Friend' System Nam

That's one of the reasons why the indie game Stardew Valley became so popular, because it had that as a feature.

The only reason its called the Best Friends system in the Japanese version is because they don't want to cause controversy by calling it what it really is, gay marriage.

As much as I'd like to believe that this is what the original developers had wanted from the beginning, right now it looks like something the localization team thought up.

For the homophobic dumbasses claiming that Xseed is pushing a "gay agenda" against the will of the original producers or whatever: Xseed has literally said that the producers have supported them in just calling it for what it is: gay marriage.

So does that mean Naoko Takeuchi supported DiC's decision to change Haruka and Michiru into cousins? What about when China or Russia removes a gay kiss from a movie? Just curious if this is a two way street here and we should acknowledges those changes are the true canon since localization can't do anything without the explicit consent of the original creative side, as all defenders of localization changes love to bring out as a defense. You can like this change if you want, but a change is a change.

Japan has always had a problem with accepting LGBT people in any fashion, and even when actively showing stuff like that, they still have reservations about explicit confirmation of characters being on the spectrum due to their overly conformist values.

At least until the next time someone makes a claim that Japan doesn't have "Shonen Jump Weekly themes" then people will shift the tone again and say Japan is actually super progressive and has tons of support for LGBT stuff. It's getting a bit tiring seeing the narrative flip flop back and forth depending on stuff like this happening. Everything I see says that Japan doesn't really support this kind of stuff, but certain people keep trying to tell me it does

Banshou wrote:

As much as I'd like to believe that this is what the original developers had wanted from the beginning, right now it looks like something the localization team thought up.

My general rule is if something was really what the original creator intended, they wouldn't need a foreign localization team to change anything. It always comes off like damage control to me to justify changing things in localization. I see this more like XSEED trying to avoid another Tomodachi Life outrage where certain gaming outlets raised a stink because there was no option for same-sex marriage in that game, so if they can change the dialog and alter some art assets to avoid all that then they will. XSEED did something like this with Akiba's Trip as well to try to head off the accusations of sexism toward the American version of that game. I suppose we'll see how far they'll take it and if they also censor out the gender select option like the American localization did with Animal Crossing: New Horizons since even that seems like a touchy subject these days.