Hentai game pisses off Chinese netizens

You might remember when I reported about an online protest against a “Japanese” symbol in a Chinese game. The object of that protest actually turned out to not be Japanese-inspired, but it’s the thought that counts, right? Now it seems that ultranationalist Chinese netizens have hooked onto a new outrage in the computer gaming world:

A Japanese-developed, adult-themed computer game has incensed some of China’s online gamers who deem it a bawdy slur on the classic Chinese novel, Dream of the Red Chamber.

Slaves of the Red Mansion, a fantasy game about girls sold into sexual slavery, has been denounced as “blasphemy” by some Chinese who have called for the game’s designers to apologize and halt its production.

“Turning Dream of the Red Chamber into a lewd game besmirches a treasure of Chinese literature, and is a desecration of Chinese culture,” thundered one irate surfer on web portal Sohu.com. “As a big fan, this is absolutely unforgivable for me.”

The game’s developer, listed as Takayashiki Development, could not immediately be reached for comment.

Dream of the Red Chamber, also known as Dream of the Red Mansion, by Qing dynasty (1644-1911) author Cao Xueqin, chronicles a noble family’s declining fortunes, and is often regarded as the zenith of classical Chinese fiction. The Japanese computer game, however, features images of scantily-clad young girls attached to chains and comes with an adults-only warning.

While the game’s setting has little to do with the epic novel, its Chinese critics believe the main character — a pallid young girl called Lin Daiyu — is a direct take-off of the novel’s heroine. They say the story’s character has been slandered; she’s described in the game as an illegitimate child born after her mother had an affair with a foreigner.

“Her mother died of drink and disease, and Lin Daiyu was sold into the red mansion,” the Chongqing Economic Times said, citing the game.

China is very sensitive about Japanese interpretations of its literary landmarks, and anti-Japanese sentiment regularly spills over into the virtual world.

As none of the English news sources I checked seemed to go into much detail about the Japanese game, I decided to investigate it further. Here’s what I could find on Japanese sites:

The Chinese critics are indeed correct when they claim the Japanese game is partially based on the Chinese novel. It wouldn’t be unreasonable to claim that the Chinese title “Dream of the Red Chamber” (紅楼夢) on “Slaves of the Red Mansion” (紅楼館の隷嬢達) simply based on the fact that they share the same character 紅楼 (Kourou or “red”). When combined with the fact that one of the characters in the game shares the name of one of the characters in the Chinese novel, it’s pretty much impossible to deny that the Japanese game is partially based on “Dream of the Red Chamber”. However, the similarities don’t extend much beyond the fact that the Japanese game uses a few names and plot ideas from the Chinese novel [I write this assuming that the Chinese novel doesn't have the generic hentai game plot of a single young guy having to choose between a variety of one-dimensional servile anime girl character types].

The Japanese game has a character named Lin Tai-yu, who is a half-foreign girl who tragically lost her parents and became a slave(the claim that she is the main character of the game does not appear to be true). The characters used to write her name are the exact same as those used by Lin Daiyu (林黛玉), a character in the Chinese novel who also happened to tragically lose her parents(The name of another character in the game, “Lin Hong-yu”, also appears to be based on a character from the novel). A look at the official homepage of the Japanese game reveals that even the romanization of her name, “Lin Tai-yu”, matches one often used to refer to the Chinese novel’s character. However, a quick look at the Japanese page reveals that Lin Tai-yu is nothing more than a generic timid maid character, not unlike hundreds of other maid characters that appear in Japanese porn games. Her maid-look (pictured above) also seems to clash with the general image of China’s Lin Daiyu (pictured below).

The full Japanese title of the game is “ピアノ～紅楼館の隷嬢達～”, or “Piano~ Slaves of the Red Mansion~”. For some reason, all the English-language news articles about this controversy failed to include the word “piano” in the title.
I’m not sure why they left out such an important part of the title. After all, a piano is smack-dab in the middle of the game’s cover image and we can assume that some sort of kinky piano-related action goes down in the game.

While some of the characters have names from the Chinese novels, some of the other character names have different origins. These include the characters Li Hsiang-Lan (based on Shirley Yamaguchi‘s name) and Elizabeth Plantagenet (the name of a Queen of England). It seems they needed some exotic-sounding names and didn’t have time to make up some original ones.

A group of Chinese netizens are outraged that a Japanese hentai game is loosely based on a Chinese novel. Why is there outrage from China, but no outrage from Japanese fans of Shirley Yamaguchi or English people who don’t like the name of one of their queens used in a porn game? I’m guessing it has something to do with the fact that only idiots would waste their time getting angry about some obscure Japanese porn game and the ultranationalist anti-Japanese movement in China is full of such idiots.

[For those of you interested, you can download a trial of the game at this site. I tried to sit through it, but it was incredibly boring so I closed the program after 5 minutes. I was unable to directly observe any insults to China in the game. Anyone up for the challenge of watching the whole demo and giving a summary?]

[News story found via Japundit]