The newly released Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth has become another victim of “localization” as the English version pushes a feminist agenda that wasn’t there in the original Japanese.
There is a scene in the game that has two friends asking protagonist Kasuga what he said in his marriage proposal to female character “Sacchan” during his date.
Here’s the English version (albeit with the Japanese dub) of the scene in question (1:40:35):
For comparison here’s the Japanese version with Japanese subtitles (1:33:36):
The Japanese version actually translates to the following:
Do you think a girl like that who works hard and lives her life would be happy if someone told her they’d make her happy?
The original Japanese says nothing about “independent woman” or “needing someone to come in and save the day”. “Independent woman” is nothing more than a westernized feminist phrase meant to demonstrate that “women don’t need men.”
Such nonsensical logic suggests that simply telling a woman “you will make her happy” is somehow offensive to a “strong independent woman”, as if instead you should make a woman “not happy” during a marriage proposal.
Coming from this, in any sane world it makes absolutely zero sense and begs the question why you’re marrying her in the first place.
Even though Sacchan is a woman, she does a great job at work and taking care of her family, which is great.
“Onna nano ni” are the words used here, which mean roughly “even though you’re a woman”, so it essentially means the same thing as in the English version.
Hey hey! It’s bad to say “even though you’re a woman” these days.
Things like “because I’m a woman” or things like “even though you’re a woman”, there are a lot of people these days who get annoyed when people say things that make judgments based on gender, not just women.
As can be seen above, there was no mentioning of how such phrases are considered “sexist” in the Japanese version, and instead spoke more to the truth about how there are more “people” who get angry at such talk nowadays.
While the original Japanese version still seems to slightly push a feminist notion, the English version completely takes the dialogue and rewrites it to fully push a dishonest, feminist slant that suggests Sacchan “doesn’t need a man to be happy”.
Many found this ridiculous, considering the Like a Dragon series has entire mini-games dedicated to softcore videos, cabaret clubs, and practically has a full dating simulator, yet now the game wants to lecture to players what is and isn’t “sexist”.
Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth released January 26th for Windows (via Steam and the Microsoft Store), Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, PS4, and PS5.
