An Ignorant Goon Draws Near!

Move over American homophobes!

Say that's disappointing...huh? What's disappointing? Why this story about a Japanese politician making shitty comments about gay people. That's disappointing enough knowing that not even Japan, which thanks to time zones and jet streams or whatever seems to exist about ten years into the future, has been spared small-minded regressives with aggressively ignorant views about LGBTQ equality. But it's even more disappointing because now I have to feel weird about loving Dragon Quest.

"Slow, plodding gameplay?
Primitive graphics? Sign me up!"

-no one in America in 1989

Well, weirder. I'll explain. Dragon Quest is a series of Japanese role playing video games that started on the NES. They've never been super-popular outside of Japan, in fact Nintendo had to give away copies of the game to get Americans to even try it. They're an acquired taste, but I've been a fan since the first one and along with Final Fantasy, they were my first experience with video role playing games and manga style artwork. That's right, I'm playing the hipster 'it's super obscure, you've probably never heard of it card.' Oh, and also, the series was called Dragon Warrior back then because of some copyright bullshit, but you probably don't care about all that, so on to the raging homophobia.

Japan also drives on the left, so maybe
they just like to do their own thing?

The politician I mentioned, Mio Sugita, despite being a Japanese woman and a member of Japan's Liberal Democratic Party sounds a lot like a old white dude from America's jerk wing of the Republican party (yes, I know, they're mostly wing now). The Lib Dems, according to my exhaustive Wikipedia research, is Japan's right wing party and super into conservatism and nationalism. There probably is an answer as to the question of why the conservative party calls itself the liberal party, but that answer is almost certainly in Japanese and well, here we are.

Pictured: a childless straight couple
who can apparently fuck right off as well.

Of gays and lesbians Sugita said recently:

"These men and women choose not to have children. In other words, they are not 'productive.' I wonder if it appropriate to spend taxpayer money on them." 

-Mio Sugita, legislator, noted homophobe  

Oh, and it gets better. And by better I mean worse. She went on to suggest, in classic American homophobic asshat tradition that:

“...people may start demanding such rights as marriage between siblings, between parents and children, or between humans and pet animals or even machines.”

-Sugita going down a 

well-trodden slippery slope

"I don't know who this Sugita woman thinks she is, but this is a clear case of
intellectual property theft. I mean, we practically invented ignorant homophobia."

-Tony Perkins, head of the Family

Reattach Council and noted asshat

The story was 50% the Japan is weird
trope' and 50% the internet is kinda racist.

Yeah, then after getting tired of being married to their own parents and/or pets, they're going start marrying kitchen appliances and then when that ends in a messy divorce, people are going to start marrying abstract concepts. Holy shit, better start legislating some morality quick because the only thing that stands between the youth of Japan and marrying their Roombas and the notion of irony is Mio goddamn Sugita. Huh? Yeah, yeah, that Japanese guy who married his body pillow. Except he was Korean, the whole thing was a stunt and no, nobody married a body pillow. Ever.

So what the hell does any of this have to do with a long-running Japanese RPG series? Well, nothing until series music composer, and right-wing shit-merchant, Koichi Sugiyama invited Sugita on to his stupid cable access show or whatever to laugh at how liberals want to marry their dogs. Boooo.

"We'll be back with more of Mio Sugita's barely
coherent screed against homosexuals. So stay tuned."

-Japan's Fox News

Above: photos from some other
occupation and massacre...I guess? 

I say right wing-shit-merchant because in addition to composing the classic music to one of the best JRPG series ever, he also cohosts a conservative talk show on Culture Channel Sakura which I gather is sort of like Japan's Fox News if Fox didn't put on the pretense of being a shameless mouthpiece for the bananas right and people who miss the 50's. But that's not enough to make him a shit-merchant. Being a Japanese War Crimes denier is though. The Nanking Massacre? Yeah, never happened says Sugiyama.

Hey, maybe he should, you know,
shut the fuck up about the war and
 stick to composing music?

Sugiyama along with some other right-wing nutters even once took out an ad in the Washington Post to attack an earlier ad about the treatment of 'comfort women.' during the second World War. The term comfort women refers to the tens or perhaps hundreds of thousands of Korean, Chinese, Filipino, Indonesian, Burmese and Japanese women who were kidnapped by the Imperial Military and forced to work as sex slaves. Sugiyama and pal's ad claims comfort women, or 'ianfu' didn't exist but were instead legal prostitutes. It further asserts that the survivors are just lying. Awesome.

Anyway, so now we can add a sprinkle of homophobia to Sugiyama's already heinous worldview. But who cares right? I mean, what difference does it make that some elderly revisionist invited an obscure gaycist on to his stupid show for jerks? None, unless you're a fan of Dragon Quest. Before this story I was sort of vaguely aware that the composer of the series was a right-wing loon, but now that he's attached himself to Mio Sugita's crazy train, I've looked up the details and holy shit.

"[Marriage equality] could make people capable of enjoying normal romance
and getting married believe that they have an option of going homosexual."

-A thing Mio Sugita, a 

grown-ass adult, actually said

Most of the male cast of Arrested
Development, I'm looking at you...

Goddamnit, why do people have to ruin awesome things like Dragon Quest by being gross and hateful? I don't mean to suggest that the icky I'm feeling in any way compares to the horrible things Sugita and Sugiyama spout off about, but c'mon. And why hasn't the game's publisher, Square-Enix, fired the shit out of him? Especially now that for the first time in human history we're finally starting to hold people accountable for their words and actions through the power of public outrage and internet-based disgust?

Well, ok, I do know why. Dragon Quest games are traditional as hell and they've been using the same music and graphical style in all eleven games and the spin-offs for over thirty years, so yeah, they're probably reluctant to rock the boat. But there's still time to pull his score out before DQ 11's international release in September, right? I mean, rewriting and rerecording hours of orchestral music...how hard can that be? Oh...right. Very. Well, in the meantime, I guess I'll be playing Dragon Quest with the sound off. 

Here, enjoy these adorable Dragon Quest Slimes designed by famed Manga
artist Akira Toriyama-who's not a nationalist goon or raging homophobe. At
least not that I know of...Shit, if he is, don't tell me. I don't think I could take it.