[Solid Snix]

So the third dungeon of Tokyo Mirage Sessions was changed in the west and internationally with the Switch version of the game.

Originally it was a gravure themed dungeon, which is — think sports illustrated swimsuit edition. Now it’s fashion-model themed.

It’s sort of like a second-draft of that original dungeon, because the message that Tsubasa needs to dryhump a yoga ball in a bikini to be taken seriously as an artist is kind of ****ed up. But it’s not exactly saved, because having to model at all to be taken seriously as an artist is still ****ed up. The game could easily have used that as a jumping off point to make any sort of point about the entertainment industry.

TMS isn’t really interested in actually questioning or criticizing the entertainment industry, at least not thus far. I don’t really have a huge problem with that personally, I never really expected any scathing analysis out of this game.

I just think it’s interesting, because the initial reaction to the game’s localization changes indicated that it lost some sort of important facet to the story it was telling. The moral at the end of this chapter is that “Tsubasa needs to give it her all in every aspect of her career.”

Whether she’s posing half nude or not isn’t really relevant to the game’s narrative. The game doesn’t really say anything about gravure in the Japanese Wii U version, and it doesn’t say anything about fashion modeling in Encore.

Removing the nudity at all is still laughable though, especially considering that the game isn’t actually any less horny.