I've been happy to note lately that there's been a sharp decline in a trend that had disturbed me for years — removing all references to Japan from Japanese import items.

As a fan of animé, and an artist of "manga" style myself, very little used to annoy me more than going into a store and scoping out the latest games, only to be faced with ugly, boring, uninspired box art that had little or no relation to the game. I mean, Enix's "Dragon Warrior IV" for the NES had the misfortune of having a lovely, functional Toriyama Akira picture of the eight heroes replaced with a black background and a (hideous) "realistic" painting of the Zenithian Sword. Less bothersome to me was Sega's "Phantasy Star IV" having cover art by world-reknowned fantasy artist Boris Vallejo; I would have preferred the Japanese box art, but at least Sega tried to make it look decent.

I found it irritating and insulting to my (11 year old at the time) intelligence that rather than the proper animé art, the first of Capcom's NES Mega Man" games featured box art that resembled an ugly, disproportional, unshaven human man in a corny Mega Man cosplay — and I know I'm not the only one who thinks so. I'm ever so grateful that the "Mega Man X" series has retained the Japanese artwork — even if it is dragging on forever ("MMX7" just becoming available for the PS2, as I recall).

So, why did the majority of companies do this? The answer, to my mind, is easy; most video games were considered to be catered towards children, and (in my opinion) companies probably decided that the adults buying the games for their kids wouldn't like seeing weird, cartoony artwork that in the minds of most non-animé fans is still associated with pornography. Not to mention the fact that references to Japan itself were (and in some cases still are) removed from most "mainstreamed" animé such as "Sailor Moon", "Pokemon", etc.

So why even bother to release Japanese games, or Japanese childrens shows? Again, the answer is simple: animé fans would buy it (if only to support it), and so would non-animé fans if they didn't think it had to do with animé, or didn't know what animé was (and up until the last decade or so, most people didn't).

Due to the rise of multiculturalism (and the growing legions of fans who would boycott a company of they botched a game), more and more companies are bowing under the pressure to keep Japan in Japanese games — and I, for one, couldn't be happier about it.

Manga is also seeing a sharp turnaround in quality — companies like Viz, TokyoPop, and Dark Horse are not only releasing full, unedited volumes of manga, but in a growing number of cases it's being released in proper right-to-left format. While the production values might not be top-notch, the translations and the effort at doing it right are definitely to be applauded — plus, Viz has been donating volumes to libraries nationwide. To a country of starving otaku, these companies are a godsend.

The number of stores willing to import merchandise for fans has been escalating within the last few years as well; I remember trying to find animé and game soundtracks in the late '90s, only to be told that it would be cost-prohibitive to import them, no matter how much I offered to pay. Nowadays, you can go to most major online stores and search for a Japanese title (say, the Arc The Lad: Seirei No Tasogare" soundtrack) and find it with little effort. Again, I couldn't be happier.

Even animé itself is suffering a bit less under poor quality dubs and subs, and translators who care less about accuracy than making it "sound good". While a lot of companies still seem to think that the average otaku is stupid — and there are enough "purists" out there who will pay an extra 5-10 bucks just for subtitling — with the skyrocketing market for DVDs, at least they can put both subs and dubs on one disc, and the battle over which is better is no longer being fought with money.

Why companies — video game and animé distributers alike — have felt the need in the past to rob us, the consumers, of Japanese cultural references and artwork, I doubt I'll ever know. But I for one am damned happy to have it back.

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