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Playing with Pain: The Politics of Asobigokoro in Enzai Falsely Accused

Playing with Pain: The Politics of Asobigokoro in Enzai Falsely Accused

Tsugumi Okabe and Jérémie Pelletier-Gagnon

Abstract The genre of boys’ love (BL), which generally refers to a body of works that depict fictional relationships between beautiful “boys,” is produced for and consumed mainly by women in Japan. Ludic expressions of sexuality and gender unique to BL have gained popularity on a global scale but have also drawn negative attention. In this article, we employ the concept of asobigokoro (playful spirit/heart) to highlight the importance of regional ideas of play and playfulness in analysis. We argue that asobigokoro functions as a kind of counter-discourse as it privileges non- Eurocentric ways of knowing, understanding, and “playing” with representations of sexuality. Game analysis through an asobigokoro lens enriches the field of regional gaming by drawing on Japanese sociopolitical contexts to situate a reading of Japanese ludic representations. Asobigokoro stresses the importance of understanding cultural variations of “play” and “playfulness” in order to make sense of “taboo” subjects in culturally nuanced ways. In our textual analysis of Enzai: Falsely Accused, we that the simultaneous appropriation and subversion of violent and sexually explicit content, which characterizes the game’s asobigokoro, can be traced to Japanese feminist forms of asobi (play), which are rooted within the tradition.

1. Introduction Among the various efforts to promote greater rights for women in Japan, in February 2016, the UN Committee for the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) made a plea for banning “the sale of video or cartoons involving and sexual violence against girls and women.” According to CEDAW, “stereotypes continue to be the root causes of sexual violence against women, and , video games and animation products such as promote sexual violence against women and girls” (UN CEDAW 2016, 5, item 20b). In response to the ban, Kumiko Yamada, of the Japanese Women’s Institute of Contemporary Media and Culture, published an opinion letter in which she argued that prohibiting the sale of videogames

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and other media containing “controversial” content ultimately thwarts the individual and/or collective efforts made by women who have contributed to their cultural production and legacy (Yamada 2016). In the blog posted to the web page of the Women’s Institute of Contemporary Media Culture, Yamada also critiqued the implicit that underpins the “feminist” aims of the protocol by making note of how “men” are also victims of sexual violence, as in many and boys’ love (BL) and (erotic games) that play with homoerotic themes and content.1 Yamada emphasizes the need for regional perspectives to facilitate a culturally meaningful dialogue concerning fictional representations of sex and violence in Japanese popular culture. Bjarke Liboriussen and Paul Martin (2016) have drawn attention to a growing trend in the study of video games through a sociocultural lens that emphasizes the importance of understanding video games from within the cultural center of production. Coining the term “regional ” to locate this perspective, Liboriussen and Martin define it as “scholarship that explicitly situates itself in a particular locality” but where “such situatedness intersects with the power- geometries that cut across the local, national, regional and global.” We employ “regional gaming” as a conceptual framework to investigate the production of ludic expressions and representations in Japanese erotic video games. If the term “regional” in regional game studies “allows us to hold onto the reality that game studies does have a center—a concentration of intellectual resources in Western Europe and North America” (Liboriussen and Martin 2016), then the importance of regional concepts— “concepts that have been developed in non-Western epistemologies and social formations” (Liboriussen and Martin 2016)—in academic scholarship speaks for itself. However we advocate for applying regional concepts beyond academia to address international politics regarding the regulation of Japanese video games. In this article, we seek to widen the critical scope of regional game studies by applying asobigokoro, a Japanese concept of playfulness, in our case study of Enzai: Falsely Accused. Enzai: Falsely Accused (Enzai hereafter) is a Japanese PC game developed by Langmaor (a brand division of WillPlus, Ltd., a dōjin game production company). The game is co-produced by Yura, who directed and handled the game’s illustrations, and Yūma, the game’s scenario writer. Released on May 23, 2002, in Japan and January 25, 2006, in America (as the first licensed Yaoi game by JAST USA), Enzai tells a story of a young boy named Guys who is wrongfully accused and sentenced to life imprisonment for a murder that he did not commit. Much of the

1 See entry for Yamada for full transcript.

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takes place within a prison where Guys is repeatedly tortured and raped by other “male” inmates all the while trying to find evidence to prove his innocence. In countries such as Australia where Enzai has been banned, 2 the game’s graphic representation of both physical and psychological abuse, when taken out of its cultural context of play (asobi), runs the risk of conveying distorted impressions about morality (or the lack thereof) in Japan, perpetuating a discourse of cultural otherness that is characteristic of orientalist . Heeding the call of Yamada’s observations, this article begins with a working definition of asobigokoro from which we frame our textual analysis of Enzai by identifying some of its ludic elements. Having laid our conceptual foundation, we then contextualize Enzai within the wider tradition of Yaoi and culture.3 We conclude by outlining some of the limitations and potentialities of asobigokoro as we consider the challenges that might lie ahead.

2. Asobigokoro, Gender, and Gamic Realism The Japanese term asobigokoro is an ambiguous one. It is comprised of play (asobi) and heart/spirit (kokoro) and can be translated as playfulness, or a playful heart or spirit. The Japanese Kōjien dictionary defines asobigokoro as a desire to play for play’s sake but with (critical) distance (asobi hanbun no kimochi).4 The term also connotes a quality of leisure (yutori) that is characterized by a sense of witticism, lightheartedness (sharekke no aru kokoro), 5 and even a degree of mischief (itazura). We use asobigokoro to describe games that intersect the boundaries of play and parody. The asobigokoro quality of a game is not only manifest in its “fun factor,” but also marked by its attention to detail, craftsmanship, and creativity. Despite its strong presence in everyday Japanese culture, the notion of asobigokoro is not a term usually subjected to critical examination. While asobi may seem contrary to the widely held view of the Japanese as workaholics, Takeshi Moriya (1984) points out in the preface of The Playful Spirit of the Japanese People that it is not a matter of whether Japanese people are good at play (asobi jōzu) or bad at play

2 “Enzai: Falsely Accused.” 2002. Refused-Classification.com: Censorship in Australia. 21 Aug. 2009. Accessed September 7, 2018. https://www.refused-classification.com/censorship/games/e.html or https://www.refused-classification.com/censorship/games/a-to-z-listing.html. 3 In the translators’ introduction to Hiroki Azuma’s Otaku: Japan’s Database Animals, Jonathan E. Abel and Shion Kono (2011) describe otaku as “those Japanese, usually males and generally between the ages of 18 and 40, who fanatically consume, produce, and collect comic books (manga), animated films (), and other products related to these forms of popular visual culture and who participate in the production and sales of derivative fan merchandise” (xv). 4 Kōjien, 2nd ed. (: Iwanami Shoten, 1977), s.v. “asobigokoro.” 5 Daijiten, 2nd ed. (Tokyo: Kodansha, 1989), s.v. “asobigokoro.”

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(asobi heta) but that they like to play (asobi suki). Historically speaking, asobi has been associated with the sacred in Japanese culture and participating in the ludic activities of the Shinto shrines was believed to have been a way for one to reach the divine (Yoshida et al. 1987). According to María-Dolores Rodríguez del Alisal (2002), ludic attitudes toward creativity (tsukuru) sit at a crossroads of playfulness and religiosity whereby the joy that one feels in the process of making something is as great as seeing the final product itself. In relation to Enzai, we can assume that the process involved in making the game was “fun” as the game’s grotesqueness is over the top (as we will later discuss). Japanese ludic expressions of sexuality, particularly within the context of erotic video games, are designed to entice, provoke, and unsettle. Raveri (2002) points out that because play is also “constrained within the institutional matrices of power and authority” (13), “[w]hen ludic expressions become excessive—as Huizinga pointed out—they represent a threat to the stability of society” (4). In other words, because certain cultural ludic expressions may not always translate well in other cultural contexts, regional frameworks for understanding these expressions are necessary, and we agree that foreign pressure to regulate pornographic games “is akin to a new form of cultural colonization” (Pelletier-Gagnon and Picard 2015, 38–39), Japanese asobigokoro might offer a counter-discourse to colonialism. According to Massimo Raveri, Rupert Cox explains that “play in Japan is based on the absence of a clear distinction between creativity and order” (Raveri 2002, 21) and that as “ludic logic makes play an affirmation of certain cultural ideals and the social order; it is also a playful subversion of them” (Cox 2002, 182). Embedded in some forms of asobi, then, lies the potential to disrupt dominant forms of power in provocative and ironic ways. Within the context of regional gaming, an asobigokoro lens stresses the importance of domestic ideas of play and playfulness in game analysis to bring to light “unequal global relations within gaming culture and within the academic study of games” (Liboriussen and Martin 2016). Where the top-down decree of international policymakers’ ban of erotic and pornographic video games is concerned, we argue that asobigokoro functions as a kind of counter-discourse as it privileges non-Eurocentric ways of knowing, understanding, and “playing” with representations of sexuality. Game analysis through an asobigokoro lens enriches the field of regional gaming by drawing on Japanese sociopolitical contexts to situate a reading of how Japanese ludic representations are created and consumed. As a site of tension and constant negotiation, asobigokoro highlights the importance of understanding cultural variations of “play”

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and “playfulness” in order to make sense of “taboo” subjects in culturally nuanced ways, making visible the power dynamics between the center and periphery at play. In Enzai, elaborate sex scenes and rape reinforce the notion of spectacle. The game fleshes out, quite literally, scenes of rape, sex, and torture and it prizes itself in terms of its graphic depictions of sex between men by bombarding the player with hard-core pornographic images that compensate for the characters’ lack of emotional depth and the game’s lack of complexity. It is a game about collecting erotic memories and images to complete the narrative to the fullest. In fact, asobigokoro is even more emphasized through the fact that the endgame is to revisit the game’s gallery at your own leisure and to look at the scenes out of context. These aspects of the game indicate an awareness of the kinds of play, or asobi expected from both producers of and consumers of BL games. The conscientious and active engagement of producers and consumers with Yaoi visual novel games is strikingly similar to the way that so-called otaku produce and consume .6 To some extent, then, Azuma’s notion of database as “a model or a metaphor for a worldview, a ‘grand nonnarrative’ that lacks the structures and ideologies” used “to characterize modern society” (Translator’s note, Azuma 2009, xvi) might help to recontextualize the representation of violence in games such as Enzai. That is to say, the culmination of violence in Enzai should be understood not necessarily as “a simple fetish object, but [as] a sign that emerged through market principles” (Azuma 2009, 42). In other words, Enzai makes visible a bricolage of hardcore BL signs, which, through its repetitive representations, are emptied of significance, emphasizing the asobigokoro, or playful spirit of the game.(Azuma 2009, 42). According to Azuma, moe characters “are not unique designs created by the individual talent of the author but an output generated from preregistered elements.” (42). In explaining the proliferation of Di Gi Charat Azuma states that it “is not so much a project that naively relies on the desire of chara-moe but a complex project that, by pushing that desire to the limit, has become a satire for the present market dominated by moe-related designs” (47). Gamic realism (gēmu-teki rearisumu) follows from this. It refers to the notion that metafictional structures invade other media (manga and anime),

6 According to Azuma (2009), “The term moe is said to have emerged in the late 1980s, originally referring to the fictional desire for characters of comics, anime, and games or for pop idols” (47–48). He also describes “otaku in the 1990s [as] obsessed with ‘chara-moe,’ the various traits related to manga and anime characters and defined as desirable by otaku” (22). Some of these traits include “cat ears,” “maid costumes,” and “antenna hair” (44).

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severing the ties between narratives and characters. Instead, it places emphasis on the repetition and endlessness whereby the metastory becomes the real hook.

3. Feminists at Play? A Critique of Gender in Yaoi Games In this article, we refer to fictional works of romance and sex between men, including shōnen-ai, yaoi, tanbi, June, and boys’ love, under the umbrella term Yaoi, according to Kazuko Suzuki’s genre classification. First and foremost, unlike , a genre of manga created by and for gay men, the birth of Yaoi is often attributed to the cultural production of shōjo manga narratives and magazines, which emerged in the 1970s, created by and for women. While the origins of Yaoi and its visual tropes of the “beautiful boy” (bishōnen) have been traced to the prewar works of Kashō (Otomo 2015) and even further to Japanese historical practices such as nanshoku and kashoku (McHarry 2010), it was notably the publication of (1974) and The Song of the Winds and Trees (1976) by members of the Year 24 Group, an all-female group of manga artists known for revolutionizing the genre of shojō manga, that paved a path for the development of the genre. It is important to note that not all Yaoi products are created solely by women for women with strong feminist aims. Andrea Wood (2011) argues that recent research in both Japan and America “suggests that there is a small but evident demographic of male consumers for this genre. . . . the appeal of Boys’ Love games is not as gender segregated as some scholars have previously claimed” (373–74n7). According to Mark McLelland (2000b), “the author’s name is another site in which gender identity is destabilized” (23). He points out that many manga writers “write under one or several pen-names and it is impossible to know whether a male-gendered name signifies a male writer or a female-gendered name a female writer. Many of the names chosen are deliberately obscure, not simply about gender identity, but also contain coded references” (23). In Enzai, the gender of the director is made ambiguous, for only the (sur)name Yura (由良) is mentioned. That the scenario writer Yūma (ゆうま) has a name commonly assigned to men also refutes the predominantly held view that Yaoi is produced by women. The point here is not to focus on gender specificity, but rather to point out certain limitations and risks in trying to attribute male or female gender markers to a product that plays with notions of gender to begin with. Moreover, though women are scarcely represented in Enzai, there is much talk of women featured in adult

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magazines among male prisoners,7 suggesting that although these “men” have sex with other “men” they also sexually desire “women.” Homophobia also seems to exist within the game since sex between “men” is justified by some of the prisoners as a means that simply fulfills their bodily needs. In other words, whether or not the creators of the game use pseudonyms—presumably to separate regular work activities and boys’ love—the asobigokoro aspect of the whole creation process of Enzai is emphasized in this ambiguity.

4. Ludic Formulae of Enzai Bishōnen and Shota-con Elements While critical attention has been paid to Yaoi in English- language scholarship, there are fewer definitions that encompass the variations of the genre within the subset of erotic Japanese video games (Miyamoto 2013; Pelletier- Gagnon and Picard 2015; Galbraith 2011; Wood 2011). According to Mia Consalvo, “sex and sexuality have been integral (if subtextual) parts of many games, and their expression generally reifies conservative religious beliefs about heterosexuality and ‘proper’ romance” (Consalvo 2003, 171), but as Wood points out, “Boys’ Love games . . . present queer views of sex, sexuality, and erotic fantasies that destabilize normative understandings of these terms. First and foremost, these games, much like their manga and anime counterparts, trouble gender in some significant ways” (2011, 362). Yaoi games might be seen as competing against the eroge industry. According to Pelletier-Gagnon and Picard (2015), “computer game production has been tied to since the very beginnings of the game industry in Japan, where erotic content was typically used as reward and incentive for playing” (30). Erotic games generally target a male audience and, though the contents of these games vary, they more or less serve the same purpose as ero manga in that “the sexual aims that are dominant in ero manga and dominantly male are seeing, possessing, penetrating, and hurting” (Allison 1996, 64). Creators of Yaoi games accomplish to renegotiate the sexual aims of eroge, resisting established power relations by replacing beautiful girls (bishōjo) common in eroge with beautiful boys (bishōnen). The beautiful boy archetype (bishōnen) is a staple in BL and other Yaoi genres. Bishōnen are characterized by their slender, white, hairless bodies, with flowing hair

7 During the prisoners’ break time, some of them often gather in the courtyard and look at adult magazines. In one instance, Prisoner C states, “There are tons of guys who will settle for men in this rotten world. When there aren’t any women around, that is.” These characters are not part of the major plotline of the game.

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and large eyes. They are youthful and androgynous-looking, which according to McLelland (2000b) makes it “difficult for someone not familiar with the illustrative tropes of the genre to work out the sex of the figures depicted” (18). As caricatures that transcend normative ideas of gender, bishōnen occupy a liminal space and they “can be read as a figure of resistance: both to the notion that biology is destiny and to the correlation between biology and gender role” (McLelland 2000a, 78). In countries such as Japan where “heterosexual sex . . . is structured in relation to two strong paradigms: the sex trade and the family” (McLelland 2000b, 22), the notion of bishōnen serves as a “blank canvas upon which she [the woman writer and reader] can develop her rhetorical, ideal relationships” (Suzuki 1998, 248) through a kind of subversive play. In fact, the representation of male homosexuality depicted in Yaoi was used to critique the objectification of women in ero manga by projecting women’s desires onto androgynous caricatures, while simultaneously satirizing aspects of male sexuality. In what became known as the yaoi ronsō—a series of critical debates on Yaoi that appeared in the Japanese feminist magazine Choisir from 1992 to 1997 (Isola 2010, 86)—critics expressed divided opinions regarding the subversive potential of Yaoi. Drawing on Fujimoto Yukari, Isola argues that Yaoi “allows the female viewer to move from the perspective of the violated to the perspective of the voyeur and the violater” (Isola 2010, 89). However, Isola also points out that for critics such as Takamatsu Hisako Yaoi offers an “egalitarian model for gazing” (Isola 2010, 89),8 which offer idealized models for reimagining dichotomies of female passivity/agency, seer/doer, victim/perpetrator. According to Deborah Shamoon (2004), “Masochism and rape fantasies provide one method of allowing the female characters to engage in dirty acts without themselves becoming dirty, and without owning the desires depicted” (97–98). Dru Pagliassotti cites Kazuko Suzuki’s argument that “women write rape scenes into BL manga as a form of resisting the social stigmatization of a rape victim” (2010, 68, citing Suzuki 1998, 258). But it has also been widely acknowledged that a simple inversion of existing gender roles arguably runs the risk of reasserting gender stereotypes. Also, an implicit claim is made that women are empowered through the

8 A note regarding the citation of this source. Isola writes on page 89, “Takamatsu Hisako responded to Masaki’s criticism by arguing yaoi was liberating for women because unlike heterosexual stories, where women are routinely the object of male gaze, yaoi constructs an egalitarian model for gazing.” The footnote following this sentence cites Wim Lunsing (paragraph 15). Lunsing, however, does not actually use the phrase “egalitarian model for gazing.” Instead, paragraph 15 of Lunsing’s essay ends with a footnote that references Takamatsu Hisako’s work as follows: Takamatsu Hisako, “‘Mikata-teki’ ron no karegata e: miyoo to suru koto, miete kuru koto”[To those who engage in the 'ally-enemy' discussion: what you try to see, you get to see], in Yaoi Ronsō I [The Yaoi Controversy I], Tokyo: Choisir, 1994, pp. 4-6, (first published in Choisir, vol. 20, May 1992).

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marginalization of “homosexuals” and “homosexuality,” which does little to destabilize a patriarchal hierarchy of power. Consequently, while some Yaoi narratives allow some women to renegotiate their subjectivity, the renegotiation is ultimately achieved at the expense of perpetuating myths about gay cultures. At the same time, however, McLelland (2000b) reminds us that “the beautiful boys in women’s fiction are not like real boys, nor are they like real gay men. These comics say nothing about how gender is, but about how it ideally should be: negotiable, malleable, a site of play” (23), or asobi. In Enzai, the representation of “male” bodies as having been wounded, scarred, or bruised seems to contradict the bishōnen aesthetic, but for some it might heighten the desirability of the characters. Enzai makes visible the creators’ playful, but also careful, rendering of the bishōnen figure by simultaneously appropriating and subverting its visual form. Set in post-revolutionary France, Enzai paints a picture of a bleak society where those with capital and political power manipulate the law to protect themselves from consequences for the crimes they commit. Guys is the focalizing agent from whose perspective the player understands the world of Enzai. He is characterized in terms of a shōta-con visual aesthetic and represented as an innocent and inexperienced young boy. “Shota or shotacon9 is used generally to refer to manga or anime [and video games] depicting sexual acts between young boys or between adults and young boys” (Pagliassotti 2009, note 28). In order to “avoid associations with what might legally be classed as virtual ” (Wood 2011, 367), JAST USA changed Guys’ age from 14 to 18 and omitted some scenes for the game’s release in North America. Guys is younger, and smaller in comparison to other bishōnen characters in the game, which reinforces his youthful appearance (that is, except for Io, who is also presented as a shōta-con character). In contrast to his appearance, the use of the Japanese personal pronoun “ore” instead of “boku” and the use of the modal expression “darō” renders Guys assertive and “masculine,” hinting at the possibility that he “is not a passive player in the prison power hierarchy” (Wood 2011, 372). The primary objective of the game is to prove Guys’ innocence, but also to unravel the mystery of the conspiracy that led him to prison. Guys is frequently visited by his lawyer, Lusca, who works to build a strong case against Guildias, the detective

9 “Shōtarō was the name of a young male in the manga series Tetsujin 28-go, and thus the term reportedly—the author has yet to locate authoritative confirmation—derives from the character’s name to characterize a ‘Shōtarō complex’, or an appreciation for the cuteness/sexual appeal of young boys, paralleling the use of for ‘Lolita complex’, or an appreciation for the cuteness/sexual appeal of young girls” (Pagliassotti 2009, note 28).

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who framed Guys for murder. Throughout the game, Guys befriends his fellow inmates who possess knowledge, information, and clues that ultimately help him prove his innocence and obtain his release from prison. During his imprisonment Guys is tortured and abused by his fellow inmates as well as the prison guard, Durer, who enjoys sadistic sexual play. His fellow inmates, however, also become his potential love interests, based on choices made by the player at the decision points. The gameplay requires very little engagement because a player is only able to make a limited number of choices. Some of these choices request the player to make practical decisions, such as to “Stay in your cell” or “Go outside”; to “Get some rest” or “Go have some fun”; and “Don’t go with him” or “Go with him.” The choices made by Guys (i.e., by the player) lead to ten possible different endings. Making the wrong choices leads to a “bad” ending—Guys’s madness or death. Making the right choices leads to several “happy endings” with one of the characters with whom that Guys develops a love interest. Aside from solving a mystery and playing the role of the detective in collecting evidence and clues, much of the gameplay revolves around Guys’ sexual encounters.

Seme and Uke Dichotomy The term yaoi is by definition “a sardonic acronym for yama-nashi, ochi-nashi, imi-nashi (no climax, no point, no meaning)” (Levi 2010, 2). It was coined to describe homoerotic works created by amateur hobbyists (dōjinshi) that parodied popular manga and anime often through the coupling of two male characters. Boys’ love, however, refers to the commercial brand of Yaoi, which emerged in the 1990s. Unlike yaoi, boys’ love is often characterized by happy endings, and rigid rules such as the one-stick one- hole formula (ichibo ikketsu). For this reason, as Suzuki (2011) explains, yaoi offers “a venue for self-expression without . . . restrictions placed on other ” (106), which is, for example, made manifest in the diverse range of the coupling of characters (known as kappuringu). Kappuringu results in two distinct roles: seme and uke. In brief, seme is derived from the Japanese word semeru, meaning to attack, whereas the uke connotes the opposite, meaning to receive or the recipient of the act (ukeru). This paradigm sets up a dichotomy whereby ideas of submissiveness and domination are used to illustrate the power dynamic between characters. Relationships often start with the assertive seme who seduces or coerces the shy and passive uke in unwanted bodily contact or sexual acts. In Enzai, Guys (the player) endures various forms of rape and torture by leather strap, metal bar, soft cloth belt, and burning candle wax. There are many bizarre

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moments and obscene scenes in the game and while these ludic representations might be considered “deviant” and “obscene” from a Western perspective, it is equally important to stress that these elements do not conform to, or reaffirm, mainstream Japanese values. Asobigokoro thus does not fit neatly within the region of Japanese game culture, but rather creates its own dynamic space for the subversive nature of asobigokoro and games such as Enzai.10 Games such as Enzai deliberately flout the emphasis placed on monogamous relationships by violating the idea of an egalitarian romance quintessential to boys’ love by the mere fact that the player is required to interact with other male characters in various forms of BDSM play in order to move the plot forward. According to Wood, “Although this objective [escape from prison] is ostensibly the player’s main goal for ‘successful’ narrative closure and completion of the game, far more critical to the experience of ‘play’ in Enzai, as with Zettai Fukuju Meirei: Absolute Obedience, is making decisions that will ‘unlock’ the sexually explicit sex scenes” (2001, 369). This, she argues allows the player to participate in a kind of “erotic scavenger hunt” (2001, 369), which speaks to the asobigokoro (playfulness) of the game, however problematic.

5. The Prison, Body, and Otaku Culture Enzai belongs to the tradition of other Yaoi games such as Gakuen Heaven (2002),11 Togainu no Chi (Blood of the Reprimanded Dog 2005), Lucky Dog (2009), Hadaka Shitsuji (Naked Butler 2011), and Dramatical Murder (2012), to list but a few other examples, which “play” with themes of illicit sex, rape, and torture to varying degrees. Indeed, many games rely on the uke/seme paradigm to construct a power dynamic between characters that is reinforced by the setting in which these games take place. Naked Butler (2011) is set in a mansion, where the master/butler dichotomy that underpins the narrative prepares the audience for the various forms of play. In Gakuen Heaven (2002), the senior/junior (senpai/kohai) dichotomy of the school setting works in the same way. In Enzai, we see “power dynamics in the prison hierarchy unfold” (Wood 2011, 369) in the prisoner/prison guard dichotomy. Setting is a crucial aspect of Yaoi games. McLelland (2000b) has pointed out that in manga, the stories are “usually set in an ill-defined ‘other’ place (often Europe or America), in another historical period (more often the past but sometimes the future)”

10 See Pelletier-Gagnon and Picard (2015) for critical discussion on the intersection between national policies and the eroge industry. 11 Gakuen Heaven was first released for the PC in 2002 followed by the PS2 version in 2003 and PSP version in 2009. It has also been adapted into an anime, manga, and novel.

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(18). In addition, these types of games also take place in various disciplinary institutions such as schools, churches, and prisons. The rigid confines of the prison and the enclosed settings in which various forms of BDSM activity occur serve as a commentary about repressed sexuality that is made visible in a most violent and hyperbolic way. For this reason, the game’s graphic depiction of flesh covered in blood, saliva, semen, and sweat shows how the creators “every trick in the book” to make a spectacle of the body. Wood goes so far as to argue that “despite its dark and unsettling content, Enzai: Falsely Accused has the potential to resonate with young adults who feel oppressed by adult power and authority, especially in regard to sex and sexuality” (2011, 372). The exaggerated sound effects (screaming, crying, moaning in pain and pleasure), along with the hyperbolic representations of Guys’s reaction to being touched, kissed, and tortured, all play into this effect. In fact, on some occasions Guys admits experiencing pleasure despite having been forced into having , performing oral sex, and masturbating in front of his attacker. Even after Guys’ first encounter with Durer, the prison guard who him, Guys states “I can’t believe I forgot the pain” although he also repeats “how it felt awful.” Phrases such as “I can’t stop panting,” “strong sense of pleasure,” “sweet numbness,” “strange pleasure driving me crazy,” and “swimming in sweet pink pain” all obscure the notion that the sex is nonconsensual. Guys also expresses his carnal desires as in the case with Belbet, when he wishes, “I want him to do it stronger.” In other words, Guys is not only a passive victim of sex, but an active agent in some scenarios. Indeed, the prison setting manifests a kind of space wherein the rules of the outside world are no longer applicable—where one no longer has control over what happens to “his” own body. The game blows this aspect out of proportion, utilizing prison (as what we could interpret) as a metaphorical space to explore the apprehension about the conjugal space, a space governed by patriarchy where the potential for conjugal abuse always lingers. The enclosed space of the prison also manifests some elements of otaku culture. If we consider how most of Yaoi culture is tied to the physical space of Otome Road in Ikebukuro, Tokyo, Yaoi cultural productions could be seen as comprising their own enclosed mental and social space, protected from normative social norms, where products such as Enzai can be created without judgement. One may also interpret this enclosed space as being directed by asobigokoro, as manifested in the hyperbolic violence and pleasure featured in the game. In its form as an otaku-made digital interactive text meant to be consumed by fellow otaku, Enzai occupies a unique place

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within a certain tradition of self-aware otaku productions exploring the condition of the media fanatic. In the 2005 film Train Man (Densha Otoko), for example, the protagonist redeems himself through the romantic pursuit of someone of the opposite sex, while in manga and anime series such as WataMote, 12 the socially inept female protagonist chooses to reject society and contact with others to pursue happiness through her own means. Enzai can be seen as a text that explores this dichotomy once more but exploits its branching storyline structure to provide different possibilities without a stable ending. For example, many playthroughs may end with Guys’s death in prison because he is never able to solve the mystery, while other endings provide escape through serious romance with a secondary character. Enzai hints at these possible situations, but never quantifies the ending conditions as being more or less valuable; rather, it emphasizes unlocking, revisiting, and enjoying the captured moments of guilty pleasure within the gallery, postponing resolution and action. In this light, Enzai is an exploration of the Yaoi condition and mental space where on the one hand, pleasure is derived from the production of Yaoi cultural products (through the enthusiasm associated with asobigokoro), but that same pleasure works as a form of self-inflicted violence against the Self as it renders producers of Yaoi at the margins of society. The text provides exit points from this condition, but unlike Train Man and WataMote, it does not make escape its primary objective.

6. Asobigokoro’s Limitations and Potentialities This article has identified several ludic constructs of boys’ love with a focus on Enzai. We will now address, in brief, the challenges and potentialities of asobigokoro. At a time when the #MeToo movement and other campaigns are raising public awareness about issues of violence against women and matters of consent, especially in North America, we predict that boys’ love games and other Yaoi products, with their emphasis on the portrayal of rape fantasies (albeit between “men”), will endure even greater obstacles, despite their subversive potential. However, we see the opportunity for the application of regional concepts such as asobigokoro to mediate the deeply complex and culturally rooted prejudice against games such as Enzai. Asobigokoro may not always have political implications, but it must be understood in relation to the rules and

12 A manga series titled No Matter How I Look at it, It’s your Guys’ Fault I’m not Popular! (Watashi ga Mote nai no wa do kangaetemo omaera ga warui!) written by Nico Tanigawa and published by Square , was published from January 2013 to July 2015. The anime spinoff, which consisted of 12 episodes, ran from July 2013 to September 2013.

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principles of asobi (play) of a particular genre and tradition. In the case of Enzai, we have shown how it is rooted in the tradition of Yaoi and feminist forms of play. Several critics have commented on the formative aspects of Yaoi. With specific reference to Enzai, Wood comments on how “the game demonstrates a critical awareness of how age plays a factor in cultural understandings and depictions of sex and sexual autonomy” (2011, 372). McHarry posits that boys’ love manga and anime (and, we would add, video games) “in which the adolescent male is predominant, may offer real-life young males a way to safely explore their sexualities, as they do for some females, and to help them form their subjectivities” (2010, 184). Orbaugh also sees the benefits of narratives that play with sexuality because it “allows them [youth] to make informed and independent choices about their own sexualities in a safe space, before they (or as they) engage in real-life sexual behavior” (2017, 104). CEDAW’s protocol to ban the sale of video games and other media that depict sexual violence fails to recognize what these video games might offer to some players. In fact, critics such as Orbaugh warn us of the dangers of “shut[ting] down all discourse on sexuality in order to try to keep exploiters from it” (2017, 105), and Cather calls attention to how “local censorship laws are aligning more and more with international norms” (2017, 79). We recognize that we may have presented a controversial reading of the game, but we also stress the need for critical work on Yaoi games to be situated specifically within regional concepts such as asobigokoro, and not only approached from the conceptual framework of gender as is most often the case. Moreover, while Japanese asobigokoro is useful for analyzing the production of Japanese Yaoi games, we believe that there are other useful regional frameworks for investigating notions of “play,” “entertainment,” and “humor” that are equally relevant and in fact necessary to widen the scope from which the production of games with “taboo” content can be studied across cultures.

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