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Comment by euske | Hacker News Reader

This is cool and illegal. What makes me envy of the West (or countries other than Japan in general) is that this kind of attempt is somewhat condoned and praised, while in Japan there would be a vocal outcry and finger-pointing campaign (with some media exposure) to the point where the author would be forced to shut down the project. It's a blessing that people can pursue things like this, and it's a huge shame that Japan is such an anal when it comes to a marginally illegal activity in an open space. (I'm sure some people do it underground though.)

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> It's a blessing that people can pursue things like this, and it's a huge shame that Japan is such an anal when it comes to a marginally illegal activity in an open space.

I've noticed spillover effects into Japanese gamers as well -- people being suspicious of or derisive about mods, even when they're perfectly legal and the game has built-in mod support (looking at you Monster Hunter World).

My (Japanese) girlfriend is on the very conservative side of the spectrum there and absolutely hates it when I bring up any kind of modding, and so do her friends -- the culture of "authorial intent is king" is very strangely strong for a culture that also appreciates and enjoys doujin.

Doujin works are made with the awareness that they are parodies of the original work. It does not alter the body of the original work in any way and, as the term itself means, self-published. It is made without any direct affilation in regards to the original work.

It's only because of time. If this were done on a newer platform/game or a game not as beloved, it would be closer to what you said.

Yeah and the way the author hedged this risk is by releasing it all at once. Nintendo may shut it down or even bring the author to court but the project is already complete. As long as just one person keeps a copy it will continue to exist and Nintendo can't do anything against it.

Your use of the term “open space” is interesting. The Comic Market could probably be considered a closed space but 600,000 annual attendants at a convention that glorifies and commercializes copyright infringement (to a good extent) suggests that there’s spaces in Japan for this sort of thing.

Doujin works organically grew underground before the internet era. I think the sole reason that doujin work is now somehow tolerated is that they're not minority anymore. They're big enough to gain public acknowledgement, but if a similar activity is attempted today by a much smaller group, they would be crushed by the public. It sucks to be a minority in Japan.

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