Koichi Sugiyama, the composer behind the hit franchise Dragon Quest, perhaps the most influential story in history, which has been relied upon for virtually every other fantasy anime ever made, is dead at age 90. His last work will be unveiled with the release of Dragon Quest XII, which I'm sure will be another great game.
I only have one song of his in my music hall of fame, 'Unknown World,' but that doesn't mean he's a mediocre composer. His music fits the theme of Dragon Quest's world as a whole, which is cheerful and silly. The same is true of Akira Toriyama's art, where the monsters are so cute you often want to hug them instead of fight them. He delivered exactly what the game makers wanted and he did his job perfectly ever since 1986 when Dragon Quest 1 revolutionized the world. My preference is epic, serious, martial music for fantasy games so Koichi's oeuvre just happens not to fit in.
To get a sense of how important Koichi is, the very first song that played in the Tokyo Olympics parade of nations was the Dragon Quest overture. That makes Koichi Sugiyama the face of Japan, more prominent even than Nobuo Uematsu or Yasunori Mitsuda or Motoi Sakuraba whose music followed after.
Koichi Sugiyama was born in 1931 and a teenager during World War II. Unsurprisingly he's a Japanese patriot who supported his side of the war, as he was raised to be and as anyone who lived during that period was. I wouldn't be surprised if he had to serve in the army in some capacity even though he'd only have been 14. The war was an all-hands-on-deck kind of situation.
In addition, like everyone born in 1931 under Imperial Japan, he did not have a high opinion of sexual deviants. He was taught to despise weaklings and wreckers like that, and everyone in his peer group agreed with him so why would he ever think differently? The last thing you wanted as your wingman in World War II was some prancing, princing, flaming faggot more worried about his nails than killing the enemy.
However, ignoring the entire context of his life, he's now being assailed as a lowlife bigot for these opinions. Instead of respecting his incredible life accomplishments, the astounding impact for good he's had on the world by bringing Dragon Quest to life and entertaining hundreds of millions of people for forty years, they're digging up old quotes where he said one un-PC thing or another. Guess what, video games are made by straight males for straight males. We are the people who play these sorts of games, and we are not, in general, politically correct. We have a right to our own opinions and our own culture, and his detractors aren't worthy to shine his shoes. These fat nobodies on the internet who have never achieved anything in their lives are blathering on about how much better people they are because they condone ramming penises up people's asses or prefer Communist China over Imperial Japan, the country which then went on to massacre the highest number of people in human history.
It's the same thing with George Washington or Robert E. Lee. These people founded nations, swayed millions to a world-changing cause, braved bullets in battle and pulled off tremendous feats no one else has ever matched in the history of warfare, all while being venerated by their contemporaries as kind, honest, just men of tremendous personal virtue. Nevertheless, some fat 300 pound slob on the internet can brag about his tolerance of penises ripping and tearing asses and spreading disease, which makes him superior to all the men who came before him.
We tear down the statues of great men who performed great deeds and erect statues to George Floyd, whose only accomplishment between armed home robberies was overdosing on fentanyl.
This is a sick, inverted value system which instead of encouraging greatness in future men to match their ancestors' deeds, encourages the lowest form of degradation with the promise that so long as you parrot the establishment's latest moral fad you don't have to do or become anyone or anything. You can sit on the internet and brag about how great you are for using the right emojis or pronouns, you don't actually have to diet or work or exercise or start a family or win a war or do anything at all. You're free to overdose on fentanyl too, odds are you'll get a statue in your honor like George Floyd, whereas if you founded a new nation and won a revolutionary war your statue would immediately be torn down.
Koichi Sugiyama's opinions are, in the main, more correct than the average liberal, so I have no interest debating whether he was right or wrong about any particular issue. That isn't the point. The point is this person is one of the main reasons Dragon Quest exists, and thus pretty much the entire Japanese fantasy and isekai genre exists, which is the wellspring of around half the best art ever made, and he deserves some goddamn respect. Especially from people who claim to be anime, video game, light novel or manga fans. They owe him everything. Forty years of hard work, so much so that he was still working at age 90 to make Dragon Quest XII great for us, and all you can do is talk about how he impacted gay people's feelings. Do you think he was working at age 90 for the money? Do you think he had anything left to prove after the incredible artistic brilliance and success of Dragon Quest XI? No, he did it for the fans. He worked until the day he died out of love for us, our community, the fantasy loving world. Have some common decency and just thank him for a job well done.
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