There’s been a lot of news surrounding voice actor and musician Pierre Taki following his arrest as many of his work has been pulled from stores including movies like Disney’s Frozen and the Yakuza series spinoff Judgment. The inevitable topic was brought up during the latest Sega Nama broadcast featuring Ryu ga Gotoku Studios head and Sega chief creative officer, Toshihiro Nagoshi.
The conversation surrounding Pierre Taki and Judgment begins at around the 6:21 marker in the latest broadcast. Nagoshi starts out by saying that it was a lot of trouble and that he was very surprised to hear the news of his arrest. He goes on to explain that after seeing it on Yahoo News at night, his phone literally started ringing the moment he saw the news on his screen, then received nonstop emails and calls late into the night. He said with a laugh that it got to the point where he’d just shout “I know!”
However, on the business side of things he began consulting with the company on how to proceed the moment he saw it, and it was decided early on to pull the game from the shelves. He went on to share his own opinion, stating that it’s the kind of situation where there is no right or wrong. While he did put in a vote to remove it from the store, he says that he can’t disagree with those who said that “It was going too far” or “It has nothing to do with the product.”
While Nagoshi says that he sees and agrees with both sides of the argument, for those wondering “why did he vote to stop its sales then?” he explains that if it were a game that had been archived from long ago it might have been different, but considering it only released a few months ago it is a whole other story, and basically an easier loss to take.
He also commented on seeing news from websites reporting Judgment 2 has been decided and there’s been plans for Judgment 3, to which Nagoshi laughed at thinking “Who the heck?” as none of it is true. However, Nagoshi did mention that Judgment has been selling out after news broke, and it ranked #3 on Amazon Japan, but it made him think “Just buy it from the beginning then. [laughs]” The sell-through was about 97% and there’s not much stock remaining worldwide.
Lastly, when asked if there would be a sequel he says that at the very least the character Kyohei Hamura won’t appear in it, and there are many ways to approach it, such as changing the character.
Judgment is available in Japan for PlayStation 4. The game releases in North America and Europe on June 25, 2019.
