Dead or Alive and otaku culture: why sensitivity is not the same as censorship

The absence of a western release of the latest in the salacious and skimpily-clad beach volleyball series has caused controversy - but this is not about free speech

Ten years ago, Japanese video game publisher Tecmo had a brilliant money-spinning idea. It decided to take the female characters from its successful fighting game series Dead or Alive and put them into a beach volleyball simulation set on a tropical island. There would be a lot of bikinis and thanks to a then cutting edge graphics engine, a lot of bounce physics. Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball sold hundreds of thousands of copies. A new gaming franchise was born.

But now that same franchise is in trouble. Kind of.