By Brian Ashcraft, 10:22 AM on Wed Jun 28 2006, 4,451 views (Edit, to draft, Slurp)

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That's what Kotaku reader Alejandro says on his 1Up page. LocoRoco looks to be the most interesting PSP game, since, well, Lumines. And while the game's creator might have stated he wanted to make a "happy game because there's too many 3D shooting game", Alejandro says that the game's anatagonists smack of blackface. Dubbed Mojya Corps, these dreadlock-like brown characters attack LocoRoco's peaceful world. He blogs:

Some countries such as Japan (where LocoRoco was developed) do not have significant Black populations and so Blackface images can come about without any criticsm. The images are also then okay to be labeled as the enemy or even serve as representations of Black characters in general, despite the racist images they perpetuate. That and I hear that Japan is just a very racist culture.

That's a big can of worms we're playing with here. Japan does not have a significant black population when compared to many Western countries. And for obvious reasons, the country lacks the same history of racism against black people. Koreans, Chinese and Burakumin, yes definitely, but not black people.

So, putting this in a Western framework can get sticky. Is it offensive to Americans or Europeans? Probably. What about Japanese folks? Maybe not. Those Little Black Sambo type books are still sold in Japanese bookstores, so this kind of character won't raise that many eyebrows. Then again, we're not just making video games for Japan, are we? Brian Ashcraft

More Here [Alejandro's 1Up page]