According to the statement, the pair's comments — which focused on frustrations over changes that add more modest clothing to Akira Toriyama's original character designs for the upcoming Dragon Quest II HD-2D Remake — were both mistranslated and sensationalized by overseas media outlets (thanks, Automaton).
The conversation in the clip that appeared on social media was translated by Valute News, although the original post has since been deleted. The statement, posted to X, calls out Elon Musk's retweet of this original clip as a factor in the ensuing controversy.
The rebuttal specifically references the mistranslation of "Puritan" as "sex education" in the following line translated by Valute and attributed to Torishima: "There's a religious concept from the West, especially in America, that influences their approach to sex education, right?"
Horii and Torishima criticise outets and users of social media for extracting comments made in the context of a much longer show in which the radio hosts were guests (which has since been removed from YouTube), criticizing them for "arbitrary clipping videos that are different from the original content and message of the entire video."
Here's Apple's (imperfect, so bear that in mind) machine translation of the statement in full:
The alterations to Akira Toriyama have been a hot topic online since the character art for the upcoming remake was revealed earlier this year, and Horii and Torishima have now taken steps to distance themselves from the sentiments previously reported. The changes are minor, but for many it seems that they amount to censorship and tampering with the late Toriyama's work.
