Conically yokai Tanuki have big stretchy ball sacs they use for various things, like fighting, playing drums, flying…
In real life Japanese goldsmiths used to use Tanuki scrotums to help pound gold into very thin gold leaf, place the gold under the skin as a buffer well they hammer it flat. They favored tanuki scrots because they were very tough and malleable, they could take a pounding better than any other animal skins. Why you get the big balls folklore and belief that tanuki bring prosperity and wealth. I looked this all up one day because I bought a couple tanuki statues from an estate sale that I kept on my porch for awhile and wondered why the nuts were so big.
Every time I see tanuki nutsacks referenced it reminds me of when I was younger and used to joke about the tanuki at the start of the stages in Legend of the Mystical Ninja on SNES having a giant nutsack. I didn’t think that’s what it actually was, just what it looked like. Joke was on me decades later when I learned that it was, in fact, a giant nutsack. Surprised censor-happy Nintendo just left it as-is.
Nintendo of America basically started the trend. NOA would censor games that were published directly by Nintendo themselves in Japan. Mother 2/Earthbound is one well-documented example.
But nowadays, Nintendo is a more global company, and so it seems that most of the newer titles they publish come pre-sanitized for a global audience to avoid the region-specific censorship they used to do.
Conically yokai Tanuki have big stretchy ball sacs they use for various things, like fighting, playing drums, flying…
In real life Japanese goldsmiths used to use Tanuki scrotums to help pound gold into very thin gold leaf, place the gold under the skin as a buffer well they hammer it flat. They favored tanuki scrots because they were very tough and malleable, they could take a pounding better than any other animal skins. Why you get the big balls folklore and belief that tanuki bring prosperity and wealth. I looked this all up one day because I bought a couple tanuki statues from an estate sale that I kept on my porch for awhile and wondered why the nuts were so big.
Anyway, yeah she probably wants those nuts.
Every time I see tanuki nutsacks referenced it reminds me of when I was younger and used to joke about the tanuki at the start of the stages in Legend of the Mystical Ninja on SNES having a giant nutsack. I didn’t think that’s what it actually was, just what it looked like. Joke was on me decades later when I learned that it was, in fact, a giant nutsack. Surprised censor-happy Nintendo just left it as-is.
This is a screenshot from Pom Poko (1994) Studio Ghibli. They were cool with this for kids.
I think some countries are just less prudish. Personally I let my kids watch it, better than seeing someone getting gutted or shot.
Nintendo probably started cracking down harder as they grew because of backlash from parents across the globe. Have to meet everyone’s expectations.
Nintendo of America basically started the trend. NOA would censor games that were published directly by Nintendo themselves in Japan. Mother 2/Earthbound is one well-documented example.
But nowadays, Nintendo is a more global company, and so it seems that most of the newer titles they publish come pre-sanitized for a global audience to avoid the region-specific censorship they used to do.
https://youtu.be/4WwJ6OVSwkM