Kotaku single handedly made me not respect gaming journalists

Yeah I remember this one. They claimed that Last Surprise included a slur in Nintendo's game, while _fucking Mass Destruction_ got censored for including "damn right". Yeah, sure, they're gonna let a slur pass, but "damn" is off-limits...

"let's go let's play retardant" these lyrics go hard 🔥🔥

In persona 5 scramble riuji says fuck

that’s one of those things where you just think for a second and ask yourself “why would atlas include a slur, especially when it doesn’t even make sense in context”

The wildest part to me about the article is that the lyrics are public so it would’ve taken the journalist 5 seconds to do their research and see that they’re wrong and go “maybe I shouldn’t submit this. This will really affect my and my publisher’s credibility”. Clearly didn’t happen.

They pretty sure gonna hear "all the homo men" when listening to Reach out for the Truth in P4 🤣

Fun fact: After Sora's inclusion as the final DLC character in Smash Ultimate, Kotaku came back one last time, writing an article about how Sora should have been made black for the game, as there are no black characters in the game (Outside of alts) Fans pointed how, not only is that dumb, but that Sora's ethnicity is most likely similar to Asian, so this would be Asian erasure

Ironic how in their attempts to call out a game for being bigoted, they were racist 😂

My favourite part of this was when Kotaku refused to take the article down. Instead they just added a note to the start of the article, defended the author, and left the headline the same so they would still get clicks on it.

Misheard lyrics in a nutshell is how I describe this fiasco

Even of it was the word retarded, it doesn't matter. Retardando is a musical term for gradually reducing in speed in terms of tempo. Which would be a proper use of the word. I've had many music teachers over the course of my life use the word this way and it's not meant to be offensive it's just Latin.

Worst part is, I don’t think the idiot that wrote that article ever apologized. They might’ve even doubled down

Generally speaking gaming journos have a serious issue with Japanese game devs, and I’m genuinely starting to think it’s actual racism rather than just blindness.

the dumbest part is that myself I thought it sounded like the r word as well and couldn’t figure out the real lyric, but I am very aware that it could not have actually been the r word because why would it be💀 kotaku really were starving for something to write about

Wait til Kotaku writers find out we still use the word retard in physics

Misheard it the first time too, but you have to admit -> Lyn's pronounciation of English Words have massivly improved -> just compare the Originals of ''Last Suprise'' and ''Rivers in the Desert'' with the metalized versions of Strikers

Kotaku should drop their own Japanese name for this confusing controversy…

I guess that situation was pretty [REDACTED]

Some people just have nothing to do in their lives

If anything they’re the one who is being offensive since they’re accusing a Japanese singer of a slur because they can’t pronounce some English words right

Actually on the topic of Kotaku, they wrote a article about Persona 5 a few months back where they claimed the game was homophobic because the Main Character and Ryuji weren't a gay couple. Granted, there WAS a scene in persona 5 involving Ryuji and 2 other gay men that did display a negative stereotype, but that was censored out in Royal because of complaints. The article I'm talking about is basically the author of the article complaining and ranting about his own ship with Ryuji and Ren Amamiya/Akira Kurusu (which are the two alias of the Protagonist in P5, for those who don't know) not being canon to the story of P5 and P5 royal. When I read it myself, I got so angry about it that I yelled the loudest I could in a rage. No wonder nobody likes gaming journalists or gaming journalism anymore! Because they write and publish crappy articles like that!

For another even worse instance of this listen the Mob Choirs pronunciation of the word "frustration" in their song "99.9"

Have You ever heard the Japanese word for run away?

Kotaku hears it so often its in anything they listen to.

A clear case of no research. A third of Lyn's lyrics are indecipherable without seeing them written out. Still has an amazing voice and mad respect for singing full songs in English without even knowing the language.

Kotaku: "you know, we COULD look up the lyrics and make sure it's actually using the R word. ... ... ... Nah. That would take effort. We're Kotaku"

Kotaku also exclaimed that P3P was 'Sexist' for having the female option to live out their 'Sexual fantasy' while also ignoring Persona 5 and the fact you can date grown women as a minor

In persona 4 theres An Easter egg when u reach the bedroom next to the calendar it's the persona 3 ost cover

NO!!!!! NOW I CANT UNHEAR IT😭😭😭😂🤣

I do remember this and I thought it was so wild how they didn't just look up the official lyrics and do some research, when that's literally their jobs as journalists.

I misheard it when I listened to the song as well. As a person to whom that term applies to, I found the concept of it just coming out of nowhere and not being elaborated in the song to be hilarious. I was fairly disappointed to learn that that bit of edginess was not snuck into the song.

When you try to fight for social justice but end up accidentally being racist.

Yukari in P4AU: 👀

I remember this one as well. Although, the first really dumb controversy that I remembered Persona 5 facing was when the western release’s box art for vanilla P5 was revealed. People were up in arms over Morgana being repositioned on top of Ann’s chest and were interpreting that as a sign of rampant censorship. Atlus’ PR Manager at the time clarified that Morgana was only being repositioned in the box art so that the mascot character’s face wouldn’t be obscured by the ESRB rating, since the ESRB rating takes up more box real estate than the CERO rating and they noticed that even the CERO rating was obscuring a decent chunk of Morgana’s face on the Japanese box art

I remember this I also know the singer got upset and she tweeted about it refuting their allegations. I also know the editor of Kotaku made a response saying they would leave the article up as the internet is forever. This was so dumb.

Honestly, even if it is *that* word, it means "to slow" in music, which makes sense to me!

People often wonder why I give no shits when it comes to game journalism. If it's not IGN taking money for higher reviews, or just being bad at games in general, it's dumb shit like this.

I just always assumed it was in a musical context and never thought twice

We not gonna point out how Fierce battle went misunderstood by a lot of people, Or the F word in P3? NOO let’s ignore the nazis in P2 and get angry at they English word mispronounced by the japanese speaker.

I mean, saying retarded randomly in a song would be weird and hilarious but wouldn't help the franchise, why the hell would they do it?

Funny how His world in this game with the lyrics of "Kicking Ass fast!" Putting on a show.

What's worse is the song had been out for years. They didn't care about the r-word, they cared about clicks

the worst thing is, after being called out, they refused to take responsability and edited the article saying "allegedly, fans pointed out singer says...", even when proved wrong, they continued to be racists pos...

The Spotify lyrics say it’s retaliate 😭😭

Kotaku is mad because they thought the word was directed to them and their journalists.

P5 Fans: *YOU NEVER SEE IT COMING* Kotaku: OH HELL NO

Honestly that just makes it better for me.

love it when the racism allegation just started going around i’ve never seen anyone apologized so fast

I mean they could just, yknow, take five seconds to Google the lyrics.

Yuzu Tanikawa in Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor on the Nintendo DS and Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor Overclocked on the Nintendo 3DS

Its almost like it's a Japanese person doing there best *and killing it i might add* to speak a second language

I knew it was a translation error but never knew what the actual word was

I always thought it was “Ritard it” like in music, like slow it down

I always heard restart it personally but retort it makes sense!

This is kinda unrealated to the song but, I like the fact that jokers prison number starts off with p5 It's stupid I know, but I laugh to myself everytime I see it

Thanks for explaining that to me. I love wake up, but I always heard the R-slur and it takes me out of the music, but I always forgot to Google the lyrics, now it makes a lot more sense!

I always thought they said that every time I listened to it

And they waited for the Smash reveal because...? It's like: "hey, they're talking about this game that's been out for months again! Let's make something out so we can talk about it too!"

The worst part about it was that I'm pretty sure the singer apologized despite doing nothing wrong

Kohaku really destroyed their reputation was this one article lmao

Controversy? With Persona 5?! Surely this can't be ri- _Kotaku reported that-_ *_Now the biting makes sense!_*

funniest thing is that the journalist clearly doesnt care cause they just call it "dlc music" since they clearly dont know where it comes from.

You had me at "Kotaku"

Well, there’s still the lyrics “crippled brain” in life will change

I THOUGHT THATS WHAT IT SAID TOO LMAO I knew it wasn’t but I remember being so confused and not knowing what else it could be 😭

I think all of you are being unreasonable. Surely you can’t be serious when you expect a journalist to do a five second google search. That would be considered actual research, a practice which is generally frowned upon in the journalistic space.

Wake up get out get out there kotaku version is fire🗣🗣💯💯 (I forget where the fire emoji)

Oh ahahaha I remember this. I was actually the one who made that giant post (under the original article in its comments section) that refuted the article’s claims point by point. I think a lot of people reporting on the controversy at the time and after the fact actually cribbed my research lol, not that I mind. I did it because I love Persona and I wouldn’t take any Lyn slander. It really bugs me when people maliciously twist non-English speakers’ accents into profanity when that was unintentional, too. Fun fact: while doing that research, I looked up videos of Lyn performing the song live to see if she said the same thing in other performances of the song. I found out that in live performances, that section of the song in question actually just consists of Lyn scatting along to the beat. So the truth is that it’s actually more than likely just a nonsense word and there is no specific lyric in that part of the song.

You never should've assumed you know what Yumi Kawamura and Lyn are saying whenever they speak Engrish, just find the official lyrics or something, job's done. 😂

Let me finish it for u- REtaRed

I didn’t know you could afford a lawyer 😮

Spotify says it as "retaliate" so that's the one I go with but after hearing about this article a while back (the word) is all I hear when I listen to it and it's funny to me because there's zero reason for the word to be there in the song and ends up sounding a bit absurd.

ngl i thought it said the same thing but i never cared cause i was vibing too hard

People hear what they mostly are related

NAH CUZ I THOUGHT THIS TOO WHEN I FIRST HEARD IT 😭

The game has much more controversies that are far more reasonable to get mad at, instead of a misunderstanding that could’ve easily been cleared up by just looking up the lyrics for the song

I literally hear "guitar hero" on this part

And they wonder why Nintendo blacklisted them.

I refuse to believe a word kotaku says after the whole totk thing they did

I instantly knew what it was gonna be about

I still hear “retaliate”

I’m waiting for them to add the antagonist canonical to persona 2 innocent sin into smash

I’m gonna be real, I thought she actually did say the R-slur and I just didn’t react at all ☠️

Who other than Kotaku? They are practically Vice

A very serious journal indeed

dawg if that’s considered a slur why don’t people cry when someone says autistic

Wait its a slur?

Ohya is wild for this one 💀

Dont worry we literally hv hitler in p2

i always thought it said "we target... the insane"

Kotaku has no idea that Japan exists

You see I thought that was the lyric, but I honestly thought it had a different meaning in Japan

Im surprised any1 even takes kotaku seriously 😂

The only lyric that bugs me the way it’s pronounced is shapeshifter in beneath the mask. It’s not a big deal, and the song still sounds amazing, but it stands out quite a bit.

Me and my friends made so many jokes about this We'd just use "retort it" and laugh

every time I listened to that song I always thought Lyn was saying retarded

I can’t name one time Kotaku has ever made a reasonable observation or a good criticism

Yeah, I remember. In the age of international communications I can't believe nobody went "hey, how about we just ask Atlus for the lyrics?" _before_ making an inflammatory article.

I would imagine that if the same person that wrote that article were to listen to A Lone Prayer, he or she would have a mental breakdown, thinking Atlus was secretly trying to summon Cthulhu or something.