The upcoming Revival My Dream is not coming to Hatsune Miku Colorful Stage, following localization issues and a debate over the racial undertones of the event.
The HATSUNE MIKU: COLORFUL STAGE! team has an important announcement in regards to the "Revivial My Dream" event! 📣
Please check out the message below for the full details~ 📝 pic.twitter.com/kZfaoCUHfE
— HATSUNE MIKU: COLORFUL STAGE! (@ColorfulStageEN) September 22, 2022
In a tweet, the Hatsune Miku Colorful Stage Twitter account said the Revival My Dream event would not be coming to the EN version of the game, citing “inappropriate” expressions.
“Upon reviewing the story and the event-related Alchemist’s Revival Gacha, we have concluded that some of the contents included expressions deemed inappropriate in general for the game”, they said in a statement.
“We are unable to alter the contents of the story or the gacha to suit the standards that would be acceptable for everyone even after multiple consultations with the relevant parties and it will be cancelled”, it goes on to say.
What’s interesting to note is that the Hatsune Miku Colorful Stage team has said that this would not be a one-off occurrence: they said this would be a course of action in future for events they deem unfit for localization.
A lot of the commotion is surrounding the event, which features a story about “townspeople” and “Jungle people”, but also uses a lot of negative terms like “savages” and “barbarians”.
Some fans have argued that the terms aren’t racially charged at all, though the general consensus is that if it looks like it touches on colonialism and uses language associated with colonialism, it might be saying something about colonialism.
While fans have argued that the event is just based off of Princess Mononoke, it makes sense that the EN team would be cautious about holding the event at all- following last year’s brownface allegations, it looks like they’d rather play it safe than risk another run of bad press.