SEGA recently announced a new update for its arcade rhythm game CHUNITHM, set to go live on July 16. Among the typical system updates you’d expect to see, one bizarre patch note caught players’ attention. In an apparent attempt to address recent backlash from players, the publisher has, funnily enough, ended up unleashing more chaos in the community.
According to Sega, the in-game line, “Let’s make lots of babies and raise a happy family” will be replaced with, “The vampire knight keeping watch at night.” The line apparently serves as a special achievement you can showcase on your profile, and this begs the question – why would somebody want to showcase “making lots of babies” on their rhythm game profile? And if you’re wondering “how does one even go from making lots of babies to being a vampire knight?” – rest assured, you’re far from the only one asking this question.
The controversial line is actually part of a collaboration between Sega’s CHUNITHM and Ensemble Stars!! – an idol management game in which you get to produce your own J-pop boy group. Of course, there are many more different profile titles released for the collaboration, and all of them reference certain Ensemble Stars characters, with some lines being directly quoted from the idol management game. However, the “making babies” one definitely caught enough public attention for the publishers to decide to have it replaced (with an alternative that cannot possibly be further from the original).
The announcement of the lines being swapped was quickly spotted by an X user, garnering over 9 million impressions and sparking debate among players. While some found the bizarre change hilarious, others criticized the original line, saying it was in “poor taste” and with “sexist undertones.” As the Ensemble Stars!! main character is a girl (a self-insert of the player), and as the game caters to a largely female fanbase, telling your audience to “make lots of babies” does seem like a statement that would come under fire one way or another.
However, Ensemble Stars fans chimed in to say all of this was a misunderstanding, consequently making the whole situation take an even more comical twist. The theory they propose is that the controversial line in CHUNITHM was never meant to be a “distasteful” remark aimed at the female protagonist (or the player) – instead, it was just an “mpreg” joke referencing actual dialogue between two male characters in the idol game CHUNITHM is collaborating with.
“They’re not ordering the player to “make lots of babies”, the line is actually spoken between the two characters. No wonder why this [post] is causing misunderstandings.”
Dialogue translation:
Ritsu: Thank you Ma∼kun, I’m so happy you feel that way. Let’s make lots of babies and raise a happy family.
According to fans, the controversial “making babies” line is right there in the original Ensemble Stars, word for word. And all this chaos will start making a bit more sense once we look at who actually said the line.
The baby making enthusiast seems to be Ritsu Sakuma, a member of the idol group Knights, and his official profile describes him as a “vampire knight keeping watch at night.” This explains why the “making babies” line was switched with the “vampire knight line” – they are meant to represent the same character.
But how did the controversial line even end up being chosen for CHUNITHM in the first place? Despite it being a game with a large female fanbase, many of which are avid boy’s love fans, Ensemble Stars does not have any canonically “BL” content – however, it does tackle the theme of close friendship between characters that can sometimes get, well, really close. For example, one memorable thing about the character of Ritsu is his affection (and out-of-pocket marriage proposals) towards his childhood friend Isara Mao – which is why his line about “making babies” may have been picked to represent him in the collab. Though, even with the context, players are in agreement that CHUNITHM made a rather strange pick.
While it hasn’t been officially addressed by either party, some users suggest that Sega did not previously contact Ensemble Stars!! publisher Happy Elements about the details of the collaboration, possibly releasing some of the profile titles without them getting greenlit by the rightsholder company, thus causing a wave of chaos in both CHUNITHM and Ensemble Stars communities.
