While the most pressing threats to the future of fetishistic H-games have passed, the industry is showing signs of "turtling up" in response to the hostile climate.

Download-based distributor BGameBox announced that the search categories for "rape" (ryoujoku) and "training" (choukyou) would be removed from the site. The e-mail newsletter, however, revealed the vendor's true plans. Instead of preventing the searches outright, the categories would instead be replaced with euphemisms and puns. Rape games would be recategorized as "Platinum" games, and that "training" games would be called "thoroughbred". That latter one is much creepier, to me. Also, I don't think I'll ever be able to look at my credit card, the Playstation's greatest hits list, or the developer of Bayonetta in the same way again.

For those few of our readers old enough to remember the 1920s, this might sound familiar. The industry is retreating underground and lowering its public profile, just as what happened when alcohol prohibition was put into effect in the US. A bar became a "Speakeasy" or a "Blind Pig", and the black market sprang up to cater to now-illicit demand. The now-famous tentacle rape fetish also sprang at least in part from an effort to get around censorship regulations.

These analogies should of course be limited, since the H-game industry is at this point self-regulating, with the government mandates off the table, at least until at least until the Diet reconvenes next year.