The context of that entire dungeon and the story content was a lot more risque in the Japanese version. It was themed after gravure idols (the character Maiko being a former gravure idol herself before becoming the talent agency founder). The dungeon was plastered with images of gravure idols, and at the end of the dungeon, the party finds the captured Maiko frozen like a photograph with the possessed photographer in a risque position.
As part of this storyline, the teenage character Tsubasa, who is seventeen, is intended to do some gravure swimwear modeling.
Having a technically underage girl doing gravure idol work in the western release would have led to its own problems. Anyway, to get around this:
- The entire dungeon and storyline section was changed to fashion modeling rather than gravure idols.
- Maiko's backstory was changed to being a former fashion model.
- All of the images depicting gravure idols were swapped out with fashion model images and Maiko's pose at the end of the dungeon was made less risque.
- A bikini that Tsubasa dons during the final confrontation is swapped with a stylish and less risque fashion ensemble.
- All dialogue in the game referring to gravure idols was rewritten and then rerecorded by the Japanese actors to match the English script. They also aged up all of the teenage characters by a year each, so Tsubasa is eighteen in the English version.
I realize this all sounds cumbersome and wild listed like this, but the end result is actually smoothly handled. If you had no knowledge of the original Japanese version of the game going in, you wouldn't suspect anything was off. That didn't stop some bitter assholes that were salty about censorship from trying to make the Treehouse look bad by trying to pass off a doctored image of Tsubasa in her western fashion costume talking about a bikini as an authentic part of the localization, though.
