It's easy to forget that, before the release of its first beach volleyball spin-off, the Dead or Alive series were taken fairly seriously as fighting games. We may have joked about the ridiculous jiggle physics, but the original was still considered a decent successor to Virtua Fighter 2.
Nowadays, of course, the Dead or Alive series is a joke, promising that new entries will be less jiggly, then turning around and flogging dozens of bikini, maid, and schoolgirl costumes as DLC. Which is why it's so absurd to read Tomotoshi Nishimura, the executive in charge of Koei Tecmo's legal affairs division, say they had no choice but to take action against fan art that might damage the image of the Dead or Alive cast—because their creators' think of them "like daughters".
The specific word used in the original Japanese is musume, which can mean "young girl" as well as "daughter", but not only is that still creepy in this context, it's a dated and overly formal use of the word. Nishimura almost certainly means "daughter" here.
Nishimura was speaking at a panel on intellectual property rights held at Tokyo Esports Festa, as reported by Game Watch. While he explained the company was grateful to its fans, and even sponsored the doujinshi convention Comiket, he also said between 200 and 300 Dead or Alive doujinshi available online had been suspended following legal action—in one case for using art from a game yet to be released. Nishimura also said that Koei Tecmo takes action against between 2,000 and 3,000 works of fan art posted to social media and artist community Pixiv each year.
Further explaining the company's stance, Nishimura suggested that some adult Dead or Alive fan art could damage the characters' image, and that image needed to be protected because other companies produced official merchandise of those characters. But also, you know, the daughter thing.
It's not the first time we've heard of Koei Tecmo taking legal action to protect the virtuous ladies of Dead or Alive. In 2021 it sued the producers of a DVD that used footage from nude mods. Meanwhile, the next game in the series will be Venus Vacation Prism: Dead or Alive Xtreme, a dating sim with a photography mode, which will only be released in select Asian countries.
