Japanese bureaucrat arrested for taking up-skirt photos. Blames gaming. Wins cliche of the year award

If you're engaging in overly-clichéd behaviour, surely at some point, if you have any level of self-awareness at all, you realise it. Obviously not every one does. Legions of hipsters still to this day sit in coffee shops perusing their Mac Books without the slightest sliver of irony at all (aside from the usual swathes of standard-issue irony that infuse everything they wear and do on a daily basis, naturally). Rafts of teenage girls still take mopey, wide-eyed black-and-white photos and stick them on their Facebook profiles next to whiny, self-pitying, attention-whoring status updates.

Some people just don't get it.

Above: People not getting it

Such seems to be the case with this story. Because seemingly not content with just falling into the Governmental-Sexual-Deviant stereotype slot, and not entirely satisfied by being a late 30s Japanese man taking illicit up-skirt photos of younger women, the hero of our tale then decided to blame the whole thing on video games as well. All we're missing here are a high-level media corruption scandal, a rigged election and a Gundam, and then I reckon we'll have wrung the maximum cliche potential we can out of this one.

But maybe I'm being too cynical about this guy's level of self-insight. Maybe he's actually some kind of high-level self-awareness genius, so in tune with the social tropes and platitudes of his situation that he's playing with us and them, piling on as many clichés as possible to as to become a deliberate, self-aware, post-modern ultra-cliché.

Still, his explanation for hiding a camera in a bag in order to take the offending pictures - despite having been arrested for similar behaviour before - is rather interesting...

Above: May not be the exact method used

"It wasn't that I forgot I was arrested for taking Peeping Tom photos, it's just that taking them was like playing a video game"

Not "Video games turned me into a deviant and made me do it". No, instead he said that his adventure was like a video game. So what kinds of video games is he playing?

Obviously a stack of hentai and pantsu-related games are available worldwide, but maybe he was actually talking about stealth games, given his methods. Maybe he was trying to create a situation more along the lines of Metal Gear, only with (slightly) more gratuitous titillation and bawdy content.

There's probably a cracking Metal Rear Squalid pun to be made here, but I just can't quite finish it in a satisfying manner. I blame my insufficient intake of coffee today. So I throw it out to you to do what you can with it in the comments. But let's stay away from any Solid Snake jokes. They're too obvious and we're all above them.

David Houghton
Long-time GR+ writer Dave has been gaming with immense dedication ever since he failed dismally at some '80s arcade racer on a childhood day at the seaside (due to being too small to reach the controls without help). These days he's an enigmatic blend of beard-stroking narrative discussion and hard-hitting Psycho Crushers.
Latest in Metal Gear
A brightened screenshot from Metal Gear Solid 5: Ground Zeroes.
Hideo Kojima knows fans thought Metal Gear Solid 5: Ground Zeroes was too short, as he thinks back to negative comments: "'Why would they sell a trial version even at a low price?'"
Metal Gear Solid 3 Delta screenshot
Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater – Everything we know about the Metal Gear Solid 3 remake
Ape Escape monkey showing its behind to the camera in a trailer for Metal Gear Solid 3 Delta
Xbox won't have Metal Gear Solid 3 remake's Ape Escape mode, but it is getting a crossover that's arguably better
Metal Gear Solid 3 remake Snake aiming a pistol
Metal Gear Solid 3 remake release date confirms the PlayStation leak: Snake returns this August
A screenshot from the Metal Gear Solid 3 remake.
Metal Gear Solid 3 remake release date leaked by PlayStation, alongside a silly Ape Escape mode returning from the PS2 days
Metal Gear Solid movie
Metal Gear Solid's former art director once said he spends "a lot of time fussing over the details of the characters' backside since that's the side the player sees most in-game"
Latest in News
Ezra Bridger in Ahsoka
A Star Wars actor just quietly confirmed that filming has begun on Ahsoka season 2
Mario
A surprise bonus Nintendo Direct is coming a week early: "There will be no updates about Nintendo Switch 2 during this presentation"
God of War
20 years later, God of War's original monster art has been revealed: behold this army of stick figures slapped on a whiteboard, no clue Kratos is coming for them
Assassin's Creed Shadows Naoe facing off against samurai warrior on red bridge
An Assassin's Creed Shadows fan is showing off some of the RPG's most impressive little details, and it's done more to get me interested than Ubisoft ever did
A woman chasing a shining butterfly with a leaping cat on her shoulder in InZOI
InZoi has a long way to go before it can actually rival The Sims as its director says EA's "spent decades perfecting" the formula
The T6 Power Armor
I'm about to spend over $400 on this iconic T60 Power Armor figurine because "Communism is the very definition of failure"