]Ubisoft has a long list of corrections and revisions needed for its upcoming (and delayed) Assassin’s Creed: Shadows. They appear to be implementing those fixes step at a time. Most recently, a company associated with Ubisoft retracted or canceled a special Qlectors figurine complementary with the Assassin’s Creed: Shadows. The cancelation was due to an insensitive design that disrespected Japanese victims of the Nagasaki atomic bombing.
This was confirmed through a Tweet on X from PureArts Limited. It’s the company that handled the design and production of the said Assassin’s Creed: Shadows figurine. Here’s their Tweet:
This was the canceled figurine in question:
The main issue with it was the one-legged Japanese Torii Gate behind the main characters Yasuke and Naoe. The only time a one-legged Torii Gate existed was when the US dropped an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Nagasaki back in World War 2, killing tens of thousands of civilians and destroying cultural cornerstones, like the Torii Gate.
Thus, the one-legged Torii Gate became a memorial for the victims of Nagasaki and an important and sensitive structure to the Japanese. PureArts Limited along with Ubisoft ignorantly incorporated the memorial into a cutesy “chibi” Assassin’s Creed: Shadows figurine. Of course, the use of the one-legged Torii Gate itself for something like this was already questionable and has offended many Japanese.
Thankfully, PureArts Limited is redesigning the figurine after extensive feedback. The Qlector figurine was supposed to be released this month, October 2024 and the pre-orders cost around $50 (USD).
According to PureArts Limited, they’re not canceling the pre-orders. Those who pre-ordered will receive an email regarding the state of their purchase. All that’s left is to stay tuned for what kind of redesign they’ll release. There’s currently no release date for that yet.