One of the little-hyped games coming out this fall is Muramasa: the Demon Blade, a Wii action game from Japanese studio Vanillaware. You might not know the developer's name, but if you played the genre-bending cult classics Odin's Sphere or Grim Grimoire, you know the developer's work. Muramasa seems like a more straightforward action game, but the poetic loveliness of Vanillaware's artwork (pictured) seems very much in evidence.

So on one hand, I'm glad to see Muramasa on the cover of Play magazine. It's a crowded holiday season with a lot of high-profile games. A fall magazine cover is a precious commodity. Good for Play for going with an underdog.

But then there's the little matter of the actual artwork, drawn by Vanillaware's founder and main artist. It's an exaggerated image of a woman, um, wrestling with an octopus. She's either scantily clad or the octopus is facilitating the malfunction of her wardrobe. She's swinging a sword, which implies whatever activity going on isn't consensual. The octopus' tentacles are wrapped around parts of her body, including one tentacle prominently cupping her splayed crotch. Make of all this what you will.

Alternatively, you can let the editor who set it up, Shane Bettenhausen, explain it for you on his blog page.

The inspiration was clear: [artist George] Kamitani obviously references the famous Edo-era Japanese print "The Dream of the Fisherman's Wife," a subtly erotic masterpiece...

The masterpiece's eroticism is so "subtle" that Mr. Bettenhausen pixelates it when he posts it in his blog entry.

Reaction to the Play cover image across the Internet appears divided; either you're clamoring for a poster-sized blow up or decrying it as a sign of the impending moral apocalypse.

Hardly. By presenting this as a simple either/or divide, Mr. Bettenhausen conveniently ignores any middle ground from those of us who think it's a striking picture, but grossly inappropriate for the cover of a magazine pushing a T-rated game that includes an ESRB content descriptor for "suggestive themes", which I suspect has to do with how much thigh the heroine shows when she jumps. If the cover of the magazine is in any way representative of what happens in the game, Muramasa would not be T-rated.

And don't even get me started on how embarrassed I am that a bunch of stupid boys probably think of the imagery as "empowering women". There's a strong strange cultural precedent to so-called tentacle rape and it has nothing to do with empowering women.

Still, Play has a well-known affinity for anime, so this isn't as out of place as it would be on the cover of, say, EGM. And there's a long history of boys fetishizing videogaming heroines, from Samus to Lara Croft to Princess Peach (don't ask me how I know about that last one). Ultimately, I can excuse this as crass means to a noble end: more attention for a game that might otherwise have been overlooked.

Finally, I'd like to assume the role of marine biologist nerd and point out that octopi don't have tentacles. They're technically arms. So from a strictly biological perspective, the artwork on the cover of Play magazine can't possibly be considered tentacle rape. Maybe Mr. Bettenhausen should have gone with that angle instead of that hoo-ha about "subtle eroticism".

Muramasa is due out on September 8th.