More and More Games With Improbable Female Casts are Getting Restricted Ratings. That’s a Problem for the Teens Wanting to Play It.

Global rating boards are developing very specific hang-ups and are keeping teens away from the games they want to play. Anime-themed games are very popular among that demographic. Imagine a game with a cute 13-year-old female lead, but the game is rated R and 13-year-olds can’t buy it without a parent’s permission. On average, they would need to be 17 if they want to buy a copy.

The reason? Even the slightest bit of crude and sexual content (referred to as fan service) or salty language is enough to get a mature rating. These games are categorized under the genre of moe, and their fanbases are comprised of adult males in their 20s and 30s. This trend is nothing new, and actually dates back to the 1990s.

As such, rating boards around the world would see fit to brand the game with a restricted rating, barring all players under a specific age from playing unless accompanied by a parent or guardian. Even Common Sense Media, the organization seeking to recover family-family values in the entertainment industry, may call some of those games either a good or cringeworthy game to play with their teen, regardless if it has a hard R.

This would be very frustrating for the average American teen who cannot handle a frank amount of being 13 years old until four years later, only to learn nothing new. They’ll learn it’s a reminder of how the rating boards’ highly specific hang-ups can restrict some spheres of the gaming world whereas other games take a laissez-faire attitude to others. Just like it has been since the early days of the video game industry, the youngest class of players want to pay for it or in other words be forbidden to buy.

Moe games that have a lot of fanservice are far from being games of such nature to be slapped with restricted ratings on questionable grounds, even if they are censored from their original Japanese counterparts. Other games of such nature also include characters throwing F-bombs at each other, scenes of underage drinking, or a recitation of a sexually suggestive phrase enough to earn an R rating. Some games can be dented with sailor talk, mild birds-and-bees conversations, as well as the same underage drinking with the addition of marijuana smoking.

Companies such as Marvelous and Compile Heart are notorious for this. For example, the Senran Kagura and Hyperdimension Neptunia franchises initially went for restricted ratings in their home country of Japan, usually for the fanservicey content, most of which result when characters are damaged, causing their clothes to rip off and reveal their lingerie. Not to mention jiggling chests too. The localizers took most or all of that content out for their international releases, some of them getting bumped down to a Teen rating from the ESRB, or in other words, a PG-13 rating. Eventually, uncut versions of these games would be released, bringing back the original restricted ratings that were intended.

According to the MPAA, games of such nature usually get “crude and sexual content” or “sexual content/material including nudity” in their descriptors. For example, if the MPAA took a look at one Senran Kagura game, they would apply an R rating for “crude and sexual content, reckless behavior and mayhem throughout, and some strong language – all involving teens.”

In every instance, the material in question may be handled in a way that would speak directly to young players. Aside from a bit of uncomfortable shifting on the couch at home, any high school sophomore, who on average is 16, could safely play them alongside their parents as some of them may be ready for such material. This raises the question of the legality of the law in some jurisdictions, whether or not the material in the game supersedes the allowed standards by a rating board.

Both the MPAA and ESRB adhere to a not fully known set of rules judging on either violent, profane, or sensual material. They do have one rule in common: one use of an F-bomb is enough for a Teen or PG-13 rating, while more than one will place it in Mature or R territory. There are some exceptions to this, and they do allow the former rating based on the context of the dialogue, and they usually must pend a two-thirds majority vote. Omori and Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin are such examples of this policy, though they still have restricted ratings.

Some have confirmed that getting away with one exposed female breast may be enough for a PG-13 or Teen rating, though most parents feel an R or Mature rating would best suit it. Because the rating boards aren’t required to specify on how they arrive at the conclusion of specific games, players are often left wondering why they got a restricted rating. Another specific example had to be Dungeon Travelers 2, where a scene of explicit sexuality got it downgraded from an NC-17 or Adults Only rating by cutting that scene from the international version.

The creator of Senran Kagura has confirmed that the franchise has much more fanservice compared to other franchises of such nature, but some games such as Doki Doki Literature Club! landed an R rating due to the bloodshed the player sees as they progress through the game. Another game from the same developers of Hyperdimension Neptunia, Omega Quintet, features the same type of content, as well as a pretty steamy bath scene. Parents were angered to learn it received a PG-13 rating instead of an R rating. The rating descriptor for that is “fantasy action violence, language, and a brief scene of nudity.”

Sexual content has been the biggest problem in both film and games. Scenes of this nature can be picked through a comb of any thickness, and any amount of detail beyond vanilla standards can be sufficient enough to bump a game into the restricted zone and limit its reach beyond adults.

The MPAA and ESRB have also demonstrated bias in regard to female casts. Sometimes, a single scene can be enough to bump it up to an NC-17 or Adults Only rating, with a censored version for consoles removing that naughty bit. It would be a win-win for the developer, but the underlying issue still persists today, even if it is an adolescent nature. Grievous bodily harm is another story.

All things said, the ratings board has been a vast improvement over Nintendo’s censorship standards of the late 1980s and early 1990s, and the ESRB was created to replace those guidelines. Long gone are the days where blood became sweat and bunny headbands became cat headbands.