Forum - View topicAnswerman - Why Are Age Ratings On Anime So Inconsistent?
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Hardgear
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I was going to say that I wish more parents understood this and pissed off already. But then I realized they DO understand, which is why they are on a crusade to wipe everything they find "objectionable" from existence in the first place... |
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CatSword
 Posts: 1489 |
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Oh boy! Now's my chance to geek out!
Err...I kind of have a 'thing'/obsession with age ratings for reasons that are unexplainable. I don't personally use them to decide my entertainment anymore, but I am still interested in them and how different countries/companies have come to different standards on what's acceptable for each age. I watched Full Metal Panic? Fumoffu on Netflix when I was 11, primarily because it was rated TV-PG and the other Full Metal Panic seasons weren't. I have no idea how anyone came to the conclusion to give that show a lower age rating than FMP. There's a good amount of swearing just in the first episode ("Oh, so you think you're hot shit, huh? I'm gonna kill your ass!") that I definitely didn't expect from a PG-rated anime. On top of that, later episodes had a good amount of fanservice/barely obscured nudity, an entire episode about a sexual predator, and Sousuke going on a barely-bleeped, very crude military tirade ("Think of your ball as a wet c[bleep]t and f[bleep]k it as hard as you can!") Most recently, Netflix has rated the Little Witch Academia series as TV-Y7, despite the dub itself containing some mild swearing ("damn", "hell") and the words "piece of shit game, piece of shit referee" appearing on-screen at one point. Amazingly, I haven't seen any complaints from actual parents yet. Every time age ratings are brought up, it must be remembered that Australia gave Azumanga Daioh a higher age rating than End of Evangelion. |
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Compelled to Reply
 Posts: 358 |
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Case in point, this gem. |
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Sakagami Tomoyo
 Posts: 943 Location: Melbourne, VIC, Australia |
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This is one area where I think Australia does more-or-less have it right. There are clear guidelines, which are pretty consistently followed - though this in itself does occasionally produce some odd results, see below.
Strictly speaking, Australia's classification board does rate individual episodes, but in practical terms this is only apparent (or relevant) on TV broadcasts. Any kind of compilation of multiple episodes has to carry the highest rating of the content included.
Which, while it does seem a bit ridiculous, is actually down to consistently following the guidelines. One disc in the set earned an MA rating (if memory serves, a single episode did it) due to Kimura-sensei's antics (ie sexually harassing female students). Consistent application of the guidelines gave that disc that rating, so the whole set has to have that rating. Other individual discs in the set were variously rated M, PG or G. |
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revolutionotaku
Posts: 893 |
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My PS3 tells me to enter the parental code whenever I watch my hentai DVDs.
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Sakagami Tomoyo
Posts: 943 Location: Melbourne, VIC, Australia |
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Oh, one other fun little fact about Australian ratings, and the flip side of the Azumanga Daioh rated MA joke:
If a publisher thinks that the ratings board rated a title lower than it deserves, they can voluntarily increase it one step; an M can be increased to an MA, a PG can be increased to an M, etc. The FLCL DVDs you buy in Australia are marked PG, but the rating it was actually given is G. |
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Just Passing Through
Posts: 277 |
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The thing about the BBFC is that it's a mandatory ratings body, legally empowered. Nothing can be released on home video without going through BBFC certification.
What that means is that they have a consistent set of guidelines to work to, and they have no axe to grind, no film industry pocket in which they reside. Like or loathe them, what they rate usually gets appropriately sorted into Uc, U, PG, 12, 12A, 15, 18, and R18. You can argue gradation, but they are usually in the ballpark. Unlike a voluntary ratings code which can be worked to maximise sales, you have to have Manga Video fifteening dubs to make the BBFC shift their opinion. The problem with the BBFC comes in the second part of their remit, not classification, but censorship. They also have the power to mandate cuts to content, or ban it completely. Back in the days of James Ferman as director, they had this crackdown on imitable techniques, which saw headbutts cut out of The Matrix and Attack of the Clones, drug use trimmed from Pulp Fiction, and a couple of anime fell foul of this too most notably Paranoia Agent, which trimmed its hanging scene in Happy Family Values. Currently they tend to crack down on underage sexuality, a frame of Code Geass (a booby grope in a photo on a smartphone, but they left the table masturbation in), a communal bathing scene in Battle Girls: Time Paradox, an omake in Ikki Tousen Dragon Destiny. They also tend to look at scenes in context before considering editing them. But of late, they haven't even sniffed at shows like Prison School, Shimoneta, and High School DxD, and given that most anime girls are infantilised, and can usually be taken for younger than high school age even when they are in high school, I get the impression that they've cottoned onto the different culture that anime stems from and treat it as its own thing, instead of judging it by the standards of entertainment as a whole. |
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CatSword
Posts: 1489 |
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Any guidelines that suggest a high school teacher going "Ding dong!" at some girls in swimsuits is strong in impact, while a high school boy masturbating over a topless comatose girl is moderate in impact have some problems in my opinion.
Madman does tend to eer on the side of caution. The final volume of Excel Saga was released as MA15+ despite the board giving it an M. (Though the later complete collection sets knocked the rating back down to M.) |
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Kadmos1
 Posts: 13590 Location: In Phoenix but has an 85308 ZIP |
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The show would need a strong TV-MA. The manga is just shy of being full-blown porn, so slapping an 18+ sticker on it would still be reasonable. |
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Takkun4343
 Posts: 1545 Location: Englewood, Ohio |
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Maybe, but in my honest opinion, that's boring. 
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Zin5ki
 Posts: 6680 Location: London, UK |
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Not that I wish for it to become my habit to mention this, but the sole inaccuracy here is that you allow for the possibility that some people actually like the BBFC... |
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nargun
Posts: 929 |
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A lot of the problem is that the text treats it as a joke, an amusing quirk, rather than as A Significant Problem. [compare-and-contrast the way the text treats Yukari's driving; even in a comedy you can treat things negatively.] |
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Sakagami Tomoyo
Posts: 943 Location: Melbourne, VIC, Australia |
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Maybe it does have some problems, but: this situation is because classifications consider the context in which things are presented, rather than being a simple content checklist. Compare and contrast: male teacher sexually harasses female students who are visibly upset and put off by the unwanted attention, the show treats it as just an amusing quirk he has vs teenage boy masturbates in the presence of a topless comatose girl, says himself that he is terrible for doing it, the movie presents it as a sign of him having hit rock bottom. Also consider that in the former it's all shown on screen, and in the latter all we have is heavy breathing over a panning shot of medical equipment followed by a shot of semen on his hand. Context and how things are presented are important. |
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Nilrem
 Posts: 145 |
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Re the BBFC one of the "best" things about them now is that they are more consistent than they used to be, and pretty open about how and why they rate things.
It's also interesting to listen to their podcasts which sometimes explains why they've changed ratings on older titles that have been rereleased (I think the original Mad Max went through 18 cut, 18 uncut, and is now 15 uncut), and how they treat Anime compared to live action. As much as I dislike everything having to go through the BBFC, it does mean that things are consistent and you're able to place a reasonable amount of trust in them as a guideline at least for personal use, and as something you can point to in a professional situation (IE showing a film in class or a club) if there is a complaint. This is to my mind an improvement on "self certifying", at least if the guidelines for self certification differ from company to company, and may not be applied in the same manner even within a single company due to changes in staff, training, and commercial pressures. At least if you're in any way relying on the certification to decide what is likely appropriate for an age group when you may not have seen the content yourself, or are a bit desensitised to certain things. I didn't really register that the US companies decided the certification themselves for years, so the ratings used to confuse and amuse me at times so I'd tend to ignore them completely except to wonder how X got the same rating as Y. [edited in]
As you say context is a hugely important factor vs box ticking, and one of the reasons that it can be hard to do ratings properly as you need to be views it impartially and make a decision based on both content and context (I think it's one of the reasons the likes of the BBFC tend to have a panel who watch things together, to get different views). This tends to get more important the closer something is to the line between age ratings or outright banning, I believe due to one change in the law a while back here in the UK, it is now possible to be guilty of an offence in regards to indecent or obscene images (I think it is classed as) for having a clip from a BBFC certified film that is out of context., although I can't remember hearing of any prosecutions. |
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harminia
 Posts: 2028 Location: australia |
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In Australia, sexual violence/threats of sexual violence/sexual harassment is always rated higher than anything else. If a show has even just a tiny bit of sexual harassment it will get marked up for that. Examples include Love Live season 1, and part two of Ultimate Otaku Teacher, which got rated M with a warning of "threat of sexual violence", despite 99% of the show not being contentious at all. In regards to comparison of Eva and Azumanga, (and note I haven't seen the Eva scene), some kid masturbating, with body parts (presumably) out of shot and where he does not harass the comatose character, is low level compared to a teacher literally harassing underage children. Like, Eva is more sexual reference than actual sexual content (Azumanga). |
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