Is it really High School?

Visual Novel Community Visual Novel Talk
#1

I have a question about ages and eroge. We all know that characters in JAST released games are all 18 years old without exception. However there are a lot of other eroge out there that aren’t necessarily English. I’ve played a whole bunch over the years but now I’m seriously wondering if age was ever explicitly mentioned. Terms like ??? etc all get used but have they ever explicitly stated Person X is 16 years old? Another point I noticed is that alcohol and tobacco use in games is frowned upon and if offered, the character will say he/she is underage. In the case of Majikoi they drank a substance which was not alcohol but somehow had the effects of alcohol haha.

So do we know for a fact if they are high school students in the high school romance eroge or do they always sidestep the issue?

#2

In some eroges, ages are explicitly mentioned. It’s very rare, though. Same with eroges set in a high school - very rare to actually see that. Often scenario writers will confirm outside of an eroge the actual ages of the characters when asked - this does not affect the legality of the actual product. Shiritsu Sakuranbo Shougakko’s games often do mention explicit ages / terms like middle school/high school, but they’re a doujin company and not subject to things like sofurin regulations.

I see characters in eroge both drinking alcohol and smoking quite a bit though so I’ve no idea where you’re going with that.

#3

I might’ve played a bunch in a row that featured the characters avoiding it when it came up. Maybe that’s why.

#4

Someone mind explaining what sofurin is? Edit: It sounds like a drink name but I’m sure it’s not. =P

#5

The EOCS, an industry self-regulatory body made up of probably the majority of commercial eroge publishers. They place restrictions on what content may and may not be included in eroge, including the requirement that characters involved in sexual acts be 18 or older. In the past they also had restrictions on things such as incest.

#6

Certain companies like 130cm are not members hence their games feature things like blood related incest. That’s also why 90% of the time when you play an incest related eroge they always have that copout “we’re not really blood related” reveal somewhere in there.

#7

You are mistaken. 130cm, or rather, Visual Art’s is a sofurin/EOCS member

#8

Question time: why DO eroge companies choose to self-regulate themselves when they don’t have to? Is this another product of the Japanese culture: conformity, maintaining image/face and so on?

Or do they have to self-regulate themselves?

I find this practise of self-regulation utterly bizarre when we have “dark” VNs like GSS and so on where… age isn’t even a major factor affecting how screwed-up the storyline can be(I can’t read jpn, so going by what the overall commentaries say). Btw, “requirement for sex”: please don’t tell me that they’re going to give “tentacle monsters” age requirements next. :stuck_out_tongue: This is Akito-kun, age: 34 years old, type: tentacle monster. :roll: :expressionless:

#9

I suspect a good bit of it is that if they don’t regulate themselves, they feel that the government may step in and regulate them. Any regulations the government puts in place would likely be far more harmful to their ability to create the eroge they want.

#10

Yeah… leave it to utterly self-serving/well-meaning authorities to completely “muck up” your market by writing up rubbish regulations and painful laws that hurt more than they “do any good”. Plus, governments these days, tend to “panic” even over the slightest issues so yeah… they’ll probably end up listening to the “crazy fanatics who want to do away with eroge” and give these fanatics the spotlight.

#11

While Lancer-X covered the whole issue with schools and stuff, this is worth a seperate note. The legal age for drinking and smoking in Japan is 20, so it is possible to be over 18 and still too young to have a beer.

#12

This is true; however, given the context of this thread I believe it is worth nothing that there are no such restrictions, self-regulated or otherwise, on the depiction of people under the age of 20 drinking/smoking. We can show people in eroge doing illegal things all we like, as long as they aren’t having sex while underage. The mind boggles.

#13

I know, but usually people below legal drinking age don’t give a shit and drink anyway IRL so I thought it was funny quite a few games and even animes feature people who might’ve been on a battlefield a moment ago refusing drinks on the basis of their age.

#14

Friend of mine said around the time Kanojotachi no Ryuugi was released that 130cm wasn’t a part of Sofurin. I’m pretty sure sofurin had some kind of rule against blood related incest and 130cm found a loophole or method to bypass it by distributing kanogi in a way that didn’t violate the rules.

#15

Kanojotachi no Ryuugi is a 2006 or so game - so it postdates that restriction. VisualArt’s has been sofurin since the start.

#16

90% of the B games I’ve played have been set in High Schools. Princess Waltz, the X-Change Series, Snow Sakura, YMK, Crescendo, and many many more. Perhaps the vast majority translated into English happen to be set in High Schools?

As for the age thing, I’ve seen it mentioned in a few games, but very rarely.

#17

No, they aren’t. If the translated game says ‘high school’ it’s most likely a mistranslation, and none of the games I’ve played out of your list were set in high schools. Very few eroge are set in high school. They are generally set in a ?? (gakuen), which simply means academy/school. In the universe of eroge, this is a magical school that looks very much like a highschool and students go to it before going to university or heading into the workforce, but everyone in it is 18 years or older. Capisce?

The reason eroge aren’t set in high schools is because at a ??? (koutougakkou) the students are generally aged 15-18, with only third-year students being 18 years old. As such most of these eroge would not be permitted sale under the EOCS regulations, and possibly not even under the CSA.

#18

Although there is a strong push to lower it to 18 (strong enough that there is a decent chance of it passing sometime in the near future).

Well nothing here. Some doujin do list high school/middle school and the like same as some list ages. Older games, eroge regulation, also list ages and exact school terms. They still use other terminology, but nothing to indicate age unless sometimes the character is clearly meant to be an adult.

#19

the way ages get listed is if said game is made into another media
that is when ages get listed

#20

People have to realize that the characters of those games are not real human being.
Those are fictive 2D characters living in a fictive world.
Then you can imagine in those worlds, people are still in highschool at 25 (even if they look like they’re 15. :lol: )
(and fyi, in Luxembourg, teens finish highschool at 19 because they have to spend 7 years there)

We all know there is an association who’d like to give more rights to 2D women than to real 3D men (so the world will become more “equal”).
Because of people like that, JAST has to be sure to tell all the characters are over 18… (and give a free pantsu to Matsuri :lol: )