Omega Labyrinth Z features high school girls going on dungeon crawling adventures filled with fanservice. The U.K. has since banned the game from being classified for sale.
In 2008, the U.K banned Rockstar Games’ Manhunt 2, but no game had been barred for a decade. But now, an anime RPG that reportedly “promotes the sexualization of children” has been refused classification in the U.K.
Serving as a sequel to Matrix Software and D3 Publisher’s 2015 roguelike dungeon crawler Omega Labyrinth, Omega Labyrinth Z expands on the original game with a new plot and an additional character. The game has players control a team of underage anime girls as they explore automatically created dungeons and fight monsters in search of a mysterious Holy Grail.
By defeating monsters, the teen girls gain “Omega Power” that “gathers in the chest” and causes their busts to grow.
But it’s the game’s underage cast that’s upsetting the U.K.’s Video Standards Council the most. In the council’s findings, the government concluded that the game features “sexual interaction between the game player and the female characters” that encourages the “sexualization of children,” making the game inappropriate for the U.K., according to TheSixthAxis.
“There is a serious danger that impressionable people, i.e. children and young people viewing the game would conclude that the sexual activity represented normal sexual behavior,” the council wrote. “There is a constant theme of sexual innuendo and activity throughout the game that suggests behavior likely to normalize sexual activity towards children.”
Omega Labyrinth Z accomplishes this a couple ways. Most noticeably, players can grope female characters’ breasts in one minigame. There’s also plenty of fanservice through explicit illustrations, such as characters exposing themselves after falling into a trap. In short, because the game features high school-aged girls in sexualized settings, the U.K. has refused to classify the game, preventing it from being sold both at retail stores as well as digital platforms.
Meanwhile, Americans won’t have to worry about the federal government banning their anime fanservice games any time soon. Omega Labyrinth Z is still headed to the U.S. for PlayStation 4 and PlayStation Vita later this spring with an M rating attached.
H/T BBC
