I was recently watching the original 1988 Appleseed film with some people and even though we were watching it in Japanese, since it had dubtitles, we noticed an ungodly amount of swearing with it culminating in the villain screaming “fucking cocksuckers” as his vehicle was destroyed. This quite shocked the people I was with so I had to explain to them both the concept of dubtitles and fifteening. This made me realise that many people these days may be unfamiliar with the concept of fifteening and, given how it isn’t exclusive to anime, I thought it might be interesting to take a look at the strange practise of fifteening in anime releases and more.
I should first define what fifteening is. Fifteening is a term that was developed to refer to Manga Entertainment’s practise of producing English dubs with added swear words in order to artificially increase the BBFC age rating of the product they were selling, usually to a 15. This was because they decided that higher age ratings would be more appealing to their audience and they needed to make adjustments to achieve this.
Numerous series released by Manga Entertainment underwent this process such as Cyber City Oedo 808, Vampire Wars, Angel Cop and many others and they are certainly the ones most associated with artificially inflating an anime’s age rating. However, it’s interesting to note that several other anime distributors have done similar things. Notably, Funimation did this with Sgt. Frog and some episodes of Dragon Ball while Sentai Filmworks apparently added profanity to the Gintama movie.
However, this practise of raising the age ratings artificially isn’t restricted to anime and you see some examples of it elsewhere. Vidmark Entertainment, which was later renamed Trimark Pictures, apparently always wanted to release their films with an R rating and would resubmit the film with added cursing in the event that they got a lower rating.
Of course, this doesn’t simply apply to movies aiming for an R rating and you see plenty of examples of movies including a little bit of profanity in order to nab a rating similar to what a 12 or 15 rating would be in the UK. Notably, a lot of movies will include a single or several swears in order to avoid a low rating with notable examples including The King’s Speech, Invictus and La La Land.
The practise of fifteening when it came to anime releases was certainly strange but it’s fascinating to see that many other types of movies use similar techniques in order to artificially inflate their age rating. Let me know your thoughts on the strange practise of fifteening in anime releases and more, what you think of the practise, what anime releases you’re aware of that underwent fifteening, any films you can remember a swear coming out of the blue and any additional information you might have on the topic.
Hopefully you have found this article interesting and informative and, if you wish to seek any of the works I mentioned, don’t hesitate to use amazon.co.uk or amazon.com for all of your needs!
Pretty sure an R rating is America’s equivalent of a 15
Quite similar. The difference is that an R rating can still be attended by underaged people if they are accompanied by an adult whereas a 15 rating specifically restricts people from under the age of 15 from watching, adult with them or not.