The Ayayo Games are a series of erotic adventure games made for the PC-98 in Japan in the early 90s. Despite her wild storylines and complex meta-references to popular anime and manga, her legacy is mostly overlooked or forgotten. Video essayist Noelle Aman tried to fix that in a recent 50 minute deep dive, but now YouTube has removed the video for violating its rules on sexual content. It’s a decision Noelle rejects, and one she accuses YouTube of making without even properly reviewing her content.
YouTube didn’t appear to have an issue with the video, which was originally uploaded on June 9th until it was removed months later on August 8th. It was titled “The Weird, Wonderful, and Influential World of Ayayo-san” and had garnered 16,000 views when Noelle realized it was missing. The video delved into the details of each game in the Ayayo series, as well as its relationship to the story and censorship surrounding the broader genre of Erotic games are called eroge in Japan.
“I filed the complaint when I woke up and the complaint was denied about 5 minutes after it was sent,” she said my box. “Their response was the general ‘it’s against our community guidelines’ with no explanation. They also didn’t explain what went against policy in the video.”
YouTube tried Clarifying its rules on sexual content over the years. In particular, it allows nudity and other content that could be construed as sexual if it is for educational purposes rather than “sexual gratification.” For example, nudity is okay in a video about artwork. A sizzling role of sex scenes in movies is not. However, even YouTube admits that there is a huge gray area between these two cases.
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It’s hard to understand why Noelle’s video doesn’t clearly fall into the “education” category. The presentation is highly polished and packed with research and analysis, on par with other high-quality video essays and the kind that their Patreon subscribers pay to get early access. Even the screenshots and gameplay are censored to cover up genitals and any explicit sexual acts (here are two examples). A less censored version of the gameplay has been available on YouTube for over two years now on the publishing channel.
“I think what’s most frustrating about it is that YouTube’s decision was clearly made without actually watching the video,” Noelle said. “It’s no worse than content that has garnered millions of views on their platform or has been around for ages and if they had seen the video they would have seen that it’s ultimately about documenting a series of games, that are important to Japanese gaming history and how it ties into said story.”
However, YouTube sticks to its initial assessment. The company said it was taking what appeared to be a third look at the video after Noelle’s Twitter threads about the social media takedown circulated. “Update: We have removed the video in accordance with our adult content guidelines because it depicts sexual activity, genitalia or fetishes for the purpose of sexual gratification without educational purposes,” it reads tweeted on August 11th. But the company still hasn’t said the exact parts of the nearly hour-long video. A YouTube representative did not immediately respond to a request from my box for comment.
Sexually explicit games, like other erotic media, have a long history of censorship. Also now are some games Banned from storefronts like Steam while others remain without a clear indication of how the judgments will be made.
In Noelle’s case, YouTube’s ambiguity, as well as the fact that the video had already survived without issue for months, has led her to speculate as to whether the takedown was initiated by mass reporting or other trolling behavior, especially since there wasn’t an issue when her channel was less popular.
“It could have been a mass flag for some reason,” she said. “People who didn’t like the person who yelled at me the other day Super eye patch wolf, it could have been transphobes, it could have been people who are openly anti-sex. It’s impossible to know.”
In any case, Noelle now feels she has no choice but to be overly vigilant in her editing going forward. “I will still continue to work on content though and be more careful going forward, maybe to a silly degree,” she wrote in one recent Patreon post. “I will not die until the world allows me and everyone else to freely discuss eroge. That is non-negotiable.”
