Content Violations Review: Visual Novel.Operation Novel

I believe this work may violate the Content Policy. It is a visual novel based on the cartoon Codename: Kids Next Door. While it does not contain scenes depicting the characters having sex, some of the images have them in various states of undress, and while it does have a disclaimer that they are over 18 years old, most of them don't look that way.

Opening

Googling reviews. It says it has like a single brief non explicit nude scence. I didn't see anything majorly bad from googling. But I haven't played it so shrug.

This seems fine tbh unless their is something I'm missing. I'm not sure the content here is bad enough for an actual cut.

Edited by miraculous on Aug 9th 2023 at 4:25:33 AM

I have played the game to completion so I can answer questions if necessary.

Here are pictures from the gallery to look at. It is the top-right from screenshot 5, and bottom right from screenshot 4 which I think might be objectionable.

Here is the basic premise of the story. It follows the adventures of Sector G, which specializes in research and development of 2x4 technology. Its members are only sane man Numbuh 62, gadgeteer genius with no safety standards Numbuh 202, mad scientist/medical officer Numbuh 98.6, and mission control/playful hacker/conspiracy theorist Numbuh 404.

The game is split into chapters, the first is just an introduction of the characters and a look at an ordinary day for them. Second is a bet between the leaders of Sector G and Sector X, and the latter's attempt to infiltrate G's treehouse. Third is 62 and 404 looking for the latter's missing doll. Fourth is 62 infiltrating X's treehouse and getting to meet all its members. Fifth is 404 being forced by her parents to attend a Skunky Scout meeting and being rescued by 62.

Being a visual novel there isn't much gameplay. Just some choices that lead to slightly different results.

My main concern is the vague ages of the characters, but I admit there isn't much objectionable content. I just wanted to be sure the game wouldn't fail a P5 check before I got started on expanding the main article and adding a character page.

Edited by Rhonin on Aug 9th 2023 at 2:59:05 PM

Oh that is more graphic than what I expected from the post in the Flag Evaluation thread and from looking at its itch.io and VNDB pages. Yeah on my reply on that thread I assumed that the "fanservice" didn't show that much more than typical Cartoon Network show Naked People Are Funny-type nudity (eg mostly offscreen and at worse a bare butt), and I was iffy even then. Actual bare-chestedness and cameltoes are a different story.

I'm heavily leaning cut on this one. I'm pretty bad with ages and stylized character designs, but to me they look like mid-teens at the oldest, and Codename: Kids Next Door lore does not help at all if the visual novel is trying to be faithful. (Literally the premise of the canon show is that Sectors consist of pre-teens and will erase the minds of someone who turns 13 and kick them out.) I know that there's ecchis with sexualized Token Mini-Moe characters that managed to pass the P5, which is why I'm still (barely) on the fence here, but it seems like fanservice exclusively of characters who would be mid-teens at the oldest is one of the main points of the visual novel, which would dump that to paedopandering territory. Like I said in the linked post, the Totally 18 entry seems to paint the age-up as unconvincing. (I still maintain that this would be fine on the porn front, it's only the pedo front that's an issue.)

TLDR: Cut unless someone has a convincing argument.

Fanfics deviating from canon is nothing new, and those sure don't look like pre-teens to me.

Edited by StarSword on Aug 9th 2023 at 10:33:05 AM

Thanks for the links. It doesn't look that bad to me? True I don't buy them being aged up. But a couple images of a child that's naked is not an automatic nuke, and those two screenshots you name seem to be mild-to-moderate ecchi at worst without context.

...What is the context actually? The work page does list Porn with Plot but I don't see much actual porn described beyond recurrent clothing damage. On the other hand, I don't see much plot either.

Are there any times aside from those two images that the VN emphasizes the characters' nudity, in text or visually? If not than the trope page makes it sound worse than it is.

The most explicit it gets is Numbuh 202 masturbating using a showerhead and the implication that a few others do as well. The scene with Numbuh 202 is played for laughs but it's also pretty explicit. The first screenshot in x4 has a still of the scene right before that.

Agewise I don't think it passes if we ignore the disclaimer that's at the start of the game.

• Early on in Episode V it's established that the setting for that episode is a middle school. The episode later establishes that the main character and others will be attending the school soon while other characters either currently attend the school or used to.
• Numbuh 62's crush Kourtney is two years older than him and character files imply her to be in high school (She's on the G.H.S. Cheer Squad with G.H.S. presumably being the local high school to the chapter's Garrfield Middle School setting.) but don't assign her to a particular grade.

Vague age is heavily at play here but if we take things at face value the main character cannot be older than 12 or 13 since it's implied that he'll be starting middle school soon. And as mentioned on the tropes page itself the heights and weights given in the game's character files combined with the way the characters are portrayed also makes them seem pretty young, horniness aside.

Regarding context. So the leaders of Sector G, Numbuh 202, and Sector X, Numbuh 78, made a bet on whose treehouse had a better defense system. Each team sending one operative to infiltrate the opposing one's base and copying their files. 78 looks down on Sector G because it mostly handles research and development, while hers handles field missions, thus she believes her team would have an advantage due to experience, also she has some slight resentment for G because they have virtually unlimited funding from Moonbase to carry out research.

Numbuh 62, the main point of view character, infiltrated X's base. After subduing the other members of Sector X and obtaining their files, started looking for an exit and accidently went into 78's room where she was in the process of changing her clothes. Thus the image of 78 partially unclothed.

62 could have ran away but had a moment of Honor Before Reason and waited in X's meeting room, because since 78 saw him he thought she deserved a chance to win. The members of his team had mixed feelings but all ultimately agreed with his choice. More Honor Before Reason from 62 and 78, the former takes of his helmet since 78 forgot hers in her room, while 78 decides not to use her weapon since 62 no longer had one. Melee fight between 62 and 78 ensues, rather long, I won't describe all of it, there was a funny moment where 62 used 23's, who has stuck in bubblegum, derriere as a Goomba Springboard to get to the other side of the bubblegum field where 78 was. 62 wins.

After reaching G's treehouse he hands over the USB with the files to 202. Some more scenes, 202 brags to 78 about her team's victory. After that 202 goes to her room and thinks about recent events, mostly about 62, his helpfulness, looks, him doing squats. She decides she needs a shower, where she points the nozzle to her private region and selecting the squats setting. And moans a couple of times. The game doesn't focus on this scene very long, but the implication that she pleasured herself is there.

So, yes there is very little porn here. Mostly ecchi moments. The game has plot, I only gave a general rundown of events.

Other scenes that emphasize states of undress are mostly clothing damage from weapons malfunctioning or accidental pervert moments.

Screenshot 3 top-left has 98.6 taking off her shirt after intentionally spilling liquid on it, this was done to invoke Distractedbythe Sexy on 62 so he would ignore a box which may have contained one of 98.6's experiments. It worked. I will note that 98.6 is one of the older looking characters.

Screenshot 6 top-left Is another Accidental Pervert moment for 62 while he was looking for 404 in the school. The girl is 202's older sister, whom 62 has a crush on.

Screenshot 7 bottom-left is a raunchy image sent to 62 by Betsy from the Skunky Scouts who tried to use her feminine wiles on 62 in order to get him to talk on why a KND operative was at their meeting. 62 figured out what she was doing and seduced her instead, gets unlocked if the bat with the toaster tapped to it was chosen. The bottom right occurs if the hot-dog gun was chosen as the weapon, it gets lost, found by the two Skunky Scout girls and 404 invokes Scorched earth protocol, meaning it self-destructs.

Edited by Rhonin on Aug 10th 2023 at 6:43:29 PM

Yikes. Yeah, middle school is over the line. Cut.

I was under the impression that 62 is new to Garfield Middle School, as in he is a transfer student, not that he is just starting middle school.

Maybe the next update will bring more clarity to the character's ages since it will feature the leader of Decommissioning. Or whether the KND has laxed its decommissioning standards.

Edit: I was looking at the devs Discord server. I thought Betsy and Maddie were original characters, but actually Maddie might be Numbuh 12 who went rogue before her 13th birthday. And Betsy looks like Numbuh 411 from Sector PR, she didn't act like she was in the KND anymore so either she went rogue or got decommissioned.

There is a Q&A channel, this is what it said about lewd content.

>How "lewd" Will NOVEL get?

For the most part things won’t go beyond ecchi.

Also I've seen the main characters' days of their birth, but not years.

Edited by Rhonin on Aug 20th 2023 at 2:01:46 PM

I agree that sexual content involving middle schoolers is over the line. Cut.

Cut per stated reasons

It's time for operation: C.U.T (Culling Unwanted Trash)

It's turned 13. It's time for it to leave.

Cut it

Cut Man

Cut Cut Cut

sorry but the middle schooler sex kills it for me. Vaporize via Inkstrike

Whelp I'm changing my stance from "Heavily leaning cut" to "Send it to Numbuh 86 for decommissioning."^note I haven't seen the show in years and just skimmed a few wiki pages so I'm not sure if that joke is entirely accurate. If it's not accurate, I apologize to fans. (Definite cut)

Our job is to see where the porn/plot ratio lands, but there's so little of either that we need to break out the analytical balance....

...Is what I thought when I went to bed yesterday. Chariot's and Rhonin's information confirms it's not as bad as the trope page implies. It's worse.

The part about one of those middle-schoolers (what happened to "totally aged up to 18 yo"?) masturbating with a showerhead, in a way that given everything else is certainly not a serious exploration of adolescent sexuality, kills it for me. Almost everything else has plausible deniability as Naked People Are Funny shenanigans or such, but this does NOT.

Yesterday I was on the fence, but that showerhead just pressure-blasted me into the "CUT" park.

Yeah. The "totally Numbuh 18" doesn't fly with middle-schoolers. Doesn't sound like it fails on porn grounds, but on pedo grounds...

Time to Numbuh 86 this work.

Edited by Ramidel on Aug 10th 2023 at 5:48:53 AM

That, and the fact that this fanwork doesn't cater to an adolescent demographic, is enough for me to vote cut.

Edited by callmeamuffin on Aug 11th 2023 at 12:06:08 AM

Cut

Cut