Tags
DanMachi, Dusk Maiden of Amnesia, ef: a tale of memories, Fujiko Mine, Fuuka, Hibike! Euphonium, Izetta: The Last Witch, Keijo, KonoSuba, Lupin the Third, Sound! Euphonium, Walkure Romanze
Grant Watson over at The Angriest has started reviewing Izetta: The Last Witch, and his rant regarding the fanservice in episode 4 The Secret of the Witch is glorious to behold:
Then there’s this soft-core animated pornography, dropped onto the rest of the series like a bucket of turds through a ceiling fan.
I dropped Izetta around episode 3; I was already uncomfortable with the levels of fanservice, and the blatantly phallic imagery of Izetta riding that gun in a short dress and not much more. I had also, courtesy of anitwitter, heard about episode 4 and said “no, nope, not going there”.
Correctly as it turns out.
As most readers would know I’m not a big fan of fanservice at the best of times, particularly when it centres on underage characters, but there are some shows where it really will ruin the experience for me.
Izetta is a classic case in point: this was a show with a serious story to tell. An alternate history World War II with magic, and a strong princess in Finé that could easily have become one of my favourite characters. But whenever I was engaging with the story, there would be a cut that was quite simply gratuitous and it would throw me out of the story.
This sort of thing damages the willing suspension of disbelief, at least for me. In the current season the show that’s frustrating me the most on this front is Fuuka, which has hints of greatness brought down by gratuitous fanservice. If Fuuka keeps going the way it has been it will soon be dropped.
Now there are shows where fanservice can work as part of the plot, although it’s risky. See for example Dusk Maiden of Amnesia where it’s central to Yuuko’s characterisation[1]. Similarly there are shows like ef: a tale of memories where the mature content of the story almost demands a certain level of, well, exposure but handle it well enough for the fanservice label to be questionable.
On a much more sophisticated level you get shows like Lupin the Third: The Woman Called Fujiko Mine where the nudity is essential to understanding Fujiko’s character. Fujiko Mine failed as a show for me for other reasons[2], but the nudity was handled sensitively and with great style.
At the other end of the spectrum you will get shows like Walkure Romanze or the more recent Keijo where fanservice is, to an extent, almost the entire point of the show. To be honest whilst I will cheerfully mock such shows[3], I don’t actually mind that they exist. There’s an audience for that, just as there’s an audience for moe[4], and there’s certainly enough shows being made to cater for all audiences.
No, the problem lies with the gratuitous insertion of fanservice into shows where it gets in the way of the story. Much as I adore Hibike! Euphonium, it does have its moments when I go “Really? Did you just go there?”[5] and it does throw me out of the story a bit.
There’s also a related problem for the casual anime viewer, and how easily this will turn people off. For example I often show friends stuff from CR or AnimeLab, and to be honest I have to be really careful about which shows I pick. It’s why I’ve never finished showing those friends Konosuba (because of episode 9[6]). It’s also why I probably won’t ever show them Danmachi, despite it having a worthwhile story.
Fanservice is a YMMV topic. I guess the point of this post is to clarify how I see it, and why I’ll try to call it out in my reviews when I’m uncomfortable with it, or when it really doesn’t fit the story being told.
Other than that, sound off in the comments if you have other examples of when it worked, or when it threw you out of a show.
Finally, thanks again to Grant for that glorious rant that inspired this post.
[1] Noting that, as I did when I reviewed Dusk Maiden of Amnesia, the level of fanservice adopted was likely to make a lot of viewers drop the series before the payoff. NB: The review is here and contains major spoilers.
[2] Mostly that it was a prequel with an “it was all a dream” copout ending.
[3] And in the case of Walkure Romanze did mock it. Twice. Although a lot of that was centered on the lethal stupidity of boob plates.
[4] I still want noses to come back though.
[5] See for example the station concert video in my final thoughts on Hibike! Euphonium S2, there’s a surprising amount of Gainaxing going on.
[6] I still shudder everytime I think about it.
Pirates of the Burley Griffin 
The thing I don’t understand is that fan service, as far as I can make out, crept into anime as it developed its otaku fanbase and shifted from being children’s entertainment to dedicated animation for a cult audience – the rise of OAVs and late night broadcasts in I’m guessing the 1980s? With animation being expensive and the adult audience being a niche one, a production company will cater directly to that market, and it seemed a lot of teenage boys liked seeing sexualised imagery of the female characters.
Surely that can’t still be the case? When I occasionally visit an anime event or convention, it strikes me that the majority of anime fans these days are young women. Surely *they* aren’t into gross sexualised imagery in all of the anime? I feel the market has shifted, and the production companies would actually be a lot more successful if they let go of fan service and embraced a broader audience.
I have to agree wrt western fans*, but I’m not across the demographics of the Japanese market enough to really comment on that. I presume that there’s still a market for it coming out of the light novel space, I do recall the Danmachi light novels getting a literal order of magnitude spike in sales from the anime, and that’s one of the ones I can’t really show to friends despite having a decent(ish) story.
*Noting that some queer female fans MIGHT appreciate that sort of imagery, although that’s probably a minority. We are seeing a bit more anime targeting the queer audience though (which is good), apparently Yuri on Ice was very good for that (and just very good in general although I haven’t seen it).
I think you’re right re the rise of the OAVs having an impact, and certainly they started in the late 80s, and peaked in the early/mid 90s. There are still tie in OAVs happening (often BDs bundled with manga volumes as I understand it), but I don’t think they’re as common as they were. Certainly, I don’t think there are many OAV only series being made these days.
There has always been a little bit of fan service in anime throughout it’s history. Even before the OVA market (and late night anime which pretty much replaced it) you’ll see it prime time broadcast shows like Orguss (1983, a topless Misa from Macross flashed on a screen) and there was oodles of naked or topless women in Urusei Yatsura (1981 – 86). Go back a little further and you have Analyzer flipping Yuki Mori’s skirt in Yamato (1974). And prior to that, possibly the man who brought a lot of this stuff into anime, Go Nagai, whose anime version of Cutey Honey (1973) was chock full of fan service.
As for women not liking it, I think people have to understand that there a lot of women are in the anime industry. The example you gave, Hibike! Euphonium, Naoko Yamada was episode director for many of the episodes and did a lot of the storyboards too. She probably storyborded that scene you didn’t like. Flip Flappers has been criticised for perceived sexualisation of the two main characters, however the creator of the series, Yuniko Ayana, is a fan of the yuri subgenre and in a tweet said she actually insisted on the swimsuits in episodes 8.
As for fanservice for hetro women, well from what I saw on Otome Road in Ikebukuro, they have absolutely no problem in sexualising young gay men.
I think westerners can be really guilty of viewing a lot of this stuff through a western lens and not understanding that a lot of symbolism seen in pop culture doesn’t mean the same thing in Japan. It’s also a highly patriarchal society which I think people seem to forget. As for targeting “queer audiences”, I really don’t think that is happening in any anime show consciously. While Matsuko Deluxe may be on every second TV commercial and has his face plastered on billboards, mainstream Japanese society (and the anime otaku set) as a whole still doesn’t understand the LGTBQI community. They’re still discriminated against.
Personally I go out of my way to avoid anime series with heavy fanservice as I find it rather cliched and often see it replacing characterisation and story. But I think at the moment a sizable portion of western anime fandom are tying themselves into knots over what are essentially short scenes (maybe one or two cuts, only seconds long) of what they perceive to be sexulisation of a character in shows almost utterly devoid of fanservice. To me it just seems silly and misses the forest for the trees.
Thanks for the thoughtful comment. To answer the last piece, it’s not necessarily the length of the scene but how obtrusive it is in terms of suspension of disbelief.
When it doesn’t fit the tone of the story that is being told, then it will tend to shock me out of the story, and that’s a problem for engaging with a show.
As I said, there’s a time and a place for fanservice, and I don’t mind that fanservice heavy shows exist (I won’t watch them, but others will and that’s fine). It’s when it seems out of place, or damages an otherwise worthwhile story that I (and many others) tend to have problems with it.
There’s also the issue of how serious anime fans will see it (or at least tolerate it to an extent as the price of doing business), vs the casual viewer/moderate fans. One of the friends I mentioned read the post and agreed with it. To quote her, she’s over fanservice and could happily go without ever seeing any ever again, and as I said it’s why I have to be really careful about what shows I pick for her.
Sorry to harp on, but I watched the video from that Sound! Euphonium episode where they play inside Kyoto station. I have seen the whole episode previously, but that clip, had no “Gainax bounce” type shots at all. Like, not a single breast moved. None. I still have three episodes to watch in the second season, but as a whole Sound! Euphonium is pretty damn wholesome. I’m really not seeing the “problems” you’re seeing, I don’t think it’s because I’m jaded or anything like that.