Let’s get the bad things out of the way first, yeah?
Oh, and you’ve been warned. It’s nothing major but if your loved one catches you eyeing then good luck finding an excuse.
Covering the baddies of fan service, it’s actually quite unfortunate that bad things usually come from generalizations and this is no different.
Let’s go a little off topic for a while.
Take a look at this popular meme (or say the truth): Muslims are not terrorists but most terrorists are that of Muslim.
Now take that and relate it to the topic of fan service….
Explicit sexual contents are not fan services (ever heard of hentai?) but most of the fan services are that of explicit sexual contents.
Now, I’ll leave you to play the victim blaming game while I get back to the topic. 😛
These guys know they are onto it, but what does anything matter?
When thinking mainstream anime and fan service, you really cannot look past this one studio that’s insanely notorious for getting on top of it.
Kyoto Animation of today.
I have to mention ‘of today‘ because that’s really what they’ve become.
Going back to the original definition of fan service, gratuitous titillation, it shouldn’t be hard even for a studio of this caliber to know that they exists as bonuses, not something that can be easily shoved into the plot.
This is where most of anime went wrong too actually; shoving fan service into 25-minutes-or-so time frame in place of the actual plot, hence the memes revolving around big tits and missing plots.
Though it goes without saying that KyoAni is not the only studio to purposely do this, they however are the biggest culprit of all. J.C. Staff and A-1 Pictures are right behind them on the move.
On top of the baddies, Kyoto Animation also has the best examples of neutral and good uses of fan service altogether.
Digging into the case…
I’m a fan of KyoAni and have been following them for quite a long time. I’m also going to leave a disclaimer here that I actually enjoyed all of these shows I have listed in this post (Part 2). I even rated them as good or better in MAL. Though, even if you can enjoy them doesn’t mean that they are free from your criticism.
All of their works have been questioned ever since K-On!. However, critical attention regarding fan service didn’t come in until Amagi Brilliant Park and thereafter.
Would you look at that? Even for a scene like this, KyoAni paid attention to the details. Sticking to the air headed character that is Sento, if you’re female then you’d probably question her dressing order, haha! There are always exceptions but really, there aren’t many females out there who puts on stockings before inner garments!
Sadly for most, it doesn’t end there…
When stuff like this gets shoved right into the plot (or lack thereof), we are being told that we MUST watch it. If KyoAni wanted Musaigen to be just a rom-com nobody would have actually complained but they did a horrifying job at getting to the core of romance AND comedy.
It may look like I’m bitching about this anime being bad in general so just head over to any review sites (hint: click the link) and you’re guaranteed to see complaints to this anime regarding this very issue; fan service.
Going a little back in time and you will have Free! plus its sequel, Eternal Summer. Though I’m more than willing to put these two away from the bad side of fan service, others don’t seem to agree that much.
Now let’s get to something much more recent; Hibike! Euphonium and its Yuri baits. KyoAni went as far as altering the story and character relationships to be different to that of the original source material. Thankfully, everything else about this anime outweighs the fan service in terms of impact so there you have it. Overall a great show but you can never forget about the things Hibike! didn’t need.
So much trash talks for KyoAni despite easily being my favorite anime studio. I’m going to save the crap about J.C. Staff and A-1 Pictures for later.
You see it here more often than anywhere else
This issue is much, much more prominent in battle shounen titles than anything else. While I’m inclined to leave pictures here I’m also afraid that there will be too many of them simply due to the fact that there are already many titles as of today!
I can see where they are going with this though….
Shounen is a mistaken genre for (and literally means) adolescence male while in truth, the word in this context is used to describe a demographic certain anime titles are aimed at. Call me a dick when I say this but if you’re aware at all, most men in their teens really do think (or thought) with their dicks. This really meant easy business for even anime industry.
You’re not going into a battle shounen without seeing at least half of the female characters with overly sized tits anymore. Add ass to that and you get something like One Piece. Hell, even the mangaka of One Piece admitted that he draws females using a base of three circles!
I can go on and complain about Fairy Tail and Kill la Kill too but that’d be me hating a lot. Hopefully you get it now that if this was a war, great shounen titles like Fullmetal Alchemist and Attack on Titan are definitely hiding for safety.
One way it serves a purpose, another way it’s just a NO
The case for this is Dragon Ball.
I get it. Most of the time Bulma goes hoe, it’s for comedy. That however doesn’t invalidate the fact that the remaining times, which happened a lot, are just plain unnecessary.
Real comedy kicks in with Goku who, for a child, happened to understand A LOT of adult humor. I’m not sure what I’m talking about anymore so here.
Now that’s (bland) comedy done right, not even a fan service. So why pull the Bulma hoe moves, Toriyama?
Hopefully we get to see the brighter side in the coming up part 3.
I actually cringed while typing most of this….
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