Well!

I know a thing or two about fan service. See my recent post Zoom! for example, which alludes to Warukyure's transformation sequence where she morphs back from her miniature form to her normal statuesque self. (Not only that, but she has nipples! Imagine that! Nipples, on a female person!)

I've seen both the series mentioned in the passages Steven quotes: Agent Aika (though not Final Mission, which is the final volume) and Plastic Little. Both have their good qualities; I liked the music in Aika (and the production qualities are solid), and the artwork and animation in Plastic Little. However, I (at least I think it was me) once described Agent Aika thus:

It's as though the director made it as perverted as possible without actually having any sex scenes - and then threw in a sex scene for good measure.

And Plastic Little is commonly referred to as Plastic Nipple. The artwork is by Satoshi Urushihara, who is justly famous for this sort of thing - but doesn't seem to have a website. I found one site on Geocities and it promptly went off line for exceeding its bandwidth quota.

Steven comments that in the U.S., fanservice doesn't sell domestic animation. I'd point out that there's damn little animation produced in the U.S. that's targeted at adults. The Simpsons. Um... Things like Aeon Flux and The Maxx. Of course, the good children's animation is good for adults too (Pixar's work, The Emperor's New Groove, Lilo and Stitch), but that's not the same thing.

There are a lot of comics targeted at adults, however, and if you think that fanservice isn't rife there, you haven't seen a recent issue of Spiderman. Or anything from Image. Or a whole lot of other material.

As for the suggestion that fanservice in anime is targeted exclusively to male fans, well, it just ain't so. The fanservice for the female population tends to be a little subtler (see Fushigi Yuugi for an example), but take a look into the world of manga and it's a whole different story. Very much equal opportunity. We don't see a lot of that in the West, though, for whatever reasons.

As for recommendations... Well. There's a whole range of fanservice in anime, from Ryoko's bath scenes in Tenchi Muyo (one of my favourite anime series of all time), to the aforementioned Agent Aika. (If you're curious, Steven provides a page of pictures (warning: scantily clad females.)) He neglects to mention that Aika is the owner of a magical brassiere. Well, given the plot and setting it's probably some form of alien hi-tech device, but you get the picture.

Sometimes fanservice is just the female characters flirting in a perfectly normal and good natured way. Sometimes it's exploitation, but really, that's nothing new either. Sometimes it's really just cultural differences in regards to nudity.

Maybe I should post my top twenty anime recommendations and note which ones provide fanservice? Then Steven can see fanservice in good anime rather than bad.

Maybe I should get my anime review pages up.

Maybe I should go to bed...

Update: Guess who linked to me! No, not the puppy blender...

Update: My Top 25 Anime Recommendations are now up.

Update: I've also listed six picks for Anime Bottom Feeders. You can flame me, or, if you want to be helpful, flame any shows you hate that I may somehow have avoided.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 11:41 AM | Comments (6) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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