Thursday, May 03

Anime

On Fanservice

Watching Rocket Girls has led me to some ponderation on the subject of fanservice.  When you think of fanservice in anime, the first thing that comes to mind is panchira and the like; gratuitous T&A.  But more generally, fanservice is something put in, not essential to the story, that makes fans happy.

There's are fair bit of fanservice of the latter sort (and a certain amount of the former) in The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, which has certainly contributed to its popularity.   Admittedly, Haruhi's awareness of Narrative Causality makes it hard to say what is and isn't important to the plot...

The scene with the HP-41 in episode two of Rocket Girls is pure engineer fanservice.  The same character is back in episode three, describing his childhood dreams of going into space, which began when he watched the moon landing (he's in his early forties; I know I watched it myself, but I was too young to really remember it).  He ended up a salariman, but left his job at the age of 40 to join the SSA, an apparently private but government-assisted space project.



The reason I wanted to discuss this is that if you are delivering engineer fanservice, you must be assuming that your target audience will include engineers, and you need to understand that they will suffer from engineer's disease.  And when you put in scenes that just plain wouldn't happen - the helicopter scene in episode one; the catalyst scene in episode three - purely for the comedy value, you do rather irk your fanbase.

Not irked enough to stop watching, not by a long shot, but still irked.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 03:43 AM | No Comments | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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