Fanservice, Does It Bother You?

I have watched the Anime, couldn't get into it but forced myself to finish it . Granted it may not have been one of the best examples, but what I was getting at was that it was an un-realistic rather than stereotypical portrayal.
 
Yup, one of the main reasons why Bleach went down in quality as it went on is that it not only sidelined Rukia (an incredibly strong female character who isn't just reduced to swooning over the male lead) after the first three seasons and essentially only really used her after that when they needed someone to deal some extra damage. Orihime got a pretty bum deal too as she went from bizarrely comic genki girl type to depressed damsel in distress (luckily the final season they animated - the Xcution arc - does rectify this a little).

One of the reasons I like Fairy Tail, and was really pleasantly surprised by it when I first watched it, is how much it gives its female characters to do - in many ways they stand on equal ground with the males (even if they are subjected to countless echhi shots)
 
Funny, I stopped watching Fairy Tail partly because I felt it wasted the potential of it's female characters (especially Lucy, who was kind of introduced as the star and then pushed to the side by the comparatively dull Natsu). I did stop after around 40 episodes (long enough to take you up to the beauty contest, though that's a coincidence) and I guess the Erza arc was quite good and there were also two or three really good Lucy episodes that rubbed in just how much they underuse her. I've often thought about going back to it but I can't decide if it'd be worth it, the main reason I stopped originally was a temporary lack of access rather than any real dislike of the show. I'm not a huge fan of Shonen action stuff in general but I like some of the character moments and stories between fights that they can have. Like I say though, I do get frustrated when they oversimplify characters so they can get on with the fighting.

With regard to Ouran, I guess I could see "unrealistic" given that the show isn't entirely grounded in reality but from a character point of view I think it's within the realms of possibility. Sure, most of the characters are extreme by design but at the same time it does feel like there is more to them than the fronts they often put up. Anyway, I think I can see what you're saying in that it's a "fantasy" of sorts.

I was just re-reading my previous post and thought I should mention that while I might like it if every show had characters and stories that are appealing and compelling to me, I don't think that they should have to. I'm willing to (grudgingly) accept that there are audiences with different taste to mine. Not sure if that actually needed to be said but I thought I should say it anyway.
 
Gintama was mentioned earlier but bizarrely it stands up as one of the greatest depictions of female characters in today's Shounen Jump in my opinion; it's a comedy but the women are just as gross, powerful, flawed and weird as any of the guys. I think it's also fair to say that there's a reasonable amount of (equal opportunity) fan service in Gintama, but nobody ever gets reduced down to just being a 'fan service character' and nothing more. Well, nobody important. It's a shame it flopped in the US when Naruto, Bleach etc went from strength to strength. There's no justice in the world.

One of the things I can't stand about promising ensemble casts is when they get reduced down to a hero or two and then a bunch of one-dimensional plot devices masquerading as different characters. I gave up on Bleach early on but I definitely get the impression that it's guilty of this, yet I don't think sloppy writing should always be conflated with fan service.

This may be my biases speaking but when I watch a fan service show aimed at women - let's use Free! as the example because it's hard to argue about its intent and I think a lot of people have seen it - I feel that the guys, however idealised, tend to be treated much more like actual people who could exist than a bunch of walking pecs. They have their own dreams, fears, strengths and weaknesses, and they're developed well enough that they come across as being human rather than a shopping list of convenient tropes. Even when the setting is unabashedly stupid like with Bakumatsu Rock, the guys are stripping off and getting into compromising situations because they chose to do it. It's sort of liberating and healthy in a dumb way. That's the kind of fan service I like. There are plenty of examples of this kind of thing in male-orientated fan service too.

I've talked about my belief that women are (perceived to be) less 'visual' than men, so a lot of the service aimed at them tends to appear more subtle than having Tsunade's giant jubblies wobbling around on the screen or showing stolen panties flying into the sky. There's also the issue that self-motivated men are viewed as more attractive whereas pathetic, weak women seem to appeal to the stereotypical male viewer (at least in the minds of production companies). Would fan service be so much of a problem if the women kicked ass and seemed like decent role models in their own rights?

R, rambling while fixing something

(I'm assuming men like women and vica versa for simplicity in these examples but these are just target audiences and not fixed demographics, so please freely invert the assumed genders if required.)
 
I have to admit, one of the things that makes me chuckle most about fan-service - especially in harem shows - is how much it has descended into literal box-ticking in terms of the types of girls on offer. I mean, I enjoy these shows as much as the next person, but one you see another Rei Ayanami-lite wheeled out alongside the typical 'nice girl', loli-girl and cookie-cutter Tsundere, you can't help but laugh.

It's like a fan-service equivalent of McDonalds - you pick what you want from a menu and away you go.
 
100% agree with what you say about Gintama. Characters like Kagura, Otae and (to a less extent) Sa-chan are great examples of female characters who are portrayed as just as, or even more capable than the men in the show whilst also being portrayed as just as flawed.
 
Good post, Rui. I might try out Gintama. I also agree with Lutga about the ridiculous box ticking of some shows. Aren't people bored of all these tropes by now?
 
I dunno, I think I have a pretty high tolerance for "stock characters" and I'd imagine other people do too. If it's the first time you've seen something then it seems new to you, even if it's been done a thousand times before. I'm generally willing to go with it if I'm still entertained (and if I wasn't entertained then it wouldn't matter if it was original).

If I'm honest, I do prefer the grab bag of tropes to a show where all the "characters" are busty women that can only be distinguished by hair colour (or worse, panty colour). Of course, that might be because I prefer the petite/loli characters (or at least more realistic proportions) so maybe I'm just as bad.
 
vashdaman said:
Good post, Rui. I might try out Gintama. I also agree with Lutga about the ridiculous box ticking of some shows. Aren't people bored of all these tropes by now?
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It's inevitable that some formulaic elements will be present in most mainstream shows since those types of characters are popular for a reason, but when the trope-led design influences become too obvious, it's really embarrassing to watch. I don't like tsundere girls (or boys, for that matter) at the best of times, but when you get a character who can literally only be defined by that word because they lack any other redeeming personality elements it's weird ^^;

And yes, watch Gintama! The first few episodes are quite slow as they have a lot to introduce but once it hits its pace it's amazing. You can also study it from the perspective of it being unusual as a Shounen Jump show which regularly seems to court controversy in the real world and makes fun of all of the things which annoy you about shows like Naruto. And it's also notable for including what is probably the least cute catgirl in the whole of anime history.

R
 
Speaking of Shonen Jump, one thing I've never really understood is why Nisekoi is a Shonen Jump series (aside from the obvious, being printed in the mag) - Now, I'm not an expect on harem manga, but seeing as the majority of the characters in the series are girls (and pretty girly looking girls at that), even if the male character is the lead, and it's about all of the lasses wanting to bang him, it's always kind of struck me as a little random that such a 'romantic' series fits sandwiched in-between a raft of straight-up action series like World Trigger, Bleach etc.

Are boys supposed to learn how to chat up girls from reading Nisekoi in-between getting their fix of Naruto?
 
I think they try to run at least a few romantic comedy series in Shounen Jump to break up the action (gag series too, though for some reason they often fail to find an audience outside Japan and disappear in silence). In an ideal world you're trying to convince a whole load of different people that the cover price of the magazine is worth paying, which means having as diverse a spread of youth-friendly content in each issue as possible. I doubt many people genuinely read and enjoy every single title running there.

Nisekoi makes me shudder but I've enjoyed some of the romantically-themed shounen titles in the magazine in the past.

R
 
Nisekoi is just as obvious a direction for fantasy escapism for young boys as Bleach is, imo.

Also, the award for out of context quotations that just fit the theme of the thread too well goes to:

Lutga said:
Orihime got a pretty bum
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Rui said:
And yes, watch Gintama! The first few episodes are quite slow as they have a lot to introduce but once it hits its pace it's amazing. You can also study it from the perspective of it being unusual as a Shounen Jump show which regularly seems to court controversy in the real world and makes fun of all of the things which annoy you about shows like Naruto. And it's also notable for including what is probably the least cute catgirl in the whole of anime history.

R
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Was it here that someone mentioned Gintama being a rare example of a Japanese TV show that satirized some Japanese politician in an episode, or was it in one my lectures at uni?

But yeah I'm definitely going to try out Gintama, I always wrote it off as some generic show based on it's appearance. Even despite reading some of your posts on it, I guess it's taken a while to twig.
 
Whilst it shares a similar art style, it is very different breed of show. It does have action in it (and quite good action at that) but it is a primarily a comedy show. If you do watch it (and please don't kill me for this) you should (RUI EDIT: YES, I WILL KILL YOU FOR THIS). They are good subs but the main reason I say that is they often annotate the show to try and explain a joke that you might not get. The show has a lot of gags that rely on Japanese pop culture or puns/play on words that only work in the Japanese language, so having these annotations can be very helpful.
 
Please watch the legal streams of Gintama. When you even have Manga UK reps quoted as "Jerome states that the streaming figures for Gintama are very good and would be interested in taking a 'punt' on the series" and the series has always struggled to keep its manga or anime going in the US, it's cruel to watch rips with annotations instead of showing there's an audience for stuff other than Naruto. Also the Internet explains most gags in the world.

Vash: There's a lot of social/political commentary in Gintama in between the gross jokes and historical references. It's pretty cool.

R
 
It's all horses for courses I think, and largely depends upon whether the situation is contrived or not, although even that is okay if it results in a truly funny scene. Push contrivance too far and it descends into full-on farce, but when it's handled cleverly it can result in scenes of true comedic timing and/or true slice-of-life comedy moments. Let's face it, a particularly enjoyable overall quality strength which anime brings in legion is the often brutal excess delivery of a gag (one ego which jumps out at me right now is Kamina's approach of super-confidence in Gurren Lagann, which if I remember rightly often caused or arose from some crude fan service joke).
 
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