A lot of people don’t really appreciate fanservice. It’s said to be a distraction from the plot, other visuals, whatever else is really important about anime. Fanservice gets a bad rap. I’ve said a bad thing or two about sexual content in anime in the past, and a most of the time, it’s well deserved; nothing will ever redeem Big Wars, least of all its awkward sex scenes. Divergence Eve shows that, regardless of whether fanservice is good or bad, you can have far, far too much of it.
At this point, I suppose I should clarify something: I’m not talking about all-out hentai. While it’s difficult to say for sure, both of the titles above would, IMHO, most likely get a R rating if reviewed by the MPAA. Although it’s not called fanservice, there’s equivalent content in American works: the way that the police on a cop show go to a strip club to conduct their investigation, a princess captured as a slave by an alien and forced to wear a metal bikini, the woman that jumps into the water in her underwear to swim across the lake; all of these are “American fanservice” that have appeared at one time or another in live action works. I can’t really say that I see any huge difference in the level of “voyeurism” between these examples and the exaggerated character designs or the nudity that appears from time to time in Japanese animation.
If it’s not a difference in the nature of what’s actually shown, then maybe it’s the media itself that turns people away, sometimes violently, from fanservice. I think that this may be a remnant of the association of animation in America with cartoon aimed at children. Any overt sexual content in anything aimed at children would indeed be extremely troublesome. However, even when it contains no sexual content and character designs are realistic rather than exaggerated, anime is not usually for children. For a good set of reasons besides sex and violence why children and most anime don’t mix, I would suggest reading The Librarian’s Guide to Anime and Manga by Gilles Poitras. At any rate, anime are not cartoons. The fact that the uneducated may be confused by this is no reason for anime fans to be confused. Some people will not like anime no matter what; that’s their right, but they shouldn’t grasp at the straws of fanservice to condemn the whole media or all works. It because of gross ignorance that we have such disasters as the Canadian Government’s recent report on anime (now withdrawn). The visual elements of anime are essentially simplified visual art, and nudity and sexual themes have had a place in in art for a long time. If we have any real respect for free expression and art, then this must be accepted.
Anime is fantasy, a caricature of real life. Fanservice, or what may be easily mistaken for fanservice, isn’t just eyecandy for the audience; it allows characters to deal with extreme situations in different ways. In Please Twins, the ever-popular beach episode allows the characters to fight over Mike’s attention in a particularly charged environment. In RahXephon‘s beach episode, some of the characters find out about about Ayato’s “tattoo” when his shirt is open, and he wanders away from the group while the rest are swimming (and, thus, don’t notice him). In HiME and Otome, Natsuki suffers embarrassment and worse from various fanservicey actions while trying to get a ride. The nudity at the beginning of Elfen Lied gives Lucy a dehumanized feel as a character. So “fanservice” isn’t really pointless after all, as long as it allows the characters to develop and face situations that (thank goodness) quite a few real people don’t. All of these are deeper than just a “dirty joke”, and have real meaning. That’s why fanservice is sometimes OK – because sometimes its important to the plot, to the characters, to the very heart of the anime. This isn’t “content, epecially sexual content, which does not add artistically to the value of a an anime” – it’s quite artistic depite anything else that may be said about it.
In Defense of Fanservice
By RedWordSmith