Forum - View topicAnswerman - Why Does Fanservice For Girls Get So Much Blowback?
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leafy sea dragon
Posts: 7163 Location: Another Kingdom |
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That dainty run, I recently discovered, is something some women actually do. I saw a woman run by in a Wal•Mart and found out some women actually run like that, with the part of their arms from the shoulder to the elbow pressed tightly against their sides and the forearm roughly straight forward. Then, a few seconds later, I saw a man running in another direction in that same way. So I figured this sort of running stance is not gender-specific.
I always wondered if that makes romance difficult for some guys who refuse to enjoy things their girlfriends like if it isn't a predominantly guy thing. Does a guy love his girlfriend less if she's into boy bands or BL? Do girls get annoyed if their boyfriends have to drag their feet over to watch romance movies?
Well, you do get characters like those in western media, like in Johnny Bravo and Mouse Trap, but not only are they always negative character traits, the joke is never in the suggestive acts, but the aftermath of the woman paying back the man via slapping or pepper spraying or whatever. I'd probably like this sort of joke in anime more if there were more instances of the girl reacting by punching the guy in the face. And having the physical and emotional damage carry over past that scene. There's also stuff like Red Hot Riding Hood, where a lecherous man is simply physically unable to get close to a woman he's ogling because she can effortlessly swat him away by reading his every move. Now that's agency.
If the fanservice has no relevance in the story at all, then it has no reason to exist in the story. This isn't just regarding fanservice; it goes for all things that are not narratively important and is a general storytelling rule. (Well, if you're going by Robert McKee's guidelines anyway. He has a pretty hardline stance, with comedy being the sole exception for him. Nevertheless, I feel that is the source of a lot of problems with pacing and focus in fiction in general.) The fanservice that exists in something like Yamada-kun and the Seven Witches is perfectly fine with me because it's plot-important. The Naruto/Sasuke kiss at the beginning of Naruto is okay because it helps establish personality traits of important characters. Series like Cross Ange get a lot of flak because fanservice exists in them that didn't need to, and could've been excised out or replaced with something more logical.
While I have thankfully never known any guy who was harassed or stalked or whatever by a woman, I have spoken with some guys who fantasize about what you describe (though, of course, the woman has to be attractive to them). Some guys want to be irresistible to women, and they want women jump their bones in public from around the corner. To them, it feels empowering. Those Axe/Lynx body spray commercials appealed to that kind of mindset.
Maybe, in the case of shonen manga, a lot of their readership are boys who don't have easy access to porn, and this is the next best thing for them?
That's specific to Japanese media (and some other countries, but I'm not as clear on those), though I'm guessing that's what you mean. In the west, you have the sultry lady, who's mature and confident, like Elvira or Lara Croft, and are not associated with cuteness in the least. The animated short Malcolm and Melvin (I believe it was made by Ralph Bakshi, but I'm not sure) had a character who was described as "sexy, yet cute," implying that those adjectives are not normally used in western media to describe the same character at the same time.
A HUGE distinction here is that almost all of the violence that goes on in anime has a narrative purpose, while most of the fanservice (regardless of if it's for guys or girls) does not. If there was a porno where a couple having sex gets interrupted by a ninja barging into the room, then one (or both) of the inhabitants defeats the ninja and resumes having sex like it never happened besides a mention or two, that porno's going to get complaints about that. It's out of place.
They can be hard to ignore if you don't know it's coming though.
Sometimes, it's a sign of desperation. There wasn't really much fanservice in the lacrosse manga Cross Manage (and even had fat girls in it, which I don't see much of in Japanese media), but the sexually suggestive scenes were cranked up to eleven during its last few chapters before its cancellation. One of the chapters was supposed to be a meeting, to plan how to train and prepare for the upcoming match but was actually a slumber party with some of the girls on the lacrosse team coming on to the male manager.
One possibility I'm throwing out is that some of the guys upset over Free! may have been upset because the time and money spent making Free! could have been used to make something that falls closer in line with their own interests. I'm basing this on people complaining about characters in mascot games they don't want, as their justification for their complaining about Character A's existence is that it uses up development time and money that could've been used to put Character B in the roster instead. (This is untrue: People like Masahiro Sakurai (Super Smash Bros.) and Steve Lycett (SEGA Superstars) have given detailed explanations about how complained-about characters get in the roster and why it isn't as simple as X budget for Y characters. Some characters need less time and money than others, some characters were done during off-hours and for free, some characters were actually sponsored with additional programmers brought in and all expenses paid by the sponsor, some characters were developed outside of the core game staff, etc.)
Wow, they can't even use the word "vagina" in hentai? If a word is so dirty it has to be print-bleeped out in hentai, that's a problem. Incidentally, I hope that the Igarashi case becomes an example of the Streisand Effect, giving her unprecedented popularity that will overwhelm any attempts to shut her down. |
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lostrune
Posts: 313 |
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Do women actually want shows where girls fall on guys laps and grab their junk by accident? Seems like something men would still enjoy as self-insert. The only thing straight dudes wouldn't enjoy it would be yaoibait, which explains why gals love shounen so much. I always saw it as guys and gals are different so their fanservice is different. If guys watch fanservice to fulfill a fantasy then a genderswapped version of the same events wouldn't fulfill female fantasies, cause women can go out and get sex much easier than guys can. What women can't go out and do is force two guys to have sex with each other, which is why so much female fanservice is yaoibait |
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manapear
Posts: 1529 |
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[quote="lostrune"]
Do women actually want shows where girls fall on guys laps and grab their junk by accident? Seems like something men would still enjoy as self-insert. The only thing straight dudes wouldn't enjoy it would be yaoibait, which explains why gals love shounen so much. [quote] There are some similar situations in shojo here and there, played kind of similar but not as typically debasing for the guy. And that's the difference; it's played up to be so embarrassing/humiliating for the female character in shonen, combined with the frequency with which it happens and how the female character lacks so much agency. But even then, as mentioned, where are the guys comparing their penises? Or sitting around in hotsprings, barely covered, and bouncing around in ways that show off their muscles. I think KyoAni is another good example of this. When the director of Free! was working on Hyouka, she would ask the animator to give the main guy some extra fanservice-y shots (which were delish), but they made a limit to how far they would go. In comparison, no expense is spared for awkward angles, gestures and whatever for those moe, fanservice-y moments with female characters.
Lol, since when do women go out and get sex much easier? Not all women have fantasies based around yaoi/gay men. Plenty of women are into het (and yuri/other women), but the problem still comes down to societies perpetuating these ideas that women aren't into "real fanservice" and that it wouldn't be rather similar. Your comment is pretty much a spin of that. When it comes to het/straight fanservice, women really just want to be able to ogle hot guys and have a female character have sexuality and actual agency. It's not inexistent, but it is pretty much niche and rare with mainstream anime. We have to look to manga and otoge, whereas straight guys have everything. (VNs, manga, anime, etc.) |
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Lord Oink
Posts: 876 |
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My diet strictly consists of shounen mainstream anime and I have seen the complete opposite. Men are far more likely to be seen naked or with less clothing than girls are. Especially when it comes to hot springs. You'll almost always see guys naked or showing off their butt but females at best show off bare shou!ders with some cleavage. You rarely if ever see female butt in onsen scenes in mainstream anime. Scenes like these are extremely common for male characters but never females. https://youtu.be/vOansi3cLKs Are you sure you're not thinking of all those late night otaku stuff? I only watch mainstream anime and it is FILLED with naked dudes instead of women. |
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littlegreenwolf
Posts: 4796 Location: Seattle, WA |
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A lot of what your describing wouldn't be considered fanservice depending on how the guys are drawn. If they're the simple noodle, non-detailed anime body it is most definitely not fanservice, which a lot of shonen anime tend to do. Free was extremely detailed and since it was around water, wet and glistening with seriously detail given to the muscles. |
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enurtsol
Posts: 14876 |
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Heheheheh contrary to some may believe, I've actually not much problem with fanservice - the more the merrier!
Where there's issue is when people try to justify it as some sort of enlightenment for the advancement of humankind. No, no it's not. It's because we're horndawgs. (And this goes for all genders, BTW.) Wallow in the depravity - be proud of it! Just don't justify it. So let's get the elephant in the room out of the way. First and foremost, yes, Japan is quite a patriarchal society. Amongst many different global standards of gender measurements, it's consistently at the lower end of the spectrum. That doesn't mean that every single aspect of J-life is like that, no of course not. Heck the manga industry is a shining beacon of light.......................... and that's about the only ones, and that's the problem. Unfortunately, most of the rest of Japan aren't like that. There's reasons why Japan's rankings so low. There are not many J-women in positions of power to affect things one way or another. • Only about 10% of major elected officials are women, while only about 15% are in upper management of large businesses. • J-women aren't fighting for maternity leave - they're fighting against maternity permanent leave! Women are still expected to leave their jobs once they become pregnant and never come back. Businesses aren't too keen on hiring temporary replacements (yes with men too, ergo the sparse use of paternity leave - but men can be forced not to take paternity leave - with women, it's unavoidable). And that's why women aren't usually hired for career-track jobs but instead as replaceable office ladies (OLs) despite their high educations - they don't want to hire and train workers who would have to eventually leave anyways. "Matahara" (maternity harrassment) is a thing in Japan - businesses harrass pregnant women to permanently leave their jobs. http://www.pri.org/stories/2015-09-09/maternity-harassment-so-common-japanese-workplace-they-invented-word-it • There's that famous incident in the Tokyo metropolitan assembly on the main podium shot on TV during her speech, a female MP was heckled into tears with sexist jeers (why are you still single, can't you have babies, etc.) all the way till the end of her speech crying. Two things: (1) that the male MPs even thought this was acceptable in the first place (and this is "liberal" Tokyo, not some conservative boondocks), and (2) that the other MPs didn't do anything to stop them while they're doing it - and it wasn't until some time later that they were forced to apologize. (And it didn't even become an issue until after it was picked up by the foreign press!) • Domestic crime rates in Japan skyrocketed in the last few years. Not because they acted differently, but rather it was not until a few years ago when Japan's domestic abuse law was finally amended to give it some teeth. So what were once legal were now illegal. http://www.japantimes.co.jp/life/2016/05/07/lifestyle/domestic-violence-abuse-knew/ • Talking about recently, another famous case of Japanese celebrity was "exiled" from the public for having an extramarital affair with another celebrity who she initially didn't know was already married (he married in secrecy) when they started. Yet the guy who's actually the one doing extramarital hardly got punished by the society at large at all. So it's not that these patriarchal things are being allowed to happen - but rather it's that there's hardly anybodies with some power to oppose. Japan's women institutions are still relatively weak (though to be fair, daresay most non-authority groups in Japan are weak). Unfortunately, authority institutions in Japan tend to be not only run by mostly men but very very old men (like 70+ old). So the pace of changes (if any) in the influential echelons of Japanese society go quite slowly (the rule of thumb seems to be it takes Japan a couple decades following global trends). Anyhow, summing it up, enjoy the fanservice. Just don't pretend it's some sort of enlightenment movement to a higher progressive plane of existence. No dudes (or dudettes) - they do it because we're pigs, and they know it. Oink oink!!! |
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leafy sea dragon
Posts: 7163 Location: Another Kingdom |
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That makes me wonder if they ever get shocked and nervous when the rest of the world is doing something that they're not, considering Japan has a culture of conformity and fitting in. |
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TarsTarkas
Posts: 5914 Location: Virginia, United States |
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I would think, no. The culture of conformity and fitting in, is for Japanese society. Despite false western perceptions, the world is not in agreement on many things. One of those major pesky things that my country (USA) tends to forget, is that most of the world mistreats women to some degree or other. |
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Lord Oink
Posts: 876 |
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Now you're just moving the goalposts. You can't just arbitrarily decided what is and isn't fanservice. Plenty of people find those scenes appealing enough to take screencaps and videos and draw fanart of them. Fact of the matter is you're far more likely to see males naked and sexualized than females in mainstream stuff. Complain about otaku anime all you want, but mainstream stuff is a whole nother story. |
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manapear
Posts: 1529 |
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That's not moving the goalposts at all. The point is people have to draw fanart to make up for the lack of mainstream fanservice of male characters. Lets do a comparison. Yes, there are naked guys in anime, but if you compare their screencaps/scenes with those of a female character and then the guys with shots from Free!, you can easily see which is at least intended as fanservice, and that makes a huge difference. Do you really think these two images are comparable to these two? For the Free! screens, the second screenshot is even one not as intended to be as blatantly sexualized fanservice as the scene of the previous screen, so even at Free!'s more mild moments of (light) nudity, it is more fanservice-y than any of the shonen shows. The point is, the mainstream shows aren't trying to be fanservice-y to a female audience. That makes the difference. By making note of that detail, no one here is moving the goalpost, but instead, pointing out where the goalpost always was and why that is the issue. Again, nudity alone is not inherently sexual or fanservice-y, but most female nudity in mainstream and shonen stuff is meant to be and that is not the case with the guys. I find the male nudity in One Piece appealing all the time (okay, when it's the Monster Trio and a few others, not everyone lol), but it is usually not being done to cater to anyone in a sexualized, fanservice way. (Maybe in a power fantasy kind of way, but not for others not straight male to ogle.) Do I ogle it? Yes. Is it made for me? No, but I'll take what I can get. (They're starting to with the merch, but that isn't most of the anime or much of the manga.) |
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Saleri
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The issue is still there, but it's simply because people who spend too much time complaining about fanservice often end up having regressive views on... most other things! Btw, cherrypicking things that have very little relevance isn't really proof that Japan is a terrible patriarchal country. And Japan really is really in front of the rest of the world in so many things, which is why it has good education rates, very low crime rates, etc.
[Citation needed]
Then compare the fanservice you claim there is in mainstream shows to actual Ecchi anime like Highschool DxD, just because Nami has big breasts, it doesn't mean she's there for fanservice. |
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enurtsol
Posts: 14876 |
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Ah, but those are relevant. Why do people have such a hard time accepting the fact that Japan is a patriarchal society? People don't have a hard time accepting the fact that, for example, the US is a Puritan society or even a gun-violent society. (All the descriptions mentioned here are relative BTW, since there are no absolute standards but rather, it's in comparison to others.) That culture is part of US history just as that culture is part of Japanese history. These social values didn't arise out of nowhere.
Which.................................... are not topics we've been discussing about. (Well, some crime rates - they're definitely at the forefront of chikan and voyeur crime rates, for instance.) Please don't take the issue that Japan is a patriarchal society = Japan is bad in all things; of course not. Even I pointed out that this doesn't mean that every single aspect of J-life is like that (and gave an example of the manga industry being a shining beacon of light). But there are legitimate reasons why, amongst many different global standards of gender measurements, it's consistently at the lower end of the spectrum (one or two instances may just be an anomaly specific to a measurement, but when it's consistently - that's called a trend). |
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Lord Oink
Posts: 876 |
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I'm pretty sure the reason they have more fanart is more easily explained as Naruto and Gintama are way more popular than Free. Saying the only reason they have more fanart is because people can't masturbate to the show as is is just confirmation bias. Just because you say it's not fanservice doesn't mean it's not fanservice. You are comparing shirtless men with other shirtless men and saying your shirtless men are better. If I Google Gintama fanservice that picture shows up, which seems to indicate people find it sexy. And looking up a video on that Naruto omake shows a comment section of fangirls saying Sasuke is so hot in a mini towel. If you're trying argue art style differences, that's opinion. One of the most popular shows for women is Nintama Rantaro. You shouldn't try to dictate what people can find attractive or not. Are you saying shounen anime doesn't pander to females? That anytime a man appears naked it's because it's a power fantasy and not fanservice? Animators know full well what they're doing, especially for shows with large female audiences like Gintama and Naruto. Gintama flat out acknowledges it since they constantly break the 4th wall. There are some double standards in play if this is fanservice but these aren't. At worse, it falls into the gross, problematic mindset that male nudity isn't as serious as female nudity. |
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manapear
Posts: 1529 |
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Absolutely agreed with Nami! And she is a very fully developed and loved character, assuming you're talking about One Piece's Nami. Even if you're not, I'm going to run with it. :') Nami is a great character, and she has a sexy design and is a mildly sexual/sexually liberated character (she wears her sexuality infrequently but definitely as she pleases and tends to use her modest as she pleases). However, it doesn't remove the fact that she is sometimes used for fanservice (not helped by Oda being very open about his relationship to/with Nami, lol). Sometimes, Nami's breasts are put on display when unnecessary. For a better reference, Erza and most of the adult female characters in Fairy Tail have a stereotypically sexy figure (huge breasts, thin build/not fat, etc). Erza wasn't treated like a fanservice object for a while. . . and then there was a focus on her in fanservice-y outfits, and even some of her fight scenes/panels focused on breast and crotch shots. Which wasn't happening with Natsu or Gray. Having a sexy body is not fanservice-y on its own, but why it's designed that way and how it's portrayed absolutely does make a difference. The guys in Free! absolutely have sexy bodies too, but not every shot is always aimed at making women drool. (Okay, I think they are, but some are overtly so compared to others.) @ lord oink: I'm sorry, but I don't think this point makes sense for what was originally said? You said, "Plenty of people find those scenes appealing enough to take screencaps and videos and draw fanart of them." So did you mean the sexy scenes? Or just any scene? Because if you meant just any scene, that was irrelevant to what littlegreenwolf was saying. When I said, "That's not moving the goalposts at all. The point is people have to draw fanart to make up for the lack of mainstream fanservice of male characters." That was in reference to people drawing sexy fanart of male characters. Because it is lacking in the shows themselves, so people make the art to fill the gap. Where did this comparison of the frequency of art come from? And sure, Naruto especially has been around for way longer and has way more mainstream popularity (hmm, I wonder what the difference is; runs in the largest shonen magazine, has an objectively male target audience). I never said anything about how much fanart they have in comparison in general, only in relation to them having people that make sexy fanart. (And even then, I wasn't talking about frequency so much as its presence.) If you are saying all shirtless men are equal, then your problem is attributing nudity/lack of clothing to being fanservice by nature. If not, then you have to be ignorant of or intentionally ignoring the context. When I googled Gintama fanservice, I got plenty of ladies in there too. Know what else I got? Gintama crossover Free! fanart. (I wonder why??) Again, it's not as simple as what people do or do not find sexy. It is also about intention. Some things are intended to be fanservice, and some are not. It is very possible and common to find something sexy that is not intended as (sexual) fanservice. Just going by the screenshots, lacking any context of the scene, I think the shot of the girl (which came up in the fanservice search) and the second screen are fanservice. Equally! But I also don't know if the second is meant to be parodying fanservice in BL or something (it does a great job if so though!). The last one may have nudity, but it doesn't look like it's meant to be fanservice. It reminds me of the scene in Berserk with Griffith, and feels like it's supposed to be serious, but knowing Gintama, comical. In Japanese media especially, you cannot take every case of nudity and say that it is inherently fanservice or meant to be sexual. It doesn't work like that in Japan. One of the reasons that Free! is regarded as obvious fanservice for women is aside from the sexy dudes drawn in tantalizing ways (different from shonen in which sexy dudes usually aren't drawn tantalizing but powerful), is that the writing is handled in a way that's different from shonen stuff. There's increasing overlap now in the shonen (sports) stuff trying to cater to women and shows like Free!. The guys are all tropes that appeal to women written up to the highest degree, and their relationships reflect that too. For another One Piece reference (because One Piece is consistently perfect for this); Sanji and Zoro are both extremely popular with women. As are Luffy and Law. And so are their relationships (there is a ridiculous amount of doujin out there). While I'm one of those women very attracted to how they're drawn and written by Oda and the anime team, the doujin tend to take it to the level that appeals to women. Luffy isn't just that hyper energetic, innocent kid; he's super pure, and kind of vulnerable and Law is mature and quiet but takes the lead in the relationship while he melts over Luffy. Not really what their relationship is like in canon, or entirely like their own personalities. Free! is a good cross-reference of that, especially with characters and ships like Nagisa and Rei. Heck, Haruka and Rin are Zoro and Sanji's relationship played up, while Sousuke is rather like Zoro but in an entirely made for female gaze way. (More of the pretty boy, but masculine charm and build that Zoro has.) |
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leafy sea dragon
Posts: 7163 Location: Another Kingdom |
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For a while though, what bugged me regarding One Piece over the Fishman Island and Punk Hazard stories was that, in the author's comments and little descriptions in the volume releases, Eiichiro Oda couldn't shut up about how sexy his wife was, and the result of sex being on his mind a lot was a huge increase in Jessica Rabbit proportions across the manga. Sanji became flatter as a character, more focused on his perviness, and you had characters like Shirahoshi and Smoker in Tashigi's body who had excuses to throw titillation in where the series didn't have it before. (That is, I'm not bothered that it's there, but I'm bothered that it's there when it didn't used to be there.)
It's less pronounced now though, and it seems to have coincided with Oda talking about other things now. |
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