Forum - View topicThis Week in Anime - Sex in Anime is Complicated
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Daerian
 Posts: 234 |
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I would call it more "hitting viewers in the face with metaphor" than being "ambiguous" to be honest. It was subtlety of metaphor on the level of the ones in Jellyfish Can't Swim in the Night. |
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Mami-kouga
Posts: 216 |
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The metaphor is unsubtle, whether its referring to her actually finally having sex after all her episodes over the issue is a different matter. And well even if it was my wonk would still that we don't get to see them actually engage with having a good first time. |
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Daerian
Posts: 234 |
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I don't disagree. As you can see from my post above I have big problem with that anime and consider it really overhyped. |
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i got the shivers!
 Posts: 114 Location: Brazil |
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It sounds like you're expecting something out of a genre that doesn't really fit it. Generally the premise of harem series requires them to keep things open for the sake of the plot. The hero dedicating himself to one girl right out the gate kind of defeats the whole point of the genre. With a mingling hero they can rotate the girls around and provide fanservice and scenes for all of them. Redo of Healer has the genius method of sex being a valid way for people to become stronger so Keyaru having explicit sex with all his entourage ties into both the plot but also keeps the harem elements. Seikon no Qwaser had a similar system but the characters there pair off into actual couples romantically. |
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Mami-kouga
Posts: 216 |
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Didn't think I'd ever see redo of the healer praise of all things in my lifetime
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Hal14
 Posts: 717 Location: Heart of africa |
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That is such a basic battle harem trope that it feels like a real stretch to call any one show a "genius" for using it let alone Redo. In fact, it so common that nowadays it gets played with like in Chained Soldier where sex is the reward for using the power rather than the power up (although even there the feelings make the power stronger like a feedback loop). |
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Nekbone
Posts: 44 |
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Wasn't it the best selling anime of its season? I also remember it being super popular with women at the time. Would love a second season eventually. |
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lossthief
ANN Reviewer
 Posts: 1440 |
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I can't speak to the latter part but considering it aired the same season as Uma Musume: Pretty Derby Season 2, it most certainly was not the biggest seller of its season. |
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FilthyCasual
Posts: 2372 |
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As for horniness in shows, whether it's highbrow or lowbrow, it's good and there should be more of it. |
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Fireminer
Posts: 18 |
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To add to the point, let's just presume that the protagonist has sex with his harem and then choose to enter relationship with one or several girls. What then? What makes a harem work -- how the girls bounce against each other -- does not work when the party involved have committed to a relationship. Has anyone here ever tried to look into how polycule actually works in real life, and how it usually fail? Everyone nowadays have access to porn at their fingertips. But you only watch porn if you want instant gratification. Does anyone here think that ecchi fans look for instant gratification from their favorite series? No, they've got porn for that. The desire for bonding with the characters is very, very real. You might say that their view on sex and relationship is immature, which I can agree to a degree, but to say that the readers are only there to sexually objectify the characters is just outright wrong. That is the attitude of people who never actually engage with the source material but only through the doujin medium. There are plenty of people like that when it comes to Fate, Blue Archive, Grandblue Fantasy, etc. but I'd hardly call them "fans". The guy you reply to should probably look into Korean webtoons, which have never been shy when it comes to sex. There are multiple series that are basically weekly serialized porn. They almost always end with the protagonist getting married with one of the heroines and rarely go any further. And then you look at how these series juggle between drama and sex. You'll come to understand that harem by nature is absurd, and that absurdity is what makes the serialization possible. Polyamory absolutely exists in real life, but it's a lot more boring, a lot less romantic, a lot more ripe for jealousy, gaslighting, abuse, etc. It's not a great thing to make a story out of, unless you're committed to an actually serious drama. Let's just say that you don't want the characters to enter a committed relationship, that it's fine if they remain sex friends. Well, that it's still a lot of baggage that is impossible not to address. Just how many writers and readers are willing to make the jump between the absurdity, which they greatly enjoy, to something very real? That is why so many harem series end when the protagonist settle down with one girl, because the story of their life after that point is completely different from the one before. I will say that even among fans of ecchi series like DxD or To Love-Ru, there were plenty of people who wanted nothing more than for Issei and Rito to bang someone. I remember when people complaining about it every week and still read each chapter as they came out. Putting aside the fact that the magazines these series were serialized on would absolutely never allow that, that attitude also reflect a misunderstanding of the protagonists -- these guys are losers! In any other story they would be bystanders, and the titillation is there to push them along the plot. The moment they become a "chad", everything falls apart, which seems like a thing a lot of fans just don't understand. I'm willing to bet that the betrayed-hero revenge-by-rape plot you see in a number of LN these days has something to do with people growing up watching ecchi shows and yet unable to comprehend the core idea. As for the article, I think that it's a missed chance for it to not discuss action series like Ikkitousen, Highschool of the Death, Triage X and Tenjo Tenge. These manga are absolutely titillating, but how much do all that boobs and asses come down to trying to arouse its viewers, and how much are they about showing the absurdity of the setting, the personality and worldview of the characters, or even the artists' appreciation of the human body? Just how thin is the line between ecchi, ryona and sex? |
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FishLion
 Posts: 226 |
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To be fair I feel like you could say the same thing about monogamous relationships in romance, for most romance stories I've read they are unrealistic unless made so very intentionally. Dating a few women at the same time all living in the same house (like in many harem shows) or sharing a common gathering place and seeing all of them interact while you date would never be fun outside of a fantasy, it would be a logistical and emotional nightmare. That's ignoring that many harem have weird living situations where up to five people are living with and dating a single person. We shouldn't romanticize polyamory into imagining it as being the same as a harem, but If there are fun fantasies where we dream about having our pick of one out of several dating partner than there is no reason not to imagine a fun fantasy where we have our pick of multiple dating partners. It would honestly be awesome to have a VN where you can romance multiple people like normal but the ending changes if you get multiple characters' affection high enough, that sounds like more of a fantasy to me then adoring multiple people while it inevitably ends in heartbreak for some of your favorite characters. |
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Piglet the Grate
 Posts: 767 Location: North America |
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Kanojo mo Kanojo (Girlfriend, Girlfriend) was highly amusing (hope we get a Season 3), but was anything but serious - has Hiroyuki ever done anything serious? |
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Fireminer
Posts: 18 |
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Hiroyuki is a good comedy writer, but the weakest part of KmK is when he tried to get serious with sorting out Rika's drama. I like her as a character, but her arc just doesn't incorporate well with the rest of the story. |
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jr240483
 Posts: 4451 Location: New York City,New York,USA |
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i read the original manga of mato seihei no slave and while it have raunchy fanservice, it is limited to mainly kissing. no sex scenes here for while its an ecchi, it is DEFINITELY no tsugumomo let alone shinmai mao no testament! also i dont think redo counts, at least according to the article writers! cant blame them for leaving redo out of the conversation considering that its sex scenes are why people do not like the MC! not to mention that it would open up pandora's box for you cant have a conversation on redo and NOT mention other borderline series like school days , yosuga no sora, or even old school ecchi OVA series knights of lamunes. then there is mother of all pandora boxes when it comes to ecchi/fanservice! *cough* *cough* KODOMO NO JIKAN
you also forgot to mention yosuga no sora considering that the series is more or less tje same as harem in the labyrinth and worlds end! that series also was 70% sex scenes by volume, but was mainly adolescent fantasies for those that had no experiences as well |
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King Chicken
 Posts: 131 |
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Yosuga no Sora seems like a perfect fit for series that includes sex. Might as well include Kiss x Sis as well if we're going for the classic. If the argument is simply shows that do more than just a boob joke and actually show characters being sexually active and depicting it in canon then it seems perfectly fine to include shows that might not meet certain people's moral approval. Unless we're going to gatekeep sex now and say a guy performing oral sex on a girl doesn't count because it wasn't depicted in a way someone liked. But then I also think describing actual teenage characters being sexually active as juvenile is an odd complaint because it's kind of the point. Who wasn't awkward about sex back then? I assume when people use the word juvenile in fanservice context they just mean immature boob jokes with no desire to go further or explore a character's feelings on intimacy or love. Which is fine since not every series needs to be some character study and sometimes an author just wants to throw some fanservice for fun. |
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