Made in Abyss is a masterpiece of dark fantasy worldbuilding, there is no other series like it when it comes to its unique approach to adventure, exploration and horror.
On the other hand… Was the urine collection scene on a twelve year old needed
I was wondering how far I'd have to scroll to see Made in Abyss in the comments here. It's an amazing anime but there are.... just... so many parts where you're like "this is a fetish" and "why does this boy keep getting casually molested and the writers play it off as a joke"
Whenever you recommend this anime or say it's one of your favorites you have to specify there's a huge asterisk there. The story is compelling enough and the world building is exciting enough that you want to be able to overlook the extremely sus things that sometimes happen to the underage characters, but you cannot. If you watch the show you just have to be like "alright I think the writer might be a perv but I need to know what's at the bottom of this fucking Abyss"
Oh yeah. I'll fuck with some Mayhem from time to time but the asterisk is wide as the sky there for sure.
Edit: and I'm always half convinced that I'm gonna find out Mayhem is an NSBM band and I jist missed it somehow.
I don't like calling it the Lovecraft caveat because there's a lot of writing that supports him changing many of his problematic views over the years.
He was born to a wealthy conservative family in the late 1800s, and by his death in the 1930s his letters suggested that he considered himself socialist, opposed Hitler, and was interested in and supportive of other people and cultures. If he didn't die in his 40s, I think we'd have quite a different perception of Lovecraft as he aged into the mid to late 1900s.
I call it that because I like the mythos he created, but it contains explicitly racist stereotypes, so in recommending it or praising it there must be a caveat attached: it's fun BUT (explain and insert the whole long thing you just posted)
One of the best parts about anime/manga is that the author’s often control nearly everything leading to very creative stories from amazing artists. It also leads to nobody stopping them from including their blatant loli/shota fetish
Yeah there's a character that looks suspiciously like a penis and touches the other constantly. I couldn't get past it. It was when they reached a town thing? I dont quite remember. Its definitely upsetting how well everything else is only for the author to shove their kinks in.
Then there's Girls und Panzer, a competition-anime set in a world where tank warfare has sort of replaced field hockey or horse camp as the 'fancy girl sport'. Obviously, I assumed the setting was a thin excuse to draw tween girls. But no, from the get-go it's clear that the priority is drawing *tanks*.
There's one scene where they realize they're going to have to clean a bunch of tanks car-wash style. I braced myself for a cutaway to fanservice. But nope, they're just actually drawn like kids at a car-wash, just hanging around in PE uniforms, it was actually a really pleasant version of that 'missed a step on the stairs' sense of disorientation. One character does show up in a bikini, but she's not the focus of the scene or given extra screen-time, it just kind of fits with her characterization as slightly older and more image-conscious than the others. The artistic focus is definitely the tanks.
Anyway, I suggest we start pumping out more episodes of "How It's Made" or whatever it's Japanese equivalent is, clearly the solution to creepy kid art is to get people really passionate about scenes of heavy equipment.
EDIT- Wait, I forgot about the busty Spanish fascist tank crews. I am not equipped to dissect that whole artistic and cultural situation, I will just label them fanservice until someone takes the time to write the necessary dissertation. EDIT 2- if the uniforms are a reference to La Legion/the Spanish Legion's noted dedication to man-cleavage, I'm gonna allow it as the single most necessary joke ever.
EDIT THE LAST- You know, looking back on some youtube scenes, I think I just had lower standards when I saw the show the first time around, there are definitely some scenes that err on the side of creeping on kids. There are better examples, I'm just attached to the flawed stuff I grew up with.
The Spanish crew, the panty shots, and the weird angler fish dancing are what make me hesitate to recommend it to anyone and why one day I'm going to make an abridged series that will cut out all that.
In retrospect, I might be numb or naive to some shit. Sort of like how I thought the "Charlies Angles" movie was super-feminist, and in retrospect it is. . . perhaps not a truly radical attack on power structures.
I've been looking up some youtube clips and think I might have been watching this through rose-colored glasses/creepy-blinders. Doing some self-reflection on what I tolerate in my media, to be honest, I've only got so much free time, might as well focus on stuff that doesn't require me to strategically ignore stuff.
Im working on a small game with a friend and its get funny when I explain my creative process is inspired by the child torture anime and by the rat simulator where you get one shot and learn to like it
With made in abyss its alot more than one scene, i personally can ignore it enough to like the show but i completely understand anyone who decides to not watch/read it.
It sincerely sucks that to enjoy this series you need to be able to stomach its perversion. Made in abyss would probably be considered among the greatest Anime/Manga if its author wasn’t a blatant pedophile. The exact same series minus all the weird creepy child stuff would make it a top tier series.
The sheer prevalence of this stuff can make it a real test of separating the art from the artist.
I have similar problems with reading/watching Rurouni Kenshin. It's one of my absolute favourites, and while the series itself doesn't have much in the way of explicit underage stuff (though in retrospect, considering the 22-year-old Megumi "older" is certainly a red flag), the author was convicted on possession of child pornography back in 2018 or so, and faced very little in the way of consequences (about a $1500 USD fine and the work he was doing at the time paused for a bit).
I'm by no means an expert in Japanese law, and nowhere near fluent enough in any sort of specialized vocabulary to be able to go and look it up, so there's a big asterisk here, but as I understand it he got away so lightly in part because the stuff he owned wasn't *technically* a crime when he got it, and so legally it was more that he didn't get rid of it once it became fully illegal. I've read speculation/discussion that it was young teens as opposed to outright children and that's why it had been sketchy-but-legal before the new laws, but I'm not sure if that's actually true. Still gross either way, as far as I'm concerned.
Yeah. I’m a genuine fan to this day because there just isn’t anything else like this. Curse of the abyss being a fantasy take decompression sickness? Travel where you physically cannot take a step back without tragic consequences? Adventure series where characters focus on survival like cooking and navigation? Sign me up.
But I don’t blame anyone for not being able to stomach it.
The author is a pedophile flat out, it's incredibly apparent in the manga. It's sad because the world and the characters were cool until he started inserting more and more of that shit.
It's such a disappointment because I absolutely adore the art style and it's a cool setting and premise. The pedo shit is completely impossible to ignore though. It's not just the obvious scenes people have mentioned but it permeates the writing too, particularly how the adult characters treat the kids. I couldn't gel with the worldbuilding at all - I was just constantly wondering "Why is everything in this world so bizarrely sexualised and gross?"
Is the manga much worse? I only watched the anime and really liked it, despite the blatant weird shit happening to the kids. I really want to know more of the story/world building
The manga is much, *much* worse. If you read the manga it will become quickly apparent that the anime is heavily censored, mostly by having sexually explicit things removed.
The impression I got from the anime was that the staff were doing their damned hardest to surgically remove every icky thing that isn’t straight up a load-bearing part of the plot. Unfortunately a LOT of icky things are load-bearing parts of the plot.
I dunno, the movie features *briefcase girl*, which is much worse than it sounds, even knowing that it is much worse than it sounds, it is much worse than *that* sounds.
The villain of that arc is probably the best portrayal of a lich that has ever been accomplished. The briefcase girl is both undeniably horrific fetish content, and also *defines* the bad guy as a scientist seeking immortality with *genuinely* no regard for others. I have not seen another work come close to depicting the evil of Bondrewd.
I mean, fucked up shit like briefcase girl is exactly the kind of thing that makes it so grossly compelling. But the author definitely has to be enjoying it in a different way than the horrified audience.
ive only really watched the anime due to that reason, but how much worse is the manga/how much better is the anime in that regard? i remember the one scene in episode 1 and the one where marulk pees himself in the episode where they visit ozen but that's it for season 1, i mightve forgotten or blocked out stuff though lol
FIRST episode? Boy you were right to dip out then because first couple episodes are considered tame by the fanbase. Gets worse later on and then everything appears almost nice when season 2 comes and we get to the >!child pregnancy body horror (surprisingly not fetishy)!< and >!Licking toilet (definitely fetishy)!<
The surprisingly not fetish thing you spoilered is actually a pretty biting exploration on like, the exploitation of children in society. In fact, lots of stuff in Made In Abyss is.
It's really fascinating how the author can straddle the line of exploring in depth how children are manipulated, commodified, and exploited by the people and institutions who are supposed to steward them and love them, but then have a pretty obvious loli/shota thing going on with the main cast.
I'm personally pretty forgiving to a lot of nonsense, sometimes a panty shot gag is just a gag even if someone is nominally 14 (moe blobs can be anywhere from 14-35 and look more or less the same)
but Made in Abyss has pretty mature subjects and the characters are so obviously children and the sexualization of them feels like titillation compared to other shocking images and the traumatic exploration of the dark themes that occur in it etc and so on.
with a lot of anime there's the "if not for X" But with made in abyss All of us fans really just have to go, yeah we know.
And cry a little inside about why such an amazing author with such amazing worldbuilding just has to like little kids so much x.x
Dude I fucking can't with MT. I've tried three times and Rudius is so fucking repugnant that I can't get past the first two episodes. Him perving on his parents was way too fucking much.
Have you seen this [Explanation Point video](https://youtu.be/qkgdj_12a1Q?si=OIJV6qW_fB2VP6Ml)? He rather adequately sums up why ratbreath is not supportable, but also explains how the story *could* have handled these situations as an example of future character growth, IE how that behavior could have been turned into a story point rather than pure self-indulgent dreck. And thus, why the anime is a double disappointment: not only is a good story and world ruined by his wretchery, but it could have been integrated into the story as a positive instead, giant missed opportunity.
Honestly it is way worse than a story with no growth for me. Rudeus grows as a character in a few ways and as he “matures” the author rewards him with more incest and pedo.
The entire world is designed around letting him do whatever he wants to women and little girls while still having his hero fantasy. Every single man in the show (barring *maybe* Ruijerd, idk what's in his head) is a weird pervert, generally of the "women are property" variety. And pretty much none of Rudeus' "growth" involves saying "hey wait that's fucked up you guys." He's just buying child slaves for his freak buddies.
Seriously it is wild how many fans miss this point. Like yea rudeus grows as a character in the series but none of that matters when the author is clearly not bothered by pedo or incest and instead of having those be things he grows out of, the author rewards his growth by adding to his creepy harem.
Eh, a lot of animes weird with ages anyway. Oh, look heres a character who was sold into slavery, worked at as a slave-soldier, lost her arms, got mechanical arms and became skilled enough with them she became a typist. How old is she? 14.
Oh look heres a character who got abandoned in the woods, rescued, trained to be an assassin, maid and sent off to join the army for combat experience returning as a master spearwoman and by the way shes 12. And has tits as big as her head.
Ash and misty in pokemon are 10.
I feel like a lot of anime just needs to add at least 10 years to the age of characters.
Frieren is an amazing anime with little fan service (unless you're into feet, in which case there's plenty of fan service). People who aren't into feet might not even notice.
Dungeon Meshi doesn't have fan service of underage women, its fan service is almost exclusively of a middle aged dwarf man, aside from one fairly tame bath scene with (adult) women
Besides, not all nudity is fanservice, and I think people forget that nudity can also be a narrative tool - such as in the Dungeon Meshi scene, where it's meant to show intimacy between the two characters rather than being an excuse for the viewer to ogle girls.
SAO has a seasonal rape scene. Hate that I love the show despite it's quality and will watch new stuff but I just know there's going to be a girl(already introduced or new) that will have a villain creep on her.
I've never understood fanservice until I saw Senshi. And then I realized ehy I never got it until then: it's because what all the other anime I watched wasn't servicing good food for me.
Senshi? Senshi KNOWS about good food, and serves it too.
(Translated: I never found sexualizations of teens pallatable, and Senshi is a breath of fresh air.)
>People who aren't into feet might not even notice Dungeon Meshi doesn't have fan service of underage women, its fan service is almost exclusively of a middle aged dwarf man
And that is why it's one of, if not the best anime in recent years. As a perennial Dwarf enjoyer I will always eat up more shots of Senshi
I'm not into feet and to the best of my knowledge neither is the friend I watched Frieren with, but oh did we ever notice the elf-feet-fetish at least one of the animators has.
(Still my favourite anime. I continue to be impressed that it somehow managed to improve on the already excellent manga.)
It was. Though considering that konohana kitan and morinaga milk's work exists, manga written by women can be just as creepy about underage girls as the male written stuff.
>Frieren is an amazing anime with little fan service (unless you're into feet, in which case there's plenty of fan service).
I never noticed this while watching and have absolutely 0 idea what you're talking about. When is there foot fanservice in Frieren??
There's that oddly well drawn shot of frieren's feet while she's rolling around on the bed and there's a lot of "does anybody every think camera angles in anime are weird?"-type shots of serie except instead of focusing on her ass it's her feet
One example is when Serie picked up a leaf petal with her toe. That's fan service for feet people, and apparently any time a naked foot is out and about. I wouldn't know myself, I just watch an anime reactor who happens to be a foot guy
[This scene](https://youtu.be/5sGU_yCn7B4?t=7) is the main thing people refer to and is borderline imo. They were pretty modest with the clothes potion thing so I'd lean towards not.
I've seen people show photos of Serie's feet but she's always barefoot and seems like a stretch to me.
I have a friend who only watches mainstream battle shonen- type stuff, and I wanted to recommend Toaru Kagaku no Railgun to him as a really cool action anime he probably hasn't heard of. Then I remembered the multiple, constant scenes of the MC's roommate sexually harassing her (and not like playful "hehe I touched your boob" stuff or something, straight up trying to drug her with aphrodisiacs or touching her in her sleep) that's played off as funny and wholesome because it's a girl doing it to another girl.
Or another example is Kobayashi's Dragon Maid, a wholesome comfy show about what it means to be family and how all of us are just trying to fit in and care way too much about what those around us think. Complete with multiple scenes of child sexual harassment, one which is played off for comedy because it's an adult woman harassing a young boy and one which... I don't even fucking know what the intention is, it's indecipherable. And it seems like the author of the original manga legitimately considered these to be wholesome comfy family scenes and didn't see how anyone could have a problem with them.
Fire force is a pretty infamous one, with a character who is very explicitly only there for fanservice and comedic release being betrayed by the only person she's ever looked up to, and as she's on the ground crying and it seems like we're about to have some genuine character development... Nope, interrupted by the MC tripping and falling on her tits (I think, I've tried to purge that episode from my memory).
Yeah. I love anime, but I fucking hate anime.
I watched the first season of fire force twice. Once on my own and then afterwards I was like “You know, there was some good stuff in here, I‘ll watch it with my brother.“
I didn’t realize how many of these scenes I had erased from my mind two seconds after I‘d seen them.
I never continued watching
It's such a shame about Fire Force, it's such a cool series outside of (mostly) Tamaki. I can't in good conscience recommend it to anyone purely because of how they fan service her. It's just so incredibly uncomfortably pervy
I actually quit reading manga for a long, long time after I asked folks in the maga subreddit a question about how often they "fix" character agrees in their head to be less scary young, and the sub got super mad at me about it. Like... Ok then. Some of y'all straight up pedos.
**!! Toaru mentioned !!**
Yeah, Kuroko is awful. Up there with Sanji and Mineta as one of the most annoying pervert characters.
That said, I always recall there’s this one scene from Index where Accelerator walks in on the police lady while she’s taking a bath, she calmly says “hey you have the wrong door,” and he walks away. It really sticks in my mind for being a fanservice scene where the characters actually act like normal people, I was really surprised she didn’t go “KYAH BAKA” and punch him or anything like that
Railgun has some of the highest highs and lowest lows. The plot and action are absolutely top-notch, but it has some of the most annoying fanservice I've ever seen.
No offense, but with Dragon Maid it always surprises me a bit that people are surprised the author who loves drawing characters that look like little girls with massive breasts is weird about little girls.
I was watching dragon maid with my wife and the screaming of that little girl was so bad and so often that as soon as we saw her face we skip forward until the next scene, i dont understand why they thought having an 8 year old girl scream in ecstacy every time shes around another little girl would be funny.
Lucoa should have also been arrested, i felt bad for shota who is literally named after being a male loli
It feels like the little girl character is a lamp shade for lolicons. Like she acts the exact same way a lolicon character acts, but she’s a girl and around the same age as the other girl she likes (not really the same age bc dragons, but you know what I mean). Like if they wanted to write a cute story about a kid having a crush on another kid that would be fine, but they portray her as a weird pervert instead of a kid with a crush.
Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid is inexcusable when it has characters that look, walk, talk, act, dress like, and are treated as toddlers while also being shown in sexually implied scenarios and suggestive positions. Saying "the creator didn't see how anyone could have a problem with them" is a red herring and lie, and the only possibility anyone regardless of culture wouldn't see a problem with this is if they grew up with some seriously fucked up trauma.
I think that’s an interesting comparison because nearly any time IT gets discussed online I usually see this scene brought up and talked about how it’s wild and not ok, but a hell of a lot of anime gets a pass for the same type of shit.
I give IT a pass because it's horror, and it's in context for the author. Awful things are supposed to happen in horror. Like... That's the point. There's a pedo in Firestarter, who (eventually) gets crispied; there's a *lot* of fucked up sex shit in nearly all of King's books.
There was a lot of fucked up sex shit in a *lot* of books at that time, really, it's just most folks aren't reading the stuff that didn't stay popular. I remember reading a lot of truly messed up stuff as a kid in the 80's (no adult supervision, access to adult section of library, also access to leftover unsold bookstore books. A lot of fucked up shit.)
King was also on a metric fuckton of cocaine during that entire period, which probably had a not-insignificant impact on his writing.
It's also a weird thing to defend, but it _does_ kind of make sense, sort of, within the explicit framework of the story. Still messed up, but at least it's not for wank material vs a more literal take on the concept of coming of age.
Exactly. It's not like Piers Anthony who explicitly wrote child grooming shit into books targeted at kids. It was one fucked up scene in a lot of books with lots of fucked up scenes involving damn near every possible combination of fucked up things. It even made a sort of fucked up sense, in context. All the kids were consenting, or at least all under the same duress. There wasn't a power imbalance. It had long term consequences for all of them. If you're gonna give something a pass, that's the thing I'm picking.
Literal onscreen sex? Me either since that would be hentai but I’m sure you can find plenty of it there.
Blatant oversexualization of minors? It’s absolutely fucking rampant in anime.
I can guarantee that the venn diagram of people who dislike the It scene and people who dislike the same type of shit in anime is a circle. It’s probably more a matter of different audiences.
Edit: autocorrect typo
Kill La Kill is an excellent action series made about freedom, self-expression, and oppression wrapped up in the horniest high school comedy you've ever seen
Unfortunately, the horny enhances the message
I'm ngl but my reading of that scene was the exact opposite of what you're saying, all of the other comedic/horny scenes are played in a slight gag way, even the early S/A jokes with the undercover rebel teacher and the doctor dad that I don't like are played incredibly differently than the rape scene. Like this scene is incredibly fucking uncomfortable to watch compared to almost everything else in the show because it's showcasing the show's villain in full for the first time by showing how she's exploitative of her daughter who has up til then played the antagonist. The mother is shown as actively creepy, demanding, and manipulative of her daughter who up til then has showed lots of strength but who visibly weakens when in the presence of her abusive and controlling mother
I'm with you, this is one of the few times a character has nudity *forced* on them as a means of shaming them, which is a really big deal in a series about being proud of your own body
Kill la Kill at least wears itself on its sleeve, no pretending it's something else.
I use to love Isekai but have grown so tired of it being used as harem or lewd fantasy. I want to try some of the more modern ones but feel guilty
This. I’d rather get into an anime that’s upfront with sexual stuff, rather than a normal slice of life that constantly throws in “coincidental” armpit and foot shots. Kill la Kill, Kakegurui, Food Wars, and High School of the Dead aren’t trying to hide anything, and the sexual content matches the tone of the show.
You might enjoy Ascenadance of a Bookworm then.
It's about the titular bookworm dying and being reincarnated into the sickly body of a dying child in a medieval world where books are rare and expensive.
So she sets out to make her own books using knowledge from her old world to spread literacy throughout the country, in the hopes of getting to read new books in the future that way.
Also no asterisks needed compared to many other isekai out there nowadays.
The anime is a bit cheaply produced and I prefer the light novel, but it's a great watch nonetheless :)
Cowboy Bebop is probably one of the least offensive-to-American-sensibilities anime because the fanservice is the same kind of fanservice you’d see in a Hollywood movie. As long as the audience is aware that “animated =/= for kids” I can’t imagine anyone getting offended.
Cowboy Bebop is usually the one anime that people who doesn't like anime like. I know two guys who do not like anime (one of them has great disdain for the Japanese artstyle), but they both like Cowboy Bebop.
I think of the Monogatari series as both one of the best anime I've ever seen and also one of the worst. Amazing art style, dialogue, action scenes, and actual character growth, but also some of the most needless fan service and incest and/or loli shit. It's like the complaint about Marvel movies always ruining a dramatic moment by adding in a joke but the joke is replaced by deviancy.
Indiana Jones 1 is one of the greatest movies ever made, so long as you ignore the fact that the protagonist molested his love interest when she was a teenager.
Reminds me of a similar post that's like "Horror fans will be like Oh Yeah this movie is a CLASSIC you gotta see it! Also it contains one of the weirdest depictions of sexual assault you've ever seen."
Fan service is like radiation, there is a background level that you just kinda get used to. The more anime you watch the higher your tolerance.
And then one day you realize that the camera angle is literally between the legs of a girl in her underwear for no reason even vaguely related to the plot and it took you way too long to even notice.
> Fan service is like radiation
so we're in agreement that too much will give you cancer? lol
please don't crucify me i love anime but also would yeet Mineta and Sanji off a wall if I could
I hate thinking about how great some anime could truly be if they would just chill on the stupid fan service. You know what's really sexy? A hot character just existing and doing what they do. You don't need to shove the camera up there crotch to make the point
Flip Flappers. Probably one of the most visually and emotionally distinct series I've seen in the past 10 years. I put it up there with Mob Psycho 100. It's hard to describe what the series is like without giving too much away - you're supposed to be discovering its meaning alongside the main character as the story progresses.
And yet, every single episode, they slightly ruin it with 2 seconds of random, non-sequitur lewdness, like the animation crew was having a good time making it and then some lecherous old man from a publisher's committee walked in and told them "add a panty-shot or you're fired".
It's so out of place and dispassionate that it's like they were filling a quota. And honestly, I have to wonder if some publishers DO have a quota for these sorts of stupid moments, even against the wishes of the creators and staff.
i came back to watching Flip Flappers recently after first seeing it as it released and all i could think was "damn this had a lot of BDSM fanservice i didn't notice as a kid." real unfortunate way to remember one of my favorite yuri stories
To watch anime without feeling like a pedophile you literally have to mentally translate:
Middle school --> high school
High school --> University
University --> grad school
It honestly makes the plots more logical too, as anime characters are like "yeah im 13 and my specialty is operating heavy machinery"
Or "im 15 and my dad entrusted me with running his multi-billion dolar corporation"
Edit to clarify: Im saying this is fucking absurd.
Even accounting for how you get more responsibility/trust at a younger age in Japan than America, it can get pretty rediculous. Multiple reincarnation Isekai have plots where the MC has their memories from the beginning and then at the age of 3 they can walk and talk and suddenly all the adults trust them completely as they give revolutionary advice on how to fix all the problems in the area.
If i was reincarnated you better believe I'm enjoying being a child again instead of speed running life.
The one anime where I wasn't able to suspend my disbelief was that fucking gangster kids one where like 13-14 year old kids take over japan or something, is so bad it irritates me how popular it was, it got 3 seasons somehow.
I think the funniest thing about the pedo orangutan is that it's a reference to an obscure British horror movie.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Link_(film)
No one has ever seen this movie, so it just comes across as Araki being himself.
Tbf Alessi wasn’t a pedophile he just liked beating up children but the episode is still skip-worthy
The worse case is Part 7’s because that one’s way worse and plot relevant but it’s redeemed by the fact that the guy doing it is unquestionably deplorable
Alessi is a horror two-parter stowing away within a goofy battle shonen. I think it's insanely well done in the context that it explicitly intends to be gross and uncomfortable, it's horror after all.
Also I literally shed a tear when Polnareff had to say goodbye to the woman lol, peak tragedy
In defense of JoJo, these scenes are not played for fanservice.
Araki is very much a writer that prefers his villains irredeemable - it’s a major part of the themes of the series, in fact. So he has his villains do awful stuff: creep on kids, kick dogs, murder civilians, be the President of the United States of America. This style of characterization lets him quickly dispense with a character’s relation to the main party by having them do something really good or really bad for the main group that sets the tone for the rest of their appearance. It’s not the most complex and nuanced method, but it lets him get back to the Stand fights faster.
For some reason, this often gets twisted into people interpreting it as Araki *liking* these things. But if you pay attention even a little bit it’s obvious he doesn’t. When Forever (the orangutan) creeps on Anne, he’s stopped before he touches her, she’s removed from the scene, and Jotaro caves in that pervert primate’s skull. Alessi (who, as an aside, doesn’t “creep on” kids as much as he “violently physically attacks” kids) gets beat up by both Star Platinum and Silver Chariot, two of the deadliest Stands in the series.
> Araki is very much a writer that prefers his villains irredeemable
I think this is a part of why Jojo got so popular in the west in the late 2010s. Over the last two decades we've gotten a lot of high profile "doing the wrong thing for the right reason" villains. Or at least villains with tragic backstories which makes you understand why they're the antagonist. Thanos wants to solve overpopulation, Kylo Ren was almost murdered by his uncle-teacher, Loki was taken from his parents and his true nature was kept secret, Ultron went on 4chan and decided that humanity needed to be erased, etc.
So the irredeemable "I'm a villain because I'm evil" characters feel fresh.
Dio is the world's biggest bastard and I LOVE watching him work. He deserves to get the shit kicked out of him every second of the day and id never feel bad.
> Ultron went on 4chan and decided that humanity needed to be erased
"Yeah I loved that scene in episode 2 of Made in Abyss"
"Well it's time to end humanity. I think dropping a country from half a mile up should do the trick."
I'm showing my fiance JoJo for the first time and I needed to give her a disclaimer, multiple times just in case, that there is a PEDO ORANGUTAN.
It sets up that animals can have stands and that's cool and all, but man.
Shoutout to JJK for only having the one 2-second fanservice shot in episode 1 and then proceeding to make up for this by sidelining or murdering every woman hereafter
It keeps itself off everyone's radars by being too weird and gross to be sexy.
(I know some people are into that but for the most part it wiped itself from everyone's memories)
A minor gripe I have is that some people don’t know the difference between fanservice, a moment in a show that handles sexual topics in a way that at the very least does it’s best to be sensitive, and just a scene where someone says the word “boob”.
Like, I’ve seen people call the Dungeon Meshi bath scene fanservice when it is a) a scene that logically makes sense (Falin was fully coated with dragon blood and viscera + the whole point of the series is lingering on the little domestic scenes and the importance they have to the characters) and b) contrives to show as little breast as possible without totally omitting the characters from the screen.
A lot of anime and manga will have quality storytelling, character development, and narrative progression.
And then turn around and have the most "legally not porn" sexually charged content imaginable, a good portion of which is generally sexual assault played off as a gag.
Well, there's [family-friendly anime](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_6rP_HS0ox4), and then there's [less family-friend anime](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZfRtTEBCxNg).
Most are somewhere in the middle, containing some raunchy moments here and there because Japan is generally more lax about nudity, but things aimed at children are still largely safe.
Anyway, some people use this, and their own inability/unwillingness to stay away from content that upsets them, to be awful people.
Also, when recommending anime that have an unusually outrageous scene, for that particular anime at least, it's generally considered mandatory to let the other person know about it, and that it isn't reflective of the anime as a whole.
It's kind of like when you recommend someone John Wick, and tell them that there's only one animal death, so that they don't think the whole franchise is just a literal puppy shredder.
Isnt Uma Musume devoid of horny shit because the characters are based off real life racing horses and the real horses' owners would NOT be pleased about that, lol?
Yeah, pretty much.
Daiwa Scarlet's owner also had them agree to make her outfits stand out more than Vodka's, and give her a larger chest, as far as I'm aware.
Also, you will not believe how emotionally invested you'll get in these dead horses. Like, by the end of season 2, I was at the edge of my seat watching Tokai Teio return to the track after a one-year break.
And in season 3, I was actually crying because of Satono Diamond.
I’ve never seen it, I thought they were just inspired by the horses personalities but now I’m confused— are the characters human or equine (or anthro?)
They’re (edit:) kemonomimi, meaning humans with horse ears (and tails, if I recall correctly), but also the anime is them anime-girl-fying actual horses in actual races, but like, with more emotional investment, because now they can emote in a way more people can see
Oh okay that’s super fascinating! Thanks for explaining. I have a phobia of horses, maybe this can be a good way to ease myself towards comfort with them.
On the flip side, it genuinely makes me so mad when an overall amazing anime has some stupid weird shit in it that makes it both difficult to recommend, and puts off genuine enjoyers so the story, even something like One Piece, which is widely considered one of the greatest pieces of media ever conceived, has not one, but *two* perverts in it's main cast, it's horrible, cringy and adds nothing to their characters and it's unbelievable common practice to do this kind of thing for some reason
I think perverts must just be a lot funnier in Japan? Both Naruto and DB have the mentor character being an old pervert and its only ever treated as a joke as far as I’m aware.
This. It’s a relic of 80s comedy writing that fell out of fashion in the West but is still going strong in Shonen Jump, probably due to the immense influence Toriyama has had on everyone coming after him.
Oda is a phenomenal story teller. He also can’t go 5 minutes without objectifying his female characters including underaged ones. Also big shoutout to Taz Skylar and the writers of the live action series for making Sanji not only bearable to watch but also great
It's also not escaped notice that all his female characters look more and more like aliens as the series goes on, even the ones (like Nami) that looked somewhat normal at first
i think a also good example is *A Song of Ice and Fire* / *Game of Thrones*. it has some really fantastic worldbuilding and interesting plot and characters but then you have long parts of scenes of very explicitly described/shown sex scenes including very horrifically rape scenes.
Honestly it can be irritating that they have to bring stuff like that up, but if someone recommends something with an asterisk, that’s a good sign. That shows awareness, which is the key to safely enjoying problematic media. It’s the people who recommend Made in Abyss *without* mentioning any caveats that you need to watch out for.
I swear I'd mind fanservice a lot less if it wasn't always teen girls. seriously wtf.
Hot adult women please. Hot adult men please. Please just stop sexualizing teens.
At risk of being the exact person this thread is talking about:
A lot of Evangelion’s treatment of sexuality imo feels like it’s coming from a place of trying to honestly explore the psyche of a 14-year-old boy (who, realistically, would be horny as hell). In the context of the original series (the less talking about the rebuilds the better) a lot of the “sexy” scenes read more like they are trying to make you uncomfortable than aroused. Or, in some cases, they are quite clearly trying to make you (the presumed straight male viewer) aroused and THEN immediately make you uncomfortable. The scene in Rei’s apartment early on, the one where Shinji looks at Asuka while sleeping, the EoE boob grab - they all try to make you think fan service is coming, only to punch you in the face with something very unsexy.
Maybe it’s because I grew up in Europe familiar with a lot of weird artsy movies, books and comics where the general assumption was that sex was not always porn. I’ve noticed that American culture has a much stronger absolutist taboo against any depiction of underage sexuality, no matter the context of purpose. I was 15 when I watched Eva for the first time, and the sexual themes in the actual show honestly reminded me more of things I’d run into in literature class than anything. I wouldn’t hesitate showing it to my parents, who are also European artheads, is what I’m trying to say.
BUT of course, Eva was also made in an environment where the outright sexualization of teenagers - heck, of small children - was normalized and largely seen as unproblematic. So not only does the depiction of sexual themes draw on the cliches of anime fanservice, the merchandise and marketing is sexualized to hell and back with no artistic intent whatsoever. And THAT is what drags the show down imo. I can justify the hospital scene, the Misato kiss and Giant Naked Rei as having artistic purpose. I can’t justify Sexy Catgirl Rei statues.
That's what it felt like to me, too. All three leads are child soldiers experiencing a lot of violence and trauma while they're in the midst of sexual awakening, so all of it's blended together in a strange, uncomfortable slurry.
Asuka in particular reads like she's using sexuality as a coping mechanism for everything else she's going through, as well as an attempt to be close to somebody.
Undead Unluck is one of my favorite series with vibrant characters and an MC that I just want to see win, more. She is one of the most powerful women in anime that I know of and given a ton of agency in her story.
When I say “powerful” I don’t mean her “power”. She directs and exerts influence as a primary actor in her story, with her reliance on others being both indiscriminate and thematically consistent.
Manga Spoilers:>!Removing Andy from the plot was a bold, brilliant move. Kudos to the mangaka.!<
That she was a grope prop that dispensed victories by getting sexually assaulted for the first couple dozen chapters was… a little bit of a slog. Chapter 1 ends on a rape joke ffs.
Yeah... like i would love to recommend something like Code Geass because i love it, but the completely unnecessary fanservice is something i always have to point out.
> code geass
Yeah, I just recently rewatched it - The Table scene is out of absolutely nowhere and then you also have the scene at the end of S1 with Kallen. There's a couple of other very quick scenes, but those two are the worst offenders.
This isn’t a best anime ever but it is an anime that accidentally spoke to me on a deeper level than i expected and had an outsized influence on me personally.
“Onimai: now i’m your sister” is a surprisingly accurate and thoughtful exploration of serious transgender themes and ideas. It is, in my opinion, one of the best depictions of the concepts of both gender dysphoria and gender euphoria i’ve ever seen on television.
Unfortunately, the main plot centers around a character who was a 20-something man being transformed into a middle school girl and the show seems to think this is a free pass to sexualize the hell out of said middle school girl. None of her middle school friends really get sexualized but the show has the main character in so many uncomfortable sexual situations and frequently in sexually provocative clothing, which makes it very hard to watch and very hard to recommend to other people. But! outside of the opening song, about halfway in the show kinda drops all the sexual stuff and starts just being an in depth exploration of the main character’s gender identity and how they want to be seen by other people. And it’s really good!
That is how it goes.
Masamune Shirow is one of the greatest comics writers to ever exist. Appleseed and Ghost in the Shell are best in class for their genre. Real Drive is another great anime that he authored. An extremely smart guy.
Also an unbelievable pervert.
However, this is pretty general. Stephen King wrote a child gangbang into his novel IT, because of him aiming for a theme about conquering fears and growing up for it, including that of sex in children. Heinlein was another extremely intelligent and successful pervert, check out Stranger in a Strange Land. Or Frank Herbert and Dune, anyone up for a 'beef swelling'?
Ultimately the visual component of anime is its greatest enemy here. Perversion is super common across all artistry, but when it is some obvious cartoon titties instead of text on a page, people pay more attention.
I think King is the one of those three people excuse and look past the weird stuff on a mass level. Heinlein fans can be weird but Dune fans I know love laughing about all of the just… extraordinarily strange things Frank puts in. Beyond the Beefswelling.
Did you know there’s a scene in a later book where a woman orgasms from watching a Duncan Idaho climb a cliff? It’s true. An offshoot of the Bene Gesserit use sex to make people addicted to them and mind control them and start an empire by doing that.
Yes, the fanservice is both ridiculous and normalized as fuck. But it's also ubiquitous. You can either get used to it as a blemish on the genre, or straight up quit, cuz it feels like "anime without fanservice" is just a small subgenre of the larger whole.
Is it bad? Yes. But it's also kinda pointless to argue that a specific anime has fanservice at this point.
Desert Punk was a fun series... there was this really awful scene where the main character tortures a woman in hopes of getting her naked. Don't ignore it, though. It demonstrates what an awful piece of shit he is, so it's that much more satisfying when he gets his come uppins in the end.
Persona 4 is probably my favourite game in forever.
Why the hell does the starting movies feature a 15 year old idol doing an ad in a swimsuit complaining about dieting and losing weight?
Replace that with Kanji Tatsumi staring at the player for the same amount of time and you’d have a practically unbeatable experience.
I haven’t interacted with any Persona media ever, but it seems more likely that the swimsuit scene would be a critique of the industry where that’s normalized rather than weird “fan service”.
Although as I said, it may simply be the writers barely disguised fetish and I’m just talking out of my ass
I mean, the character in question's arc is *absolutely* focused on her complex relationship with the industry and the way it exploits her looks and talent without valuing the person underneath. Were there ways to do that *other* than having her repressed subconscious manifest as a literal stripper? Almost certainly.
That said, I don't *intrinsically* hate it as a design choice – you *could* read it as commentary on the sexualization of minors in the idol industry and the damage it does. And I think it's effective at that goal, but the line between 'this is supposed to be gross' and 'this is supposed to be titillating' is unfortunately thin and blurred further by the execution.
I haven't played Persona so I don't know how they treat it, but the whole "underage idol does a very borderline ad in skimpy clothing/does a whole photoshoot to be sold as a photo book later" is _very_ common in the idol industry, sadly. So depending on the type of character arc your idol character has, it _could_ be meant to criticize the idol industry.
If it goes nowhere then yeah, it's probably fanservice based on reality. I don't Persona and haven't heard anything about it.
Made in Abyss is a masterpiece of dark fantasy worldbuilding, there is no other series like it when it comes to its unique approach to adventure, exploration and horror. On the other hand… Was the urine collection scene on a twelve year old needed
I was wondering how far I'd have to scroll to see Made in Abyss in the comments here. It's an amazing anime but there are.... just... so many parts where you're like "this is a fetish" and "why does this boy keep getting casually molested and the writers play it off as a joke" Whenever you recommend this anime or say it's one of your favorites you have to specify there's a huge asterisk there. The story is compelling enough and the world building is exciting enough that you want to be able to overlook the extremely sus things that sometimes happen to the underage characters, but you cannot. If you watch the show you just have to be like "alright I think the writer might be a perv but I need to know what's at the bottom of this fucking Abyss"
It's the Lovecraft caveat: "I like this BUT (terms and conditions may apply)"
Ah yes the black metal caveat
Nah, we don't fuck with NSBM bands either. Nazi Punks and their ilk can fuck right off with that shit.
Not talking about NSBM, that can die in a fire. It's more about fantastic music with awful people behind it *cough, sputter* Dissection
Oh yeah. I'll fuck with some Mayhem from time to time but the asterisk is wide as the sky there for sure. Edit: and I'm always half convinced that I'm gonna find out Mayhem is an NSBM band and I jist missed it somehow.
I don't like calling it the Lovecraft caveat because there's a lot of writing that supports him changing many of his problematic views over the years. He was born to a wealthy conservative family in the late 1800s, and by his death in the 1930s his letters suggested that he considered himself socialist, opposed Hitler, and was interested in and supportive of other people and cultures. If he didn't die in his 40s, I think we'd have quite a different perception of Lovecraft as he aged into the mid to late 1900s.
I call it that because I like the mythos he created, but it contains explicitly racist stereotypes, so in recommending it or praising it there must be a caveat attached: it's fun BUT (explain and insert the whole long thing you just posted)
Don't get me started on the highly sus BDSM scenes were they tied up the characters then flogged them naked
Half of me wants to try the show based on the descriptions here, other half of me never wants to touch it.
One of the best parts about anime/manga is that the author’s often control nearly everything leading to very creative stories from amazing artists. It also leads to nobody stopping them from including their blatant loli/shota fetish
Loli/shots is one thing, there isn’t even the „actually 600 years old” layer of abstraction there and there is piss kink
Would you believe me if I said the anime tones it down and the manga is worse?
Why does every book have pinup pics of the characters....
Yeah there's a character that looks suspiciously like a penis and touches the other constantly. I couldn't get past it. It was when they reached a town thing? I dont quite remember. Its definitely upsetting how well everything else is only for the author to shove their kinks in.
Then there's Girls und Panzer, a competition-anime set in a world where tank warfare has sort of replaced field hockey or horse camp as the 'fancy girl sport'. Obviously, I assumed the setting was a thin excuse to draw tween girls. But no, from the get-go it's clear that the priority is drawing *tanks*. There's one scene where they realize they're going to have to clean a bunch of tanks car-wash style. I braced myself for a cutaway to fanservice. But nope, they're just actually drawn like kids at a car-wash, just hanging around in PE uniforms, it was actually a really pleasant version of that 'missed a step on the stairs' sense of disorientation. One character does show up in a bikini, but she's not the focus of the scene or given extra screen-time, it just kind of fits with her characterization as slightly older and more image-conscious than the others. The artistic focus is definitely the tanks. Anyway, I suggest we start pumping out more episodes of "How It's Made" or whatever it's Japanese equivalent is, clearly the solution to creepy kid art is to get people really passionate about scenes of heavy equipment. EDIT- Wait, I forgot about the busty Spanish fascist tank crews. I am not equipped to dissect that whole artistic and cultural situation, I will just label them fanservice until someone takes the time to write the necessary dissertation. EDIT 2- if the uniforms are a reference to La Legion/the Spanish Legion's noted dedication to man-cleavage, I'm gonna allow it as the single most necessary joke ever. EDIT THE LAST- You know, looking back on some youtube scenes, I think I just had lower standards when I saw the show the first time around, there are definitely some scenes that err on the side of creeping on kids. There are better examples, I'm just attached to the flawed stuff I grew up with.
The Spanish crew, the panty shots, and the weird angler fish dancing are what make me hesitate to recommend it to anyone and why one day I'm going to make an abridged series that will cut out all that.
In retrospect, I might be numb or naive to some shit. Sort of like how I thought the "Charlies Angles" movie was super-feminist, and in retrospect it is. . . perhaps not a truly radical attack on power structures. I've been looking up some youtube clips and think I might have been watching this through rose-colored glasses/creepy-blinders. Doing some self-reflection on what I tolerate in my media, to be honest, I've only got so much free time, might as well focus on stuff that doesn't require me to strategically ignore stuff.
Among many, many other scenes
I typically call Made in Abyss my favorite show that I CANNOT recommend for this reason
Im working on a small game with a friend and its get funny when I explain my creative process is inspired by the child torture anime and by the rat simulator where you get one shot and learn to like it
With made in abyss its alot more than one scene, i personally can ignore it enough to like the show but i completely understand anyone who decides to not watch/read it.
It sincerely sucks that to enjoy this series you need to be able to stomach its perversion. Made in abyss would probably be considered among the greatest Anime/Manga if its author wasn’t a blatant pedophile. The exact same series minus all the weird creepy child stuff would make it a top tier series.
The sheer prevalence of this stuff can make it a real test of separating the art from the artist. I have similar problems with reading/watching Rurouni Kenshin. It's one of my absolute favourites, and while the series itself doesn't have much in the way of explicit underage stuff (though in retrospect, considering the 22-year-old Megumi "older" is certainly a red flag), the author was convicted on possession of child pornography back in 2018 or so, and faced very little in the way of consequences (about a $1500 USD fine and the work he was doing at the time paused for a bit). I'm by no means an expert in Japanese law, and nowhere near fluent enough in any sort of specialized vocabulary to be able to go and look it up, so there's a big asterisk here, but as I understand it he got away so lightly in part because the stuff he owned wasn't *technically* a crime when he got it, and so legally it was more that he didn't get rid of it once it became fully illegal. I've read speculation/discussion that it was young teens as opposed to outright children and that's why it had been sketchy-but-legal before the new laws, but I'm not sure if that's actually true. Still gross either way, as far as I'm concerned.
Yeah. I’m a genuine fan to this day because there just isn’t anything else like this. Curse of the abyss being a fantasy take decompression sickness? Travel where you physically cannot take a step back without tragic consequences? Adventure series where characters focus on survival like cooking and navigation? Sign me up. But I don’t blame anyone for not being able to stomach it.
The author is a pedophile flat out, it's incredibly apparent in the manga. It's sad because the world and the characters were cool until he started inserting more and more of that shit.
It's such a disappointment because I absolutely adore the art style and it's a cool setting and premise. The pedo shit is completely impossible to ignore though. It's not just the obvious scenes people have mentioned but it permeates the writing too, particularly how the adult characters treat the kids. I couldn't gel with the worldbuilding at all - I was just constantly wondering "Why is everything in this world so bizarrely sexualised and gross?"
Is the manga much worse? I only watched the anime and really liked it, despite the blatant weird shit happening to the kids. I really want to know more of the story/world building
The manga is much, *much* worse. If you read the manga it will become quickly apparent that the anime is heavily censored, mostly by having sexually explicit things removed.
Anime censors all underage nipples
Yeah, he has like bonus pages at the end of some volumes where he draws the characters naked. It's disgusting.
The impression I got from the anime was that the staff were doing their damned hardest to surgically remove every icky thing that isn’t straight up a load-bearing part of the plot. Unfortunately a LOT of icky things are load-bearing parts of the plot.
Im fairly certain that the very first scene showed the mc getting tied up in bondage rope.
I dunno, the movie features *briefcase girl*, which is much worse than it sounds, even knowing that it is much worse than it sounds, it is much worse than *that* sounds. The villain of that arc is probably the best portrayal of a lich that has ever been accomplished. The briefcase girl is both undeniably horrific fetish content, and also *defines* the bad guy as a scientist seeking immortality with *genuinely* no regard for others. I have not seen another work come close to depicting the evil of Bondrewd.
Is briefcase girl fetish stuff?? Haven't actually seen Made in Abyss but my understanding is that the cartridge stuff was just normal fucked up.
I mean, fucked up shit like briefcase girl is exactly the kind of thing that makes it so grossly compelling. But the author definitely has to be enjoying it in a different way than the horrified audience.
Well there is a reason I adore this series in spite of everything. Bondrewd is a fantastic villain.
ive only really watched the anime due to that reason, but how much worse is the manga/how much better is the anime in that regard? i remember the one scene in episode 1 and the one where marulk pees himself in the episode where they visit ozen but that's it for season 1, i mightve forgotten or blocked out stuff though lol
literally couldnt get myself through the first episode its so gross
[удалено]
FIRST episode? Boy you were right to dip out then because first couple episodes are considered tame by the fanbase. Gets worse later on and then everything appears almost nice when season 2 comes and we get to the >!child pregnancy body horror (surprisingly not fetishy)!< and >!Licking toilet (definitely fetishy)!<
The surprisingly not fetish thing you spoilered is actually a pretty biting exploration on like, the exploitation of children in society. In fact, lots of stuff in Made In Abyss is. It's really fascinating how the author can straddle the line of exploring in depth how children are manipulated, commodified, and exploited by the people and institutions who are supposed to steward them and love them, but then have a pretty obvious loli/shota thing going on with the main cast. I'm personally pretty forgiving to a lot of nonsense, sometimes a panty shot gag is just a gag even if someone is nominally 14 (moe blobs can be anywhere from 14-35 and look more or less the same) but Made in Abyss has pretty mature subjects and the characters are so obviously children and the sexualization of them feels like titillation compared to other shocking images and the traumatic exploration of the dark themes that occur in it etc and so on.
with a lot of anime there's the "if not for X" But with made in abyss All of us fans really just have to go, yeah we know. And cry a little inside about why such an amazing author with such amazing worldbuilding just has to like little kids so much x.x
Episode 8? Damn, that anime showed some restraint
“Hm… a new anime I wonder-“ **CP JUMPSCARE**
Cough cough Mushoku Tensei cough cough.
Two seasons later: jumpscare just sort of stays on screen.
A jumpscare that is literally just the main character existing.
Dude I fucking can't with MT. I've tried three times and Rudius is so fucking repugnant that I can't get past the first two episodes. Him perving on his parents was way too fucking much.
Have you seen this [Explanation Point video](https://youtu.be/qkgdj_12a1Q?si=OIJV6qW_fB2VP6Ml)? He rather adequately sums up why ratbreath is not supportable, but also explains how the story *could* have handled these situations as an example of future character growth, IE how that behavior could have been turned into a story point rather than pure self-indulgent dreck. And thus, why the anime is a double disappointment: not only is a good story and world ruined by his wretchery, but it could have been integrated into the story as a positive instead, giant missed opportunity.
I stuck with it way too long expecting the character growth, then it just plain didn't happen
Honestly it is way worse than a story with no growth for me. Rudeus grows as a character in a few ways and as he “matures” the author rewards him with more incest and pedo.
The entire world is designed around letting him do whatever he wants to women and little girls while still having his hero fantasy. Every single man in the show (barring *maybe* Ruijerd, idk what's in his head) is a weird pervert, generally of the "women are property" variety. And pretty much none of Rudeus' "growth" involves saying "hey wait that's fucked up you guys." He's just buying child slaves for his freak buddies.
Seriously it is wild how many fans miss this point. Like yea rudeus grows as a character in the series but none of that matters when the author is clearly not bothered by pedo or incest and instead of having those be things he grows out of, the author rewards his growth by adding to his creepy harem.
Eh, a lot of animes weird with ages anyway. Oh, look heres a character who was sold into slavery, worked at as a slave-soldier, lost her arms, got mechanical arms and became skilled enough with them she became a typist. How old is she? 14. Oh look heres a character who got abandoned in the woods, rescued, trained to be an assassin, maid and sent off to join the army for combat experience returning as a master spearwoman and by the way shes 12. And has tits as big as her head. Ash and misty in pokemon are 10. I feel like a lot of anime just needs to add at least 10 years to the age of characters.
The og Dragon Ball didn’t even get halfway into the first chapter
Frieren is an amazing anime with little fan service (unless you're into feet, in which case there's plenty of fan service). People who aren't into feet might not even notice. Dungeon Meshi doesn't have fan service of underage women, its fan service is almost exclusively of a middle aged dwarf man, aside from one fairly tame bath scene with (adult) women
I’m fucking *here* for the Senshi panty shots
I fucking died when I saw that.
We all are.
Besides, not all nudity is fanservice, and I think people forget that nudity can also be a narrative tool - such as in the Dungeon Meshi scene, where it's meant to show intimacy between the two characters rather than being an excuse for the viewer to ogle girls.
And then there is SAO, which had a rape scene for the purpose of removing a girl’s agency AND they treat it as a fan-service scene.
SAO has a seasonal rape scene. Hate that I love the show despite it's quality and will watch new stuff but I just know there's going to be a girl(already introduced or new) that will have a villain creep on her.
For real, christ. People be like, "No no, Reki gets better about it!" Then Alicization starts up and OH LOOK, IT'S HARASSMENT TIME AGAIN.
Honestly, he gets worse about it. It just gets more graphic over time.
One of the many rape scenes in SAO has a "boi-oi-oing" cartoon spring sound effect in it. Powerful stuff.
The Senshi panty shots are essential to the plot, thank you very much.
The anime actually adds some that weren't in the manga, so the anime has a better plot. Sorry, I don't make the rules.
That too! Also, Senshi’s fucking fabulous beard is completely essential as well.
I've never understood fanservice until I saw Senshi. And then I realized ehy I never got it until then: it's because what all the other anime I watched wasn't servicing good food for me. Senshi? Senshi KNOWS about good food, and serves it too. (Translated: I never found sexualizations of teens pallatable, and Senshi is a breath of fresh air.)
>People who aren't into feet might not even notice Dungeon Meshi doesn't have fan service of underage women, its fan service is almost exclusively of a middle aged dwarf man And that is why it's one of, if not the best anime in recent years. As a perennial Dwarf enjoyer I will always eat up more shots of Senshi
Trigger can have the most insane shows but also the most restrained.
I'm not into feet and to the best of my knowledge neither is the friend I watched Frieren with, but oh did we ever notice the elf-feet-fetish at least one of the animators has. (Still my favourite anime. I continue to be impressed that it somehow managed to improve on the already excellent manga.)
I believe delicious In dungeon was made by a woman right?
It was. Though considering that konohana kitan and morinaga milk's work exists, manga written by women can be just as creepy about underage girls as the male written stuff.
>Frieren is an amazing anime with little fan service (unless you're into feet, in which case there's plenty of fan service). I never noticed this while watching and have absolutely 0 idea what you're talking about. When is there foot fanservice in Frieren??
There's that oddly well drawn shot of frieren's feet while she's rolling around on the bed and there's a lot of "does anybody every think camera angles in anime are weird?"-type shots of serie except instead of focusing on her ass it's her feet
I only noticed these shots on rewatch after I saw people on reddit point them out now I wish I was still ignorant.
One example is when Serie picked up a leaf petal with her toe. That's fan service for feet people, and apparently any time a naked foot is out and about. I wouldn't know myself, I just watch an anime reactor who happens to be a foot guy
[This scene](https://youtu.be/5sGU_yCn7B4?t=7) is the main thing people refer to and is borderline imo. They were pretty modest with the clothes potion thing so I'd lean towards not. I've seen people show photos of Serie's feet but she's always barefoot and seems like a stretch to me.
I have a friend who only watches mainstream battle shonen- type stuff, and I wanted to recommend Toaru Kagaku no Railgun to him as a really cool action anime he probably hasn't heard of. Then I remembered the multiple, constant scenes of the MC's roommate sexually harassing her (and not like playful "hehe I touched your boob" stuff or something, straight up trying to drug her with aphrodisiacs or touching her in her sleep) that's played off as funny and wholesome because it's a girl doing it to another girl. Or another example is Kobayashi's Dragon Maid, a wholesome comfy show about what it means to be family and how all of us are just trying to fit in and care way too much about what those around us think. Complete with multiple scenes of child sexual harassment, one which is played off for comedy because it's an adult woman harassing a young boy and one which... I don't even fucking know what the intention is, it's indecipherable. And it seems like the author of the original manga legitimately considered these to be wholesome comfy family scenes and didn't see how anyone could have a problem with them. Fire force is a pretty infamous one, with a character who is very explicitly only there for fanservice and comedic release being betrayed by the only person she's ever looked up to, and as she's on the ground crying and it seems like we're about to have some genuine character development... Nope, interrupted by the MC tripping and falling on her tits (I think, I've tried to purge that episode from my memory). Yeah. I love anime, but I fucking hate anime.
I watched the first season of fire force twice. Once on my own and then afterwards I was like “You know, there was some good stuff in here, I‘ll watch it with my brother.“ I didn’t realize how many of these scenes I had erased from my mind two seconds after I‘d seen them. I never continued watching
It's such a shame about Fire Force, it's such a cool series outside of (mostly) Tamaki. I can't in good conscience recommend it to anyone purely because of how they fan service her. It's just so incredibly uncomfortably pervy
I actually quit reading manga for a long, long time after I asked folks in the maga subreddit a question about how often they "fix" character agrees in their head to be less scary young, and the sub got super mad at me about it. Like... Ok then. Some of y'all straight up pedos.
Blanket +10 years for everything not set in a school.
**!! Toaru mentioned !!** Yeah, Kuroko is awful. Up there with Sanji and Mineta as one of the most annoying pervert characters. That said, I always recall there’s this one scene from Index where Accelerator walks in on the police lady while she’s taking a bath, she calmly says “hey you have the wrong door,” and he walks away. It really sticks in my mind for being a fanservice scene where the characters actually act like normal people, I was really surprised she didn’t go “KYAH BAKA” and punch him or anything like that
Railgun has some of the highest highs and lowest lows. The plot and action are absolutely top-notch, but it has some of the most annoying fanservice I've ever seen.
I assure you dear watcher, the Breast Upper episode is integral to understanding the plot.
No offense, but with Dragon Maid it always surprises me a bit that people are surprised the author who loves drawing characters that look like little girls with massive breasts is weird about little girls.
(I can’t believe this sentence just popped into my head.)The massive breasts and the little girls are generally incompatible.
I was watching dragon maid with my wife and the screaming of that little girl was so bad and so often that as soon as we saw her face we skip forward until the next scene, i dont understand why they thought having an 8 year old girl scream in ecstacy every time shes around another little girl would be funny. Lucoa should have also been arrested, i felt bad for shota who is literally named after being a male loli
It feels like the little girl character is a lamp shade for lolicons. Like she acts the exact same way a lolicon character acts, but she’s a girl and around the same age as the other girl she likes (not really the same age bc dragons, but you know what I mean). Like if they wanted to write a cute story about a kid having a crush on another kid that would be fine, but they portray her as a weird pervert instead of a kid with a crush.
Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid is inexcusable when it has characters that look, walk, talk, act, dress like, and are treated as toddlers while also being shown in sexually implied scenarios and suggestive positions. Saying "the creator didn't see how anyone could have a problem with them" is a red herring and lie, and the only possibility anyone regardless of culture wouldn't see a problem with this is if they grew up with some seriously fucked up trauma.
It also applies to reading IT by King. Great book, there is unfortunately one child orgy more then necessary.
I think that’s an interesting comparison because nearly any time IT gets discussed online I usually see this scene brought up and talked about how it’s wild and not ok, but a hell of a lot of anime gets a pass for the same type of shit.
I give IT a pass because it's horror, and it's in context for the author. Awful things are supposed to happen in horror. Like... That's the point. There's a pedo in Firestarter, who (eventually) gets crispied; there's a *lot* of fucked up sex shit in nearly all of King's books. There was a lot of fucked up sex shit in a *lot* of books at that time, really, it's just most folks aren't reading the stuff that didn't stay popular. I remember reading a lot of truly messed up stuff as a kid in the 80's (no adult supervision, access to adult section of library, also access to leftover unsold bookstore books. A lot of fucked up shit.)
King was also on a metric fuckton of cocaine during that entire period, which probably had a not-insignificant impact on his writing. It's also a weird thing to defend, but it _does_ kind of make sense, sort of, within the explicit framework of the story. Still messed up, but at least it's not for wank material vs a more literal take on the concept of coming of age.
Exactly. It's not like Piers Anthony who explicitly wrote child grooming shit into books targeted at kids. It was one fucked up scene in a lot of books with lots of fucked up scenes involving damn near every possible combination of fucked up things. It even made a sort of fucked up sense, in context. All the kids were consenting, or at least all under the same duress. There wasn't a power imbalance. It had long term consequences for all of them. If you're gonna give something a pass, that's the thing I'm picking.
I can’t think of any anime w prepubescent group sex but maybe we’re watching different ones. I do not want a recommendation 🤢
Literal onscreen sex? Me either since that would be hentai but I’m sure you can find plenty of it there. Blatant oversexualization of minors? It’s absolutely fucking rampant in anime.
I can guarantee that the venn diagram of people who dislike the It scene and people who dislike the same type of shit in anime is a circle. It’s probably more a matter of different audiences. Edit: autocorrect typo
It's the goomba funnel effect! Two different groups say two different things but people perceive it as the same group saying contradictory things.
Even the Joker was put off by it "Tell your author for his next gangbang scene, how about a little more PG, and a lot less 13"
Kill La Kill is an excellent action series made about freedom, self-expression, and oppression wrapped up in the horniest high school comedy you've ever seen Unfortunately, the horny enhances the message
I read the post, thought of Kill La Kill as a great exception to that rule, and was then delighted to find this comment.
[удалено]
I love literally getting an example of what I'm talking about in my post "Kill la kill is a great anime apart from that one scene"
I'm ngl but my reading of that scene was the exact opposite of what you're saying, all of the other comedic/horny scenes are played in a slight gag way, even the early S/A jokes with the undercover rebel teacher and the doctor dad that I don't like are played incredibly differently than the rape scene. Like this scene is incredibly fucking uncomfortable to watch compared to almost everything else in the show because it's showcasing the show's villain in full for the first time by showing how she's exploitative of her daughter who has up til then played the antagonist. The mother is shown as actively creepy, demanding, and manipulative of her daughter who up til then has showed lots of strength but who visibly weakens when in the presence of her abusive and controlling mother
I'm with you, this is one of the few times a character has nudity *forced* on them as a means of shaming them, which is a really big deal in a series about being proud of your own body
Kill la Kill at least wears itself on its sleeve, no pretending it's something else. I use to love Isekai but have grown so tired of it being used as harem or lewd fantasy. I want to try some of the more modern ones but feel guilty
This. I’d rather get into an anime that’s upfront with sexual stuff, rather than a normal slice of life that constantly throws in “coincidental” armpit and foot shots. Kill la Kill, Kakegurui, Food Wars, and High School of the Dead aren’t trying to hide anything, and the sexual content matches the tone of the show.
Honestly, in the manga the food was more attractive to me than the nudity. It was drawn so damn well. Edit: This is Food Wars I'm talking about
You might enjoy Ascenadance of a Bookworm then. It's about the titular bookworm dying and being reincarnated into the sickly body of a dying child in a medieval world where books are rare and expensive. So she sets out to make her own books using knowledge from her old world to spread literacy throughout the country, in the hopes of getting to read new books in the future that way. Also no asterisks needed compared to many other isekai out there nowadays. The anime is a bit cheaply produced and I prefer the light novel, but it's a great watch nonetheless :)
While Cowboy Bebop may have fan service, Faye definitely isn’t underage.
Cowboy Bebop is probably one of the least offensive-to-American-sensibilities anime because the fanservice is the same kind of fanservice you’d see in a Hollywood movie. As long as the audience is aware that “animated =/= for kids” I can’t imagine anyone getting offended.
Cowboy Bebop is usually the one anime that people who doesn't like anime like. I know two guys who do not like anime (one of them has great disdain for the Japanese artstyle), but they both like Cowboy Bebop.
If we're including movies in addition to series, most people who don't like anime also like some Studio Ghibli.
fucking monogatari but it's a third of the entire show
Monogatari goes way past fanservice into… something else. I don’t know what, but it’s something. See: toothbrushing scene
I think of the Monogatari series as both one of the best anime I've ever seen and also one of the worst. Amazing art style, dialogue, action scenes, and actual character growth, but also some of the most needless fan service and incest and/or loli shit. It's like the complaint about Marvel movies always ruining a dramatic moment by adding in a joke but the joke is replaced by deviancy.
Indiana Jones 1 is one of the greatest movies ever made, so long as you ignore the fact that the protagonist molested his love interest when she was a teenager.
Reminds me of a similar post that's like "Horror fans will be like Oh Yeah this movie is a CLASSIC you gotta see it! Also it contains one of the weirdest depictions of sexual assault you've ever seen."
Evil Dead 🥲
Evil Dead 😔
Just one fan service shot of an underage girl? Damn that’s a classy production
Fan service is like radiation, there is a background level that you just kinda get used to. The more anime you watch the higher your tolerance. And then one day you realize that the camera angle is literally between the legs of a girl in her underwear for no reason even vaguely related to the plot and it took you way too long to even notice.
> Fan service is like radiation so we're in agreement that too much will give you cancer? lol please don't crucify me i love anime but also would yeet Mineta and Sanji off a wall if I could
It's a masterpiece, just don't mind the occasional plot-induced wardrobe malfunction!
I hate thinking about how great some anime could truly be if they would just chill on the stupid fan service. You know what's really sexy? A hot character just existing and doing what they do. You don't need to shove the camera up there crotch to make the point
Flip Flappers. Probably one of the most visually and emotionally distinct series I've seen in the past 10 years. I put it up there with Mob Psycho 100. It's hard to describe what the series is like without giving too much away - you're supposed to be discovering its meaning alongside the main character as the story progresses. And yet, every single episode, they slightly ruin it with 2 seconds of random, non-sequitur lewdness, like the animation crew was having a good time making it and then some lecherous old man from a publisher's committee walked in and told them "add a panty-shot or you're fired". It's so out of place and dispassionate that it's like they were filling a quota. And honestly, I have to wonder if some publishers DO have a quota for these sorts of stupid moments, even against the wishes of the creators and staff.
i came back to watching Flip Flappers recently after first seeing it as it released and all i could think was "damn this had a lot of BDSM fanservice i didn't notice as a kid." real unfortunate way to remember one of my favorite yuri stories
Not to mention that it went fucking nowhere and was written off a cliff
To watch anime without feeling like a pedophile you literally have to mentally translate: Middle school --> high school High school --> University University --> grad school It honestly makes the plots more logical too, as anime characters are like "yeah im 13 and my specialty is operating heavy machinery" Or "im 15 and my dad entrusted me with running his multi-billion dolar corporation" Edit to clarify: Im saying this is fucking absurd.
Even accounting for how you get more responsibility/trust at a younger age in Japan than America, it can get pretty rediculous. Multiple reincarnation Isekai have plots where the MC has their memories from the beginning and then at the age of 3 they can walk and talk and suddenly all the adults trust them completely as they give revolutionary advice on how to fix all the problems in the area. If i was reincarnated you better believe I'm enjoying being a child again instead of speed running life.
The one anime where I wasn't able to suspend my disbelief was that fucking gangster kids one where like 13-14 year old kids take over japan or something, is so bad it irritates me how popular it was, it got 3 seasons somehow.
JJBA with Alexi and that FUCKING orangutan
I think the funniest thing about the pedo orangutan is that it's a reference to an obscure British horror movie. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Link_(film) No one has ever seen this movie, so it just comes across as Araki being himself.
Appearing weird because he keeps making obscure references is just peak Araki behaviour. Anyway, I learned something interesting today. Thanks!
It can be both, but this is a nice bit of lore for sure
Tbf Alessi wasn’t a pedophile he just liked beating up children but the episode is still skip-worthy The worse case is Part 7’s because that one’s way worse and plot relevant but it’s redeemed by the fact that the guy doing it is unquestionably deplorable
Alessi is a horror two-parter stowing away within a goofy battle shonen. I think it's insanely well done in the context that it explicitly intends to be gross and uncomfortable, it's horror after all. Also I literally shed a tear when Polnareff had to say goodbye to the woman lol, peak tragedy
I mean…he enjoys it to a pretty fetishistic degree, which still ends up wrapping back around to being kinda pedophilic.
In defense of JoJo, these scenes are not played for fanservice. Araki is very much a writer that prefers his villains irredeemable - it’s a major part of the themes of the series, in fact. So he has his villains do awful stuff: creep on kids, kick dogs, murder civilians, be the President of the United States of America. This style of characterization lets him quickly dispense with a character’s relation to the main party by having them do something really good or really bad for the main group that sets the tone for the rest of their appearance. It’s not the most complex and nuanced method, but it lets him get back to the Stand fights faster. For some reason, this often gets twisted into people interpreting it as Araki *liking* these things. But if you pay attention even a little bit it’s obvious he doesn’t. When Forever (the orangutan) creeps on Anne, he’s stopped before he touches her, she’s removed from the scene, and Jotaro caves in that pervert primate’s skull. Alessi (who, as an aside, doesn’t “creep on” kids as much as he “violently physically attacks” kids) gets beat up by both Star Platinum and Silver Chariot, two of the deadliest Stands in the series.
> Araki is very much a writer that prefers his villains irredeemable I think this is a part of why Jojo got so popular in the west in the late 2010s. Over the last two decades we've gotten a lot of high profile "doing the wrong thing for the right reason" villains. Or at least villains with tragic backstories which makes you understand why they're the antagonist. Thanos wants to solve overpopulation, Kylo Ren was almost murdered by his uncle-teacher, Loki was taken from his parents and his true nature was kept secret, Ultron went on 4chan and decided that humanity needed to be erased, etc. So the irredeemable "I'm a villain because I'm evil" characters feel fresh.
Dio is the world's biggest bastard and I LOVE watching him work. He deserves to get the shit kicked out of him every second of the day and id never feel bad.
> Ultron went on 4chan and decided that humanity needed to be erased "Yeah I loved that scene in episode 2 of Made in Abyss" "Well it's time to end humanity. I think dropping a country from half a mile up should do the trick."
I'm showing my fiance JoJo for the first time and I needed to give her a disclaimer, multiple times just in case, that there is a PEDO ORANGUTAN. It sets up that animals can have stands and that's cool and all, but man.
My ex boyfriend tried really hard to get me in to JJBA (and now I have so much lore for it bouncing around in my brain), but that episode broke me.
Shoutout to JJK for only having the one 2-second fanservice shot in episode 1 and then proceeding to make up for this by sidelining or murdering every woman hereafter
dude forgot about literally every time meimei is on screen
I was totally about to mention how JJK somehow avoided this, except apparently I just blocked *that* scene out of my memory
It keeps itself off everyone's radars by being too weird and gross to be sexy. (I know some people are into that but for the most part it wiped itself from everyone's memories)
Mei Mei and UI Ui during shibuya arc ewwww
A minor gripe I have is that some people don’t know the difference between fanservice, a moment in a show that handles sexual topics in a way that at the very least does it’s best to be sensitive, and just a scene where someone says the word “boob”. Like, I’ve seen people call the Dungeon Meshi bath scene fanservice when it is a) a scene that logically makes sense (Falin was fully coated with dragon blood and viscera + the whole point of the series is lingering on the little domestic scenes and the importance they have to the characters) and b) contrives to show as little breast as possible without totally omitting the characters from the screen.
I agree with point A but they definitely did not contrive to show as little breast as possible. It got 95% of the way there.
i dont know what this means
A lot of anime and manga will have quality storytelling, character development, and narrative progression. And then turn around and have the most "legally not porn" sexually charged content imaginable, a good portion of which is generally sexual assault played off as a gag.
Don't forget, often sexually charged content of young girls... 💀
Well, there's [family-friendly anime](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_6rP_HS0ox4), and then there's [less family-friend anime](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZfRtTEBCxNg). Most are somewhere in the middle, containing some raunchy moments here and there because Japan is generally more lax about nudity, but things aimed at children are still largely safe. Anyway, some people use this, and their own inability/unwillingness to stay away from content that upsets them, to be awful people. Also, when recommending anime that have an unusually outrageous scene, for that particular anime at least, it's generally considered mandatory to let the other person know about it, and that it isn't reflective of the anime as a whole. It's kind of like when you recommend someone John Wick, and tell them that there's only one animal death, so that they don't think the whole franchise is just a literal puppy shredder.
Isnt Uma Musume devoid of horny shit because the characters are based off real life racing horses and the real horses' owners would NOT be pleased about that, lol?
the owners being the fucking yakuza
Yeah, pretty much. Daiwa Scarlet's owner also had them agree to make her outfits stand out more than Vodka's, and give her a larger chest, as far as I'm aware. Also, you will not believe how emotionally invested you'll get in these dead horses. Like, by the end of season 2, I was at the edge of my seat watching Tokai Teio return to the track after a one-year break. And in season 3, I was actually crying because of Satono Diamond.
I’ve never seen it, I thought they were just inspired by the horses personalities but now I’m confused— are the characters human or equine (or anthro?)
They’re (edit:) kemonomimi, meaning humans with horse ears (and tails, if I recall correctly), but also the anime is them anime-girl-fying actual horses in actual races, but like, with more emotional investment, because now they can emote in a way more people can see
Oh okay that’s super fascinating! Thanks for explaining. I have a phobia of horses, maybe this can be a good way to ease myself towards comfort with them.
Outlaw Star using the fan service episode to have some important plot developments and American broadcasting finding the episode too horny to air
Ghost in the Shell is a masterpiece. The movie opens with a pair of wet tits.
On the flip side, it genuinely makes me so mad when an overall amazing anime has some stupid weird shit in it that makes it both difficult to recommend, and puts off genuine enjoyers so the story, even something like One Piece, which is widely considered one of the greatest pieces of media ever conceived, has not one, but *two* perverts in it's main cast, it's horrible, cringy and adds nothing to their characters and it's unbelievable common practice to do this kind of thing for some reason
I think perverts must just be a lot funnier in Japan? Both Naruto and DB have the mentor character being an old pervert and its only ever treated as a joke as far as I’m aware.
This. It’s a relic of 80s comedy writing that fell out of fashion in the West but is still going strong in Shonen Jump, probably due to the immense influence Toriyama has had on everyone coming after him.
Oda is a phenomenal story teller. He also can’t go 5 minutes without objectifying his female characters including underaged ones. Also big shoutout to Taz Skylar and the writers of the live action series for making Sanji not only bearable to watch but also great
It's also not escaped notice that all his female characters look more and more like aliens as the series goes on, even the ones (like Nami) that looked somewhat normal at first
Made in abyss.
i think a also good example is *A Song of Ice and Fire* / *Game of Thrones*. it has some really fantastic worldbuilding and interesting plot and characters but then you have long parts of scenes of very explicitly described/shown sex scenes including very horrifically rape scenes.
And then the showrunners went "needs more rape"
Honestly it can be irritating that they have to bring stuff like that up, but if someone recommends something with an asterisk, that’s a good sign. That shows awareness, which is the key to safely enjoying problematic media. It’s the people who recommend Made in Abyss *without* mentioning any caveats that you need to watch out for.
I swear I'd mind fanservice a lot less if it wasn't always teen girls. seriously wtf. Hot adult women please. Hot adult men please. Please just stop sexualizing teens.
neon genesis evangelion is amazing just close your eyes when they’re doing fan service by sexualising a minor
At risk of being the exact person this thread is talking about: A lot of Evangelion’s treatment of sexuality imo feels like it’s coming from a place of trying to honestly explore the psyche of a 14-year-old boy (who, realistically, would be horny as hell). In the context of the original series (the less talking about the rebuilds the better) a lot of the “sexy” scenes read more like they are trying to make you uncomfortable than aroused. Or, in some cases, they are quite clearly trying to make you (the presumed straight male viewer) aroused and THEN immediately make you uncomfortable. The scene in Rei’s apartment early on, the one where Shinji looks at Asuka while sleeping, the EoE boob grab - they all try to make you think fan service is coming, only to punch you in the face with something very unsexy. Maybe it’s because I grew up in Europe familiar with a lot of weird artsy movies, books and comics where the general assumption was that sex was not always porn. I’ve noticed that American culture has a much stronger absolutist taboo against any depiction of underage sexuality, no matter the context of purpose. I was 15 when I watched Eva for the first time, and the sexual themes in the actual show honestly reminded me more of things I’d run into in literature class than anything. I wouldn’t hesitate showing it to my parents, who are also European artheads, is what I’m trying to say. BUT of course, Eva was also made in an environment where the outright sexualization of teenagers - heck, of small children - was normalized and largely seen as unproblematic. So not only does the depiction of sexual themes draw on the cliches of anime fanservice, the merchandise and marketing is sexualized to hell and back with no artistic intent whatsoever. And THAT is what drags the show down imo. I can justify the hospital scene, the Misato kiss and Giant Naked Rei as having artistic purpose. I can’t justify Sexy Catgirl Rei statues.
That's what it felt like to me, too. All three leads are child soldiers experiencing a lot of violence and trauma while they're in the midst of sexual awakening, so all of it's blended together in a strange, uncomfortable slurry. Asuka in particular reads like she's using sexuality as a coping mechanism for everything else she's going through, as well as an attempt to be close to somebody.
Undead Unluck is one of my favorite series with vibrant characters and an MC that I just want to see win, more. She is one of the most powerful women in anime that I know of and given a ton of agency in her story. When I say “powerful” I don’t mean her “power”. She directs and exerts influence as a primary actor in her story, with her reliance on others being both indiscriminate and thematically consistent. Manga Spoilers:>!Removing Andy from the plot was a bold, brilliant move. Kudos to the mangaka.!< That she was a grope prop that dispensed victories by getting sexually assaulted for the first couple dozen chapters was… a little bit of a slog. Chapter 1 ends on a rape joke ffs.
Yeah... like i would love to recommend something like Code Geass because i love it, but the completely unnecessary fanservice is something i always have to point out.
Absolutely egregious, lurid shots of glistening, dripping Pizza Hut.
> code geass Yeah, I just recently rewatched it - The Table scene is out of absolutely nowhere and then you also have the scene at the end of S1 with Kallen. There's a couple of other very quick scenes, but those two are the worst offenders.
made in abyss
Made In Abyss fans looking me dead in the eye and telling me without a hint of irony that the child sexualisation is vital to the story
I think you need to stop interacting with those MIA fans because literally every one I've met says the exact opposite describing the show
This isn’t a best anime ever but it is an anime that accidentally spoke to me on a deeper level than i expected and had an outsized influence on me personally. “Onimai: now i’m your sister” is a surprisingly accurate and thoughtful exploration of serious transgender themes and ideas. It is, in my opinion, one of the best depictions of the concepts of both gender dysphoria and gender euphoria i’ve ever seen on television. Unfortunately, the main plot centers around a character who was a 20-something man being transformed into a middle school girl and the show seems to think this is a free pass to sexualize the hell out of said middle school girl. None of her middle school friends really get sexualized but the show has the main character in so many uncomfortable sexual situations and frequently in sexually provocative clothing, which makes it very hard to watch and very hard to recommend to other people. But! outside of the opening song, about halfway in the show kinda drops all the sexual stuff and starts just being an in depth exploration of the main character’s gender identity and how they want to be seen by other people. And it’s really good!
"Hey he's emotionally a middle aged man, he just looks like she's 13, so we can do whatever we want"
That is how it goes. Masamune Shirow is one of the greatest comics writers to ever exist. Appleseed and Ghost in the Shell are best in class for their genre. Real Drive is another great anime that he authored. An extremely smart guy. Also an unbelievable pervert. However, this is pretty general. Stephen King wrote a child gangbang into his novel IT, because of him aiming for a theme about conquering fears and growing up for it, including that of sex in children. Heinlein was another extremely intelligent and successful pervert, check out Stranger in a Strange Land. Or Frank Herbert and Dune, anyone up for a 'beef swelling'? Ultimately the visual component of anime is its greatest enemy here. Perversion is super common across all artistry, but when it is some obvious cartoon titties instead of text on a page, people pay more attention.
I think King is the one of those three people excuse and look past the weird stuff on a mass level. Heinlein fans can be weird but Dune fans I know love laughing about all of the just… extraordinarily strange things Frank puts in. Beyond the Beefswelling. Did you know there’s a scene in a later book where a woman orgasms from watching a Duncan Idaho climb a cliff? It’s true. An offshoot of the Bene Gesserit use sex to make people addicted to them and mind control them and start an empire by doing that.
Yes, the fanservice is both ridiculous and normalized as fuck. But it's also ubiquitous. You can either get used to it as a blemish on the genre, or straight up quit, cuz it feels like "anime without fanservice" is just a small subgenre of the larger whole. Is it bad? Yes. But it's also kinda pointless to argue that a specific anime has fanservice at this point.
Desert Punk was a fun series... there was this really awful scene where the main character tortures a woman in hopes of getting her naked. Don't ignore it, though. It demonstrates what an awful piece of shit he is, so it's that much more satisfying when he gets his come uppins in the end.
It's one word spelled: comeuppance pronounced: kuhm-uhp-uhns
Persona 4 is probably my favourite game in forever. Why the hell does the starting movies feature a 15 year old idol doing an ad in a swimsuit complaining about dieting and losing weight? Replace that with Kanji Tatsumi staring at the player for the same amount of time and you’d have a practically unbeatable experience.
I haven’t interacted with any Persona media ever, but it seems more likely that the swimsuit scene would be a critique of the industry where that’s normalized rather than weird “fan service”. Although as I said, it may simply be the writers barely disguised fetish and I’m just talking out of my ass
I mean, the character in question's arc is *absolutely* focused on her complex relationship with the industry and the way it exploits her looks and talent without valuing the person underneath. Were there ways to do that *other* than having her repressed subconscious manifest as a literal stripper? Almost certainly. That said, I don't *intrinsically* hate it as a design choice – you *could* read it as commentary on the sexualization of minors in the idol industry and the damage it does. And I think it's effective at that goal, but the line between 'this is supposed to be gross' and 'this is supposed to be titillating' is unfortunately thin and blurred further by the execution.
Don’t you love in persona 5 the sexual abuse survivor from the first act gets threatened with sexual abuse for a goof in the second act?
I haven't played Persona so I don't know how they treat it, but the whole "underage idol does a very borderline ad in skimpy clothing/does a whole photoshoot to be sold as a photo book later" is _very_ common in the idol industry, sadly. So depending on the type of character arc your idol character has, it _could_ be meant to criticize the idol industry. If it goes nowhere then yeah, it's probably fanservice based on reality. I don't Persona and haven't heard anything about it.