Elfgore said:
These threads always ruin my mood for some reason, I don't know why... oh wait, I do! It's pretty much people saying every anime I enjoy is nothing but trash.
*snip*
-No you have a problem with it. No one is forcing anyone to watch these shows. If you don't like the content, then just stop watching it. Don't force yourself to. Some people *gasp* like this stuff. So they can joyfully stick to what they like, while you can stick to what you like. Simple.[footnote]You is generalized by the way.[/footnote]
I agree with this. Granted, not every anime I, personally, enjoy necessarily has fanservice; Madoka Magica is pretty lacking in that department, despite all of the yuri subtext, for example. However, thoughts are the same; these threads always make me and everyone else who enjoys things with ecchi and fanservice feel bad by implying that all fanservice-y anime is bad and wrong.
See, I don't think fanservice is inherently bad. It's only bad when it's handled badly. You can cherry-pick all of the worst examples to try and make a case, but that completely ignores all of the good series that have fanservice in them. The HSotD boob-Matrix scene is stupid and terrible, and Eiken is stupid and terrible, but not all fanservice anime is. An example of something that I watched recently was Highschool DxD. I think it was Elfgore here that recommended it to me, actually, in that "anime 3x3" thread we had a while back that I thought was kinda neat. Anyway, Highschool DxD is ont of the best, if not THE best, period, ecchi series I've ever seen because of the way it treats the subject matter. It's FULL of boobs, true, even completely nude ones, but the thing is, they're treated as much as a facticity as they are as symbols of sexuality. I recall one scene where one of the female main characters is wearing see-through nightwear as she sits outside at night, and the male lead walks in and... doesn't really pay attention to her tits as they talk. Sure, you can see her nipples, but that's not what the scene is about. It's actually quite heartfelt. Highschool DxD is quite good about that; if there are more important things to worry about than boobs, then the focus is not going to be on boobs, regardless of whether or not they're visible. However, more than anything, it's thematically consistent; sexuality is established as one of the main narrative themes of the series early-on, so it just
makes sense that it'd be there. Compare this to series like, say, Vividred Operation, which I couldn't stomach enough to get very far into, which does not bring up any sort of sexuality in its narrative, but instead randomly chooses to focus on every female character's lovingly-rendered asses in booty shorts. That sort of fanservice makes no sense in context, so it's jarring and takes you out of the experience.
Now, onto the OP:
-I'm gonna cite Kurumi from Date A Live, too, as well as Rias Gremory from Highschool DxD. There's also Saber from Fate/stay Night; I know I didn't like her much as a person (I thought she was overly serious and annoyingly single-minded), but she was a well-written character.
-Highschool of the Dead is pretty bleh, all things considered, and Eiken is just so ridiculous that I'm not even sure if it's actually supposed to be fanservice.
-Eh, I dunno. Right about now, I'd say it's leveled out a little.
-No. Certain ecchi series have a problem with poor writing, but then again there are always poorly-written things, regardless of how fanservice-y they are. Fanservice is just an easy thing to pick on.
Captcha: "Which city is in New York?"
I live in Canada, Captcha. If the answer wasn't so obvious, I'd have no idea. (The answer was New York City.)