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What’s
Fan Service?
Fan service is what happens when directors and company officials feel that there’s something missing from their brand new anime. What could be missing from oh say Sailor Moon? I’ll tell you what: countless shots of naked females of course. You see in the context of shows such as Sailor Moon the producers know that girls will like it [because it’s Sailor Moon and girls like Sailor Moon] however they don’t know how to draw the attentions of young men towards the show and so they add in various shots of the heroin showering, getting changed and appearing naked during transformation from her school girl self to Pretty Warrior form.
Of course this has no real bearing on the quality of a show like Sailor Moon. That particular show is destined to be appealing simply because it’s so nice. However as we all know anime producers enjoy flogging certain aspects of shows [tournaments in Saint Seiya and Dragon Ball Z] and fan service is one of the most overused aspects of them all. 99% of fan service is pointless simply put in to get male audiences going in fact sometimes it can be quite funny to see how the scriptwriters manage to add in that all important shower scene.
Some series abuse their viewers with pointlessness more than others however. Here are a few examples.
Agent Aika
If you thought Cutey Honey had a lot of fan pleasing panty shots in it you aint seen nothing yet! This show features panty shots on a more than frequent basis once every three seconds you’ll see a shot of someone’s undergarments. However panties are just the beginning you see Aika [the secret agent mentioned in the title] possesses the Golden Buster this allows her to transform [Sailor Moon style] that is to say she gets naked. Couple these features with lesbian undertones and lots [lots] of shower scenes and you get a neat package guaranteed to give young Kenichi a nosebleed.
Dragon Ball
The first series of Dragon Ball featured enough shower scenes to make you go stark raving mad. Even when Bulma didn’t have a capsule to make a house she had one that made a shower it was all a bit grating. Other fan service included constant panty and sexuality jokes and a lot of pointless nudity all in good fun though and thankfully Toei gained some sense by the start of Dragon Ball Z either that or Bulma became allergic to water!
Neon Genesis Evangelion
Eva itself did not feature that much fan service however it did continually promise to do so. At the end of every ADV dub of the show the next episode preview would feature Rei or Asuka saying things like. “There’ll be plenty of fan service next episode ok?” or “Watch next time for more fan service.” This may have boosted the otaku youth’s interest in the show however it didn’t do much for Anno’s own belief in the world he’d created and later episodes slipped into disappointment.
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Shows that Lost their "Appeal"
Most of the time we don't see the full extent of fan service however we are left in the dark in regards to certain shows and thier editing. The aforementioned Sailor Moon is a perfect example a lot of the characters were re developed and a lot of the art edited digitally to suit western conventions and taste. Lines showing curves and emphasising characters breasts were removed so too was a lot of dialogue and sexually orientated jokes. Sited here are other examples of shows that lost their fan service during editing admittedly more often than not for the better. In tegards to examples below however the editing may have taken away from certain humurous aspects of the shows:
Outlaw Star
A lot of things were cut from the original dub of Outlaw Star but one famous exapmple is "The Hot Springs Planet" episode a fan [and fan service favourite] when this episode was finally shown it was heavily edited and lost almost every drop of humour. Sad indeed.
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Tenchi Muyo!
Another example of how censoring can just make a show seem silly. Although there was a rediculous ammount of fan service on show during the series it was all relevent in terms of building up the sexual tension amongst the main characters. A perfect example of how pointless it is to censor a show where nudity and sexual situations are key is in the length the translaters went to in order to draw swimsuits on characters. No matter what Cartoon Netwrok want you to believe no one takes a bath in a swimsuit!
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Although fan service is pointless and sometimes incredebly annoying it has a distinguished part in setting the anime art form on it's own as a unique entity. While it may seem sad and slightly perverse it serves more often than not as comic relief also in closing I'd like to say that fan service is indeed pointless but aint that the point?
Thanks to:
This guide couldn't have been brought to you if it wasn't for http://anime-fanservice.org/ and www.fan-service.com who provided a lot of the screenshots seen here.
