What do you think about the latest anti-fanservice controversy?

When it comes to character designs, you can't please everyone. Someone is bound to be offended when a female character is portrayed as lewd, sexy, or have big tiddies, and usually a good portion of those who complain are those who are insecure about their looks in the first place. So what can you do?

Since you can now make money from the site that is formerly known as Twitter, people will now be offended or stir up drama on purpose to drive up as many views on their tweet as possible.

I generally dislike both sides of these arguments. You get right-wing prudes lining up against right-wing misogynists, both of them misappropriating different left-wing ideas.

It's part of the culture of the day, specially in the Anglo-American sphere. The new puritanism as some call it which is probably a fitting title even though the context is different

Like you say, fanservice is nothing new, has always existed and probably will continue to exist in the future. I cannot see Japanese mangaka and doujin writers bending the knee to accommodate to anglo-Western sensibilities. That will definitely put Western anime/manga providers in a pickle. Wouldn't be surprised if we get modified/censored English language versions of certain productions in the foreseeable future.

@Caraculiambro Yep not maybe, it's absolutely guaranteed. Now the woke have almost finished decimating Hollywood, it's now anime's turn, although in truth it's been in their crosshairs for quite some time. You might say they(the Japanese) won't change but if places like Crunchyroll stop buying ecchi heavy titles, then that sends a strong signal of what to write that will pay the bills. Money is at the heart of everything after all & between Funi & Crunchyroll they could be spending billions each year, how could writers not take notice? In the last year any new ecchi heavy titles that were released were so heavily censored that hardly anyone bothered to watch them, or those that did were forced to go elsewhere to get the uncensored version. The thing is all of those titles must have lost money so sooner or later they will just stop buying any of them, money talks afterall. Some people love ecchi some don't but when ecchi heavy titles are censored so hard they literally remove most of the ecchi elements from them, then who is left to watch them? People who don't like ecchi wont & people who do won't watch them either because the parts they looked forward to were removed & equally as bad is they are made to look ugly with all the censor boards covering huge patches of screen real estate. Why would any company buy a product they know will lose money? Sure it's their own fault for picking the worst version of in the first place but still with the new woke agenda that's spreading everywhere, what choice did they really have? I guess they are quite literally caught between a rock & a hard place. Remember Sony now own's all the main anime streaming sites in the west except HiDive so it should come as little surprise they are going to run Crunchyroll & Funi like all there other media enterprises & will protect themselves from controversy as much as possible. The days of Crunchyroll & Funi doing what the fans want is well & truly over, at least until sanity returns to the industry once again, if it ever does?

I wonder what the new controversy is about, I guess as anime fans all we can do is support the products and hope our continued patronage won't be ignored as it was in gaming and other nerd culture.

@AnimePedestrian This isn't some organized general shit. Soon, scandals occur here and there because Twitter finds out about yet another sexually attractive character. Although it's ironic that Kashino is being attacked by the same people who celebrated the exposed and toned abs of one of the male characters in Genshin.

@RobertBobert Oh I see... I wish people would stop with all this cancel culture stuff. Like I'm not one for fan service, like I like a bit but not excessive. But I dislike censorship for the most part - I do have to say Lolicon seems pretty messed up, though I assume this Kashino character above the Age of Consent and looks like a young women/adult.

@AnimePedestrian Kashino is a typical doujiko oneesan https://azurlane.koumakan.jp/wiki/Kashino . The problem started because although she hardly appears in events, she has memetically large breasts and therefore regularly receives new skins. The new one was especially lewd and they added jingle physics for fan service. Children on Twitter found out about this and began, as usual, to complain about straight men or whine that no one had seen the illustrator live women.

Apparently, any female characters should represent real women (even if it's a girl cow in gacha), and sexualized female characters only appeal to straight men.

Younger generations are caught up in cultural pillow fights based on mini-narratives to feel like life has meaning, in comparison to certain, historical meta-narratives which are equally as divisive, but not hot-swappable. Some of them would willingly dismantle free speech, and freedom of expression, because they have zero IQ.

@RobertBobert I swear there are real busty women in real life. It like anything which appeals to straight men (and Lesbians) must be torched at the stake nowadays.

@hypergoob Love the pfp.

But most our freedoms are under constant attack nowadays. Soon freedom of thought will be gone. If it isn't already.

If it's a fanservicey series to begin with (which seems to be Azur Lane's case) then I find it silly for people to complain about fanservice, it's like complaining that Dragon Ball has too much fighting. That being said, I agree with @logopolis' post.

@-Ryu Do you agree that if the left is doing crap that you don't like, then just calling them crypto-right will solve the problem?

@RobertBobert I meant more that I agree with the notion that both sides of these debates are insufferable, neither really want to discuss, they just want to silence the other side, either because of promoting "woke agenda" or because hot anime girls existing is problematic due to them having "unrealistic" bodies or whatever.

@-Ryu Do you agree that if the left is doing crap that you don't like, then just calling them crypto-right will solve the problem?

@RobertBobert Its both though, from my understanding. Anime is hated by the Right... and the Left. For different reasons.

If I had to guess the Right hate Anime because it promotes tolerances and inclusion. See example A;


Example A

The left hates Anime because it empowers the 'male' gaze. See example B;


Example B

It similar to Gaming. The Left hated it because it was sexist. The Right hated it because it was a convenient scape goat for violent gun crime. I remember a lot of younger right wingers were surprised when Trump took a stance against gaming, or the internet's freedom of speech and so on. I wasn't as I was thoroughly jaded at that point towards both extremes.

As a result Anime like Gaming before it isn't got much cover in the political hailstorm above it. It only saving grace is its a foreign product, however countries like Australia and Canada have attempted to ban the sale and distribution of Anime - it never gets far due to a little thing called free-markets but it shows the attempts have been made.

I mean the US outlawed liquor at one point. I could imagine Australia or Canada banning the sale of Anime if they got enough Bi-Partisan support. The lucky issue here is that the two sides will argue with each other over there reasoning rather than team up for now.

@AnimePedestrian In fact, the left loves Astolfo. Not only because the femboy thing has become extremely popular among the “anime right,” but also because debates about their identity are a popular topic of conflict with trans activists. But what worries me personally is not the right-left thing, but the fact that the issue of taste in general has become another battlefield in the culture wars and now even personal preferences in characters are becoming quite a hot minefield. Although I have already forgotten the times when you could be accused of something if you liked a morally controversial character (hello controversy over Eren).

@RobertBobert Yeah my point was the right dislike Astolfo. (hence example A) I guess the 'left' would love Astolfo... however if someone is anti-Anime they aren't gonna be looking for the positives of Anime they'll harp on the negative to get the changes they want or get it banned. Ishtar would be the one the left dislikes (hence example B). Again the right isn't gonna jump on a sword to save Ishtar and the 'male gaze' in anime because if they dislike it, they will ignore the cries of anime weebs to move to shut down anime due to it promoting diversity and tolerance.

Similar thing happened in gaming, for a long time the left defended games. As art. They argued games and games designers were art/artists and were protected by Freedom of Speech. They protected games from 'Jack Thompson', who if there's any gamers from the 00s then you will know the name. Then Anita came along, and the left crumpled. The right never ran to games defence as they had no interest in protecting the freedoms of game designers. They just sat and watched as an entire industry got cooped.

The scary thing was Anita and Jack Thompson met and they were agreeing on every point the other made. How games degrade women. How games promote violence.

I think likely its because Anita and Jack were establishment hacks, and games was at the time anti-establishment. We'll game stories are now as establishment as they come.

Note I agree that it sucks seeing Anime under fire, but ultimately to understand the battle we need to understand all the sides and there interests. And both right and left show no interest in defending animes freedom (collectively individuals always exist on both sides).

@AnimePedestrian You made an important point - a lot of this, both now and then, was happening on the part of the moral guards and the establishment. The only difference is that when Thompson did it from the right side and the left was in opposition, no one found Thompson's arguments valid or sympathetic. But when the left itself was at the top, all of this crap suddenly seemed like a completely supported and approved position, even if many of its defenders were fighting against Jack over it just yesterday. This reminds me of the case of James Gunn, who in more conservative times actively made radical pedo and suicide jokes, but when the left was in power, he turned into a moral guardian and began to support the persecution of people for radical speech. If no one has yet come up with some kind of mirror or flipping sides effect, then it’s high time.

@RobertBobert I agree, on that. However back in the fifties and sixties the Comic Code and McCarthyism was mostly a right controlled censorship. Sadly it might be an age thing. I mean most of the people who were apposed to the Comic Code and McCarthyism became the modern proponents of the system which has crippled the west's creative endeavours.

This is likely due to them being older, and thus more prudish which some one else pointed out. Where once a young vibrant flower saw her body as empowering and sexualization was a form of fighting against stereotypes and oppression now as a elderly mother or bitter single cat lady her views have morphed and twisted. Now she sees sexualization of women as a form of oppression, or wants to protect her daughters from being exploited as she was - so she dresses up her words, and is now fighting against the thing she was in support of when she was younger.

TLDR; People's ideals change.

If you make a show seinen, your goal should be to please men. If you make it shoujo your goal is to please women. If you can`t decide and make the women ugly, you cater to no one thus not getting an audience. I dislike blackrock pushing ugly women who look like men. I hope that stays out of anime.

@AnimePedestrian I think that all this perfectly shows that many things are determined by people not so much on their own, but depending on who is promoting it. As you have already noticed, many people actively promoted the sexual revolution when their opponents enforced sexual morality, but quickly became terribly prudish and moralistic themselves when their own people began to enforce it. At one time, Churchill said something similar, noting that “he who was not a revolutionary in his youth has no heart. He who did not become a conservative in maturity has no mind.” I wonder if the sides will switch again when the right gains full power and the left goes into opposition again?

I'd like to believe it's just a Twitter (X) and an Instagram problem, but I have a hard time believing that considering how far censorship has actually gone. I'm not exactly surprised at the puritanical behavior, as we've seen it all before with people throwing the same insults out such as "incel," "addict," or amongst certain groups something akin to the soldier of Satan (an exaggeration, but close enough). I'm not even surprised that younger people have such prude reactions to this anymore, though I'm constantly thinking they're hypocrites since they probably enjoy the exact same stuff in their favorite series.

The thing that shocked me the most, however, is that people kept saying "How bad does your game have to be to resort to this." I know not everyone knows of Azur Lane, thankfully, but you'd think they'd do a quick Google search and find out the game has always been like this, and that this is nothing new.

I'm just tired of the entire conversation because there's no getting through to any of them regardless of where they stand. I just wish they'd leave stuff they don't like alone instead of trying to change it, considering they're not gonna consume it either way. That, or the people who play it and complain anyway are still gonna play it regardless of whether things get censored or not.