What's up with ecchi?

[AkihaTohno]

Why is there a lot of ecchi animes? I've been watching a few, and I think they don't have to be ecchi at all. Sure, some panty shots and scantily clad women are fine , why not? But all ecchi do is throw around panty shots every chance they get and exploit women lol. Some of these ecchi shows even seem like the scenes were forced.

Ikki Tousen for example. That show would of been really really good, if there was less "Hey look at her gootch" and more story and fighting. IE, in episode two, the main character got her clothes ripped off during a fight when it didn't have to at all *notices several people who've never seen Ikkitousen now running off to download it*.

Just saying, some ecchi series could of been so much more instead of trying to be a constant perve-fest.

[TangentZ]

-Why are there Pokemon-clones?
-Why are there fighting anime?
-Why are there sports anime?
-Why are there racing anime?
-Why are there hentai anime?

Why? Because different people like different things.

Obviously there is an audience for it or the anime would not have been made.

For every one person that thinks Ikkitousen is "bad", there may be three others who think it's "good".

BTW, Ikkitousen is licensed.

[Deralti]

Originally Posted by AkihaTohno

Why is there a lot of ecchi animes? I've been watching a few, and I think they don't have to be ecchi at all. Sure, some panty shots and scantily clad women are fine , why not? But all ecchi do is throw around panty shots every chance they get and exploit women lol. Some of these ecchi shows even seem like the scenes were forced.

Ikki Tousen for example. That show would of been really really good, if there was less "Hey look at her gootch" and more story and fighting. IE, in episode two, the main character got her clothes ripped off during a fight when it didn't have to at all *notices several people who've never seen Ikkitousen now running off to download it*.

Just saying, some ecchi series could of been so much more instead of trying to be a constant perve-fest.

BLASPHEMER!

Just kidding, I agree. Although, I don't think ecchi is required at all for a series to be good. Just look at tsukihime* . The Japanese seem to love the ideal of ecchi and, come on, they even made whole serieses of nothing but sexual humor(Love Hina, that acursed pile of #$@!$!*@$@#$%#%.)

edit:
* = Ok, well, there was ONE ecchi scene, and it was so short that It didn't really matter.

[AkihaTohno]

Tangent - Just because it's licensed, doesn't mean you can't download it *taps nose*

lol sexual humor is fine tho, it's just how bland some of these ecchi series make it.
Onegai twins was ecchi wasn't it? But it did a good job at balancing it.

And the new series Daphne in the Brilliant BLue is ecchi, but i don't find it that bad. Making the girls wear bumper stickers allows the artists not to have to make the world's oddest camera angles. and always force looking at boobs. it's win-win really.

[Kurara]

I think it's hard to draw the line between ecchi and normal anime ... Because in a lot of anime, you'll see naked people, and it won't be ecchi. There will be some "ecchi jokes". By example, Onegai Twins is considered ecchi by a lot of people.. But to me it's not, because everything is in the context. There was sometimes some ecchi jokes, but there wasn't tons of pantyshots and the characters weren't shown in maid costumes every chance they could.. :P If you see what I mean. To me an ecchi series is a series where there's a -lot- of fan service. .. And that the series basically revolves around that. There's also bishoujo game anime, which isn't ecchi in my opinion.. But something to that effect. ^^;;

I think that we see a lot of ecchi anime and bishoujo game anime because that's what's popular and that's what gets subbed. I'm not saying it's a bad thing at all.. And I'm not sure if I'm completely right.. But that's what I believe. There's a -lot- of non-ecchi anime series... But those series are very popular.

[Muir Woods]

Ecchi is there for a simple reason: To appeal to the pervert in all of us. Ecchi in my definition would be softcore porn, such as the stuff I see in Playboy (mmm Playboy, thanks dad!) magazine. No actual acts of sex, but you can reveal anything all you want. The moment there's a depiction of intercourse, that's hardcore. It's also the same reason why magazines such as Playboy, or Penthouse are made.

[babbito2k]

@_@ this thread just seems to be about excessive fanservice. The word "ecchi" is basically meaningless, referring as it does to anything anybody wants it to. The line to be drawn if any is between ero-anime, which is rarely broadcast (and is never discussed here), and everything else.

Fanservice is a staple of anime, and seemingly every show that wasn't put together for weekend mornings has some amount of it. It used to be that the first episode or two of a series would dish up a couple of scenes and that would be that, unless there was a mid-series "onsen" or beach episode.

The show I remember as breaking the barrier was Hanaukyo Maid Tai. At least half the episodes IIRC had some nudity. There were seemingly endless suggestions of sexual activity. Putting a 10- or 12-year-old boy at the center of the whole mess... this show seems to have started a trend.

The recent spate of game-based shows has nothing to do with this - those shows already have a story to tell ("Popotan" is exceptional in its excesses). "Onegai Twins" on the other hand was concocted out of one sentence ("we might be related...") and a couple of character sketches.

IMO the endless discussion of "ecchi" in various threads is just one of those things that people disagree about, like long series vs. short series. Some people are determined to celebrate every series that provides fanservice, to the extent that they provoke others into condemning it, and vice versa I suppose...

It is true that some shows have little to offer other than fanservice. But it can also be said that some mecha shows have little to offer than stock footage of giant gizmos combining into a block-long can-opener, or that some romance series are comprised of endless scenes of some mope pining away after some obviously unworthy other.

[kyosuke]

Ecchi animes are fine. They're sometimes required or I suppose needed for some scenes and times.
But they're okay, it's not like there are any actual sex or something, like Love Hina for example, the ecchi is fine and funny many of the times. People have different likings you know. You have a point there though, like you mentioned, Shingetsutan Tsukihime turned out really good without ecchi-ness. Well maybe it exist because people like them?

[M00gle]

ecchi... i prefer hentai. There are a few hentai series that make me laugh, like Spaceship agga ruter and Words worth, hmm i might have strayed from the subject..... *wanders off*

[Master Ran]

Originally Posted by AkihaTohno

Why is there a lot of ecchi animes? /What's up with ecchi

This thread pretty much answered the reason for the er..ecchiness of an anime.

Anyway, just remember that Japan is in the east and not the West. And thus, its culture and moral values are very different from West--christian-Judeo culture.

Kinda likes those major bouncing boobs. Yup, it stirs some blood of many a young fans but basically, it was just a simple, lighthearted way of making a funny moment and also distinguishing that this character is a woman/girl.
Anyway, I guess everybody here already figured it out why anime women have large breasts and anime western women have a humongous breasts.

Just some post valentine nothings.
Master Ran

[AkihaTohno]

I like this thread cause it's just different opinions


Love Hina , from what I found, was pretty damn good. It was funny and had more then most ecchi series do. I don't mind the boobs at all, or the sex jokes. All in good fun. The random set of boobs are okay.

What's getting me now actually is Ikkitousen's mass of panty. the masses of panties in 3 seconds. For the love of GOD. Whenever she kicks it's "Woo, I see her ba-dong-ka-donk"... I just think it's needless in some series.

If you want to see women being exploited, why don't they just stick whole family loving hentai?

[kj1980]

Because even in Japan, these are called "otoko ni kobiteru anime."

[Seiryuu]

heh. I've never heard them called "ba-dong-ka-donks" before.

Why is there ecchi? because most people wouldnt sit through a soap opera no matter how good the plot. We'd either leave to watch something funny or watch until things heat up and then turn it off. The ecchi series gives the folks who want fanservice and nosebleed-humor a reason to watch it, and the massive upstart in eps 1&2 can often numb the more conservative folks, so that the rest of it is not so bad. A lot of ecchi series DO try to make a good plot. Like Green Green dealing with such things as defying fate, being in love with someone who forgot you, and choosing between the old flame(Midori) and the new girl(Futaba). I'm not saying that Green Green is deep and meaningful, it dilutes the plot too much with stuff like a fat pervert being raped by a Kodiak bear, but if you can watch through the whole mass of perversion, you can find some nice gems underneath it all.
Also, some GOOD series have plots that just require some more ecchi than normal and try to numb the viewer in ep1. Especially OVAs. Stuff like Devil Hunter Yohko or Video Girl Ai. The opening premise promises for a great show, but naturally dictates some ecchi. So, they overload the beginning. Especially Devil Hunter Yohko. Ep1 was just short of hentai, and it made sense, since the Devil Hunter must be pure until her initiation, and thus the "devils" want to steal that purity before the new girl awakens. Yet after ep1, you never see anything like that again. Ecchi is there to drag in ratings. Don't dump a series just because it's got some gratuitous crap, you never know what you could be missing.

[Kurara]

I somehow disagree with that.. [ Sorry! ]

I think that a lot of "meaningful" anime series and series that deal with serious topics don't have fan service or ecchi. Green Green is a bishoujo anime, which is why a lot of people see it as an ecchi series.. But the main "ecchi" contents are about the crazy things the characters do. I'm not trying to define what's ecchi, but what I'm saying is that I really don't think all anime series or even most are ecchi series loaded with fan service ... I can name several series where you won't see any fan service. It's just that a lot of popular shounen anime are bishoujo anime with fan service.

Also, just seeing someone naked isn't fan service to me. By example, in Onegai Twins, a lot of people were shocked by the fact that you see the two girls taking baths together. I don't see what's so shocking about that. It's just a scene like another, and it wasn't fan service to me..

[relentlessflame]

Also, there are so many different kinds of "ecchi" and "fanservice" in anime. To me, its almost a question of whether or not the "ecchi" or "fanservice" feels out of place.

Take a show like Yumeria, for example. It's full of "ecchi" - basically the series revolves around it - but it's never tasteless, its always entirely funny, and it's just a fun-to-watch anime (at least to me!). You could almost say that the whole show is a parody of the concept of "ecchi" in anime. Not everyone will appreciate the humour, but it's very good-spirited and meant to be fun. In a show like this, you know what to expect, and so it doesn't feel out-of-place. (Some may find it over-the-top, but that's another question.)

You have other shows like Kimi Ga Nozomu Eien, which has some very explicit "ecchi" scenes, but it fits so perfectly into the plot that it doesn't feel in any way like fanservice. That is an entirely different kind of thing altogether, in my book.

Then you have fanservice like in Onegai Twins (as was mentioned previously). Did they have to have bath scenes to advance the plot? No, I suppose not. But, did it feel out of place? Well, maybe you're a bit surprised at first, but it seemed totally normal after a while. It's just like "oh, they're having another bath". There were, of course, the few well-placed (inevitable) jokes and situations that came as a result, but overall it just became part of the tapistry of the show. They used those scenes for some pretty significant plot points throughout. (Again, I realize that not everybody liked Onegai Twins, but that is also beside the point!)

Of course, romantic comedies are typically full of "fanservice" (there's often where a lot of the "comedy" comes from). Love Hina is, of course, the primest example of this in my mind. Sometimes, at least to me, it seemed a bit over-the-top (you felt sorry for poor Keitaro after a while), but it also was part of the tapistry of the show - it is, basically, what gave it its flavour (along with Naru's legendary indecisiveness).

Whenever I hear the word "fanservice", I can't help but remember watching the dub of Evangelion, where at the end of each episode, Misato would announce in the preview that the next episode would contain some fanservice. Every time she said that, everybody watching would roll their eyes. It just seemed so out of place to mention in the preview, and sometimes seemed out-of-place in the anime also. So that, to me, is a whole other type of fanservice.

So, there you have a few different examples of "ecchi" and "fanservice" in anime. This doesn't really answer the question of "what's up with ecchi?" so much as just point out that its everywhere and in many different flavours (I didn't even come close to covering all the bases). Of course, as Muir woods said above, on a certain level ecchi appeals "to the pervent within us all", but how we react to it depends largely on how its used in the show and whether or not it feels out of place.

[Kurara]

Yeah, I agree with you. I think it's very much if it feels out of place or not...

I think that fan service always feels out of place. ^^;; the only thing I disagree about in your post is about KimiNozo. I think that In Kiminozo, the fan service feels -very- out of place. Because it's supposed to be a very serious and dramatic anime, yet you suddenly see a 12 year old and a girl with big boobs in tight pink nurse outfits ... :P I don't think nurse outfits look like that anywhere. Same thing with the waitress outfits that are unrealistic to me. To me that was fan service .. But I know that the series doesn't revolve around that .. It's just sort of normal to see that type of thing in a bishoujo anime. I think all panty shots are out of place.. Unless the character really has to make a pose that results in showing their panties. x.x

To a lot of people, just seeing a character with big boobs is fan service, but I don't agree with that ...

Personally, if you see a character who's naked and it doesn't feel out of place, it's not fan service or ecchi.. A good example of that is Ranma. It's definitely not a series made for people who want to see something ecchi.. Yet we often see naked people in it because they take baths. It's the same thing for Onegai Twins.. To me it's very natural because the bath scenes in Onegai Twins always revolve around the two girls talking about things they couldn't talk about while the guy is around. In UFO princess warukyure, the guy owns a bath house, so of course, you'll see naked girls. To me that's not fan service ...

I think there's a big difference. And it's mainly a cultural difference.. Because to a lot of people, nudity is something that's mainly shown in porn mags and things like that.. And a lot of people feel that if there's realistic nudity in an anime it's just to appeal to perverts. :P But it's not always the case ..

[Seiryuu]

I agree with much of this, but first: I never said that ecchi humor was a sign of serious topics or that there weren't many serious shows that had no ecchi. All I said was that a lot of the shows that DO have significant amounts of fanservice seem to do so to keep people's attention while pulling them through a heavy plot. And many of my favorite series employ this idea with other forms of humor, giving people some other reason to watch a serious show if they don't want something that serious. Take Puchi Puri Yuushi. The last couple eps put the main characters through some exttremely tough decisions, but part of the reason you feel the severity of the problem is because in the hilarity you really got to know the characters.
Also, no offense, but I would have to say that Green Green IS ecchi, not just bishoujo. Yumeria is bishoujo. Bishoujo is lots of cute girls, maybe fanservice, maybe sexual humor and situations, but overall not perverse. Three perverted idiots locked in a storage room at a gym, with the heat on high, all naked, all grabbing each other in a huge ball of mutual violation, is ecchi. Not to mention it's to be expected from an H-game.
Oh, and if you were frightened by KimiNozo the anime, and the nurse outfits, never look at the game. I recently saw a set of CGs from the game, and the guy ravages every female character there is, even the 12-year-old girl! The anime is nothing.

[Seiryuu]

Oh, almost forgot. I've been thinking about O.Twins' ecchi question. I agree I wouldn't call it ecchi for the bath scenes, especially since they are clearly, as already stated, just the girls talking about stuff they can't talk about with Maiku. However, some other things might qualify as questionably ecchi.
For instance, when one of the girls has a dream and wakes up to find that she'd done some fairly frightening things to the other girl while sleeping. I've heard of sleepwalking, but sleepravaging? Or the entire episode about the girls trying to "fix" the guy(they think he's gay so they do everything they can think of to seduce him to the proper alignment). Even so, there's not enough for a legitimate ecchi. Just romance comedy, though close at times.

[Kurara]

Originally Posted by Seiryuu

I agree with much of this, but first: I never said that ecchi humor was a sign of serious topics or that there weren't many serious shows that had no ecchi. All I said was that a lot of the shows that DO have significant amounts of fanservice seem to do so to keep people's attention while pulling them through a heavy plot. And many of my favorite series employ this idea with other forms of humor, giving people some other reason to watch a serious show if they don't want something that serious. Take Puchi Puri Yuushi. The last couple eps put the main characters through some exttremely tough decisions, but part of the reason you feel the severity of the problem is because in the hilarity you really got to know the characters.
Also, no offense, but I would have to say that Green Green IS ecchi, not just bishoujo. Yumeria is bishoujo. Bishoujo is lots of cute girls, maybe fanservice, maybe sexual humor and situations, but overall not perverse. Three perverted idiots locked in a storage room at a gym, with the heat on high, all naked, all grabbing each other in a huge ball of mutual violation, is ecchi. Not to mention it's to be expected from an H-game.
Oh, and if you were frightened by KimiNozo the anime, and the nurse outfits, never look at the game. I recently saw a set of CGs from the game, and the guy ravages every female character there is, even the 12-year-old girl! The anime is nothing.

Oh, I agree about Green Green. I also think it's ecchi.. But to a lot of people the word "ecchi" means nothing ... Also.. The gym scene.. Do you really think that people were appealed by that scene? ^_^;; I don't think so at all... I'm not trying to argue but think about it... It was mainly a humoristic scene because I really doubt anyone thought it was appealing at all. :P

I wasn't frightened by KimiNozo. I was just saying that to me, the nurse and waitress outfits are blatant fan service that shouldn't be in the anime at all ...

And for Onegai Twins, well, I don't know. I think that a lot of it is just "perverted humor".. It would have been different if there was panty shots or if the two girls were always shoved in maid outfits if you see what I mean..

I understand your point.. Maybe in some series it's to make the atmosphere more light-hearted.. I think it's that way if it's "ecchi humor" which is different than fan service to me. However, I don't think that it's always the case.. That's just what I was trying to say. ^^; Sorry if I offended you.

[monir]

Although those ecchi scenes were out of place, they provided emotional venting from all the intense emotion that was brought out by KGNE. Ikkitousen on the other case had a legendary storyline that was turned into a joke. All the fanservice that came along with it, just made it worse. Only way Geneon is going to sell any of Ikkitousen is by putting a lots of provocative stance and panty shots on the cover of our heroines, so some unsuspecting poor soul (mainly male audience) can be lured into buying the DVD. Green Green had its funny moment and that particular part (fat guy and the bear) described by Seiryuu was one of the part that I am trying to forget in vain. Not to mention, some of the projected ecchiness from the baka-trio's point of view were plain disturbing. gahh!!

Now here I agree with relentlessflame about shows such as Yumeria and ecchiness. Sure this sort of shows doesn't have any definite storyline and it will be a futile destruction of braincells to invent any, but they are fun to watch nontheless. Best of their feature, I feel, is they do not tend to drag the stories. The fact, in some cases there are no stories to begin with, also helps. 12-13 episodes per series for these sort of shows cannot be a coincidence.