Ecchi: The most hated genre of all time?

[Lyocol]

I'm a big ecchi fan and I'm not ashamed to be as one. Unfortunately for me nearly all places that I went seems to hat anything related to ecchi. Last year when my girlfriend cosplaying Shizuka from Queen's Blade, which I believe the least sexy character in the show and people are giving bad receptions to me and my girlfriend just because she were cosplaying a character from an ecchi show. The only ecchi show I know people loved is High School of the Dead but I hated it. I really hate zombies and I'm not joking about it.

Is ecchi the most hated genre of all time? Is ecchi the worst anime-related product of all time? Even hentai(full-blown porn) got better reception than ecchi in overall.

[Archon_Wing]

http://mal.oko.im/archon_wing/favs

According to that, ecchi is my worst rated genre, so I would definitely say a lot of them do me no good, but this is frequently because the show themselves are of low quality, and have nothing to do with ecchi. It doesn't help that many of those shows come from Xebec, aka IG's garbage can.

Ecchi manga is great though. Too bad thanks to censorship, it has to be butchered via light beams of doom when they get adapted. so they can sell for more on dvd.

[Joyce_Steele]

Lots of people thought hating anything related to Twilight and Michael Bay movies are smart people but in reality they just as stupid as the fans of both.

I'm a woman and I don't mind watching ecchi as long it doesn't get too much of it. Lots of people that I met hate Yosuga no Sora for its sex scenes and nudity but I didn't watch it for those. I watch it for plot and characters, which I'm become a huge fangirl of.

Anime and manga isn't the only culprit. I've seen too many Hollywood and non-Hollywood movies where the actresses get topless or naked for no obvious reasons except as an eye-candy for male viewers. It is really unfair that most female-oriented movies like Twilight used similar tactics to win the hearts and minds of female viewers and got bashed because of it. Don't get me wrong I hated Twilight too but not for its fanservice(unlike 90% of the male haters out there).

[Reckoner]

The problem with ecchi is that it often walks a fine line between being sexually alluring and sexually objectifying women (Sometimes men, but not much ecchi of males around to my knowledge). A lot of fanservice is nonsensical and completely devoid of respect for women, often treating them more like sacks of meat than real people. When I watch a show, seeing boobs the size of watermelons or having constant pantsu flashes is just a complete turn off, and is just quite revolting.

And honestly, when the whole point of your show is to sexually stimulate your audience, why not just take it one step further and make porn?

[Akito Kinomoto]

Ecchi isn't a problem when a show is centered around it. But anything taking itself seriously may find sexual stimulation to be more of a distraction than anything else.

When a show fails to sell on its fanservice and its main draw is fanservice, then we have a problem.

[Kameruka]

You know, ecchi shows are made by and for Japanese men. Take Queen's Blade for example. Most English-speaking anime fans trashed it for its huge amount of fanservice and nudity but in Japan it sold like hot cakes(I know this is a hyperbole but I don't have better euphemism). It got three TV seasons and several OVA specials while 07-Ghost, a comparable show for female viewership, is not even close to QB's popularity.

OP: I know lots of girls cosplaying Sora from Yosuga no Sora and they all got good receptions for that. At least I know YnS isn't so horrible after all.

[Triple_R]

Originally Posted by Archon_Wing

http://mal.oko.im/archon_wing/favs

According to that, ecchi is my worst rated genre, so I would definitely say a lot of them do me no good, but this is frequently because the show themselves are of low quality, and have nothing to do with ecchi.

I wouldn't be so sure that the show being ecchi, and the show being low quality, are entirely unrelated.

Here's the thing with ecchi - It's basically hentai contextualized with a plot and some degree of characterization. In other words, the plot and characters are there to serve the sexual content, not the other way around.

This is an important distinction, as it determines what gets prioritized in the creation, writing, and production of an anime show.

A show like, say, Sakurasou, has some ecchi fanservice, but its there to spice up the plot/characters. People may or may not like it, but it nonetheless doesn't represent a lasting shift in primary focus - the plot and characters remain the primary focus.

With ecchi-as-primary-genre shows, the plot and characters are designed and written to maximize sexual content. I think this approach runs a greater risk of having plot contrivances (in order to squeeze in all the sexual content), and of having thin characterization as characters are less likely to be explored in depth beyond their sexual side.

Whenever something takes precedence over plot and characters - And this something can be ecchi, it can be in-jokes, it can be playing with tropes, it can be any number of things - the plot and characters tend to suffer for it. At least in my experience, and opinion. And depending on how much importance one puts in plot and characterization, this can lead to "lower quality" works in their opinion.


I think the reason ecchi isn't a particularly well-liked genre is...

1) It tends to be lowbrow (Reckoner's points touch on this a lot). Some people just don't like lowbrow material, for various reasons. It should be noted that a show can have sexual appeal and also be highbrow (I'd argue that some of the better VNs are like this - G Senjou, for example).

2) Some people don't have an interest in contextualizing porn with a paper-thin plot. If they want porn, they just want the porn - They don't want some paper-thin plot to go with it. This might account for the OP's observation of hentai having a better reception than ecchi.

[momobunny]

Originally Posted by Reckoner

The problem with ecchi is that it often walks a fine line between being sexually alluring and sexually objectifying women (Sometimes men, but not much ecchi of males around to my knowledge). A lot of fanservice is nonsensical and completely devoid of respect for women, often treating them more like sacks of meat than real people. When I watch a show, seeing boobs the size of watermelons or having constant pantsu flashes is just a complete turn off, and is just quite revolting.

And honestly, when the whole point of your show is to sexually stimulate your audience, why not just take it one step further and make porn?

Yeah... I find it rather revolting myself.

[hyl]

Originally Posted by Reckoner

And honestly, when the whole point of your show is to sexually stimulate your audience, why not just take it one step further and make porn?

Making it adult-only will make it harder to sell your discs due to stricter rules and probably some other things like not being able to be broadcast on most channels

[Archon_Wing]

Originally Posted by Reckoner

And honestly, when the whole point of your show is to sexually stimulate your audience, why not just take it one step further and make porn?

Hey now, softcore porn is good too!

[Chiibi]

For me, it completely depends on characters and/or story. If they're good, ecchi aspects don't bother me in the least. Quite a few of my favorites have an ecchi sub-genre.

[backbone]

Which left me wondering why shows such as To-Love-Ru could become so popular despite its highly nonsensical and stupid ecchi scenes

[0utf0xZer0]

Originally Posted by Lyocol

Is ecchi the most hated genre of all time? Is ecchi the worst anime-related product of all time? Even hentai(full-blown porn) got better reception than ecchi in overall.

Well, as I'm sure you've noticed, the stereotypical ecchi show is full of low brow comedy and "spectacle", with eroticism that is far from sophisticated. Many people consider those qualities juvenile and avoid them on that reason even if they don't consider themselves elitists.

Originally Posted by Reckoner

And honestly, when the whole point of your show is to sexually stimulate your audience, why not just take it one step further and make porn?

First, because not everyone is in the mood for something "fappable" all the time. Sometimes people are just looking for something teasing.

Second, because it's seldom just about stimulation. As noted earlier, low brow and spectacle are extremely important to these genres.

Originally Posted by Reckoner

The problem with ecchi is that it often walks a fine line between being sexually alluring and sexually objectifying women (Sometimes men, but not much ecchi of males around to my knowledge). A lot of fanservice is nonsensical and completely devoid of respect for women, often treating them more like sacks of meat than real people. When I watch a show, seeing boobs the size of watermelons or having constant pantsu flashes is just a complete turn off, and is just quite revolting.

I often find myself going "this is revolting, but I can't tear myself away from the "spectacle"". But then I often find myself numbed to the entire thing after a few episodes and don't bother continuing.

(And then of course you have something like the Monogatari franchise, whose spectacle elements range from sublime to abysmal depending on what part of the story you're talking about.)

Not quite sure what I feel about an "alluring v. objectifying" dichotomy because it feels like you're using taste to define who gets the get out of jail free card.

Originally Posted by Triple_R

2) Some people don't have an interest in contextualizing porn with a paper-thin plot. If they want porn, they just want the porn - They don't want some paper-thin plot to go with it. This might account for the OP's observation of hentai having a better reception than ecchi.

Hentai frequently has paper thin plots too. With good reason too: even a paper thin plot can usually provide a decent H scenario to keep things interesting.

Of course, hentai is usually like, two episodes so the plot doesn't really need to be that thick. In fact a lot of adapted hentai does an immense amount of "plot compression". Your mileage will vary as to whether anything of value was lost.

Originally Posted by backbone

Which left me wondering why shows such as To-Love-Ru could become so popular despite its highly nonsensical and stupid ecchi scenes

Because even a lot of smart people have a craving for dumb and low brow sometimes. Though I will not that for me personal, To-Love-Ru never really scratched that itch particularly well.

[Chiibi]

Originally Posted by backbone

Which left me wondering why shows such as To-Love-Ru could become so popular despite its highly nonsensical and stupid ecchi scenes

Fanservice?

Most people know I am an avid shipper...so if an ecchi series has romance, I'm normally on board. I thought To-Love-Ru had potential...but they ruined it with filler after filler.......and they weren't GOOD fillers either. >_>

I remember sitting there with a friend watching said fillers and thinking 'God, this is SO stupid...'
However Kanokon made To-Love-Ru look like a good show...because at least the latter had likable characters whom you cared about somewhat.

[GDiddy]

The ecchi doesn't get to me, as long as there's a good plot and characters that you grow to like.

Otherwise, if I want to look at tits and ass, I can just download one of billions of porn sites.

[Utsuro no Hako]

I'll echo what others have said about the objectification of women in ecchi. There's no reason why sexual comedy has to be that way. You could very easily build a scene full of penis jokes around a dojikko losing her glasses and walking in on the boys changing for gym class, but no, we always have to get the hapless MC barging in on the girls.

Which is the other problem with ecchi -- it's the same tired old jokes over and over again. How many times can you watch an idiot protagonist fall on top of a girl and grope her without realizing what he's touching? Is there no one in Japan capable of coming up with a sex joke that wasn't a cliche when Love Hina did it ten years ago? Are the producers just trying to save money by recycling old scripts?

[0utf0xZer0]

Originally Posted by Chiibi

However Kanokon made To-Love-Ru look like a good show...because at least the latter had likable characters whom you cared about somewhat.

Please don't remind me of the pitfalls of my extreme weakness to kitsune-mimi.

Originally Posted by Utsuro no Hako

I'll echo what others have said about the objectification of women in ecchi. There's no reason why sexual comedy has to be that way. You could very easily build a scene full of penis jokes around a dojikko losing her glasses and walking in on the boys changing for gym class, but no, we always have to get the hapless MC barging in on the girls.

One of my favourite scene in Sakurasou is Mashiro convincing the MC to model for her in his boxers. And then there's Inukami which did a damn fine job of male nudity as a harem comedy trope. Exceptions to the rule but they are out there.

[Akito Kinomoto]

Originally Posted by Utsuro no Hako

Which is the other problem with ecchi -- it's the same tired old jokes over and over again. How many times can you watch an idiot protagonist fall on top of a girl and grope her without realizing what he's touching? Is there no one in Japan capable of coming up with a sex joke that wasn't a cliche when Love Hina did it ten years ago? Are the producers just trying to save money by recycling old scripts?

Probably because the horny teenagers infatuated with the jokes at first moved on but the studios know they can draw in a new batch of horny teenagers with the same tried and true techniques.

[Triple_R]

Originally Posted by 0utf0xZer0

Not quite sure what I feel about an "alluring v. objectifying" dichotomy because it feels like you're using taste to define who gets the get out of jail free card.

The following is my take on "alluring vs. objectifying":

With objectifying, specific body parts take precedence over the character/person that those body parts belong to. With alluring, it's the character/person intentionally trying to be sensuous/seductive/sexy that is the main factor in the sexual allure. It's a question of agency for me - Is the character trying to be/act sexy, or is it a gust of wind/pervy camera angles/impossibly bouncy breasts that's causing sex appeal regardless of character intent?

In one case, the female character is getting oogled beyond her control. In the other case, the female character wants to get oogled (or at the very least, she's trying to sexually arouse another character). I can understand why this would be a key difference from a feminist perspective. One empowers the female character, while the other one takes power/control away from her.

Hentai frequently has paper thin plots too. With good reason too: even a paper thin plot can usually provide a decent H scenario to keep things interesting.

Yes, but if one just wants pure porn (i.e. a sex scene, or sexual imagery), there's much less "fluff" to go through with hentai than there is with ecchi. Ecchi has a plot that's paper-thin in a synopsis/complexity sense, but there nonetheless can be a lot of it (yes, this is because it has to fill up a cour or more's worth of TV episodes).

Hentai usually "gets down to business" (if you catch my drift ) a lot quicker than Ecchi does.

[Archon_Wing]

To love ru is a terrible series but has great art and the Darkness incarnation decided to get pretty explicit, so that's what people went for.

But we're talking about the manga. With the exception of a brief quality increase in Motto, the anime is trash and pretty useless for purposes of well... anything.