Glad this blog is back. At least for now.

And the blog’s never been dead. Just sleeping. We’re all busy with school work.

I think the mentality is that “sex sells, but it’s not the only thing that sells”. As I see it, fanservice, in a more serious show, is a device which keeps the “less-than-intellectual”, to put it tactfully, portion of the audience engaged. Or perhaps to prod already devoted fans into buying character merchandise. Erotic Images can provoke even the best and brightest (Einstein was a bit of a playboy, from what I’ve heard).

To sum it up, fanservice is an effective, albeit overused, tool to get the attention of viewers. However, I wouldn’t recommend looking too deep into it. Westerners tend to do that sometimes. A service scene is just a service scene, after all. And Gundam was made to sell toys. And Eva was a depressed man’s ramblings.

But this is C/BotS… It’s probably deeper than most other animes.

that said,

Lafiel FTW~

@kadian1364: Yeah, it’s a great scene; I didn’t mean to mischaracterize you in that way, sorry. That conversation is just one of the things that led to me writing the post. I definitely think . . . of the Stars is very smart, but in the other parts I mean to write I’m going to tackle some other shows that use fanservice as well (though probably still just as “smart”). I guess the idea is to point out that it’s a technique, rather than something that automatically disqualifies a show from serious concern.

CotS great strength is the scene composition, as you said making every shot with purpose behind it. Cheesecake scenes of Ekuryua aren’t just for the sake of pure fanservice, and CotS never relies on it, so I, and probably many others, consciously/unconsciously let it get away with more because its “smarter” going about it, than simpler minded series that use fanservice like a crutch.

That’s all I wanted to say, but here’s some discussion fanservice that we like to indulge ourselves in. Alright, you did a good job here in establishing the utility of Eksuryua’s scenes in particular. It DID feel completely arbitrary to me and I suppose it does work even as merely breakers of dialogue/monologue dumps.

I didn’t think C/BotS suffered necessarily for these distractions — if one is to relate to them as distractions, but I didn’t think they were that necessary either.

But looking further, I realize that my Catholic socialization is driving the ship. The apparent objections I make are particularly towards sexual fanservice: corruption of the body/spirit/mind etc. and everything Augustine said. I thought of alternatives to lingering shots of abh body parts and came up with spacecraft, lander world planetscapes, abh cityscapes.

While I stand by these alternatives, I realize that they aren’t necessarily ‘better’ or more ‘tasteful’ than Atosurya’s bosoms. Consider that my alternatives can be routinely called tech porn and scenery porn. Some people intellectually fap, and even consider this superior to actual fapping with one’s genitalia, and consider themselves better for it. I know I indulge myself with this though nowhere as often (nor as pleasurable) as looking at Lafiel in her evening gown.

Recently, I got bothered by the nature of fanservice in a fall anime Letter Bee, to the point that its charms didn’t seem so charming anymore and I felt that the fanservice didn’t compel me to keep at it and in fact took away from the experience. I was blogging the show and now I’ve dropped it after 5 episodes.

What bothered me about it I realize is that I was seeing children being sexualized and the show was being clever about it. I didn’t appreciate this. I suppose I don’t think badly of C/BotS because it does a very good job of making the characters seem adult. Their concerns are adult and their challenges demand maturity. Their character designs are youthful, but not child-like.

I don’t intend to be righteous about this at all, however strongly I feel. Ultimately, I want to acknowledge that fanservice is a matter of taste and along with appropriateness it is ultimately arbitrary.