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I can't get enough

4 (5.2%)

If it is good, I can enjoy a little peak

29 (37.7%)

I could honestly care less

12 (15.6%)

I ignore it, but sometimes it is just distracting

16 (20.8%)

It is annoying, honestly stop!

16 (20.8%)

Total Members Voted: 75

[martinuzz]

I only like fanservices if they can get boy bands to perform in some backwater grassland, instead of having them cause a stampede of 13 year old girls do more damage to a concert hall than a battalion of drunk angry hooligans.

(Really, back when I worked at a music hall, we had 3 kinds of events: low risk (just a few man security), high risk (triple security), and boy bands (5x security at least, to keep 13 year old girls from literally squishing themselves to death while they all stampede their way to try and get a closest to their idol.)

[Reelya]

Wrong context, Martinuzz (unless you're kidding).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fan_service

Fanservice generally refers to added nudity / bikinis or sexy shots in general added to a work of media, presumably to bring in more viewers/readers.

[martinuzz]

Wrong context, Martinuzz (unless you're kidding).

Partly kidding. Tbh, that meaning of the word was completely new to me until I read this thread. Up till now it was just like I posted.
You scarred my pour soul lol (although admittedly, it was kinda hard to find a patch of unscarred soul tissue for that).

Also, I feel a generation gap. I must be getting old 

[Flying Dice]

Maybe a little societal one, depending on where you live. The root idea is old as sin, and you can take that as any mix of literal and metaphorical that you prefer.

[SirQuiamus]

Fanservice is the primary reason why I haven't watched a single episode of anime for over two years. I've not always been against it: I was very much into blatantly servicey shows in my teens, but then I either got old and tired, or alternatively, the nature of fanservice changed dramatically in the post-tsunami period _{(possible, but less likely).}
Towards the end of my ~10 years of anime-fanhood, I started seeing an increasing number of shows that seemed fairly sincere and non-exploitative, but eventually turned out to be plotless, characterless husks -- hollow vessels for gratuitous and creepy perv-service. In other words, the obvious and easily ignored side dish was insidiously becoming a compulsory main course, and after such horrors as Nisemonogatari and *shudder* Nazo no Kanojo X, I was ready to admit that we can no longer have nice things. _{Feel free to disagree with me, though.}           

[Reelya]

That's why you should get people to recommend anime to you rather than going in blind. There are generally around 4-5 really worthwhile anime shows each season by my reckoning, out of 30-40 new shows that come out every season. That's not to say that the bulk of the rest are unwatchable, they're just not memorable: my main criteria for recommending things are fitting the askers criteria, quality and originality: does this show fit what the person is asking for, and does it deliver something you can't get in any other show?

Most fan-service bullets can be dodged by not watching shows where the main characters are in highschool, or there are excessive numbers of female to male characters. These criteria would have ruled out Nisemonogatari and Nazo no Kanojo X. You will miss a few gems by always doing this though, but you'll avoid many more piles of trash.

[LordBucket]

Fanservice is the primary reason why I haven't watched a single episode of anime for over two years.

I generally find myself neutral towards anime fan service. The Japanese have a talent for making naked women somehow completely unsexy to the point that it blends into the background.

Evangelion comes to mind. For those who haven't seen it, imagine a girl who is classically petite with boobs, and thoroughly submissive. Now imagine hundreds of clones of her all naked and looking at you. Sounds like a recipe for sexy awesomeness, right? But, now imagine that she's completely emotionless and unresponsive. To the point that when at one point the protagonist falls and lands on top of her with a hand on a boob, she simply waits for him to get up. And when he doesn't because he's in too much embarrassed shock to do anything, she simply asks him to move without a hint of facial expression or feeling in her voice. She's about as sexy as a statue.

And as if that wasn't enough...

Spoiler: Major plot spoilers (click to show/hide)

The reason she's so emotionless and unresponsive is that she's a clone in a war situation and knows she's completely expendable. Just like her predecessors who have already died and been replaced, she knows she's going to die and be replaced. Kind of a buzzkill.

Oh, and by the way, she's a clone of the protagonist's mother. Yes, the guy who fell on her.

Sometimes I suspect anime writers are purists who are annoyed that executive meddling demands pretty girls in their "Great Work" and so do everything they can to sabotage it and make them as unsexy as possible.

[SirQuiamus]

@Reelya
I am painfully aware of the fact that anime is uncannily compatible with Sturgeon's law. Regardless, my earlier modus operandi was to watch at least one episode of every new show that came out -- partly because I was bored, partly because I had no trust in the recommendations of other fans. Thing is, there are no universal criteria of acceptability in these matters. Back in 2012, Nisemonogatari was probably the most recommended show on the blogosphere ( D: ), and even today, if I ask "Have you seen any mature seinen shows lately?," some people will still answer in all sincerity: "oh yeah i watched nisemonogatari yesterday and it was great." Having to wade through shit was not the only reason I quit, however -- it was also just plain fatigue and shifting interests.

@LB
Rei is firmly in the zettai-ryouiki of anti-fanservice.

[Flying Dice]

Fanservice is the primary reason why I haven't watched a single episode of anime for over two years.

I generally find myself neutral towards anime fan service. The Japanese have a talent for making naked women somehow completely unsexy to the point that it blends into the background.

Evangelion comes to mind. For those who haven't seen it, imagine a girl who is classically petite with boobs, and thoroughly submissive. Now imagine hundreds of clones of her all naked and looking at you. Sounds like a recipe for sexy awesomeness, right? But, now imagine that she's completely emotionless and unresponsive. To the point that when at one point the protagonist falls and lands on top of her with a hand on a boob, she simply waits for him to get up. And when he doesn't because he's in too much embarrassed shock to do anything, she simply asks him to move without a hint of facial expression or feeling in her voice. She's about as sexy as a statue.

And as if that wasn't enough...

Spoiler: Major plot spoilers (click to show/hide)

The reason she's so emotionless and unresponsive is that she's a clone in a war situation and knows she's completely expendable. Just like her predecessors who have already died and been replaced, she knows she's going to die and be replaced. Kind of a buzzkill.

Oh, and by the way, she's a clone of the protagonist's mother. Yes, the guy who fell on her.

Sometimes I suspect anime writers are purists who are annoyed that executive meddling demands pretty girls in their "Great Work" and so do everything they can to sabotage it and make them as unsexy as possible.

That's one of the saddest parts about Rei. She was supposed to be something like what you described, only more so: inhuman and creepy. Instead otaku viewers turned her character into an archetype for one of the biggest fetishes in the medium.

Your proposition wouldn't surprise me, at least in some cases; it's usually painfully clear when fanservice is mandated from above, and such seems to be universally dull.

[Neonivek]

That's one of the saddest parts about Rei. She was supposed to be something like what you described, only more so: inhuman and creepy. Instead otaku viewers turned her character into an archetype for one of the biggest fetishes in the medium.

It is more that she is sort of an attractive personality archtype often known as the Ice Queen. Which appears quite often in anime and surprisingly often in dating sims.

But she wasn't really meant to be all that creepy, more "off". As well her humanity was always meant to shine through, she was meant to give off "Stolen humanity".

Though unlike quite a few archtypes, this one is rather gender neutral in that you see a lot of male and female characters in that cold, unemotional, and detached role. In fact when a male character plays this part they are almost always Bishi as well.

Though when a male character has that role in the west they tend to be part of the military... and no woman almost ever has that role... it is almost like the west believes women are emotional basket cases and the idea of an emotionally in control woman would be wholly unbelievable.
(Actually it is because western roles for women is a LOT more confined and limited. Where Manga/anime has such a huge diverse set of personalities to the point where they once made a manga ENTIRELY out of female character stereotypes and managed to have a cast large enough to populate a school. A western version might MAYBE have enough to fill out 5 roles.)

[Flying Dice]

Er, I'd sort of hesitate to call Rei an ice queen; a lot of her interactions (at least by my perception) were the result of her not understanding how or not caring to into human social behavior, rather than aloofness. When she gradually became more human, that was about humanity.

[Fniff]

(Actually it is because western roles for women is a LOT more confined and limited. Where Manga/anime has such a huge diverse set of personalities to the point where they once made a manga ENTIRELY out of female character stereotypes and managed to have a cast large enough to populate a school. A western version might MAYBE have enough to fill out 5 roles.)

This is related to why Japan has a rather large catalog of LGBT subgenres in manga/anime. Japan, while being a socially conservative country, recognizes that women/LGBT people are a demographic and thus sell to that demographic. That's what I hear, anyway.

[Reelya]

Hideako Anno did explicitly promise viewers "something to drool over in every episode". Also, Gainax in general. They knew exactly what they were doing. Some people say Anno was shocked that people sexualized Rei, but if you read quotes from Anno, he fully knew what he was doing: they explicitly promised a fan service quota. He made statements about it in interviews to the extent that (paraphrasing) 'anything popular gets sexualized (at comiket), it's been like that since the dawn of time'. He was immersed in the doujin culture himself, he knew how it worked, and had been implicit in that stuff as well.

Also, Neon Genesis Strip Mahjong aka "Neon Genesis Evangelion - Eva and Good Friends The Stripping Project!", which consists of multiple games and artbooks. Much of the Rei porn was officially produce by Gainax themselves. So perhaps outrage at Rei being sexualized was that unofficial Rei porn cut into the licensed Rei porn market ...

There is one quote where Anno attacks people reading manga (and porn) openly on trains, saying that the culture is infantilized, but if you read the full quote, he's talking about older businessmen doing this, saying the entire Japanese culture sucks, not the Otaku demographic specifically. And his solution is how much better things were under the military dictatorship of WWII, back when people had morals, so I think that can be taken with a grain of salt. It's also kind of ironic, such reactionary talk coming from a director who promised drool-worthy fanservice in every episode of his Big Show.

[Neonivek]

Er, I'd sort of hesitate to call Rei an ice queen; a lot of her interactions (at least by my perception) were the result of her not understanding how or not caring to into human social behavior, rather than aloofness. When she gradually became more human, that was about humanity.

So your saying the Ice Queen melts?

[Flying Dice]

-snip-

No arguments on that in this quarter. I'm just remarking on how, despite that, it pretty much all comes off as repulsive and fitting.