Personally, Fanservice is a Bore

Fanservice is like hot sauce. A little bit can make a show slightly more entertaining. While watching Code Geass, I'd think "Man, Kallen looks good in that suit she wears when she pilots that mecha." 1% girls in attractive mecha suits improves the anime, but once we get over say...10% fanservice in my estimation, it starts to affect the quality. Thus, do we get to the debate about whether new anime sucks. The issue is that yes, in the past, we didn't have twitter feeds of anime websites meaning that we didn't hear about every single panty shot anime they came out with, but on the other hand, this current moe boom is making me go uuurggh. Yes, moe has its roots in 90s and 80s anime, but the fact is that anime can't live on moe alone, as much as you can't make a meal out of hot sauce. One of my favorite series of the 90s, Slayers, has cute female characters like Amelia and Lina, and attractive male characters like Zel and Xellos, but when you lose interest in Zel's awesome body, there's still the mystery of whether he'll ever find something to get his original body back, the excitement of battles with monsters and gods, and even some amusing hijinks on the side.

Compare this to me trying to watch the anime of Rosario + Vampire. I thought the manga was fairly cute, so I thought "I'll watch the anime." OK, I don't think I got through an entire episode. The point of a panty shot is that you're seeing something usually hidden. If you see them every five seconds, it breaks one's concentration. I start thinking "really? why doesn't she wear shorts under her skirt? Doesn't she know that she's constantly flashing everyone? What if she wears period panties?" Back in the 90s, a harem anime would have maybe five panty shots in a show. You could ignore that level of panty shot and still enjoy other aspects of the show. Of course, I blame harem shows for moe anime today. At first, they had to make some weak attempt to have a plot and they put some random dude in to create some sort of audience sympathy, but since anime creators found that having a plot was unnecessary,and no one cares about the wimpy guy, remove both and we get moe.

I can't complain too much. While anime has fucking CHU BRA or whatever, Ouran Host Club finally grew a plot, Nana's near final volume is coming out, All My Darling Daughters is sticking in my head as some sort of masterpiece ,and so I'm happy. And of course, I'm not on Japanese fan time in anime or manga, so I am in part shielded from the crap. Right now, I'm am obsessively watching Planetes, which I have to admit is one of the best anime I've seen. I only just watched Code Geass. Being late really has its perks.