ChristopherKay

As I said in response to a comment a little further up, while fanservice definitely does not inherently have a sexual or gendered connotation, when referring to anime that is the meaning that the term has developed. Talk to most anime viewers about shows with “fanservice” in them and they’ll react in the same way.

At no point in this article do I condone the use of excessive violence in media. I think that you’re right: that is another form of pandering, and is potentially far more damaging. Someone could probably write a pretty great article about that. This article, however, is neither about the negative affects of media violence nor the evils of misogyny in media, it’s about the constructive ways that skin and sexual elements can be used to supplement or enhance a story. You seem to be under the impression that this article is about how fanservice is evil when in fact it’s just demanding a more tasteful, creative and competent version of it.

I agree! However, while fanservice is not technically a sexual thing, I would argue that the term has developed that implication.

While I agree that there are exceptions, I will say that I feel as though a disproportionate amount of anime (especially popular shows) are misogynistic and showcase shallow female characters compared to other mediums.

Good points, however, I will say this isn’t so much a defense of fanservice as a demonstration that it has the potential to be used more creatively and tastefully than it currently is. In my ideal world, there is no fanservice. I would have made that clear, but that’s not really what the article is about: it’s about how considering that we live in a world where fans demand fanservice and anime is an industry that there are still ways that creators can fulfill those demands while not sacrificing substance and morality.

I see Homura’s betrayal as a sort of wake-up call to the fanbase and towards anime fans in general. The first five-sixths of Rebellion, we are given an idealized world, the kind of world that fans not only wanted but convinced themselves that Madoka was, ignoring all of the harsh truths it dished out. The world is not simply idealized in the fact that the first half-hour is sweet, sugary fun: everything up to Homura’s betrayal is most definitely NOT Madoka Magica. Everyone fighting together to save Homura, a constant stream of one-liners, the absurdly overblown fight between Homura and Mami that completely defied the original series’s portrayal of combat, the ridiculous ‘dark’ plot twists of the Incubators evil schemes (Incubators were never selfish creatures in the original series): all of it is the sort of world Madoka fans pretended Madoka was, the kind of world they wanted it to be. It was dark and ominous, but its underlying nature was forgiving and fun, and in the end everyone got to go to heaven and it was great. Homura’s betrayal is an expression of the creator’s dissatisfaction with this mentality and an attempt to make the audience take a deeper look at the original show and their own lives. Homura’s labyrinth almost seems like a metaphor for the labyrinth escapism can trap you in, a sugary false reality that can only eventually crumble.

While not really personal favorites, I completely agree that all of these are great shows to help people get into the medium and I echo what other people have said specifically about starting people off that have conclusive endings. Nothing is more frustrating than getting absorbed in a story only to find that the ending either won’t be made for the foreseeable future or doesn’t exist. However, perhaps even more important than that is the fact that almost all of these series have relatively great English dubs. I’ve found that people just getting into the medium can be extremely off-put by having to read the subtitles for a series while watching, and that a great dub will really help to alleviate this frustration.

I like how in your article you tie Madoka’s dark nature to real life. I think that this is very true: despite being a show about magic and wishes, Madoka actually has a lot to say about real life in the ways that its characters are forced to make decisions about who they want to be and what they want to live for and the intensity to which those decisions are challenged. However, in addition to Madoka’s success in portraying the nature of life’s trials in a far more realistic manner than many other forms of media, it was also a MASSIVE financial success. As is true with any financial success, it will undoubtedly have successors trying to replicate it, and this has already been the case: shows like ‘Yuuki Yuna is a Hero’ and ‘Selector Infected WIXOSS’ have appeared trying to copy the formula to grab a spot in the sun, and these shows have unfortunately demonstrated little of the tact that Madoka has choosing instead to attempt to appeal to viewer’s pathos in any way possible and substituting a more ‘realistic’ take on magical girls for over-the-top suffering made to get a reaction out of the audience simply by playing up the subversion of expectations that is ‘these are cute girls-watch horrible things happen to them’. Do you think that the nature of the anime industry might drag down any chance at establishing a more thoughtful and mature magical girl genre before it can truly be born? I’d love to see another Madoka, but it simply seems unlikely now that Madoka has ironically demonstrated much more surefire ways to make money than being poignant.