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Comments
Also bishoujo and bishounen just mean pretty girls / pretty guys so I went with different words to specify "ecchi oriented toward people who like [gender]". I could have said "(fe)male-oriented ecchi" but it'd be more accurate to not have to assume audience sexuality in the first place.
Huh? A lot of things are blatantly created with specific gender and sexuality in mind as the audience. And it's not just manga adaptations from magazines with specific demographic terms.
I mean, as an example, this article came out literally today.
Yeah, I mean, to be graphic, once the distinction was made nobody has let the twains of shounen-ai/yaoi and bara meet even though they're "technically" the same thing.
I'm not sure what you're arguing with me about this for.
For reference, to my understanding, this is the line you're objecting to. (If you're objecting to a different line, let me know.)
It'd be simple enough to say something like "the realm of androphilic fanservice has clear distinctions between material oriented toward heterosexual female audiences, such as shounen-ai and yaoi, and homosexual male audiences, such as bara."
Exactly why do you seem to be up in arms about the exact wording I used in that post?
I wasn't really a huge fan of it while watching the series, but it started growing on me at the very end, and now I can't say I indifferent toward it anymore.
Perhaps is it's that your attempt at sounding "accurate" and objecting to entrenched industry terminology that anybody who cares would already understand is just unhelpfully pedantic, if not pretentious.
I guess I used the wrong word there, sorry. I didn't mean "accurate to depicting the industry", I meant "accurate to what I wanted to say", which was the very general question asking about sexual fanservice involving male characters.
Here's a rephrasing, to make it clearer (albeit wordier).
"Come to think of it, most of what I know about ecchi has to do with portrayals of female characters. I wonder how anime works that focus on portraying male characters with sexuality in mind handle sexuality, especially but not limited to visual sexuality."
I worded it this way because I specifically wanted to ask this question very generally. I didn't want to use existing words like "bishounen" or "ecchi" in the latter point specifically because they might limit the answers I get.
Manga ecchi may be more varied, but it's probably still like a 70/29.2/.8% split Straight Male/Straight Female/Other audience split.
But (almost) all anime is.
I'm not sure how to interpret this aside from as a reference to the bodice-ripper thing. Or maybe you mean the specific thing where the ecchi (you know what I mean) is in the form of romantic bombardment?
I mean, the average LN is full of fanservice, but it's descriptions of things that are to interpreted visually (ie, "The girl looked like this" or "The girl accidentally fell into MCs privates area chest first"). In fact, in terms of the LN market, I'd say it's maybe 80% male just because of the way LNs emerged as a concept and then Shosetsu came around.
Meanwhile, things aimed at women like Bookmaker don't contain much fanservice (like some LNs aimed at men, but those are in the tiny minority in their own market) whilst something like Hamefura will include that dokidoki sort of fanservice I mentioned earlier.
My "Watching" now only has two things on it. Rather than twenty-something things some of which I hadn't even watched in months if not years.
Quite liberal definition of "watching" you have there.
I found this quite hilarious:
So, something different sure is going on in Pretty Rhythm - Dear My Future.
So episode 8 starts out with yet another acknowledgement of Mia's frenetic, almost sand-paper-ey attitude:
But then Mia herself starts to change and become more like a leader. I mean, she hasn't become a leader to Prizmmy, but she has helped So Min and in episode 9 she really helped Sho stop being an idiot towards Aira. It's almost as if somebody realized how weird Mia was coming off as and decided to fix it immediately.
> Quite liberal definition of "watching" you have there.
More like I was just too lazy to remove stuff from it, after thinking I'd keep watching it.
Huh, Moribito has a Tainaka Sachi ED.
It had some interesting insights, particularly since I knew what the main character was up to and I got to study how he acts. This story is told quite well IMO.
The bare-midriff school uniforms and some of the lechery are still unexplained and not particularly welcome, but the show definitely gets a good amount of the storytelling done right.
It's kind of a shame that the anime series almost certainly won't ever be extended. It basically only finished one arc or a few at the beginning of the entire story.
That said, given that we already know the lead character's background, the novelty of the initial shock is no longer what would carry the story forward -- it'd likely be more conflicts that draw upon things in his background. But part of the draw of the anime series is that "initial shock"...
Kadokawa wanted people's money?
This is basically all modern LN anime not SAO or Re:Zero. I'm pretty sure somebody is publishing the novels in English somewhere.
Speaking of, I've always wanted to continue Accel World in novel form but I get the feeling that the longer it goes on the less engrossing it becomes.
Meanwhile, I'm not sure if Hi-Evolution 0 is canon. Considering it's ending, it's certainly meant to be right before the start of Hi-Evolution 1, however, everybody has smartphones (obviously Eureka Seven itself was slightly anachronistic even for it's time in terms of tech). Also, Hi-Evolution 1 may be it's own specific canon... maybe?
Anyways, Adroc Thurston was a weirdo:
Freaking out Charles and Rey every chance he got. In fact, according to this, their incessant lifting on the military bases was the very inspiration for the lifting LFOs (which Adroc invented, but before he found the Archetype/Nirvash skeleton).
It was nice to see like, the Dewey from before the start of Eureka Seven.
Yeah, uh... okay??? I mean, the gap between my knowledge of the series and this new normal is like, beyond extremely wide.
EDIT!!!!: GMH!, somebody licensed BEATLESS!!!
At some point I might revisit Eureka Seven. The original is an absolutely beautiful story but for whatever reason I just haven't really felt the impulse to look more at it.
Meanwhile I'm imagining this sport using the same pocket-dimension tech shown in Z/X Code Reunion, lol. Also I can't help but think of Flying Circus.
TOM's translation stalled like, years ago. J-Novel Club (who translate like... every LN under the sun) probably worked out some deal with them to allow them to publish on their site in addition to their own efforts.
I implore you to never watch Eureka Seven AO, it is my favorite anime of all time and I'm pretty sure we'd start a civil war over it.
From what I saw, Circlet Princess' pocket dimension is much bigger and varied than the one from Z/X Cr. In Cr they just mostly fight in space.
This show just got weird.
The main villain (who is an old man and not a Prism Star) wants to destroy the Prism show for secret reasons, and Hye In from PURETTY desperately wants to surpass Prizmmy and complete the Symphonia Series so she can be the first Prism Star to perform Greatful Symphonia.
And it turns out the main villain is the one hosting the Symphonia Series competitions and is explicitly trying to find somebody exactly like Hye In. Meanwhile, Yun Su, who is the designer for Dear Crown and is mainly affiliated with PURETTY has also been entranced by the Symphonia Series since he was a young boy. However, his growing feelings for Aira (aka somebody else's sort-of-girlfriend) lead him to (incorrectly) view Aira as the goddess meant to wear his designs, even though the girl he's looking for is clearly Hye In.
So Hye In is one of those characters who is both talented and loves to train, so she's basically better than the rest of PURETTY combined but has to hold back so she can match her team. When Mia convinces her otherwise, Hye In not only manages to be the first character in her age group to perform two jumps, but a solo Prism Act as well, earning her the Symphonia Dress of the Beginning at Summer Fest. All Just According to Plan as per our mysterious main villain...
Vaguely Related
I don't think I've ever watched an idol show where like... when the final competition comes around, one of the (eight or so) main characters decides not to participate because there's another idol opportunity they'd like to pursue further.
I mean I guess it'd be like if in a sports anime, a prominent character quit the main team to do something else (which I guess is what's sort of happening in Free! as it goes on with Makoto) but with idoling there's always more opportunity than "Become the [Whatever it is this time] Queen".
The closest it's ever come is Laura in Aikatsu Stars! Hoshi no Tsubasa, mostly because there was a vs show at the end rather than a big competition like S4 Selection and she didn't even leave until after the show ended.
And then she still battles with Yume in the International Star Premium Cup in the epilogue.
Digression
Anyways it continues to surprise me that somehow the Pretty Rhythm game is even more intensely insane than the anime. Like, Mia's main jump, Kirakira Future Star, was really really streamlined in the anime, in the game she's just obscured in so many lights that you can barely see her.
And the Prism Act Line is so so very basic in the anime compared to the game version.
But this time? Man, it was bad. Especially since it didn't even involve any main characters. Well, it involved Aurora Dream main characters, but this isn't Aurora Dream. I mean, at one point Yun-su just designs an outfit for Aira rather than doing his job designing for COSMOS.
Also, since like in three months I'll be confused as to how the units work in this arc I'll just write them down here:
(Prizmmy+PURETTY)/3= Sprouts, P&P and COSMOS. Note: Love Mix is wholly unrelated.
Anyways, then came episode 32 and oh my goodness episode 32, it was so great. Hye In getting glamoured by Don Bomby into wanting Symphonia so bad she almost went down the Act Line to what appears to be the Fiery Underworld? That's why people cite this as one of the Pretty Series' high points. I mean, I actually felt the terror and foreboding. In an idol show!
First of all, Shou and Yun-su's fighting over Aira confused her so badly it left an opportunity for Don Bonby/Asechi Kintarou to entrance her with the newly designed Mysterious Symphonia Dress and so this kind of drove Aira insane and made her decide not to participate in the Crystal High Heel Cup and do the Symphonia Selection along with the Prizmmy and PURETTY shuffle units.
Nobody even knew she'd be wearing the Mysterious Symphonia Dress until the very moment MARs went on stage and basically they blew everybody away and Aira was so entranced with the Mysterious Symphonia Dress she actually managed to open the Door to Symphonia!
And then she performed a Prism Act called Road to Symphonia which was like... it had literally the best non-vocal music of the series so far.
BUT THEN her soul got trapped on the other side of the door so the "Aira" who was back in the real world signed up to work for the Symphonia Syndicate.
Which meant the rest of MARs had to go with her but they couldn't save her since there was no way Kintarou would just give them a Symphonia dress for them to get Aira's heart out of Symphonia instead of putting her further in. So then Kintarou starts up the next part of Symphonia Selection like, right then, with Sky High Symphonia, where every unit from Pretty Top has to try and beat MARs and if they lose then they have to sign up with the Symphonia Syndicate.
So Serenon with K use the power of soccer and transforming into unicorns to try and open the door to Symphonia, but they can't since they aren't even wearing Symphonia Coords so they end up having to go work for Kintarou too.
After that, LOVE MIX also try to save Aira (because after all Itsuki is Aira's brother) but, frankly, they're kind of extremely bad at it.
Before they're taken away by Kintarou's blimp, Serenon w K do manage to tell everybody they can't traverse the Door to Symphonia without Symphonia dresses before being locked away forever, so Shou and Yun-su go to Korea with PURETTY to find out more about design from Yun-su's mother.
Whilst there, they combined advice from Myeong-Ja (Chae Kyoung and Yun-su's mother) and Aira to figure out that the only way to save Aira is through her own philosophy of "Pretty Remake" so they remake the Symphonia pieces that Prizmmy and PURETTY have collected so far (pictured here, making clothes in Pretty Rhythm).
Unfortunately, even though Prizmmy manage to perform Road to Symphonia whilst MARs under Kintarou can't get that same Prism Act to evolve, they still lose. Meanwhile, Mia's Symphonia Coord, despite being remade, is yet to evolve.
Prizmmy do manage to reach the deepest ends of the Door to Symphonia, where Aira's soul is waiting to reach further into Symphonia. They tell PURETTY that they need to evolve Road to Symphonia, which PURETTY actually manage to do in the next episode which means they beat MARs and save everybody from Kintarou.
Obviously this makes Kintarou mad, so he decides to just slander Prism Shows since his ultimate Prism Act can no longer be completed. He tells the whole world about the time he literally paid money to ensure his daughter Kyouko became Prism Queen, something she hasn't known for like, twenty years?
This makes everybody question the legitimacy of Prism Shows, so Prizmmy and PURETTY hold their own show to help people believe in Prism Shows again.
And, obviously, after Greatful Symphonia almost stole Aira's heart, Kyouko decides the best way to revive Prism Shows is to make her young impressionable Prism Stars perform it.
This leads to a new Symphonia Selection with all the units from Pretty Top vying for the Center position of Greatful Symphonia. MARs perform the same set of Prism Jumps they did in the Aurora Dream finale at the Prism Queen cup, thereby inspiring all the new units at Pretty Top and reminding them why they loved Prism Shows to start with.
That allows Mia to finally evolve her Symphonia Coord, and create a new Symphonia Prism Act.
Aaand that's as far as I got.
Man I love this show.