Shadows on the Wall

I keep getting comments about my video reviews of the early episodes of Hanamaru Kindergarten and Chu-Bra!! Recently, I've been thinking about this: There are the events of the show, then there is the presentation of those events. A show's events may be innocent, but they may be presented in a way that's not.

In serial experiments lain, when we see lain walk into her bedroom, and we see the cold den of humming, black machinery it's become, complete with standing water on the floor, and we see her casually sit between five monitors wearing clothes she's thrown on, we see that she's completely comfortable with this. But the staff clearly highlights the horror of this situation; everything from the lighting to the pacing to the music reinforces the fundamental wrongness of her lifestyle.

For a counter-example, look at a series like Tenchi Muyo!, a harem anime about a boy surrounded by girls who are attracted to him in various ways. But the show plays off that dynamic explicitly:


 * Ryoko is madly in love with him, and frequently gets naked and rubs herself all over Tenchi.
 * Ayeka is so prim and proper that she blushes when she touches Tenchi; she feels strongly for him but does nothing specifically romantic.  Ryoko often takes advantage of Ayeka's embarrassment this way.
 * Sasami, the child, has a mild schoolgirl crush on Tenchi.  In practice, she treats him more as a beloved older brother, never attempting to get as much as a kiss from him.
 * Washuu respects Tenchi's character, and other than a couple instances of teasing him about his genetic suitability, has no sexual interest in him.

And that's it; the other girls never demonstrate actual romantic interest in Tenchi. So any sexualization is kept on the surface. Ryoko is sexy as a character, so she's sexualized. Sasami is not, so she isn't (she even wears an armpit-to-knees towel during bath house scenes).

Compare this to, say, Chu-Bra!!. The girls are not sexually active (that we know of), and are extremely embarrassed when talking about their bodies. They're in seventh grade; that's reasonable. Many girls that age are uncomfortable with their bodies. But the show spends large amounts of time showing the girls in their underwear, or inventing excuses to make them talk about their bodies (like a scene in the first episode where a girl is repeatedly queried about the fit of her panties, until she's eventually forced to yell out the word "crotch").

Now, granted, Chu-Bra!! is a comedy. The adolescent female body is the centerpiece of the show. But there are ways of addressing that comedically without showing it on the screen. What I've seen of Koi Kaze deals with sexual attraction to an underage girl without ever showing skin. Heck, Kodocha deals with lolicon tangentially for a while.

So, the show's staff doesn't have to show as much skin. But should they show less? I propose that they should, or at least, it would have been better if they had (shown less). I don't want to see more boycotts, more outraged parents, more backlash over anime. This doesn't serve our ultimate interests. It's immediate gratification at the expense of long-term potential. It's opening our industry up to attack, when honestly there are plenty of other approaches the staff could have taken to this show.

(Before someone raises the point: yes, this is a gray area. Straight logic doesn't apply here. One can't say that this show is okay, and so that show is okay, because of all sorts of social and environmental factors.)