Anime has built up a host of tropes over the years that it has become well known for, even amongst non anime fans. One of the more controversial of these is the seeming reliance on fanservice, often involving the over sexualisation of characters to please the audience.
Whenever the topic of sexualisation in the industry comes up, strong opinions are soon to fly, as many people’s favorite shows feature a lot of fanservice in them. Despite the discourse, sexual imagery and themes are not exclusively for cheap titilation, and quite a few anime actually use them in genuinely fun or interesting ways.
7 Space Dandy
Some stories of every medium commit to characterizing their protagonists using the style in which the story is presented. The Tatami Galaxy is a great example of how different events can look when the main character is in full control of their presentation. With this stylistic choice, a horny main character usually translates to a horny show, and Space Dandy revels in its protagonist’s desires.
Dandy is a character who only seeks money and women, and this colors the whole show around him. Due to his namesake dandyism though, he comes off as quite likable and relatable. He’s more Johnny Bravo than Master Roshi. It also helps that the ladies he directs the camera at are often friendly with him and don’t seem disturbed by his obvious ogling.
It also helps that the show’s version of space faring society is akin to a floating Las Vegas, meaning pin up models and glittering waitresses feel like a natural part of the world rather than shoehorned in for audience appeal.
6 Beastars
Beastars is a strange little anime. The story of Beastars’ anthropomorphic world is one that makes sexual scenes inevitable. Protagonist Legosi is a gray wolf struggling with burgeoning feelings for a rabbit schoolmate, in a world where carnivores and herbivores being romantically involved is unheard of.
His feelings are very explicitly of a sexual nature, but also somewhat hunger driven as well. The crossover between sexual feelings and predatory feelings is touched on extensively in the story, so scenes of a sexual nature come fairly regularly. Instead of using them for aimless appeal though, the show cleverly links them with its themes, and Legosi’s innocent nature stops him from ever taking advantage of the situation whenever he’s involved in one.
5 Highschool of the Dead
Highschool of the Dead was one of the biggest anime of the early 2010s, and one of the first anime a lot of people saw. Part of how it reached this level of acclaim was through its over the top violence and sexuality. Hardly anyone in the anime community hasn't seen Saeko Busujima’s boobs dodging bullets in slow motion.
Despite its lack of restraint with its fanservice, HotD manages to set itself aside from the crowd by how hyperbolic everything in the show is. It taps into the full blown sex and violence of many american thrillers of its time, making it feel like it’s going for a specific stylistic profile. Many anime mix sex and violence, but rarely to the sheer extent HotD does, making them feel half baked as a reult.
4 Konosuba
At first glance, Konosuba seems to be a bog standard isekai harem anime. Konosuba's main character is a loser who gets reincarnated into a fantasy world, and soon gathers together a party of fantasy ladies. However, Konosuba soon reveals itself to be explicitly determined to subvert trope after trope in the name of comedy.
The protagonist, Kazuma has no special powers, and everytime he starts to get his way, there’s some misfortune waiting around the corner to knock him down. The most relevant subversion in the show comes via the character, Darkness. Often iseaki anime will put female characters in sexual situations against their will as an excuse for fanservice. Darkness however, is an explicit masochist.
She’s portrayed as a genuine deviant, who relishes in being degraded or attacked. So whenever she is captured, threatened, insulted or de-clothed, she erupts in genuinely disturbing delight. This might not deter some people, but the show comedically uses her over-enthusiasm for typical fanservice setups to make both the audience and the other characters simultaneously uncomfortable and entertained.
3 Yuri On Ice
Fanservice is usually hyper-focused on female characters, especially in the shonen space. The logic usually goes that hormonal teenage boys will be drawn to sexualised women in their media. However, a lot of shows fail to capitalize on all the hormonal teenage girls, who are often more than hungry for their own fanservice.
Yuri On Ice is easily one of the biggest anime to capitalize on the desires of the straight female audience. The show goes out of its way to play up the sex appeal of Victor and the other figure skaters, with plenty of close ups on shiny lips and toned, athletic frames. Victor’s constant doting over Yuri is also primed to hit certain fans in the heart with all the strength of a cheesy romance novel.
2 Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure
A lot of the time, the main issue with fanservice is that it takes control of the scene, and literally shoves itself in the audience’s face. So, fanservice that is so understated that it might not even be perceived as fanservice is often much more palatable.
Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure is a series famous for its high fashion, greek statuesque character designs. If there’s one thing both these things have in common, it’s a comfortability with showing skin. Jojo has some of the most scantily clad men in anime, and while their bodies are never shoved at the camera in a traditional way, it’s hard to deny how aggressively attractive they are.
Not to mention, that the series also has occasional traditional ogling in baths and showers, although they are often interrupted by some horrific occurrence like a disembodied brain or a hyper-intelligent ape.
1 Food Wars
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Food Wars is one of those anime that received a lot of buzz due to their fanservice. The usual fair doesn’t make for shocking twitter clips anymore, but the bombastic scenes of exploding clothes and pleasured screams helped push the anime to people who may have never known about it.
Using the concept of a “foodgasm” as a pretense for these titillating scenes is admittedly quite clever. The comparison between sexual pleasure and culinary pleasure has been made a million times, but visually fusing them on screen made for impactful expressions of just how delicious the dishes are. Often these scenes leave the audience thinking “I'll have what she’s having”.