Fapservice.com is an NSFW website that highlights the ecchi fanservice scenes in anime and manga. If you’re an ecchi lover, you probably know about the site already! It’s a great resource if you want to get your ecchi fix without having to watch an entire series.

I recently sat down with wizardofecchi, the owner of the website, to discuss his philosophy about ecchi and otaku sexuality. We also talk about the stigma that lovers of 2D characters face, as well as what is probably the most controversial issue in the fandom today: lolicon.

Q. Could you briefly explain what you do at Fapservice.com?

Sexual material has long existed in anime, often as a bonus feature in so called ‘ecchi’ (shorthand for ‘perverted’) anime.  But over the past 5-10 years, ‘ecchi’ anime has evolved into a more purist form with intense nude scenes and even mini-OVA extras on blu-ray that left zero doubt of their erotic intentions.  Many ecchi titles these days make no qualms about it- they fully intend for their content to be fapped to.

These ‘new wave’ ecchi titles would generally cram about 10-30 minutes worth of softcore porn material over a ~300 minute season.  This is really nice for fans of softcore-attuned types who feel turned off by the violent and degrading nature of hentai or who simply prefer solo girl or girl/girl stuff over boy/girl.

Not to mention, the production values in anime tend to be much higher, particularly for popular series such as To Love-Ru  or Queen’s Blade.  The only problem is, well, the other 270-290 minutes.  It’s not a burden that hentai fans have to deal with.

Early in 2013 I started making videos compiling “the good parts” of these types of shows into a single video for each series, not unlike Mr. Skin, but for anime.  It was only for my own use, but after I saw how good they were turning out, I knew that I just couldn’t keep them all to myself.

About half a year later, I launched fapservice.com.  For the first year or so it was almost totally dedicated to these types of videos, but has since evolved, thanks to a long list of awesome writers and volunteers, into a seasonal anime review site, like a Random Curiosity for pervs.

I think ecchi is really fun and that’s at the heart of what I have always wanted the site to be about.  Part of that mission is doing my part to help remove the stigma associated with 2D erotica. Honestly, I think as long as you aren’t hurting anybody, people should be allowed do whatever they need to do to meet their sexual needs, and while fapservice has now branched out into mainstream waters a bit, ultimately it will always be a site where the goal is to fap to sexy girls in a judgement free environment.  Those girls may happen to be 2D most of the time, but they are still sexy all the same.

Q. What are some of your favourite ecchi anime? What series have you enjoyed covering the most on your site?

The most fun I ever had blogging an anime was season one of Shinmai Maou no Testament last year.  Not only was the adult content WAY more intense than anticipated, the story was rock solid and never boring. Maken-Ki! Two was also pretty fun since all the nude scenes were redrawn from TV and so each week was like playing detective, trying to guess which scenes would show the fun bits on BD.

The best actual anime to feature gratuitous nudity was Ranma 1/2. It started to lose its magic after about 2.5 seasons, but for the first 50 episodes worth, it was pure gold.

My favorite ecchi shows nowadays are basically the ones that I know will make for the hottest videos. So stuff like Juuden-chan, Maken-Ki!, Ikkitousen, FREEZING, Queen’s Blade, etc.

Q. Detractors of ecchi often say that fanservice is unnecessary and that people should just watch hentai if they want sexual titillation in anime. I know that your site covers some hentai as well, but what’s the allure of ecchi fanservice in TV anime?

Anyone who says something like that probably has a very narrow view of things.  Not everyone is into hardcore stuff, and not every hardcore fan is exclusive to hardcore.

There are plenty of guys, though probably still a minority, who prefer softcore porn to hardcore porn.  And I don’t just mean for anime or hentai but for live-action porn as well.  And the fact is, softcore porn is generally overlooked in the hentai business, or at least it has been for the past 25 years or so.  If you want to fap to softcore 2D, your options are pretty limited.  Which is why ecchi anime evolved to fill this void.

In addition to the softcore fanbase, there is something totally unique about sexuality in the context of an anime.  For example, there’s rarely any kind of real character development in most hentai.  This is in contrast with anime series that typically run 12 episodes and offer plenty of time to develop the characters.  It definitely feels different when we feel we know (or obsess over) the characters before seeing them get naked.

And due to the fact that hentai titles tend to be pretty short- usually only a couple episodes in most cases- they tend to lack the time required to tease viewers.  For me, tease is what makes ecchi so much better than anything else for stimulation. In Seikon no Qwaser for example, we only get a murky glimpses of the main character’s nipples before she has her big reveal around episode 8 or so.  The impact of seeing her bare breasts is greatly increased by the frustration of having to wait to see them for so long.  Of course, she doesn’t just show them, they get sucked on too.  So it ends up being a pretty epic experience that few hentai would be able to match.

There was a similar impact for characters like Ekaterina Kurae (also from Seikon no Qwaser) who had never shown her nipples in the manga and only showed them in sneaky ways during the anime.

Overall, the context and the buildup of the nude scenes, as well as the typically superior production values, makes the eroticism of ecchi anime as good or better than most hentai.

Q. You’ve been blogging about ecchi anime since 2013. Have you noticed any particular trends in ecchi anime over the years? Do you feel that now is a good time to be a fan of ecchi anime?

It’s really hard to say.  2014 was the weakest year for ecchi since the ecchi boom started in 2007, yet 2015 ended up being the strongest.  And now, coming off the strongest ecchi year ever, the first anime season of 2016 is looking like it will be the first TV anime season in a decade to not have a single nipple sighting.  Sales have been all over the place and it’s hard to tell how much the industry trusts the ecchi genre as a money-maker going forward.  Recently the results have been way too random to project the health of the ecchi side of the anime/manga industry with much confidence.

Hopefully the current era of ecchi anime lasts and lasts, but it’s impossible to know where it will be in a few year’s time.

Q. I’ve noticed that your site employs a somewhat broad definition of fanservice. Many posts feature screenshots of female characters who are fully clothed but happen to look very flattering, for instance. Is fanservice more than tits, ass and nudity?

About a year ago, a series of unfortunate events forced to me make a tough decision.  Either shut down the site for good, or bring in help from among the readership to help with content so that I could fix the site over several months and keep content rolling.

I chose the latter, and it ended up being a terrific decision.  With new writers and contributors came a huge boost in site content, and within about 6 months the site traffic had increased by 500% before stabilizing around 21-22k daily visitors from all around the world.  Though the site is in English and I myself am an American, nearly a third of the site’s traffic is from non-English speaking countries.  And about roughly half of the site contributors are from outside the US.

As it turns out, this group was remarkably diverse with a very wide definition of what is sexy.  Many of them are dedicated type-A fans, and the guy who does more than anyone to manage the site these days, ScissorMeTimbers, swears that he never faps to anime.  Which is pretty funny, given that such a thing is the entire point of the site.

But like all collaboration efforts, there has to be some give and take and so to keep content moving, I gave every writer a lot of freedom in what they wanted to cover and we try to work off each other like a team.  As a result, the site has become decidedly more like (the American version of) “Maxim Magazine” recently, although a great deal of that has to do with a Winter 2016 season that is the tamest for service in a decade.  Ideally, you want something like the 2015 Summer season where readers are tuning in every day to see what new exciting sexy content just came out.

Q. Could you explain what type-A fans are?

Type-A fans watch anime primarily for the plot or story.

Type-B fans watch anime for any other reason.  Whether it be action, nerdery, fanboyishness, or sexual stimulation.  Type B fans are most frequently associated with those seeking sexual stimulation from anime, but it’s actually a very broad definition that includes anyone who watches anime for reasons other than story.

Q. How has the Fapservice community evolved over the years? 

I would say it has always been a community that values humor and brotherhood.  That’s what makes it special compared to a lot of other places on the internet I think.  Some of the commenters are just insanely insightful people, which tells me that we’ve done the right things to attract the right kind of audience.

Q. In a recent blog post, you described yourself as an “apprentice lolicon” and attempted to defend lolicon fans. There’s a heavy stigma around lolicon, even among hardcore anime fans. Although lolicon does not involve the real-life exploitation of children, it is still heavily linked to pedophilia in the minds of most people. How would you explain lolicon to those people?

Well, among Japanese Otaku, you are an outsider if you are NOT a lolicon.  It’s all a matter of cultural perspective.  I tend to think that Japan, though currently suffering through a socially conservative regime at the moment, has generally been one of the most progressive nations in the entire world since the post-war rebuild began.  That’s not to say liberalism can’t go too far, but I tend to think that social progressives tend to end up on the right side of history more often than not and that Japan’s recent history of social progressiveness on many issues, including sexual ones, is a window into the future of all rich nations.  I think we have more to learn from them than they do from us.

The key thing here is that nobody is getting hurt by a drawing.  It’s the same reasoning as to why we don’t ban violence in video games or movies in America.

Ultimately, as long as you aren’t hurting anyone or anything, you should be allowed to live any lifestyle you want.  Whether that means ‘shacking up’ with a girlfriend for 50 years, or living intimately with a member of the same sex, or deciding to get married… to your long beloved dakimakura.  That’s an anime pillow, for those who don’t know.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I personally think the connection between lolicons and pedos is lazy surface level reasoning.  For starters, most anime lolis don’t actually look like realistic portrayals of young girls.  And never mind that the real life versions are smelly, loud and annoying.  It goes totally at odds with the escapism and idealism that many lolicons feel on a Freudian level.  Many Otaku are men who never want to grow up and deal with the responsibilities of being an adult man in society (i.e. get married, have kids, become the head of a household).  As a person who never wants to grow up, it only makes sense that they would seek a fictional girlfriend who never has to grow up either.  And obviously, an ACTUAL girl would ACTUALLY grow up, which would defeat the whole point for a lolicon, assuming they were ever even interested in a real girl in the first place.

I used to be judgmental about the subject, but the more I came know actual lolicons and hear their philosophy the more I began to realize that they get a raw deal unfairly from sanctimonious types who do not know what they do not know.

Personally, I think lolis in anime are fun and yes, they can be sexy.  But what makes them sexy is how they in no way represent a realistic portrayal of a little girl.  They are a series of squiggly lines with coloring on a computer screen.  And they represent an ideal that is totally at odds with the harshness of adult reality.  I get that on a societal level, we need men to be grownups, for the betterment of society and all that, but on a purely individual level, I think people should be allowed to be who they want to be.

Q. Personally speaking, one of my problems with the lolicon mentality is that it puts female sexual innocence on a pedestal. This sort of attitude towards female sexuality is not uncommon in mainstream society, where it’s difficult for girls to express themselves sexually without being shamed. How do you suggest we talk about anime and gender issues in a way that no one feels shamed or marginalised for their sexual preferences?

I think most people respect an unpopular opinion if it is well supported and you show that you clearly put a lot of self-formulated thought into that opinion.  Anyone that becomes your enemy over such a thing probably isn’t a friend you would have wanted anyway.

The best way to overcome social stigma is to talk about the subject as openly and as frequently as possible.  Slowly over time, familiarity causes the issue seem normal.  This has become a well recognized tool for social progressives.

Take the issue of gay marriage for example.  For Americans in the 1990s, the idea of gay marriage was utterly unthinkable.  In the 2004 election, an American president staked his re-election on the gay marriage issue, and won, with several states passing constitutional amendments to bar it.  But fast forward ten years, and not only is gay marriage legal, it’s done a total 180 in public support.

And with the current wave of transgender discussions and exposure, we’ve already seen many states pass gender identity legislation with regards to public bathrooms and locker rooms.  The gender we identify as is becoming protected as part of the civil rights movement.  This was something that was unthinkable just a few years ago.

Whichever side of those issues you may fall on, there’s no denying that exposure to those issues eroded the stigma that was around them.  And this is something that has been true going back a long time.  Everything from 60’s civil rights to women’s suffrage to ending slavery.  All started as ‘unthinkable’ ideas that became less and less shocking and more and more reasonable the more people became used to it.

So I think the best way to remove the stigma around sexualizing 2D material is to simply discuss it openly and often in a way that shows people that it’s not a big deal.  Make it seem normal, and in time perception will become reality.

Q. Finally, is there anything you’d like to say to anime fans who like ecchi but find it difficult to admit openly?

The more normal we make it seem, the more normal it becomes.

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I’m extremely grateful to wizardofecchi for letting me have this interview with him. While I don’t necessarily agree with everything being said here (for one thing, much of the backlash against lolicon has come from within Japan itself, notably from actual girls), I also firmly believe that these views need to be heard. Long-time readers are probably already aware of my views towards otaku sexuality, so I won’t go on about it here. For those of you interested in how Japanese ecchi fans approach the topic, I translated a Japanese To Love-Ru blog post a few years ago which you may find relevant.

At any rate, I invite you to draw your own conclusions. All I ask is that you come to your opinion through a place of respect.