Where do we start with this topic?
Anime fanservice isn’t something “new age”, let’s put it that way. It didn’t just show up in the 2010s and start pissing off a lot of non-fans or “some” actual anime fans.
So the idea of the industry suddenly throwing it in to “appeal” to a certain fan is nonsense when viewed as a whole.
The anime industry has had fanservice since the 1990s at least with shows like Golden Boy.
You could argue the case for shows like Bubblegum Crisis, or of course, 1985’s Dragon Ball series with Bulma, Roshi, and then Maron in Dragon Ball Z, etc.
Or going back further, there is also Urusei Yatsura, the OG of parody anime (and shows with some fan service).
Westerners weren’t exposed to anime back then like they are now
Before only the fans were tuned in. Now the idiots are as well.
This to me is the difference as to why fan service from anime pisses off and offends so many Westerners regardless of whether they’re fans or not.
It’s not just anime specifically, it’s manga, light novels, and all things related.
Add that to the madness of the 2010s with people being offended by everything including isms, or daring to mention that the word TRAP isn’t offensive to trans, and you have the basic answer to the question.
Now let’s go deeper.
Why Westerners are offended by anime fan service:
1. Westerners have gotten softer since the 2000s
And this is a collective truth.
I grew up in the 1990s, the last era before everything seemingly got softer and more fickle than it ever has been.
I could have never imagined that 20 to 30 years from the 1990s, we would have people on social networks arguing and crying about fictional characters. Or getting into fights and controversies over something non offensive that they find offense with.
I could have also never imagined that the gaming industry by an extension (which anime is closely tied to with its games, etc) would go through so much censorship and backlash just because a woman rightly has cleavage and that then somehow becomes sexist.
It’s unreal to think all of this shit is for real. But it is.
Westerners in particular have softened up, but not all.
2. The age of entitlement
Nowadays everybody thinks they’re entitled to what they want without putting in the work to get it. And this is true for anime, manga, hentai, whatever.
In this case, Westerners have become so entitled that they think outraging on Twitter about an anime or something they don’t understand will somehow make it disappear.
They think screaming, shouting, name calling, bashing, or in the case of some Western women, calling anime fans incels will somehow make it go away.
The definition of child logic.
If you throw your milk bottle out of the cot, you expect someone to pick it up for you. And if you demand the milk be made how YOU want it to be made (eg, anime), you expect the world to bend to your will.
Except this is what people are doing as ADULTS. Not just teenagers.
It’s that level of entitlement.
3. Feminism has changed for the worst
Feminism wasn’t necessarily a negative movement from the time it began in the 1800s. And that could also be said about the 1900s depending on the time period we’re talking about.
But one thing is for sure: ever since we’ll say, the 2000s, feminism has slowly been degrading and rotting away from its core mission.
That core mission was equality for the sexes, but NOT at the expense of one gender over the other.
This plays into anime because since the mid 2010s, a surprising amount of Western women, especially American or Australian women, have been crying about fan service.
It’s always described as this evil thing that somehow makes men “get the wrong idea” or encourages men in “bad” ways. Anything that can’t be substantiated with facts.
Remember The Rising Of The Shield Hero drama in 2019 with Naofumi Iwatani? He’s the MC of the Isekai series.
He was falsely accused of r*ping the red-haired devilish princess, and without due process, they banished Naofumi from the kingdom without proving he was actually guilty.
This reflected society in the real world, especially in the West, and Feminists were mad as fuck.
Even the likes of CBR jumped on the bandwagon of grandstanding regardless of whether they were inherently wrong.
The reality of accusations was and is now a reality, not a myth.
Shield Hero rose to fame because of its message, and it showed the anime industry that modern-day feminism which has degenerated will attack anything that highlights a truth they’d rather be silenced.
In the case of Harem anime that have come out over the years like To Love Ru, High School DxD, Uzaki Chan, or even the gorgeous girls of many Shounen anime (My Hero Academia), the backlash is always about breast sizes and attractiveness.
Strangely, these feminists compare themselves to fiction and make up all kinds of excuses as to why it’s somehow evil when in fact it celebrates women.
It also adds to the reasons why Westerners hate or are offended by anime fan service
4. Victim Olympics
Since the 2010s across all races and backgrounds, from a WESTERN point of view, everyone is in a rush to participate in the new victim Olympics hosted across social networks like TikTok.
The game is simple. Try to be the biggest victim you can possibly be, and find ways to make people sympathize and empathize with your supposed victimhood.
By doing so, you earn victim points which makes you feel better about yourself, and it may even help you CANCEL the things you don’t like, or the people who rub you the wrong way.
When Goblin Slayer aired, there was some level of this nonsense. Same with Shield Hero of course, but it backfired.
Then the same thing happened with the anime Ishuzoku Reviewers, and that was followed up with Redo Of Healer, which set the internet on fire.
Then came World’s End Harem, which is literally an anime about an abundance of women sleeping with and taking advantage of men for their sexual pleasure. With an overarching theme of feminists wanting to kill all men off, which is why they created a virus called “Man killer”.
Yet all people saw and criticized was the fact that women were “sexual objects” and found every way to make it into a victim Olympics type of situation.
The same was true for Redo Of Healer, which despite its obvious controversy, was a case of karma and how good people do bad things after being mistreated by bad people (regardless of gender and double standards).
5. Wanting the world to shine out their asses
The loud group of Westerners who are offended by anime fan service, female characters, boobs, attractive women, or whatever else, have a skewed view of reality.
They believe the world shines out of their asses, and this is obvious by their behaviour of wanting and demanding things to be the way they expect them to be.
Even if they themselves aren’t buyers or consumers of the product they’re so angry about.
It’s hypocrisy at its finest.
Anime doesn’t play by the same rules as the now coddled TV shows you see in the Western world.
Anime will highlight a male character punching a female character (even if it’s for comedy), and not just the other way around as you’d see in a Western show.
Anime will highlight a woman’s assets, beauty, and so on, without batting an eye, whereas in Western shows this is either censored or seen as “offensive” even though those same people will praise Instagram half naked pictures and claim it to be empowered.
This is why anime fan service is offensive.
It breaks the rules, doesn’t play the game of double standards (even men get the same treatment), and the average nutter can’t take it because it’s a few too many sugars in their coffee which makes them angry.
Even though they’re not even being forced to have too many sugars in their coffee in the first place.
Fan of dating sims? Then this is the adult anime game you’ll wanna try next.
6. Being angry at the fact they can’t control a foreign product
Anime is Japanese. It’s foreign by design. This is the key and the reason why anime is one of the last forms of entertainment that is still creative and FREE from politics.
You can’t say the same about Western TV shows, movies, Hollywood, Disney, etc, because a lot of that shit has been hijacked by pretentious bastards who pretend to care about political issues.
When you lead with politics, you end up with a BAD product.
Anime doesn’t suffer from this, and those who influenced the current market of bullshit in the West as far as entertainment dislike their lack of control and influence over anime.
They can’t scream to Twitter and make their “annoyances” go away. It’s not enough, and so helplessly screaming into the void continues.
7. Too used to having things “softened” by government, society, Hollywood, etc
The UK, Australia, and the USA when it comes to entertainment products, TV shows, etc, are essentially watered down foolishness in 2024.
The joke is it wasn’t always like this. Remember South Park, Futurama, Simpsons, etc?
The irony is these countries outside of just regular entertainment are known for hard hitting shows, comedy, “offensive” material, and so on.
But the 2000s, and especially the 2010s, changed everything.
Australia showed this when they went on a rampage of banning anime and making false accusations about various works like SAO for example.
The UK proved it by claiming an anime like Girls Und Panzer is somehow promoting paedophilia when it’s a wholesome series about girls who love all things military and tanks and the history of it.
The USA proves it more than both countries with the onslaught of controversies, Twitter drama, or foolish people on TikTok claiming Spy x Family promotes child trafficking and sexualizes Anya Forger.
This is why anime, Japan, and everything in between pisses so many Western fans (or non fans) off because it’s a reality check like no other, and their coddling has made them entitled babies in adult bodies.
In the end, Western anime fans aren’t all like this. That goes without saying. But the amount who are is staggering by numbers.
It’s not only Westerners who hate fan service, it’s also COMPANIES like Patreon who proved it when they went through a controversy some years back.
When the truth was revealed, it made their political speech seem more disingenuous than it already was.
There is also the case of Funimation before it merged with Crunchyroll, or Crunchyroll itself, as well as Libraries, educational institutions in the USA, and more who have a bone to pick with anime and its “fanservice”.
But it’s a nonsensical fight they can’t win as I pointed out in #6.
