The Idea of Intellectual Fanservice

August 16, 2007 in Commentary by Tom Langston (calaggie) | 1 comment

Professor Miyuki

Sparked by a comment of a classmate while watching Leni Riefenstahl’s “Olympia” (“Is that a woman?” during the men’s triple jump) and the discussion of possible fandub projects by my anime club like Tenchi and Ouran, my mind started to ruminate about general dualities that exist in anime. The first three that came to mind are harems and reverse harems, traps and reverse traps, and tsundere and deretsun. I tried to think of another solid pair and came up with two contrasting forms of fanservice: pantyshots and intellectual.

Intellectual fanservice can consist of discussion of theories, music, technology and other topics that involve some level of contemplation on the audience’s part or are more subtle than flashes of underpants. Some examples are the classical and orchestral music performed in Nodame Cantabile, the conversation Koizumi had with Kyon about the anthropic principle, and Pachelbel’s “Canon in D” in the KyoAni version of Kanon.

The lesser but still notable duality that came up in brainstorming was the overly nervous vs. the “calm and collected”, the stoic characters. Mugi in Hitohira is one example of the nervous trait while the stoic group may include Akira Takano (School Rumble) and Sakaki (Azumanga) although there are likely more in drama series that I just can’t think of at the moment. I’m sure there are some other dualities that I have missed as well, whether they are based in character types or more abstract things.

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  1. Mike’s avatar

    Mike on August 16, 2007 at 9:34 am

    Heh, intellectual fanservice. I’d add all the religious symbolism in Evangelion too. If the reference is meant to be pejorative, though, I’d say it should only apply to instances where the “intellectual” or high culture stuff doesn’t have much to do with the central story. (That, for instance, would not apply to Nodame, where the students are in conservatory and classical music is a necessary and central part of their lives.)

    In either case I might adopt the label myself in future reviews. Thanks. :)

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