Scamp did a pretty great runthrough of the summer anime season on the Cart Driver—check it out!—and I can tell this is going to be a pretty full season for the ladies.
Here’s what I mean:
- We’re getting Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon Crystal (not to be confused with Viz Media’s Sailor Moon re-release) a remake of only one of the most beloved shoujo series in Western anime fandom;
- Blue Spring Ride, a Kimi Ni Todoke-type shoujo romance;
- Free! 2, which puts all the talent and hype of Kyoto Animation behind a series engineered exclusively for the purpose of ogling hot guys;
- Gekkan Shoujo Nozaki-kun, a rare 4-koma romance adaptation targeted at girls;
- Dramatical Murder, Love Stage, and Black Butler: Book of Circus (thanks for the correction, Tony!)—three shows that are probably not going to be notable except that they’re all BL shows that pander to women. I cannot recall a time we’ve had more than one BL show airing per season.
I’m not saying that all of these shows are going to be awesome. We probably won’t know if there’s even a single one worth watching until July. However, this seems to be an indication to female fans that senpai has finally noticed us. Studios realize our money is just as good.
Still, will this season be any better for it? I don’t think it will be.
A lot of these shows may be pandering to women now, but it’s still pandering. Whether it’s the “my little sister is hot for me” of last season or the “men in drag for no reason” of the now, studios will deliver us these fantasies whether we want them or not.
Did you notice that just about all of these shows are romances? Whether het or BL, they seem to be primarily about two people getting together. But I suppose that comes with the territory of the shoujo term—even if we had a show about an engaging, independent female character kicking ass, that would probably be considered shounen.
And let’s look more closely at this glut of BL. So far, nobody has very high hopes for the plots of these shows; they’re simply targeting fujoshi viewers. We’ve been trained not to expect much from the single BL show of the season and we get what we expect; recent titles like Sekai Ichi Hatsukoi get uncomfortably non-consensual. Yes, I am definitely part of the problem, but if we tell studios we just want pretty boys, we’re not going to get any of the cool female characters we crave.
It’s almost cliche for an anime fan to bemoan today’s shows and how much they suck, compared to the “good old days,” defined as “five to ten years before that fan discovered anime.” You often hear a lot about the ‘90s or early ‘00s being a golden time for anime, when really, there was just as much junk then as there is now. In reality, time and distance wipe away the bad shows from our memories, so we only remember the good stuff that aired.
My guess? Probably I’ll end up watching one or two shows from the summer season—same as always. There’s more shows aimed at women, but the percentage of what looks like quality and what looks like junk remains the same. It’s remarkable that women are getting such a big piece of the pie now, but fanservice is still insufferable, no matter who it’s aimed at.
More of my writing on fanservice:
Photo via Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon Crystal.