Ecchi in 2014: A Year In Review

year-in-review

The year 2014 was an underwhelming if not ominous time for ecchi fans, but it still had some great moments.

Before I dive in, here’s a quick recap of all 2014 anime series to feature nudity:

 

Winter season

 

Maken-Ki! Two
Wizard Barristers
Space Dandy

 

Spring season

 

Blade and Soul
Kenzen Robo Daimidaler
Seikoku no Dragonar
Gokukoku no Brynhildr
Knights of Sidonia

 

Summer season

 

Shirogane no Ishi: Argevollen
Rail Wars!
Momo Kyun Sword (just barely)

 

Fall season

 

Ushinawareta Mirai wo Motomete
Grisaia no Kajitsu
Garo: Honoo no Kokuin

 

Miscellaneous nudity (OVAs, Movies, etc)

 

To Love-Ru Darkness (OVA)
Queen’s Blade Vanquished Queens (OVA)
Mujaki no Rakuen (OVA)
Nozo x Kimi (OVA)
Ikkitousen – Epoch Extravaganza (OVA)
Rakuen Tsuihou ~Expelled from Paradise~ (Movie)
Japan Anima(tor)’s Exhibition – ME!ME!ME! (Original music video)

 

The jury is still out

 

Nobunaga the Fool  (Winter)
Akame ga Kill! (Summer / Fall)
Madan no Ou to Vanadis (Fall)
Cross Ange: Tenshi to Ryuu no Rondo (Fall / Winter)
Trinity Seven (Fall)
Ore, Twintails ni Narimasu. (Fall)
Kiseijuu  (Fall)
Terra Formars (Fall)

 

Notable non-nude ecchi series

 

ImoCho (Winter)
Fuuun Ishin Dai Shogun (Spring)
Fate/kaleid liner PrismaIllya 2wei! (Summer)
Seirei Tsukai no Blade Dance (Summer)

 

The year 2014 actually started well enough.  Maken-Ki! Two  was one of the more hyped ecchi series of the past few years, and it more or less delivered.  Wizard Barristers  managed a few nude scenes on BD as well, making the Winter season slightly above average overall.

The Spring season was one of the stronger seasons of the last few years, featuring five different series to opt for nudity.  Three of them were major efforts:  Kenzen Robo Daimidaler , Seikoku no Dragonar and Gokukoku no Brynhildr … it proved to be quite the haul for a single season.  During a time when original nude-ecchi content is kinda hard to come by, this season had it three times over.

The Fall and Summer seasons from 2013 had also been very strong for ecchi as well, with the Fall season being arguably the best ecchi season of all time (nine TV series featured nudity that season, the most ever in a season).  For a calendar year, the ecchi genre appeared to be on a roll.

But even as things might have seemed great on the surface, the tragic reality is that sales for nude-ecchi titles have steadily dropped since 2012.  FREEZING Vibration  saw its sales drop 70% compared to the 2011 original season.  Samurai Bride  saw a similar sales drop compared to its first season.

Good ecchi anime such as Yuushibu  sold poorly, as did novelty ecchi anime like Sekai de Ichiban Tsuyoku Naritai!.   The only financially successful 2013 ecchi anime were High School DxD New and Vividred Operation , and both were successful mainly because they were associated with a pre-existing brand.

Maken-Ki! Two was break even at best, and every other 2014 ecchi series bombed brutally, with the exception of Sidonia no Kishi , a series for which success likely had nothing to do with the token nude scenes.

Given the stunning lack of sales power of ecchi over the past two years, it was only a matter of time before the industry reacted, and that’s exactly what happened in the Summer and Fall seasons of 2014.

The Summer season came very close to being totally non-nude across the board, which hasn’t happened in an anime season since early 2002.  Even with Rail Wars!  and Argevollen  saving the day, the Summer season still ranks as the weakest ecchi season since the Fall of 2009 (a season that had just one ‘blink and you’ll miss it’ nipple sighting in the entire season).

The jury is still out on the Fall 2014 season, but as of now there are only two shows with confirmed nudity, and neither of them would be confused for To Love-Ru  or High School DxD .  Barring a huge save from Trinity Seven  or Cross Ange , it’s looking like the Fall season will be a dud.  (Cross Ange recently hinted on twitter that nudity could be coming later when the series’ second OP hits BD.)

A troubling trend has shown itself in recent seasons, where even low-budget ecchi anime are stopping at blank boobs and faux nudity.  Shows like Imocho  and Seirei Tsukai no Blade Dance  provided a new blueprint for anime companies who fear that taking service too far could be bad for sales.

The good news is that these gutless fanservice shows haven’t found huge success either, well, other than Cross Ange  anyway.

In summary, 2014 was the year when the rubber met the road for the ecchi genre.  After flying so high from 2008 to 2012, the decline in sales the last couple years finally reached critical mass and the industry reacted to it in a way that is obviously less than favorable to dedicated pervs.

With 2015 upon us, it’s clear that the next year in ecchi will be about big name sequels, including the last two bastions of nude ecchi success:  To Love-Ru and High School DxD .  That’s nice of course, but things won’t get back to the golden age of the recent past without some other series stepping up big.  Hopefully shows like Triage X  and Prison School  can be that next big thing.

Until then, here’s a look back at the standouts from last year.

 

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Most Noteworthy Ecchi Anime of 2014

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| Surprise of the year |

 

dragonar-6

| Seikoku no Dragonar |

 

Though based on a manga with plenty of nudity, the anime version seemed like a 50/50 bet to deliver until it made its intentions known in epic fashion during the AT-X airing of episode six.  It was one of the bigger “holy shit” moments I can ever remember having from watching the TV airing of an ecchi anime.

On BD, this series missed very few chances and ended up delivering nudity in almost every single episode.

But more importantly- okay… almost as importantly- this series was actually fun to watch and had the feel of a non-ecchi anime at times.  Though not as good as Zero no Tsukaima , this anime had a very similar kind of mainstream feel to it at its core.  This was incredibly refreshing compared to most other nude ecchi series that tend to be poorly made and are only worth watching as fap material.

Ecchi manga have long had an ability to function on both a fap level and a fun level, but this balancing act is much more uncommon to see achieved with panache in anime.  Seikoku no Dragonar  pulled this off better than any other anime in 2014.  It was a reminder of what ecchi manga are capable of in anime form when given good representation.

 

| Most under-appreciated ecchi series |

 

KRD

| Kenzen Robo Daimidaler |

 

Some people liked this anime.  I didn’t especially.  But for as silly as the anime was and for as grating as some of the characters were, this anime scores every bit as high on the fanservice scale as High School DxD  had.  If only every anime season had a fanservice showcase like Daimidaler  to watch every week.

Despite the attempts to woo over DxD  fans, Daimidaler  only averaged ~1700 BDs in sales per volume.  For a show that seemed to live by the motto ‘go big or go home’ when it came to pretty much anything, it never really found the traction it was expecting.

 

| Most innovative ecchi series |

 

makenki2

| Maken-Ki! Two |

 

This anime will be remembered for redrawing for nudity at an unprecedented rate.  Not one single instance of censorship could be found in the TV version, but on BD this series was a nipple fest.  There are a lot of series that add nipples to blank boobs or use screen cropping to hide things, but redrawing characters completely to show boobs… you just don’t see that very often and certainly not as frequently as Maken-Ki! Two  did.

The sexy BD specials were also a bit unique in how they were designed.  Many ecchi series include extras that are implicitly intended as fap material to be sure, but the specials in this series were so direct… it was basically an anime version of amateur style softcore porn.  Xebec new damn well that people would be buying the BDs for these extra scenes.  They knew exactly who their audience was.

Each of these BD specials also had a nifty way of tying into the events of the TV episodes in some way.  Though they could have been even better, the blatant “soft porn” feel of these specials even surpassed the offerings from Kanokon  and Ladies vs. Butlers .  That’s not to say the Maken-Ki! Two  specials were better than those, but they were clearly made with maximum intent to be fapped to.

 

| Biggest disappointment |

 

imocho

| ImoCho |

 

This was a loaded year for disappointments, especially if Trinity SevenMadan no Ou to Vanadis  and Cross Ange  fail to deliver.

Seirei Tsukai no Blade Dance  would have earned this distinction in almost any other year, given that the source material flirts with nudity and the anime was made by the same studio and crew that did High School DxD .

But among them all one stands out above the rest.  ImoCho  not only disappointed, it flat out lied to us.  It created situations that strongly implied BD nudity, even going as far as fake censorship to degrees that had never been seen before in an anime.  Never in history has an anime without nudity featured more sexy censorship than Imocho .

Not only did this anime set a new bar for censorship trolling, it influenced future anime such as Momo Kyun Sword *, Cross Ange and Trinity Seven to use similar misleading tactics.

*Momo Kyun Sword  had loads of fake censorship and blank boobs on BD, though strangely it did sneak ONE nipple on BD almost to see if anyone would notice.

Of course, the source material itself is non-nude and the mangaka is a woman herself who never envisioned her work as anything explicitly erotic.  It’s delicious irony then than the live action-version of ImoCho  turned out to be a ‘pink film’ with loads of X-rated content.  Only in Japan.

 

| Best story in a nude ecchi anime |

 

grisaia-vol.1-31

 

| Grisaia no Kajitsu |

 

Your milage may very.  I personally found  Grisaia no Kajitsu  to be… if not spellbinding then certainly interesting and competently told.  It was almost completely free of anime logic and cliches.  The main character is the anti-Rito, and his harem cast are characters, not caricatures.

Like any adaptation, sometimes this series has to cram too much story into too little time and it’s not always an ideal outcome.  But if petty imperfections can be overlooked, this was a stylish anime with enough atmosphere to pull viewers in.

I liked how this anime tried to capture the look and feel of an actual eroge.  The black bars at the top and bottom, the close up shots on the characters which resembled game screens.  You could tell a lot of thought went into making this anime look and feel the way it did.

Gokukoku no Brynhildr  was a close second.  It botched things when it rushed the manga at the end, and it was a bit corny and predictable throughout, with an insufferably cliched main character to top it off.  But despite those problems,  Brynhildr  had some real heart to it, and I think I’d have to go back to a show like Code Geass  or School Days  to remember an ecchi anime that got me to care more about the characters than Brynhildr  did.

 

| Best ecchi anime OVA of 2014 |

 

Ikkitousen Extravaganza Epoch - 02 OVA (41)

| Ikkitousen Epoch Extravaganza |

 

This category is surprisingly loaded.  The fifth To Love-Ru Darkness  OVA was the arguably the hottest episode in the entire series.  Queen’s Blade Vanquished Queens  took the ecchi genre to the fringes of hentai.  That ME!ME!ME! music video was insane on every level.

But there’s just something about how Epoch Extravaganza  went about its business.  There is an art to making the audience feel hot and bothered, and this OVA has it down to a science.

 

| Best ecchi anime series 2014 |

 

makenkitwo

| Maken-Ki! Two |

 

Nobody has knocked ecchi out of the park the way that Xebec has over the last seven years or so.  When they picked up the popular ecchi manga Maken-Ki!  for a season, it was huge cause for excitement.  When that anime was to be helmed by ecchi demi-god Hiraku Kaneko, expectations went through the roof.

A few months before the series began, a pre-series OVA was released and set expectations into the stratosphere.  Ultimately, those expectations proved to be unrealistic and unfair.

The anime itself had a few brief moments of genius, but on the whole it wasn’t quite as witty or as smart as it thought it was.  This show had delusions of grandeur- it wanted to be a witty comedy full of pop culture references, and it also wanted to be fap material.  In the end, trying too hard for humor and for service made both suffer.

While the actual TV anime was somewhat disappointing, the final product was still something that scored pretty damn high on the fap-o-meter.  And if you look at ecchi anime the same way I do, there isn’t anything that matters more than that.

Maken-Ki! Two  was a grand experiment.  It tried to take ecchi anime to a higher level, to be a legit mainstream anime AND to appeal to pervs at the same time.  It didn’t work out as well as it could have, but they gave it their best shot.

When ecchi fans look back on 2014, Maken-Ki! Two  will probably be the first anime they remember.