Are the “Ikkitousen” style of ecchi series fading away?

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The other day I was doing random research for a blog writeup when I stumbled across an interesting factoid:  the guy who directed the original Maken-Ki! series also directed the second, third, and fourth seasons of Ikkitousen.  That was pretty surprising, given the huge difference in art styles.

I was working on the Samurai Girls project at the time and it just suddenly donned on me that Samurai Girls had effectively taken over as the new Ikkitousen for ARMS, after the company relinquished the franchise to TNK in 2010 (ARMS did do a single Ikkitousen OVA in 2011).

In terms of the ingredients, it was almost exactly the same.  Nearly all the fighters were hot girls.  Both mixed action with nude fanservice, including plenty of combat nudity.  Both had themes that tie into ancient martial arts. Both franchises are relatively high budget.  Both franchises had nudity filled specials on DVD and BD.  And both series were incredibly irreverent with an undeniably sub-sophomoric sense of humor (fart jokes, etc).

Then I realized that FREEZING was also in this same boat, as was Queen’s Blade, as were a lot of series.  And then I remembered that the two biggest financially disappointing ecchi series in recent memory were Samurai Bride and FREEZING Vibration.  Could it be that this same old formula has played out too many times?

I decided to check into this, using the following criteria to classify an anime as being in the “Ikkitousen formula”:

  • It must be a TV series (this would exclude OVA series like Vanquished Queens and Master of Martial Hearts).
  • It must have nudity in the TV episode portion of the anime.
  • It must have specials on DVD/BD that contain nudity (this would exclude series like Mohoromatic and Boku-H).
  • It must have more than a token amount of combat / action (so no shows like Koihime Musou or Princess Lover!).

Of course, the original Ikkitousen series by J.C. Staff didn’t meet the 3rd requirement, but all its sequel seasons did.  The first anime to meet all four of these requirements was Ikkitousen: Dragon Destiny (2007), and its influence on ecchi has been considerable seeing that this formula has since been repeated an additional nineteen times over the next seven years.

Here’s a look at when those twenty “Ikkitousen formula” series were made, who made them and how many sales they brought in:

 

2007

 

Ikkitousen: Dragon Destiny (7,887 average BD sales per unit) (ARMS)

 

2008

 

Ikkitousen: Great Guardians (7,665 average BD sales per unit) (ARMS)

 

2009

 

Queen’s Blade: Rurou no Senshi  (10,340 average BD sales per unit) (ARMS)

Queen’s Blade: Gyokuza o Tsugu Mono (6,556 average BD sales per unit) (ARMS)

 

2010

 

Ichiban Ushiro no Daimaou  (2,587 average BD sales per unit) (Artland)

Ikkitousen: Xtreme Xecutor (4,198 average BD sales per unit) (TNK)

Samurai Girls (5,305 average BD sales per unit) (ARMS)

Seikon no Qwaser (6,522 average BD sales per unit) (Hoods Entertainment)

 

2011

 

FREEZING (5,299 average BD sales per unit) (A.C.G.T.)

Maken Ki! (3,024 average BD sales per unit) (AIC)

Manyuu Hikenchou (2,394 average BD sales per unit) (Hoods Entertainment)

Seikon no Qwaser II (3,385 average BD sales per unit) (Hoods Entertainment)

 

2012

 

Hagure Yuusha no Estetica (2,188 average BD sales per unit) (ARMS)

High School DxD (9,751 average BD sales per unit) (TNK)

Queen’s Blade – Rebellion (3,370 average BD sales per unit) (ARMS)

 

2013

 

FREEZING Vibration (1,766 average BD sales per unit) (A.C.G.T.)

High School DxD New (9,272 average BD sales per unit) (TNK)

Samurai Bride (1,960 average BD sales per unit) (ARMS)

Sekatsuyo (905 average BD sales per unit) (ARMS)

 

2014

 

Maken Ki! Two (??? average BD sales per unit) (Xebec)

It’s worth noting that Kenzen Robo Daimidaler (slated for release later this year) is pretty likely to fall into this category as well, though its action scenes will be of the mech battle variety.

In summary:  2007 had good sales, 2008 had good sales, 2009 had very good sales, 2010 had solid sales, 2011 was a mixed bag, 2012 was a tough year and 2013 was a brutal year.  If not for High School DxD, which is really more of a harem type anime, this genre of ecchi would have been an outright sales disaster the last two years.

I don’t think the anime industry will look at these numbers and not react to them, even the established “hit” franchises in this genre all saw their sales decay with follow up seasons.  Of the eight sequel seasons from series that began as hits, every single one of them sold less than all of their previous incarnations.

This probably explains why Hoods Entertainment took the cautious route with Queen’s Blade: Vanquished Queens, going with a four episode OVA to take the temperature before committing big resources to a series who’s previous season barely cracked a 3,000 BD sales average.

The scary part is that other ecchi series have actually had it worse, aside from shows like Strike Witches and To Love-Ru.  The latter being the rare case of a franchise actually getting stronger in sales with each sequel.  So it’s not just Ikkitousen styled ecchi that’s in decline, it could just be a reaction to the current market which may just be skewing anti-ecchi at the moment.

Anyway, food for thought.  I know these posts are kind of doom and gloom, but my random dose of positivity would be that ecchi has been around a long time and so long as at least a few shows here and there are hits, there will be enough of a carrot dangling down for production companies to bite.  I have to say though, ARMS desperately needs one of those hits in the worst way.  If they went under, nude ecchi would lose its biggest champion.

If High School DxD New and Yuushibu continue to take their sweet time hitting BD, I might soon have a post up analyzing the commonalities between the most successful nude ecchi series and attempt to understand exactly what it was that made them successful.