Filtering revealed nothing on this medium distance shot. The close up angle had an interesting result though.
The second episode of the ARMS animated, Yasuomi Umetsu directed anime shows its first sign of nudity potential with a clear water bath scene. What’s interesting about this is that there isn’t any opaque white fuzz posing as steam, just a little bit of slightly reflective water covering up blank boobs. At least, I think they’re blank.
Notice in the filtered second picture that there are no dark spots or coloration where the nipple would be. There is, however, a bit of a fuzzy “poof” of discordance right where the nipple would be, which is sometimes used as a tactic to conceal nipples in other anime.
Notice there is no long hair flowing down, no soap bubbles, and the water is clear. Those boobs are fully unconcealed, and blatantly blank boobs are becoming rarer on DVD / blu-ray these days than they used to be.
This instance falls under the category of “artistic” nudity too and adding nudity here wouldn’t doom the anime to the labels associated with shows like Ikkitousen which are strongly looked down upon by the mainstream anime fanbase.
Maybe they stay with blank boobs on blu-ray, but usually these factors would strongly point to future nudity. A good example of this exact same scenario would be the bath scene in Blood C, which did add nipples (faintly) on blu-ray.
That said, do I think there is a nipple on that boob yet? Probably not. If there is one on blu-ray, I don’t think it exists right now. There is no opaque censorship and when they try to cover up nipples with anything less than opaque censorship filters will always spot them, or at least uncover very strong evidence of their existence. A few recent examples of nipples being detectable through half-assed TV censorship include Strike the Blood, Sekatsuyo, Natsuiro Kiseki and Horizon in the Middle of Nowhere II.
Of course, there is also the fact that this anime was made by a former high-end hentai in company ARMS, a company which has featured nudity in roughly three quarters of their non-hentai anime productions. Even the best anime they’ve ever produced hands down, Elfen Lied, was loaded with nudity. And the director, best known for hentai-hybrid action classics Kite and Mezzo Forte, obviously has not shied from explicit content either.
ARMS has had a tough time making a buck lately and I thought this series might be an attempt to re-brand themselves. As a consequence, I thought they might completely avoid nudity with this show, but thankfully it looks like some habits die hard.
Also, because it doesn’t really deserve its own post, the third episode of Space Dandy did this:
This is pretty much what I meant last month when I said I actually hoped there wouldn’t be nudity in this show.
Interestingly, this aired fully uncensored on Tokyo MX, but aired censored on Adult Swim’s broadcast. Which makes some sense, I just find it interesting to see where each of those respective broadcasters chose to draw the line.
