The 25th frame of the English opening sequence for New Cutie Honey reveals a character named Danbei Hayami firing a Rocket Punch while the main character, Honey Kisaragi, lies topless and prone in the background. This specific visual moment, captioned with the word fan service, represents the crystallization of a concept that began in Japanese anime and manga fandom before expanding globally. The term describes material intentionally added to please an audience, often through sexual elements like nudity, but it has evolved to include any element that serves the fans rather than the plot. When U.S. companies translated these works, they frequently edited out such content to align with American cultural values, a decision explained by Mike Tatsugawa as a clash between Japanese permissiveness and Western obscenity laws. The history of this phenomenon traces back to the 1970s, when shows like Cutie Honey began introducing risqué elements, eventually leading to the standard inclusion of full frontal nudity and shower scenes by the 1980s. In the West, rating systems like the Comics Code Authority and the MPAA rating system, which replaced the Hays Code, strictly limited unnecessary nudity, yet the desire to please the audience persisted through other means. The 1983 film Return of the Jedi featured Carrie Fisher as Princess Leia wearing a metal bikini and chains while enslaved to the gangster Jabba the Hutt, an attempt to feminize the character and appeal to boys' fantasies. Critics argue that this portrayal reflects the crude fantasies of the audience by making Leia the object of desire for a monster, highlighting the tension between artistic intent and audience expectation.
The Mechanics of Desire
Keith Russell defines fan service as the random and gratuitous display of anticipated gestures common in manga and anime, including panty shots, leg spreads, and glimpses of breasts. He regards this as an aesthetic of the transient glimpse, which takes the mind unaware and open to libidinous possibility without mediation. This concept contrasts with the gaze, as it offers a reassuring, unrealistic nature that confirms the freedom of desire. In the world of mecha shows, long shots of robots and sexual elements are considered fan service, as are violent episode-long fight scenes and emphasis on shipping. Christian McCrea feels that the animation studio Gainax is particularly skilled at addressing otaku through fan service by adding meta-references and showing violence and hyperphysical activity. The Gainax bounce, a term for jiggling breasts, originated from the opening scene of Daicon IV and was adopted by other animators, including the creators of the hentai series Cream Lemon. Shower scenes were very common in movies and anime of the 1980s and 1990s, whereas many more recent TV series use trips to onsen, tropical locales, or swimming pools to showcase characters in bathing suits. Series aimed at males can also include fan service for women, an attempt to court a wider audience, while shoujo manga aimed at female readers includes fan service such as showing male characters half-naked and in enticing poses. Robin Brenner notes that in U.S. comics culture, fan service aimed at women is rare, yet in Japan, series can be famous for their fan service content. Chris Beveridge explains this mindset with Agent Aika, stating that while there is some plot, the reason people watch is for the sheer amount of fan service.