Nuclear Lunchbox wrote:Redo of Healer, the infamous fantasy anime from the Winter 2021 season featuring numerous sex scenes filled with violence, rape, and gratuitous nudity, received a greater than average percentage of female viewers during its run. Anecdotally, I assumed it would do very well with men and fall completely flat with women. Clearly, I was incorrect and learned from my mistakes. This is an extreme example, but I think it bears relevance to the current fanservice conversation.
It sounds like we're dipping into the territory of claiming to know what women like. Perhaps some of our preconceived notions are incorrect.
I'm not really trying to speak for women. I actually tried to avoid sounding like that, but maybe I just didn't get my points across.
It's certainly interesting that this series attracted women in unconventionally high numbers, but it's not really a strong argument for or against anything. I can't claim to concretely know how every woman feels about sexually objectifying media, but I think it's pretty clear what demographic is being catered to with the sort of fanservice we're discussing; and it's not just to the exclusion of women, but also LGBT people, or simply those who don't enjoy sexual objectification or don't want it interfering with the story being told. I care about social justice personally, but I wasn't trying to be overly moralistic with my argument either: my main thesis was that, above all else, fanservice negatively impacts storytelling.