An explanation of "Fan Service"

This term fan service is a really important one for a librarian to understand if she doesn’t want to end up getting in trouble from parents. Some background information: in Japan most manga is made for men in their late teens, twenties and early thirties. In order to capture young men’s attention two things are necessary; sex and violence. Now violence is pretty easy to spot, and is pretty acceptable in most people’s minds for older children. Sex on the other hand is still culturally taboo. So the pool of non sexy and none bloody manga is pretty small, and then that pool is filtered again by the American companies who buy and translate it. After all they want to sell copies too. It’s for these reasons that buying manga for young men is so much harder than for girls.


And now fan service. Most people think of fan service as your basic panty shot, and that’s pretty much what it is. It seldomly gets to full nudity, but the girls might as well be naked because they often end up drenched and in clinging clothing or strategically covered in some nearby object. Sometimes it’s more of a costuming thing; the main character may end up dressed up as a maid or in cat ears and a tail. In the same way we have sexy school girls and girls with guns the Japanese have a whole gamut of sexy outfits including a simple “girl wearing glasses.” Dressing up a character in one of these outfits is considered giving the fans service.

Sometimes fan service is just funny, but sometimes it’s really worrying. Some of the artists really love the female form, in the same way a boy here would love the form of Pam Anderson or any other large chested female. The trick to finding something acceptable to you is to skim all books that look like they are aimed for young men and see if it’s too much.

A side note: Japan is still a little behind on what is considered socially acceptable in the sexual harassment department. Flipping up a girls skirt to show her panties is considered funny by men and just annoying by the girls it happens to. While they are making changes to the legal system I haven’t seen a lot of change in the manga. You may want to keep an eye out for that, or be prepared to talk to people (the students, parents and other teachers) about why skirt flipping is okay in Japan and why the book was chosen for the library.