Discussion Fanservice in Fairy Tail

[KingOfNight]

No. That is actually what syx said, especially as "there's nothing that shines with it". So you have to ask that member, as I try to figure out why he's actually reading Fairy Tail. To me it appears there's nothing much left besides "Plot, plot progression, fights, villains and so on" - neither drawing style.

That user just seems to dislike Fairy Tail in general, so why is he in FT forums anyways?

Well, you need to take into account what he said in his next post:

Spoiler

It seems that I forgot to mention that I was talking about the arc(s) after the "timeskip" and not about the series as a whole. My post is more a current view of mine regarding this topic, since the series - in my opinion - hit the point where fanservice became annoying due to the neglection of important elements.

So it seems he got into the series because he did have something he likes in it. Until the timeskip at least.

No. People who complain all the time for months or even years about same things everytime they come up just keep a retarded discussion alive for the sake of keeping a retarded discussion alive.

Never seen that really. In the chapter discussion, people are simply saying what they think of a certain chapter. Then there is of course, people who reply to them telling them to drop the series because they hated what happened in this specific chapter. Leading to a discussion about fanservice.

So again: How does fanservice actually affect you when you read Fairy Tail?

I said several times that I don't really care about the fanservice itself when reading Fairy Tail. If it's presented in the middle of a good chapter, I have absolutely no problem with it. Even if it's presented in serious moments and all that. But a whole corny chapter of fanservice? I can do without.

How does it affect my WHOLE view on the series? It doesn't affect it at all really.

 

[REN KOUEN]

But there's others out there that do care. As much or even more than you don't. Moreover, it's a disrespective flamebait to simply paint Mashima's name black by calling him a perv.

i agree that it is disrespectful, and i am not in favor of name calling and mangaka bashing on this site

so we can agree there mr hoeru

it does seem that some people bash mashima just to bash him, it makes me wonder if they are even fans of FT or if they are just here to troll

he is a great artist, and the plot is developing nicely for a pretty long shounen title, FT has stuck around this long for a reason

its a damn good manga, is it as good as the big 3???

thats debatable and off topic honestly

but fanservice has been around since dragon ball and even earlier titles, i dont see why people focus on this manga when they complain about it.

mashima may use it more frequently and his characters may be drawn more attractively

but it still surfaces in plenty of other mangas, however i never see the mangakas getting negative attention because of it

 

[M3J]

How is calling Mashima a pervert bashing him or trolling? Either way, as long as he doesn't use fan service in place of plot or as distraction so people overlook the bad (subjective) plot, I see nothin wrong with him using the fan service. It's only when he relies on it as sellin point that people would be justified in complaining. Telling people to "not read" the manga just because they don't like the fan service or complain about it is worse than someone calling Mashima perverted (which is true, if he admitted to it).

 

[Necron]

I don't really read Fairy Tail anymore, occasionally I skim through a chapter, but in the end the manga just lost me after a while.
And one of the reasons for that was indeed the fanservice.
It doesn't really bother me if it's well placed, or should say "not ill-placed". If you take One Piece for example, there are moments where we have a bath scene or a bikini scene or something like that, but that happens every 30 chapters or so and when it happens it takes up one or two pages max, most of the time only a few pannels.

With Fairy Tail, at some point it started to have pantie-shots, ass-shots and boob-shots every single chapter, I'm not even kidding. I scrolled through the last few chapters just to make sure and I saw fanservice in almost every 5th page (not to mention the bath scene). The saddest part is, that these shots happen not only for comic purposes, but also during "serious" moments, like characters crying or fighting or storytelling.

To make my point clear, just take a look at this: http://www.mangapanda.com/fairy-tail/354/13
Supposedly this is a very emotional moment. The girl hasn't been home for a long time, has probably lived through a lot of hardships and is finally accepted back by her people, who were frozen in a giant layer of ice a couple hours ago. However, the writer erases every possible emotion you can feel, because he has to shove a giant pair of breasts between the crying girl and the reader.

I've been trying to find a comparison of some sort in One Piece and that's really hard to do with a 700 chapter manga, but take a look at this for example:http://www.mangapanda.com/103-2628-8/one-piece/chapter-521.html
Now in One Piece, just like in Fairy Tail, the design for most female characters is kind of ridiculous. But note how there isn't any sort of fanservice neither in this pannel, nor in the rest of the chapter despite Boa (arguably one of the most attractive females in the manga) being topless the whole time. Why? because the situation is serious and demands the reader to focus on the story she tells.

Fanservice like used in Fairy Tail, is just a very poor, lazy and cheap way of getting the reader's attention and distracting from the (in my opinion very basic and not that interesting) writing. But that's just me, if you like that level of fanservice I'm completely fine with you disregarding everything I wrote.

(Sorry for that stupidly long post)

 

[REN KOUEN]

How is calling Mashima a pervert bashing him or trolling? Either way, as long as he doesn't use fan service in place of plot or as distraction so people overlook the bad (subjective) plot, I see nothin wrong with him using the fan service. It's only when he relies on it as sellin point that people would be justified in complaining. Telling people to "not read" the manga just because they don't like the fan service or complain about it is worse than someone calling Mashima perverted (which is true, if he admitted to it).

he shows gray naked just as much as the girls

so at least his fanservice is unbiased

 

[liductan]

he shows gray naked just as much as the girls

so at least his fanservice is unbiased

As a female reader. I've never thought of gray striping as fanservice until recently...I just thought it was funny and entertaining. I missed that..Maybe because it didn't feel force to me. Neither did the girls for a while... until recently. oh..if gray is the only fanservice..That's not a lot of options considering, we have erza. minerva, mira, lucy etc..constantly being expose.

 

[M3J]

he shows gray naked just as much as the girls

so at least his fanservice is unbiased

One guy naked compared to more than one girl. Yep, no bias there. Guess Mashima's scared his story's not that good anymore.

 

[SharkBait]

One guy naked compared to more than one girl. Yep, no bias there. Guess Mashima's scared his story's not that good anymore.

Well Leon-sama, Natsu in that previous chaper, and one musnt forget the BL slide.

 

[liductan]

..leon can count but we barley see him. Natsu was fighting, so his clothes rips a little.. wow it doesn't happen in other mangas. A character fights and some of his clothes rips apart..No, that isn't common at all. Gray is probably the only constant one being used.

 

[M3J]

Well Leon-sama, Natsu in that previous chaper, and one musnt forget the BL slide.

How often? Do they get naked or nearly naked as often as the women?

 

[SerpentTailedAngel]

Natsu doesn't need that much clothing damage. He wears an open vest. It's kind of like how it hardly mattered if Sting wore a shirt or not because it's so tight that it doesn't conceal squat.

I have to agree with liductan though. While there definitely is fanservice from both sexes, it is much more obvious when it's a girl providing it. At a certain point I'd like to say that people are just more used to recognizing female fanservice as fanservice and gender expectations and whatnot (a lot more people complain or cheer over girls in swimsuits than they do about guys), but part of it is definitely deliberate on Mashima's part.

 

[REN KOUEN]

i guess the main point to me is that none of the fanservice is truly insulting or tasteless

i have seen way worse in a few other shounen titles.

once again i can see the disrespectful or degrading argument from a female POV, and i respect that argument

however to a certain extend those readers knew what they were getting into when they began to read the manga, or from mashimas previous work in rave

i do understand how it would be difficult for some female readers to identify with or support a female heroine who is constantly exposed or shows a ton of skin

however this is a shounen title, and when you look at females in the real world today, many highly respected and famous females

also wear next to nothing quite often....honestly its just part of the ever-evolving culture of the world

 

[obamamania]

Everyone is entitled their own opinions, but I personally still think that while some of the fanservice is annoying, it's nowhere near as bad as it could be considering how good Mashima is at drawing it. Please, read this week's Kenichi and you'll see fanservice you wouldn't possibly believe. Or maybe you would, considering it's Kenichi. If this manga was like Kenichi at all though, there is no WAY that you know who would still be clothed by the end of this week's chapter.

 

[liductan]

Most people that are complaining are not complaining about the fanservice itself but how it's used. There are only a few that I read, who did not like it at all. fanservice in Ft is not offending, just over used.

 

[SharkBait]

Most people that are complaining are not complaining about the fanservice itself but how it's used. There are only a few that I read, who did not like it at all. fanservice in Ft is not offending, just over used.

Reminds of my feelings on that panel with the camera angle making, flare was it, bewbies huge while she was crying, really ruined the moment and ought to have not been done that way.

 

[M3J]

Problem with fan service is that it can take away the seriousness of the moment and/or imply that the manga doesn't have much plot or the mangaka wants to distract. Given the amount of fan service, Mashima could be seen as desperate for more readers, given that it's not always necessary to include boobs or whatnot. Maybe like Kishi, he's just finding ways to extend the plot or provide some ways to please the fans, especially if the plot isn't as good.

 

[THM Nindo]

Reminds of my feelings on that panel with the camera angle making, flare was it, bewbies huge while she was crying, really ruined the moment and ought to have not been done that way.

Yeah, I totally agree.
This is a great example of fanservice ruining a great moment.

Basically, it was the moment when she says something like "I'm home", and she cry of relief.
But, the way it was drawn was basically a huge close-up of her boobs.

Totally ruined the drama for me...

 

[REN KOUEN]

Problem with fan service is that it can take away the seriousness of the moment and/or imply that the manga doesn't have much plot or the mangaka wants to distract. Given the amount of fan service, Mashima could be seen as desperate for more readers, given that it's not always necessary to include boobs or whatnot. Maybe like Kishi, he's just finding ways to extend the plot or provide some ways to please the fans, especially if the plot isn't as good.

this was my only complaint about the fanservice

like when lucy was trying to close the zodiac gate and we got nothing but crotch-shots of her in a very serious moment

---------- Post added at 03:11 PM ---------- Previous post was at 03:09 PM ----------

Everyone is entitled their own opinions, but I personally still think that while some of the fanservice is annoying, it's nowhere near as bad as it could be considering how good Mashima is at drawing it. Please, read this week's Kenichi and you'll see fanservice you wouldn't possibly believe. Or maybe you would, considering it's Kenichi. If this manga was like Kenichi at all though, there is no WAY that you know who would still be clothed by the end of this week's chapter.

amen to this, he is the best artist in all of manga right now

one of the best of all time

 

[Newkerzy]

Problem with fan service is that it can take away the seriousness of the moment and/or imply that the manga doesn't have much plot or the mangaka wants to distract. Given the amount of fan service, Mashima could be seen as desperate for more readers, given that it's not always necessary to include boobs or whatnot. Maybe like Kishi, he's just finding ways to extend the plot or provide some ways to please the fans, especially if the plot isn't as good.

On this, I'll somewhat agree. But I feel it's more like his own brand of humor. Rather, it's more like serious humor.

One guy naked compared to more than one girl. Yep, no bias there. Guess Mashima's scared his story's not that good anymore.

It's posts like these that seriously make me want to laugh. Seriously? if you thought Mashima doesn't know shit about writing a story, then what does the last two chapters tell you? Mashima doesn't need fanservice to write his story, but he does it anyways. Why? it's because he loves it. Mashima is perfectly capable of writing a manga without fanservice gimmicks, but he doesn't use them as a gimmick at all. He uses it because he loves doing it. It's not because he's perverted, he does it because he wants to. Mashima's aim with his manga is to appeal to all sorts of fans out there, including the perverted ones.

 

[ca12nag3]

Problem with fan service is that it can take away the seriousness of the moment and/or imply that the manga doesn't have much plot or the mangaka wants to distract. Given the amount of fan service, Mashima could be seen as desperate for more readers, given that it's not always necessary to include boobs or whatnot. Maybe like Kishi, he's just finding ways to extend the plot or provide some ways to please the fans, especially if the plot isn't as good.

This would be the case if it starts to interfere with the plot itself. However with FT it never seems to bother me as much as it does with other stories. Im actually more annoyed by Juvia and her constant Jealousy and worship of Grey then i am of bikini and crotch shots.
Still nothing in FT makes me want to stop reading it because i enjoy it to the max. Even if Juvias constant theme is the most annoying i can think of it still is something i take for granted.
That said the fan service is 1 of the things that makes me enjoy it too. You never know what Mashima might pull next.

I could go endlessly on about how i admire Mashima for his work without going into fanboy mode, because i appreciate his work for what it is. A few reasons why i put up with his fan service?

- he talks in detail about how he works outside and inside the manga releases, like how his editor wants him to redo stuff or add or remove things. Which he doesnt always agree with. How many authors do we know that talk this openly about their work?
- all the art is to my opinion top level, i never felt like... ok this could have been done better its sloppy.
- every time i read fairy tail i cant wait to read the next chapter. Its catching.
- each and every character is more or less unique, they dont look like generic characters that you just open a can of, that have just different 3 sizes and a different dye of hair-color.
- last but not least, i admire how he is able to bring something so well that he himself dislikes doing, like bringing back lisanna. It wasnt his idea it was his editors. And he did it so well. Its 1 of the reasons i like his work so much. Hes that gifted.

What i mean to say with these points is that this outweighs his leaning to draw fan service. I just feel that all the other stuff outweighs it by far. Its merely my opinion. Feel free to comment if you want ^^