One of my hobbies is to pick a random topic related to Japan or anime and research its origin, and since I’m a guy who loves a good pantyshot or three, I thought I’d write about the history of panchira in Japanese pop culture.
Just as the magical girl genre can be traced to the popularity of Bewitched in Japan, the modern fascination with pantyshots can be traced to a Western source, namely the skirt scene in Marilyn Monroe’s The Seven Year Itch, which caused a huge stir in Japan at the time. Starting with Astro Boy’s sister Uran (which means Uranium, which always stuck me as an odd name to choose), pantyshots were used for occasional comic relief in anime, until Go Nagai pioneered the ecchi genre with his Shameful School and Cutey Honey series in the 1970s. Although he pretends otherwise now, Hayao “Anime was a Mistake” Miyazaki benefited from the rise of the panchira meme, too, as the signature move of the main character in his first series was to do a handstand, exposing her panties. As anime evolved and expanded into new genres, some shows such as Strike Witches and Agent AIKa took panty fetish-related visual culture to such an outrageous point they can only be considered art. So, what’s your view on pantsu in anime?
Yesterday I drove down to Tokyo to see a guy about some interesting “H” games we’ll be bringing out in the future. Along the way, I stopped at an interesting “parking area” (one of the rest stops located inside Japan’s enclosed freeway systems) that was unique: it was designed to look like something out of a samurai film set in the Edo Period. Instead of a boring building containing a few shops and vending machines, visitors are able to walk along street that looks like it fell out of a wormhole from the 1840s, and buy various traditional items including dagashi and Kyoto candy before having a traditional Japanese lunch of noodles or tempura. The Japanese love to get extreme with their hobbies, and there are actually “freeway otakus” who love to travel around the country, visiting these rest stops and writing reviews of them on websites and on Twitter.
It’s time for more awesome anime magazines from Japan, which are loaded with glorious free posters and illustrations for fans, from the newest shows. See the new magazines on the site, or read our detailed blog post about the new Megami!
