In the first article I ever wrote for J-List, I discussed the decline of the Senran Kagura series. I took a lot of flak for the title, with commenters assuming I had a problem with the ecchi content (it seems relatively few commenters actually read articles beyond the title). But I honestly think you’d be hard pressed to find a bigger ecchi fan, I’m just disappointed in the direction they’ve taken one of the biggest ecchi franchises of the decade. It doesn’t have to be this way, and so today I’d like to discuss the qualities that make a truly great ecchi series, and by extension how to make Senran Kagura great again.
The first step is to understand exactly what ecchi is, how it differs from other erotic media, and other comedy series. Most popular seasonal animes these days have some kind of ecchi fanservice, the gratuitous use of sexuality to titillate the audience. But the ecchi subgenre is defined by such sexual themes, employing them for both comic and erotic effect.
In short, an ecchi show is a sex comedy. Not at all limited to animation, you could describe Hollywood classics like Animal House, American Pie, Porkies and the like as live action ecchi sex comedies.
The most important thing to pull out of that definition of ecchi is the “comedy” part. A great ecchi series has to be funny. It also needs a plot, grounded in conflict, with something at stake should our hero fail in that conflict. That last bit is just a basic requirement of dramatic writing, but you’d be surprised how many animes, and ecchi ones in particular, don’t even meet that low bar.
An all too common trap that ecchi series fall into is this idea that ecchi means “almost porn.” As with Senran Kagura, somewhere along the line someone decided that all fans wanted out of ecchi was to get as close to the cast banging each other as possible, humor and storytelling be damned.
The result is shows like The Testament of Sister New Devil, which features five-minute-long onscreen sex scenes, sometimes followed up by a scene depicting the cleaning up of cum off the floor. And that would be fine. The sexual content itself isn’t the problem. It’s that the onscreen boot-knocking doesn’t have any conflict or stakes or even humor to it. The only purpose is to give you something to whack off to, which it seems somebody forgot is what porn is for, not television.
On the other hand, you can have intensely sexual scenes that are both funny and full of compelling and risky conflict. Take, for example, the classic skin-shedding scene in Monster Musume: Everyday Life with Monster Girls.
Our hero finds himself expected to help his busty, molting snake girl peel the dead skin off every inch of her body, including right down to her cold-blooded camel toe. She’s shy but into it, he’s shy but into it, one thing leads to another and he ends up fingering the snake. That’s funny in and of itself. He fingered a snake! But also there’s the ongoing conflict that he’s got a stable of other monster girls vying for his affections, most of them are the jealous type; and while he’s legally required to marry one of them, he’ll go to prison if he does the demi-human hanky-panky.
MonMusu makes the sexual content the central point of conflict for its story, while also using the snake titties and bird butt for comedic effect.
Where The Testament of Sister New Devil fails is in having its sexual content mean anything to anyone who knows how to find pornography on the Internet. It has an ongoing story about demon hunting ninjas or something but it’s like there’s a wall between that content and the sex part. It’s extremely clear when you’re watching an episode that’s going to be a ninja fight and when you’re watching an episode that’s going to be Basara having really disinterested sex with Mio until it’s time for Maria to mop up the cum.
Contrast that with the High School DxD franchise, which features a suspiciously similar magic battle plot full of sexy demons. But whereas Basara has to have sex with Mio to make them ambiguously more powerful for future battle reasons, High School DxD’s Issei uses comic ecchi elements in his demon battles. He communicates directly with his enemies’ titties, or shatters their clothes, or uses his own sexual frustration to power himself up. There’s no wall between the sex comedy and the plot. The sex comedy is the plot, and that’s what makes it good.
But that doesn’t mean the sex is the comedy. Senran Kagura: Shinovi Master might think getting to see Yumi’s nipples after a weirdly self-serious monologue about justice is a punchline, but it isn’t. Neither is seeing Hakufu Sonsaku’s panties during a high kick in Ikki Tousen while I’m desperately flipping through my various translations of Romance of the Three Kingdoms trying to find out which plot thread we’ve run down this episode.
Senran Kagura: Ninja Flash mixed its horny fanservice with jokes about the eccentricities of the shinobi fiction subgenre, and with comedic interactions between its beloved and well-established characters. There was more to it than just “I saw a titty.” High School DxD is equally character driven, and it leans as much on Issei being a dumb teenager who makes dumb teenager mistakes as it does on the fact that Issei’s horniness makes him even dumber.
This is important, because as the world’s greatest ecchi fan, I’m concerned for the genre. The latest season of High School DxD, which used to be the gold standard for ecchi, was a huge disappointment. High School DxD Hero was produced by studio Passione, which has so far failed to live up to the fantastic work studio TNK had done with the three prior seasons (interestingly, TNK produced the extremely disappointing Senran Kagura: Shinovi Master).
Our anime sex comedies are on the decline. Even a less traditional ecchi series like How Clumsy You Are, Miss Ueno that looked so promising turned out to be nothing but a series of fetishes disguised as jokes. I still hold out hope for this season’s Why the Hell are You Here, Teacher!? If it can just remember to have actual jokes and a few basic storytelling elements, I’ll be happy. And also horny. That is the goal, after all.
