Anime, Manga and VG Fanservice. Please make an option for the rest of us.

One of the dangers of buying anime statuettes is having to explain to your parents why you bought it and the justification.  Perhaps it's just me coming from an Asian family, but every one of my purchases is scrutinized and ridiculed, usually.  I mean, it's not like I'm buying constantly buying life sized replica of Saber from Fate Stay Night or waifu pillow (no, that's not me, just a random google image search), but it gets pretty harsh after a while.

The other danger, of course, is that anime is rife with fan service.  Okay, that last link wasn't serious.  But you know what I mean.  I can't really explain why there's suddenly a statue of a girl who has to deal with constant back pain every day until she gets surgery in my room.  I can't even explain why I'm watching an adaptation of "The Romance of the Three Kingdoms" where all the generals are pretty girls and 'ol CaoCao is feared because she wants "to obtain beautiful females into her control".  I'm watching it because I think fan service is hilarious, and I'm curious how far they're willing to take the literary classic in terms of artistic license. Seriously, guys, it's 2012.  If I wanted to see boobs, I'd go and see all the boobs I want.

Namco Bandai, you're not helping me out here either. Awesome costumes though :)

I want to say, hey guys! I like Tekken cuz it's an awesome game, there are a variety of characters, the story is one of the most intricate and in depth compared to most other fighting games, I like watching martial arts, and oh wait ....

Please ignore the male and female bikini trailer. At least Namco Bandai doesn't discriminate?

Okay, back to the story.  One of my favourite manga is ikkitousen, which means, "the strength of a thousand residing in a single rider/warrior", which is an amazing title.  In North America, Tokyopop has lovingly translted the title to: Battle Vixens. Thanks, like I don't enough trouble explaining manga/anime culture to people.  I can't even begin to express my disappointment at the localization of the material.

I don't know how much you know about Kanu Unchou / Guan Yu, but he is one of the most well-known historical figures in East Asia.  Even I have a traditional Guan Yu statue (no, not like the anime ones) in the house somewhere, which is fairly unusual for a non-Asian-religion-following family.  Naturally, Kanu Unchou is also awesome, so I wanted to get a statue of her for my room.

Here is the amazon.com search link for "kanu unchou".  Oh right, I forgot, kanu fanservice.  Okay, so maybe I'll go through it and be able to find one that's not so bad.  My other favourite character is Ryomou Shimei and I managed to find an okay one to get (that's not my link, and I got the black version).  I mean, if you were a katana wielding nurse and you suddenly had to fight, then it would make sense for you to crouch down and yes, you would be showing your panties but you are trying to defend yourself so it's okay!  Right?  At least it wasn't this one?

Seriously, at this point, even this one would've been better.  So finally I came across this one :


And I thought, that looks AMAZING.  She's in a cool pose, her hair's flaring, she's showing a bit of midriff but it's okay, she has a school sweater somewhere so she can keep warm if she needed to, cuz it's bad enough that she got ambushed and had to fight in her school uniform.

So I buy it.  I open it, ready to bask in its purtiness.  Then I see this, and my heart sank.

Please excuse the dust.  Oh, and the boobs.

I can explain her perfect hair, her having to fight in a school uniform, and possibly how a longer skirt might restrict her movements and whatever, but I can't really explain how she starts off with her shirt torn and no bra.  

I just wish they just had an OPTION of sensible manga, anime and video games marketing and merchandise with less fanservice, that's all.  So the rest of us who are put in situations where they have to explain themselves AND the fanservice at the same time.