Self Fanservice / Anime & Manga

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• Pokémon: The Series:
  • Misty, May, and Dawn receive insane amounts of fanart in which they are aged up, complete with everything that comes with puberty. For example Dawn's short skirt is often taken advantage of when it's mostly a Magic Skirt in-universe. Some of the former is the work of the female fanbase -- it comes from having a romance subplot with the Chaste Idiot Hero and the need to make her a plausible Love Triangle center in fanfiction, justified in part by how Misty's sisters look...but for the most part it's guys. This was less commonly seen with Iris, but Serena is similarly altered, and it is not uncommon with the Sun and Moon girls and Chloe from Journeys, though not to the same level as Misty, May, Dawn, and Serena.
  • Ash, Gary, Drew, Paul, Kenny, Cilan, and Clemont also have their share of fangirls as well; even Tracey has some. (Tracey usually does match his description and characterization, though.) Oddly, the only main character without hordes of fangirls is probably Brock. Fanart of the boys usually has them looking mostly like their canon versions, though aged-up fanart has a high chance of presenting everyone as tall and slightly muscular (with Gary and Paul usually being taller than Ash). In Sun and Moon and Journeys-specific works, however, Ash is usually drawn smaller and cuter than his teammates due to his design in those seasons looking younger and more boyish compared to how he looked in X and Y.
    • An emerging trend for Ash that started in 2018 is to depict his older self with a Carpet of Virility and being fairly muscular, mostly as an attempt to present an older version of him without the benefits of having a male relative to base his aged-up form on.
  • Mothers in the series usually get drawn at MILF levels regardless of their original bodytype. Delia Ketchum and Lana's mom, for example, are depicted with full figures and large hips despite their canonically petite sizes, and Lusamine tends to go up several cup sizes from her canon slender physique (for more on Lusamine, see the game section). This is seen with other mothers, like Caroline and Johanna, but to a lesser extent.
• Dragon Ball:
  • Some fanart of Dragon Ball GT will depict Bra (who's canonically 8 years old, but looks like a young teen) as suddenly being much more developed than she is in the show, especially with her chest. The assumption is that apparently she'll look exactly like her mother when she grows up.
  • Pan (who actually looks like a child) is prone to getting the aged-up treatment.
  • Young Chi-chi gets a variant on age-up fanservice by way of having her adult self fill out her younger self's armor. Fanartists also like to turn adult Chichi's qipao into a Sexy Slit Dress by leaving out the baggy trousers that she always wears under it in canon.
  • Young Bulma, who's 16 years old in the original Dragon Ball, will often be drawn with a fuller bust and hips.
  • The trend continues during Dragon Ball Super with the Saiyans from Universe 6, Caulifla and Kale. They are short, rather flat in their base form, lacking any sort of muscle definition (well, with the exception of Kale who goes full Broly, but her controlled form is the epitome of Amazonian Beauty). In fanart, however, they are drawn full Ms. Fanservice. Cabba, from the same universe, get this to a lesser extent, but mostly giving him more muscle (since he lacks any sort of muscle, looking like he has noodles for arms).
• The eponymous characters of Akagi and Kaiji are often getting their (rather... bizarre) faces turned more into standard Bishōnen style. For an example, see this fanart, which shows both a fan-drawn bishonen version of Kaiji, and (in the background) his original manga appearance. The female characters (especially Mikoko Sakazaki) also get this treatment fairly regularly.
• One Piece:
  • Although most of the characters with Estrogen Brigades are already conventionally good-looking or otherwise close to it, and therefore do not warrant Self-Fanservice, Spandam — much reviled by male fans as a fugly Smug Snake, but Draco in Leather Pants to more than a few female fans — often gets this treatment.
  • Partially to distinguish Yamato from other born female characters and diversify Oda's often samey female designs, Yamato is frequently depicted as a lot more of an Amazonian Beauty, with a lot more detailed musculature than he is drawn on page, which also emphasizes the character's tremendous physical prowess.
• Pretty Cure:
  • Fan art has a tendency to depict the (usually middle school-aged, often flat-chested) girls with distinctly more mature bodies.
  • Wolfrun from Smile Pretty Cure! gets his muscle-mass exaggerated in most fanart.
• Nnoitra, the creepy, spoon-wearing, Blood Knight with weird teeth from Bleach gets turned into a Bishōnen in a lot of fanart.
  • Mayuri Kurotsuchi is susceptible to this as well, though note he mostly looks so freaky because of make-up; without it, he's not really bad looking◊ (although he is missing an ear).
• This happens to 90% of the characters in Naruto. Hinata is described by the databooks as rather plain and bookish, but fanart tends to make her out to be this gorgeous goddess. Sakura has a small chest and large forehead, and fanart tends to make her out to be a goddess, too.
• Some people are trying to figure out what Shinigami-sama from Soul Eater looks like behind his mask. Of course, since his son is the somewhat Bishounen Death The Kid, people think that he must be even more good-looking.
  • On a different note, this may be a moot point since every single time his clothes were damaged, it was quite obviously visible that he had no physical body underneath that shroud.
  • The manga has, in fact, indicated that Shinigami might have/had a human form at one point: Mosquito knows what the Lines of Sanzu are (which Shinigami doesn't obviously have at the moment), and Kid is a sort-of clone of Shinigami.
  • Maka occasionally gets this as well, albeit to a lesser extent; granted, she's fairly cute to begin with, but some fans seemed to miss the memo that she's above an A-cup.
  • Stein too. He's far from ugly (he's considered attractive in a weird way both In-Universe and out), but a lot of fanart depicts him as a generic Bishounen.
    • His Shirtless Scene in the anime revealed he's quite well-built. Cue the fans drawing him like a bodybuilder.
• Hetalia: Axis Powers, of all series, gets some of this too. There's a Cuba/Canada doujinshi somewhere where, aside of having super Moe Canada, turns Cuba, who in canon is a chubby and Hot-Blooded Jerk with a Heart of Gold, into a slim, suave, and super handsome Latin Lover. Even though one of the main charms of the Cuba/Canada pairing is to have a non-traditionally-handsome guy getting the romantic attention of another male and thus proving that looks don't matter.
  • England sometimes gets hit with a milder version of this trope. While the majority of his fans do recognize that his combative personality and Big Ol' Eyebrows are part of his appeal and leave them intact, there are still some who "improve" him by softening his personality to make him into an unironic gentleman (even though England being hilariously unsuited for the gentlemanliness he claims to possess in so many ways is one of the defining marks of his character).
  • The huge lot of Russia fanarts in which he's slimmed down to a generic bishounen build and his nose is suddenly tiny and upturned.
  • While Taiwan is a very pretty girl and is referred to as such in canon, her breast size often goes from "on the average-to-small" side to "Ukraine level".
    • The same can be said of Belarus. Since breast size tends to be genetic and she's Ukraine's sister, it can be justified, but it's rather jarring when fanon "bust charts" portray her as bigger than Hungary, or some fanarts that make her bigger than Ukraine.
    • Belgium also gets this treatment occasionally, which may be justified as she's usually wearing heavy clothing in canon, but during the 2010 Christmas event we actually get to see her in her bra, and she has a very average-sized chest.
    • Although age tends to be vague, the younger-looking Liechtenstein, Seychelles, and Wy get aged up quite often in fanart, sometimes to the point where it's a bit jarring.
  • America is shown shirtless in canon. While he's no lightweight, his muscles are still about half the size fandom commonly portrays them.
    • A similar case with Thailand whose body muscle (as shown in Hetalia Bloodbath 2010) is kinda normal, is buffed up in fan art. Then again, these arts often go by the fanon of him being into Muay Thai (the national Thai sport), which requires any practitioner to have rather heavy musculature.
  • France's body hair can be greatly reduced or absent in fanart. Same with Turkey and Grandpa Rome, but they've got a huge LGBT Fanbase following that love it.
  • Prussia is sometimes drawn as far more muscular than he is in canon. Sometimes he'll have the same amount of muscle (or even more) as his brother in the same fanart.
  • North Italy's cuteness will often be changed to handsomeness.
  • Once in a while, Fandom will raise Latvia's height to around 170 cm.
• Ponyo's father, Fujimoto, often loses his long nose and wrinkles in fanart.
• Slam Dunk: In canon, the characters are generally good-looking but in the most masculine way possible. Fan artists tend to forget this and draw them as generically pretty.
• Junji Ito's character Souichi has a small but vocal amount of fans. You know, the creepy, occult-obsessed nail-biting anemic boy (and in a dream, psycopathic manchild, who tends to get most of the love).
• Fate/Zero: Kariya Matou wasn't the prettiest person alive, even before he had the worms transplanted in him,◊ but since he's such a generous person some artists have seen fit to give him a more palatable appearance, sometimes even downplaying the popped veins in his infected form and turning him into a Pretty Boy who just happens to have a bit of a facial distortion.
• If you took a look at fanart for Fate/Apocrypha's Astolfo/Rider of Black, you would find that his androgynous-bordering-on-girly looks gets amplified to outright "female save for that one body part" levels, curves and all.
• Kurogane from Tsubasa -RESERVoir CHRoNiCLE-. He is genuinely attractive (just very, very masculine), but fangirls tend to portray him as a skinny, feminine Bishōnen. Some fanartists do the exact opposite and draw him with so much bulk you wonder how his armor still fits.
• Some Trigun fanart reduces the amount of scars Vash has, but part of it also has to do with the fact that they're very complicated and hard to draw. Fanartists also like to make Wolfwood's neckline even lower than it already is, and in The New '20s it's not uncommon for people to give him a Carpet of Virility as well. A handful of artists also give Rai-Dei and E.G. Mine prettier facial features.
• Hellsing:
  • Alexander Anderson tends to become a Bishounen in fanart. His fanbase, on the other hand, tends to make him a hulking tower of muscle.
  • Jan is often drawn as a bishounen, sometimes an even bigger one than his brother.
• There is a ton of fanart depicting Renamon from Digimon Tamers with more tits and ass than she normally has. Renamon is human-sized and has a more adult personality than most of the other Mons in the franchise, so she's shippable... but looks like a Funny Animal at best and canonically has No Biological Sex, which fanartists are more than happy to add. Guilmon is also given more humanlike body proportions in fanart.
• Though Fairy Tail already has a lot of Fanservice and all of the major and minor characters being drawn to be highly attractive there are still two cases of this. Levy is the only post-puberty character with a flat chest, while fanart tends to draw her either being just as well-endowed as everyone else or increasing her breast size by at least a cup. Such as here and here. Wendy gets aged up in fanart with everything that comes with it. It's supported by her Edolas counterpart being older and drawn to be just as attractive as everyone else. Sometimes it doesn't age her up.
  • Gray is fairly fit in the series, but fanartists have a tendency to draw him huge.
• Kotoura-san has an In-Universe example: Manabe's fantasies about Haruka always have her being much curvier than she actually is.
• Kuroko's Basketball gets this a lot, as the basketball players are actually drawn well-muscled (although it comes into play after Art Evolution in the manga), possibly in homage to old school shounen like Slam Dunk along with keeping their physiques realistic; in the flood of art drawn by fangirls on Pixiv and elsewhere, though, they're very much slimmed down, sometimes to the point one is left to question whether one is watching the same show as the fanartist... An interesting counterpoint to this would be in the era of Slam Dunk, when Yaoi Genre doujinshi began to become prominent; possibly due to its newness and the art styles popular at the time, artists stuck to the proportions given to the characters in the anime and manga instead of slimming them down into the Bishounen style that's become ever-more popular today.
• Aikuro Mikisugi of Kill la Kill who is already attractive, but often drawn more beefy and rugged by the show's bara fandom. Same goes for the canonically big Gamagoori and Tsumugu.
• Code Geass:
  • It's surprisingly common in fanart to give the canonically non-athletic Lelouch more muscles. Though in some cases, it's more about increasing his perceived badassery than this trope.
  • Some people like giving C.C. a higher cup size than she had in canon.
• While certainly by no means ugly, Usada Hikaru, aka Rabi~en~Rose from Di Gi Charat, tends to be drawn by fans to have a much bigger bust than even the occasional changes in art style would have you believe, perhaps more than any other character in the series. Her costume may have something to do with it.
• While his manga version did hit a growth spurt, Edward in Fullmetal Alchemist (2003) is short even as an adult. In Fullmetal Alchemist: The Conqueror of Shamballa, it's shown that Noah is several centimeters taller than him and Winry is still taller than him. In fanworks, though? He's almost always depicted as taller than he canonically is (unless he is depicted in a Boys' Love setting where he might be even more small and cute to compliment his often-hypermasculine partner).
• It's very common for BL doujin artists to draw Daisuke Jigen from Lupin III with younger, more bishounen facial features, to the point where the character can barely be recognized. Lupin also gets this too, to a lesser extent.
• Osomatsu-san fanart usually changes the boys from their goofy, cylindrical selves to practically black-haired Palette Swaps of their F6 counterparts with lighter versions of their original personalities. Case in point.◊ For the fans that don't, their bodies suddenly gain more detail and definition than they originally had (Karamatsu having a toned build, Ichimatsu being chubby (due to his eating habits) or fairly skinny (due to not taking care of himself) with a prominent butt, Jyushimatsu hiding tons of muscle under his hoodie, etc.)
• Shigeo usually gets turned from a fairly plain-looking boy with a bowl cut to a youthful, adorable child in Mob Psycho 100 art. Reigen usually gets dialed up from "normal" to "breathtaking hunk in a nice suit" to match. The strangest case would probably have to go to Dimple; while he's merely a green wisp in canon, fans near-universally portray him in the body of the security guard he possessed during the Scar arc, though he's given the Pretty Boy treatment for good measure.
• Fans of Pop Team Epic tend to upgrade the girls from funky-looking tweens to regularly cute teens. Popuko gets to be the short, flat-chested spunky one, while all the thickness on Pipimi's neck gets to be transferred to an equally stacked rack (or of they're feeling like it, making her a full fledged Big Beautiful Woman). If you've ever wanted to read the Blu-Ray edition of the strip, this is it. The gag eventually came full circle with the anime adaptation, where the DVD covers are done in the usual art style, while the Blu-Ray covers have a more realistic style.◊
• Tsuyu Asui of My Hero Academia is about as far from ugly as you can get, but fan artists tend to push it even further by downplaying her frog-like characteristics, most often shrinking her mouth down. Similarly, Aizawa is generally cleaned up to look less shabby-looking and Izuku Midoriya varies from region to region, tending to be leaner in the East than the West but generally always given additional musculature atop of his canon muscles (without even getting into the idea of him having an equivalent appearance to All Might's hero form).
  • Bakugo probably has it the roughest, with simultaneous depictions of him as a toned ikemen and a teenaged beefcake.
  • Ever since the Pro Hero arc started giving more focus to Endeavor, fans' depictions of Endeavor lightened up considerably along with their opinion of him. While he is large, muscular, and square-jawed in-series, his fanart brings his appearance up to Bara levels of hunkiness.
  • The mothers of the aforementioned Bakugo, Mitsuki Bakugo, and Kyoko Jiro, Mika Jiro, are frequently given a lot more curves and bust than they actually are drawn with.
  • In canon Inko Midoriya, Izuku's mother, has her chubby figure drawn in a way that makes her cute and huggable rather than sexy, but fanartists are highly prone to amplifying both her curves and chubbiness to turn her into a Big Beautiful Woman, especially ship art with All Might.
• It's quite common for JoJo's Bizarre Adventure fanartists to soften the unique style and make the characters into more generic Bishōnen and Hunks. The anime, especially of the earlier parts, was already somewhat guilty of this, but the Estrogen Brigade produces Self-Fanservice on a whole nother level.
  • Battle Tendency's Pillar Men get this a lot. Canon◊: frighteningly muscular Humanoid Abominations. Fanon: more humanly proportioned beefcakes, although Kars' relatively feminine features are often exaggerated as well.
  • Noriaki Kakyoin from Stardust Crusaders is already a rather attractive◊ Bishounen, but that's really only in comparison to the rest of the Crusaders. Fan art tends to depict him as much more androgynous, usually so he can be an uke for Jotaro. It didn't help that in the 2014 anime adaptation, he was voiced by Daisuke Hirakawa, who was in a very fangirl-friendly series.
  • Golden Wind:
    • Pesci is one of the biggest Gonks in the series, what with the lack of neck and hair that makes him look like a pineapple. But because he's such a dorky character, fan art likes to portray him as much cuter than he actually is.
    • While he's nowhere near ugly, Ghiaccio's constantly exaggerated◊ facial expressions tends to make him look rather odd. A lot of fan art likes to portray him as a Megane Bishounen.
  • Steel Ball Run:
    • Hot Pants is a Bifauxnen to the point of being able to convincingly disguise herself as a man, but fanart likes to portray her as much more feminine-looking than she actually is.
    • Some fanart of Diego Brando in his Scary Monsters form makes him a cuter dinosaur and gives him feathers. A lot of fanart depicts his Partial Transformation as just his human form with a dinosaur tail, which, in canon, is only used to represent him in the process of shifting into his (hideous) hybrid form.
• Spy X Family: While Yor is considered attractive In-Universe, she's generally drawn with realistic proportions and comparatively conservative clothing◊. Fanart typically gives her an Impossible Hourglass Figure and dramatically dials up the the exposure levels of her clothing. In particular her Thorn Princess Dress◊ usually gets drawn as a Sexy Backless Outfit with a very low neckline. Any art placed at a beach tends to put her in a bikini or otherwise very skimpy swimsuit as opposed to canon, where during the Beach Episode she deliberately wears a full-body wetsuit so that her family won't be able to see the scars she got from her job as a Professional Killer.
• Wasteful Days of High School Girls has an In-Universe example. When Tanaka enters an Imagine Spot, she is always curvier in that story than she actually is (the flattest of the cast). Robo actually points it out.
• Makima in Chainsaw Man dresses in neat but loosely-fitting suits which does little to show off her features, but fanart likes to draw her in tighter, more feminine dress shirt and pants with, of course, a curvier figure.
• While the titular character of Bocchi the Rock! is bustier than her bandmates, she's not exaggeratedly so and her chest size is mainly used as the punchline in gags. Fan artists usually dispense with that and give Hitori giant boobs and an insanely curvy, attractive figure.
• Love Live!: Fanart tends to give all the girls a bust upgrade (with the exceptions of Nico, Rin, and occasionally Umi), and in general tends to draw them much curvier than they appear in the show. In particular, fanart usually upsizes Nozomi to "boobs the size of her head" levels and ramps up her curves to the point where she's a Big Beautiful Woman.
• Death Note fans often do this to L, an extremely skinny man who Looks Like Cesare and has dead eyes and extremely odd mannerisms. Downplayed though, because most fans leave the eye bags, pale skin, and messy hair alone, but often make him more "cute" and make his eyes shinier. Compare this manga panel◊ to this fan art.
• Puella Magi Madoka Magica: Kriemhild Gretchen is a giant inhuman-looking Living Shadow with an extremely warped face and a lower half consisting of dozens of spindly legs. Most fanart of her tends to just be the rather cute Madoka Kaname with an Evil Costume Switch into a black outfit.

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