Mother's Basement Discussion

Here's Geoff's new video on "The Art of Ecchi", wherein instead of simply talking about a new ecchi anime that has him hooked, he uses it as a jumping point for discussing what he feels would make a perfect ecchi show (while the show itself to illustrate how good or bad it is at fulfilling that criteria).

Also this video is not safe for work at all, and it shows a lot of scenes from How Not To Summon A Demon Lord, so it may be considered spoilers for the show if you're worried about that.

He breaks down what a perfect ecchi should do into a few points. I'll try to sum up (warning: brevity is not my strong suit; if you want a tl;dr, just read the bolded text) for those who don't want to click, but I recommend just watching the video for full context, mostly because I'm probably going to inject my own opinions here and there and may misinterpret Geoff's actual stances.

1. Make Good Girls: Basically, make them good characters who are interesting enough on their own on top of them being sexy. Fully fleshed out characters not only make for a better story, but it also adds to their attractiveness.

2. Make the Girls Hot: Kind of goes without saying. If the viewer isn't attracted to anyone in an ecchi, then that more or less kills the primary reason to watch the show to being with, right? Both this point and the last kind of blend into each other, as he reiterates the need for the characters to remain interesting and attractive even in the scenes where gratuitous fanservice isn't happening.

3. Minimize the Creep Factor: Basically, lower the probability of turning a viewer off by being aware of the particular kinks and fetishes that are known to be divisive, and writing around them well enough to keep them from alienating too many members of the audience, in order to maximize viewership.

In this case, he talks about things such as lolicon (particularly because of how much of a common occurrence it's become), Go-Go Enslavement, and lack of consensual behavior between characters^note i.e. characters being put into humiliating positions and/or having to endure a rapist character showing up in the story and providing the more polarizing side of the domination fetish as possible problematic kinks that can severely alienate people very easily. How to Not Summon a Demon Lord mostly uses the first two (the second being the show's fanservice selling point), and one of the criticisms Geoff has against it is a scene involving the protagonist getting drunk and molesting the show's explicitly Older Than They Look lolicon character, as it hits the uncomfortableness of the lack of consent issue as well.

His opinion on the show's use on slavery as a fetish point is a bit more nuanced (he brings up Master of Ragnarok as a comparison again), as well as talking about the use of such fetishes in shows that aren't meant to be ecchi and indulging themselves in divisive fetishes anyway (which generally alienates people who watch said non-ecchi shows for reasons not involving fanservice and IMO is part of the reason why people get ticked off at a lot of what they see as unnecessary fanservice in shows that — at least at first — didn't appear to use that as a big selling point).

...Also, that "summary" was long because he spends a lot of time talking about it... Also also, this is when he brings up SAO.

4. Everyone (characters/audience/creators) Needs To Have Fun: In the case of the characters, consensuality (or at least the appearance of it via the characters not objecting to, and even initiating, sexy situations) is just more fun for everyone involved, viewers and characters alike. Having characters look or act constantly embarrassed by every sexual or perverse moment (no matter how small), the protagonist end up suffering physical abuse from members of his harem because of bizarre "it's not what it looks like" perverted situations out of his control (which is worse if we're shown that the protagonist is a legitimate nice guy, even if most find that personality type to be boring for entertainment purposes), or outright be put into situations they obviously hate (while the show attempts to make it look hot), just makes enjoying the show for what it's trying to be harder to watch, especially if the viewer is not at all into it and/or wants to see some sort of mutual agreement between all the people getting into Deus Sex Machina shenanigans.

This also goes for the creators; if they aren't having fun making their show (Geoff's examples of this include talking about the amount of work gone into a gainaxing animation and Male Gaze shots), it'll be obvious in the final product (most by-the-numbers isekai and ecchi fall hard into this).

5. Give Me a Protagonist I Don't Fucking Hate: Anyone who has seen his other criticisms on boring leads (and/or his previous video about Master of Ragnarok) will probably know what he means here. He suggests that the least they do is give the protagonists actual flaws, and that if they're just going to bother making blank slate leads who only exist to give us a camera with which to ogle the girls with, then they should just do what Keijo!!!!!!!! does and just make the lead a girl too, for all the impact the typical male lead usually has on the show as a whole. A true lack of character in the protag just makes the show boring to watch, and if the character only exists to be a vehicle for ecchi situations, then you may as well put on a hentai for that anyway.

He also feels that more of these shows need to include more male support characters, both to help humanize the protagonist, but also to flesh out the world in a sense. Right now, most shows tend to only use other men as a means for justifying the girls' attraction towards the lead, and it's often a flimsy justification even in a narrative sense since their attraction, in this case, boils down to various amounts of Because You Were Nice to Me, because literally every other male character is a scumbag or a pervert/rapist, or both.

He ends by asking viewers what their own pet peeves in ecchi are, and what do you think that makes your favorite ecchi show stand out.

...Oh yeah, first time posting in this thread, but I've been lurking here ever since I got introduced to Mother's Basement via Exclamation Point months ago, prior to finishing season one of SAO.

Edited by Customer on Sep 5th 2018 at 2:07:12 PM

Those are all fucking great points, especially number 4.

For a video on softcore porn I found it really informative.

He even stated similarly why High School Dx D is one of his favorites, but also a favorite for the anime community in general for this. Hell, The series is just as popular with Women as it is with men, which is a good sign you have a good ecchi series.

That's a thing I had been wondering actually… How do women perceive these kinds of obviously male-oriented series, including the women who work on them?

Given the criteria Geoff gives, one can wonder if a gender-flipped version of the concept could even work…

Regarding the whole "lolicon" issue, I'm not too bothered by an anime girl looking young as long as she's unambiguously adult and acts like one. After all, small-framed adult women do exist, even moreso in Japan…

(didn't think I would post this here of all places X) )

Edited by Lyendith on Sep 5th 2018 at 10:05:50 AM

I imagine that gender-flipped ecchi would have its own issues to tackle, but I'm not too sure what would actually count as one. I'm sure they exist, but aren't nearly as ubiquitous as the usual shows.^note I mean, a lot of people say that Free! could count, but I'm pretty sure it's meant to be a sports anime.

As for how women perceive the shows, if they're not tripe like Master of Ragnarok, then I imagine that it's more or less the same as men who are watching these shows for more than just titillation (though that can be a major plus for viewers regardless of gender). Well-developed characters can make a show much greater, and well-characterized female characters can be very empowering when done well (both in the Action Girl sense and the "women can be sexy and not vilified or chastised for it" sense). Highschool DxD has a notable female following from what I've heard, and that may have to due with everyone's characterizations making them more interesting than just being Male Gaze magnets and Wish-Fulfillment fodder.

That said, I still haven't seen that show myself, so I can't personally judge (most of what I'm saying here comes from the conversations I've had with some of my female friends... so yeah... anecdotal).

Well, judging by how he describes the two main loli characters in Demon Lord, it seems like he shares the same stance on the issue.^note Specifically, he notes that Rem's proportions at closer to a small adult than an actual child, and she is, acts, and is treated like an adult in the setting. The other character, Sylvie, who is essentially the main trio's boss, is similar in that she's also an adult, but Geoff feels her proportions are more child-like overall, and that, on top of her skimpy clothing and the drunk scene, makes her feel more uncomfortable to him, despite otherwise liking the character. He didn't really disparage people who are into that sort of thing (saying that he ultimately appreciates a show trying to appeal to more than just one type of person, even if that appeal disgusts him), and suggests that, due to how common it is to see a loli type in any show nowadays, it's best to just learn to bear with it to some extent.

But from what I've seen, the body type thing isn't the real red flag for why it's problematic, though it doesn't help, peoples' perceptions being what they are. I've told people that there are adults that can pass as teens or younger before more obvious signs of aging kick in and most of the time they get it^note Though on the opposite end, to this day I still have arguments with people who keep conflating having a large chest with being sexually active and more "adult" than other women (or in a nutshell, big boobs=older), despite the fact that even in real life, there are girls who are buxom at rather young ages, they're just not nearly as common as anything in anime would have you believe.... Heck, I started playing Fate/Grand Order and while I don't have the character, I was told that, supposedly, Shuten Doji, who has a petite design, was based on her similarly petite voice actress, which isn't that unusual (One Piece, for instance, has a bunch of characters based on real people as well). However, she (the character) is constantly mistaken for a token loli, despite all her mannerisms indicating that she is very old (and almost absurdly sexual).

Anyways, it's a matter of characterization that's been the problem, mostly for the Older Than They Look and Really 700 Years Old types, which fall flat if the character exhibits childlike behavior, which seems to be most of the time. Especially since anime tends to use young characters and teens in almost everything, as well as having characters act cute or childlike because people find it appealing.

You know what character did the loli angle good despite looking like a camera cosplay whore? hilda from stella glow. she looked likke a child, sounded like an adult and goddamn acted like one.

He covers the history of anime video games and their visual evolution. His reading of the script is exhausting and intense to listen to in a video that is just over 30 full minutes long, even with a section devoted to jiggle physics!

Aaaaand at the end he states one very important bit if trivia that makes me understand him a ton more: ... he went to school for gaming development. It makes me wonder if he even released any games!

Edited by kyun on Sep 9th 2018 at 5:16:28 AM

Hmm, I wonder then why his video game videos seems to be in general his least informed videos?

(dramatic flashbacks to the utter nonsense that was the Uncharted video)

I don't think I've seen that one. What did he get wrong?

He also mentions in a reply to a comment that he's written for a couple of episodes of Did You Know Gaming. I wonder which episodes those were. Although I remember him talking about (or at least mentioning) his gaming background in another video (probably his "Yu-Gi-Oh Saved Me" vid)...

Overall, I actually enjoyed this one (I guess I shouldn't be surprised that one of the first instances of anime in video games was a porn title; I've heard it said that porn is often the inspiration behind a lot of technological advances in media), but it's not going to be a video I revisit too often. Bonus points for mentioned and/or talking about series I love^note Custom Robo, classic Phantasy Star, Ys... heck, even Senran Kagura got an admittedly expected mention once he started gushing about Jiggle Physics.

Edited by Customer on Sep 10th 2018 at 2:14:51 PM

I did find it less informative though since I'm not really convinced all of stuff included was anime storytelling tropes and not just Japanese entertainment tropes Plus since he keeps joking about Superior Anime Tropes its distracting.

Anyway, I didn't comment on it earlier, but I feel like commenting that his episode on good example of fanservice annoys me since he hasn't read the manga(I hate that manga btw, but I'm really bored when I'm procrastinating plus I do consider reading bad isekai to see how bad it gets kind of a hobby) far enough to see what the actual demon lord looks like(thats the part where I was like "Okay no, this shit isn't worth even while too bored")

Spoiler tag if you care about web novel adaption isekai ecchi spoilers Demon Lord manifests(probably due to imperfect ritual) as little girl who barely wears anything and she is bribed with cookies to not destroy humanity. Basically, she is a kid who acts like a kid who wears even less than that adult who looks like a kid :P I heavily doubt that this anime adaption is going to avoid the creepy loli stuff judging by the manga

That said, I didn't watch the video because of distaste I had for manga, but judging by summary, he hasn't read the manga so he doesn't know that it will get sleazier <_<

Edited by SpookyMask on Sep 13th 2018 at 2:15:51 PM

I was already iffy on this anime anyway, but wow that sounds shit.

In general, I don't see why the heck you would declare something as "good ecchi" before you have seen how sleazy it gets by the end of season at least <_< Its seems too premature to me.

...Pun not intended goddamit

This might lead to another Darling in the Franxx situation.

Well depends on whether ecchi fans are big enough perverts to not care when gross stuff happens. Either way, it definitely at least eliminates one of his points

In which he explains (or attempts to explain) what makes Planet With so good, and is naturally sponsored by Crunchyroll themselves after he pestered them so much about going on and on about it. I find it interesting how most of the anime/manga he enjoys are all stuff I have never watched or read.

then go Ahead and watch or read them if he convinces you to.

No need to be snippy about his sponsorships, it’s not that big a deal to me anymore.

Planet With is honestly great though, even if it doesn't get much discussion for some reason

None of the anime this season get much discussion, really…

It's not a great season. Planet With and Hero Aca are the only things I'm watching.

Well the third season of Attack on Titan is airing, but no one seems to be talking about it/

The corresponding manga arc was viewed as rather slow and plodding which probably put a damper on enthusiasm

Not to mention the gap between seasons killed the show's momentum.