Discussion Main / IReadItForTheArticles

Cut examples of this as audience reaction:

Anime and Manga

• Spice And Wolf: Due to the fact that the first episode prominently features the female lead stark naked. She's not human, but that can lead people to the wrong conclusions easily enough. Ironically after that you don't really need an excuse to enjoy Spice And Wolf as it's an extremely well-written and well-animated series, although Your Mileage May Vary if you find it a bit too talky.
  • In fact, the original name of this trope was I Watch It For The Economics.
• People who say they watch Ikkitousen for the characters. There are some pretty good characters and an intriguing story, to the point that some people get annoyed by all of the Panty Shots and Fanservice.
• Watching Naruto, Bleach, and almost every, if not all other popular shounen series almost require this. When they come up in discussion in larger IRC channels, there's so much flak-deflection going on that it's like watching one of those 200-participant Tai Chi exercise movements.
• Watching Kamen No Maid Guy for Kogarashi and his 37 senses.
• Despite the large Lolicon fandom, a good number of people watch Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha for the characters, story, battles, and Humongous Mecha anime references and try to distance themselves from the loli-lovers as much as possible.
  • Rarer, but some people don't watch it for the lesbian overtones.
• Axis Powers Hetalia is about international relations. If You Know What I Mean.
• Kodomo No Jikan is filled with explicit lolicon fanservice, but fans insist that there's a heartwarming and tender romance story underneath all that.
• Anyone who has read Onani Master Kurosawa will tell you it's because of its story or its character development. While this may be true... nobody will believe it.
  • Though for a manga about masturbation, it's really relatively tame on the fanservice scale.
• Most ''When They Cry'' fans do not (simply) like the show for the gore or "crazy" lolis. In fact, the gore is rare and always has a reason, and almost no one is crazy.
• Elfen Lied has tits in every episode, but fans only watch it for the gratuitous blood and gore.
• If you think watching Nanoha is hard, you should've been around for Card Captor Sakura: characters half as old carrying ten times the subtext*
  ^{uphill both ways!}
  , and battles? You wish!
• I watch High School Of The Dead for the interesting sociological implications of a real-world Zombie Apocalypse as seen thru the eyes of ordinary teenagers; the gratuitous T&A is a bonus.

Comic Books

• DO you read Empowered for the titular heroine's unfortunate accidents? Of course not! You read it for the Deconstruction of the misogyny of the comic book medium and the clever and subversive characterization of Fanservice.
• Of course I read Lost Girls for the lesbian por... er, the Deconstruction of the classical stories and pre-World War I society.

Film

• Come on, who hasn't watched some piece of crap because an actor you liked was in it? Although the poor, tortured Kate Hudson fans have to take the cake on this one. Sympathy hugs, you little troopers.
  • On that note, it's perfectly acceptable to watch the prequel trilogy for Ian "Palpatine" McDiarmid, and you damn well know it.
  • A better example is watching anything (Star Wars prequels included) because it features Samuel L. Motherfucking Jackson.
  • Of course sometimes you have to consider some crap movies are only worthy because of certain actors in the cast.
• There is a pantomime version of this in Charlie Chaplin's City Lights where the Tramp's attention is drawn to a nude classical statue in a storefront window. Realizing what he is doing, he immediately starts looking at the statue with the poise of an art expert, as if judging the statue abstractly and not simply ogling it.
• Do people still try to excuse watching Showgirls?
• Nobody actually watches the Saw series for gore. They watch it for the intricate plot.

Literature

• For a surprising number of people, the Harry Potter novels seem to require some rationalization for reading (let alone enjoying) them. Perhaps not too surprising given the fact it was originally marketed at children before sheer popularity and acclaim made the adult readership more 'acceptable'. Now its considered one of those so-called 'crossover' series, though in many stores, the whole series is still sold as children literature.
  • Rowling has stated she intended the series to 'grow' with the readers as her original target demographic would have aged between releases.
• People read Kushiel's Legacy novels for the politics, religion and epic questing, not the numerous extended BDSM sex scenes.
• Many people claim to only read Twilight to make fun of it.

Live-Action TV

• Many Heroes fans declare that the only reason they give the series the time of day is because of a character or two whom they like.
• Smallville has this as well. Either you watch it for the comicbook references, or perhaps Chloe, or for the Clex Ho Yay.
• How many people out there only watch NCIS because of Abby Sciuto?
• Mythbusters: "I watch it for the science."
• Glee has this on two levels — you claim you watch it for the comedic deconstruction of High School shows, rather than the music. But half the time you actually suffer through some Cliché Storm plotlines and dialogue thinking "when's the next song, already?"
  • Then there are those who say they watch it for the music, rather than the overblown teen drama, but we all know they're dying to know when (insert any two characters here) are gonna hook up.

Periodicals

• Amusingly, for a long time Playboy paid better per word than almost any other magazine; as such it attracted some serious writing talent. That Other Wiki points out that along with interviews with all sorts of famous people (Martin Luther King and Fidel Castro for example), Playboy has featured short stories by Arthur C Clarke, Ian Fleming, Margaret Atwood, and even the original A Christmas Story. One issue even has article written by Elliott Gould - look it up - wherein he tells of his recent trip to Disneyland...on acid.
  • Its interviews are often fairly noteworthy in their own right. For example, Jimmy Carter admitting that he's tempted to cheat on his wife, and Metallica revealing just how dysfunctional they actually were in the late 1990's.
  • Playboy used to be downright draconic about what they would accept. Stephen King, in the foreword to one of his short story collections, recounts a time when he brushed off a friend ragging on him for the high cut his agent took from the pay from a story: "He damn well earned it. He got me in Playboy."
  • The novel Fahrenheit 451 actually started off life as a series of short stories in Playboy.
  • I.Z.E.T.I.T. once analyzed the contents of a Playboy:
    • Vehicles: 12 g and 0.2115 m²
    • Girls 36 g and 0.415 m²
    • Articles and other interesting content (the entire rest?): 274 g
  • Playboy is also one of the few magazines which are also published in braille so that blind people can read the articles. Not only that, but that publication is government-subsidized...and when the United States Congress tried to cut off the funding in the '80s, that move was ruled unconstitutional as a First Amendment violation.
• The articles in Mayfair Magazine (still the leading men's rag in the UK) are commonly of topics suited to The History Channel ([1]) or Discovery, such as articles on the common myths surrounding Drake's defeat of the Spanish Armada or the tactics and techniques of contemporary era snipers, or the design of new-line Rolls Royce engines. It's quite common for readers to get the mag for the women, and stay to read the articles.

Video Games

• Every eroge ever. You play it for gameplay or the story, but never the porn.
• Those who play "Bayonetta" will justifiably say they play it for the excellent action gameplay. Some will also refer to the fanservice as a high-minded jab at fanservice in general.
• Most Disgaea fans will claim to play it for the gameplay and cracky storyline. They, of course, are totally lying◊.
• Ah. The things you can learn from Bible Black. It's not just the story that can serve as an excuse. You have no idea how much you can learn from reading the cultural references heavy conversations. That is if you read them instead of just skimming over to get to the good stuff.
• The Dead Or Alive series shamelessly invokes this trope. Puzzling in that the gameplay isn't even bad to begin with.
• Eroge aside, Brave Soul is still basically a perfectly ordinary RPG with a romance plot. Except, you get to do the girl on screen.
• Anyone who has ever said "I play World Of Warcraft for the story."
• Let me guess, you play Sono Hanabira Ni Kuchizuke Wo for the romance, the interesting characters, and the funny Slice of Life comedy and not the incredibly well-drawn lesbian sex scenes, right? Actually, though, this view is apparently pretty common - Fuguriya recently finished a totally sex-free Hanabira game called 'Hanahira!' because many female fans of the series enjoyed exactly these things and wanted a Hanabira game they wouldn't have to hide they play.
• Inverted with Touhou Project: Many fans don't play the games for the Bullet Hell gameplay (although there are plenty that do), instead preferring the characters, the plot, the memes, the music, and of course, the Yuri Shipping. In fact, the games don't even have any FanService.

Web Original

• The cover story for going to TV Tropes.
• Urban Dictionary
• Wikipedia, especially when you look up smut on it.
• Joining an online forum

Real Life

• "I only go to Hooters because the wings are so good."

Linking to a past Trope Repair Shop thread that dealt with this page: Too much justifying, started by Cliche on Nov 27th 2010 at 8:20:59 PM

"Some have actually said "I watch it ironically" unironically." Wait, wouldn't that mean they genuinely watch it ironically? Isn't that the opposite of the point that's trying to be made?