Forum - View topic

REVIEW: Free! - Iwatobi Swim Club Sub.DVD

Why is it that ANN reviewers get hostile and turn on their feminist goggles when they're reviewing anime which sexualize females in order to pander to males, but it's totally okay and hot to sexualize males for female convenience?

I'll have ya know that a relative's best friend's cousin's female confidant said it's true! Makes sense; after all, what else are they gonna do in there

I'm a big fan of reverse harem anime, but for some reason I couldn't get into Free!. Maybe because most of the characters are too moe for my taste.

No idea why people are bitching about this.

How many of the shows objectifying men are doing so in a manner that also plays into power fantasies about subjugation? How many of them rely on negative stereotypes about men in their character writing, only to then turn the man into an object of sexual desire and little else?

I am never, ever going to understand why so many guys think that the fanservice in Free! is comparable to the fanservice in the shows that tend to get panned here.

If Free! was anything like the typical 'lets see how far we can push the envelope' tripe that comes out at least once a season, you would see the following:

-Repeated nudity, and often (probably censored with beams of light)
- Crotch bulges that are painstakingly outlined as to actually depict the shape of the genitalia; also moving
-At least once an episode, Gou would accidentally land her hand or face on one of these bulges and the guys would cry out in suggestive embarassment
-extremely long scenes of the boys sucking on/eating suggestive and/or goopy food
-a scene where one of the boys trips and the goopy food gets all over him and theres a slow pan with him in a submissive pose that looks like it was pulled from a H-manga as he cries
-During the intense swimming scenes, someones swimwear would come off due to the sheer speed at which they are swimming, and they cry pathetically about it while screaming at the others not to look (the camera does so anyway)
-Every time anyone leans over or down or even moves at all, their ass would fill the entire screen.
-Literally nothing happening per episode but these things

How many of the shows objectifying men are doing so in a manner that also plays into power fantasies about subjugation? How many of them rely on negative stereotypes about men in their character writing, only to then turn the man into an object of sexual desire and little else?

Pretending that the playing field is totally equal and that these two things are exactly alike, although one gets "picked on" unfairly more than the other, is disingenuous at best.

Regardless, fanservice gets called out usually if the series has one of two traits: either the show has nothing to offer BUT fanservice, and thus isn't a very good show, or the fanservice is going hand-in-hand with a bunch of really crappy regressive attitudes about women. If it's just boobs, rarely is that ever treated like a negative on its own.

Also please continue to mansplain to the women here what they're supposed to like in entertainment because that never, ever gets old and irritating and is something I never get sick of seeing every time the topic of Free comes up.

You know why? It's because men and women have different tastes in their fanservice. Men usually like their fanservice and/or porn to be more hardcore and perverted because, well, stronger visual stuff titillates us more than love and feelings. Women prefer more emotion-based stimulation and that's why Free! nor fujoshi shows will never rival the debauchery found in otaku-pandering shows.

You haven't actually disputed what people are saying about why feminists would object to one type of fanservice and not the other, just said "well that's the way it is because men and women like different things in their porn" (which is a dubious statement in the first place, and undermined by what you also say about yaoi).

But even if that were so, that doesn't change the core of people's objections to it. That doesn't change why someone who cares about feminism would be alarmed by one and not the other.

And it has none of its issues, because it's just a bunch of dudes prancing about half-naked.

Love Stage had no rape scene. It had an attempted assault scene

As a long time anime fan and buyer, I do have to wonder at how spoiled we've become. When I started collecting you got 2 episodes on VHS for $20 -$30. If you were lucky there was a dubbed version but mostly it was subtitled. Then DVD hit and people just went through the roof praising the quality of the image, the actual option of having subtitled and dubbed on the same disc and 4 whole episodes per disc?! for the same price we used to pay for those pathetic VHS tapes?! OMG!!! It was a golden age.

Now? Still the same old tired arguments re: sub v. dub, that will never change. But if there is no Blu-Ray with all the bells and whistles and pencil boards and boxes and bandannas and mouse pads and cell phone charms and art books? God help the poor bastard that puts out that piece of crap because NO ONE will buy it. Yeah. That'll show them the error of their ways and make them spend an absolute fortune putting out a product even fewer people will be able to afford to buy and even fewer who can actually tell the difference in quality.

And if we want to have a physical copy of a show we want to support? 12 episodes will cost you twice what it cost on VHS. And the costlier the set, the bigger the bragging rights. Are you kidding me? And the only way a cheaper version will be put out is if the crazy expensive one sells out quickly enough to justify it. If you're lucky.

How quickly we forget the tiny, tiny little niche we inhabit.

As a long time anime fan and buyer, I do have to wonder at how spoiled we've become. When I started collecting you got 2 episodes on VHS for $20 -$30. If you were lucky there was a dubbed version but mostly it was subtitled. Then DVD hit and people just went through the roof praising the quality of the image, the actual option of having subtitled and dubbed on the same disc and 4 whole episodes per disc?! for the same price we used to pay for those pathetic VHS tapes?! OMG!!! It was a golden age.