High School DxD, a series seemingly eager to share the bare flesh of its female characters at every opportunity before its release, has finally done just that – giving us the sight of all four female characters completely nude.
Yet as if that alone is not enough to entice you to watch, they offer an additional two angles of undressed bishoujo – alongside several up-close and assorted shots of their sensitive spots in case you needed to further examine them for whatever purpose.
Jan 2, 2012 @ 10:16 CDT
Given that one will certainly see Rias (the red-haired female protagonist) naked in the first episode of High School DxD, I suppose you could see this as the equivalent of going all in in a game of poker rather than trying to bide your time.
In all seriousness though, if you’re going to go out of your way to show all your main females naked before the anime even starts… what else have you got?
Assuming this first cour to incorporate the first six volumes at best, and having skimmed through the story up until that point; beyond a bit of foreplay here and there, there really isn’t much else to look forward to fan service wise. It’s near a guaranteed certainty that the story itself will be pretty lackluster with little actual character development, and the action, while perhaps being somewhat nice to look at, probably won’t be anything too special.
Perhaps when you’re betting near all your sales on fan service and naked bishoujos, sometime you go in with everything you’ve got or none at all.
Jan 2, 2012 @ 11:47 CDT
The only way this series can amount to anything at this point in terms of sales is like you’ve said, they need to output an outrageous amount of indecency and skin to succeed.
Jan 2, 2012 @ 12:11 CDT
That’s the best guess I can come up with at this point, but that’s exactly the double-edged sword of a problem that this sort of a strategy, if you can call this that that is, comes with.
As far as my understanding of fan service goes, any series that’s going to bet a good bit of its sales on it will lure you in gradually and then hit you with some really eye-spinning stuff later on. Offset what you’ll lose in the earlier episodes with some halfway decent story telling (C3 could fall into this category) and then draw in the otaku, lolicons, and other perverted individuals with unnecessary fan service via a self-made ending in the later episodes.
As you’ve said, when you do what High School DxD is doing and go all in right at the beginning, you need to keep piling in and really push the proverbial envelope in order to make your mark or beyond.
The real problem here is the lack of buildup and the following decline in interest accompanied by the set limits of what you can show in a televised anime. Even if you’re shooting for a second season (I would be indescribably stunned if that happened here) or even just an OVA (Much more likely. Even a crap adaptation like Itsu-Ten and Hoshizora got OVAs), you keep your audience by letting them know that they have something even better to look forward to.
This is time-honored strategy not only in anime, but in any decent television series. High School DxD has near flipped that on its head, to whatever end I don’t know. This sort of thing is near unprecedented, so it’s going to be very interesting to see how it turns out.
Mar 20, 2012 @ 8:43 CDT
I doubt that they will have too much difficulty with sales. It is a sad fact that sex sells… way more than it should. If it has nude females in it, it will certainly get a great amount of attention… not to mention the money that it will make outside of the anime with body pillows, figurines, etc.
Mar 28, 2012 @ 11:44 CDT
And the results are in – sales successful.
http://seventhstyle.com/2012/03/27/high-school-dxd-outsells-all-except-lolis/
Mar 28, 2012 @ 12:21 CDT
Let the perverted otaku have their day, I say. Try as they might, truly epic and deserving series maintain their fight as they rightly should.
Apr 1, 2012 @ 1:20 CDT
Amen Brother, every season has it’s time, and now it’s time for T and A with a dose of uncensored fun, woohoo!