M: There’s a song by Fatboy Slim I think, called slash dot com, that I’d like to turn into an anime music video. I started a version a while ago, then got distracted for 10 years. Current quality is much better so I figure it’s easier just to start over, because I’m tied more to the music than the video accompanying it. The song itself is high energy and meaningless, so I’ve decided to overlay my own meeting for the video; I need you to help me come up with two lists of recent anime to check out of different types. For preference, something that came out within the last five years, and which has begun finished and ended with a couple seasons. Something that was or still is highly popular, although that popularity doesn’t have to be universal – it can be highly popular in a particular sub genre of anime watchers. One list needs to be populated by shows with a lot of high energy fighting with blades. Stylized, not gritty. The story itself doesn’t have to be uplifting, but a lot of slashing and dashing. And colorful enough that it can mix with other things. Female fighters get an extra point on the scoring. The other list needs to be… Bouncy and silly magic, but not in a fourth wall breaking way. Something that has a storyline which can at least be called good – this is important because it has to also be… There are anime where the bouncing young women in tight clothes are defended by fans as not being fan service because there’s a reason for their outfits or whatever. This should not include those; I’m looking for the kind of thing where a demon girl fights with a lot of jumping around in an outfit that should in reality either fall off or be burned off– and isn’t self-conscious about it unless someone actually comments directly to her. The best example I can think of that is older than what I’m looking for is the Queen’s Blade series. You probably could measure the eligibility for both of these lists by comparing it to that show. Blatant fan service without character, self-consciousness, and a lot of stylized fighting with swords. I know there were a few versions of Queens blade and I can’t remember which one I’m specifically referencing, but I have a feeling they all kind of follow the same idea where women are fighting with swords containing more surface area than the average outfit. We’re shooting for the shows that seek amusement by seeing how close they can get to hentai without crossing the line. In terms of that line, agent aika is comparable: almost every character is dressed in a skirt and lance straddling the camera to the point that the watcher gets accustomed to spreading eagle panty shots every 10 seconds. And it still has a decent plot line, at least for the period when it came out. The only reason it didn’t count in the first place is that it’s more shooting and hand to hand combat than what the video I’m thinking of calls for. Agent aika and Queens Blade should give you a good place to triangulate what I’m shooting for. Can you give me a first draft of those two lists?

M: I will check these out on my own. Try drafting me a new list, with the idea of having two separate lists, but with the priority of each being the secondary priority of the other. And I know I said popular; it might be better to rephrase that to“critically enjoyed”, maybe with an ad qualification of ensemble cast rather than single protagonist or antagonist. What made me think of it was the suggestion of kill la kill; I liked the show and the style would have been appropriate, but I’m trying to make it so that the emphasis is on getting the most exciting battle shots without regard for the character – and both i and the rest of the Internet are way too focused on that particular heroine. Queen‘s Blade worked partly because of its story structure – there was no single main character, so I didn’t either focus on them particularly or focus on avoiding them so that I didn’t focus on them. Does that make sense?

M: No grid, but let’s try one more list. Go heavy on the fan service in both of them. I just watched my first version, and I can summarize what I mean in a single few frames from that: a stylized leap high into the air and sword drop directly at the camera so quickly that unless you’re the one editing the video, it might take your brain a moment to realize that the woman was wearing shoulder pads, a thong which the artist made sure was visibly just shy of a camel toe in the three frames where it’s close enough to notice while editing, and boots halfway between drag queen and dominatrix. If there’s a theme to the video, I want to create, it’s a non-pretentious and laughing version of pointing out sex and violence in anime – not as a moral judgment, but showing how often it dances up to making things morally questionable. Amusement at the technical skill of making things just barely PG in each dash a 500/attack with a razor sharp sword, only leaves the target looking slightly bruised/dirty, and with an outfit, coincidentally, torn to shreds, except for pristine underwear that nevertheless has crawled up their butt crack as far as it can, without forcing their labia to open simply from the pressure. It’s ridiculously entertaining and also ridiculouslyamusing how much human effort is putting into making sure that those little bits of pink and red don’t show up in a way that everyone else thinks is acceptable.

M: Sounds like we’ve got the right target. I think I was dancing around it because… Well, I am a well mannered western male. Even the privacy of talking to your phone isn’t enough to automatically overcome the reticence. Can you please tell me three things on that last list– and in fact, on the previous lists as well. One, I assume there’s at least one male protagonist in some of them, either one who starts off, fighting or learns to fight as part of the story progression; please give me a quick list of which ones fall into that trope or something near it. Two, kill la kill likely got popular because it had a good story along with a lot of bouncing flesh; which of the shows you listed have either what could be called without reservation a good story, or at least one so fast paced, and temporarily coherent that you don’t realize how stupid it was until you finish the entire series (a la evil dead/army of darkness). Good doesn’t matter, but it has to be entertaining to make the grade for this qualification; if I’m going to try to watch these, I need to know which ones I should make some time for and which ones I can just put in the background while working on something else and get an idea of the visualbits because I’ve seen enough anime to fill in the blanks on my own. Third, can you tell me which if any of these are available on Crunchyroll?

M: Valkyrie drive is a bit too blatant. It’s maybe usable, but there’s not nearly as much swords and too far into the ecchi to be the primary source. I’m amused by it, but what I’m looking for is a little bit… Closer to the NSFW line.. It can still be on the filthier side of that line, but when I’ve seen more nipples rubbing against each other than actual battle footage five episodes in, we’re just not in the Queen’s Blades sweet spot of being more directly sexual than if the characters were just straight up naked without actually being technically past a PG rating. R and NC 17 are fine, but the fan service PG is really the key. I don’t mean this literally, but we’re looking for something where the artist has decided to make sure you know where the clitoris is through the tight tiny battle panties – but that doesn’t explicitly use manual stimulation as a key point of its plot. It’s… I’m a red blooded, heterosexual male, enjoy a good nude figure, but it’s like… I watch anime for the ridiculous things that just don’t look as easy when you produce them in reality, even with really good CGI. That could be anything from a 10 foot robot doing backflips at a speed that technically would start causing sonic booms given its dimensions, to a battle bikini that somehow gives the ideal wedgy from the back yet never manages to split the labia as the warrior executes a literal ass attack. It’s the casual inclusion of impossibility with a few strokes. At that point, ridiculous, anatomy and bouncing is fine, even welcome if done well. But when it boils down to high schoolers fondling each other in a way that isn’t quite realistic… I know it might work for some other people, but it actually reduces my interest, both artistically and Erotically. The human imperfections of a nipple which would be arousing in reality become almost depressing to me when I realize that someone has spent so much time on this when they could have been instead creating a giant battle corset, laser fight, or something. Am I getting the point across? Can you summarize what I just rambled about in a couple sentences

M: Please do. Because like I said, the Valkyrie Drive stuff is almost there, but has gone TOO far into the purely sexual. It has gone beyond the desired area where a latex cloud woman might straddle a giant sniper rifle, necessarily in order to fire it in a way that is blatantly sexual, and wandered into the area of too much cheesecake, where the latex woman is topless and clearly mounting the rifle just for the sexual thrill.

M: I’m going to alter what I said before. I stand behind the causality and artistic theory about erotic versus blatant, and all that, and would appreciate it if you took it into consideration. But I want to modify my particular critique of Valkyrie drive in this particular instance. I could overlook the breast focus and the high school frottage and everything – I mean, literally, that’s when I go check my email or something until those scenes have finished – but they’re just isn’t enough action for this particular effort here. Or for my personal tastes in general, but that’s neither here nor there. I could work around the shots where nipples were poking out out of damage or something like that if there were good fight scenes – but I’m halfway through episode six and I think there’s been like three major fights for maybe a total of five minutes. I’m sitting through a goddamn beauty pageant in episode six and it’s not even looking like it’s going to end with some form of ballroom or bikini fight for the crown. The point is, the way I put it earlier might have implied that this degree of ecchi should be avoided; this is not so. However, it certainly does not serve my purposes to value perv over battle. If all I wanted was fighting, I probably could have gotten what I wanted just by going through a canonical viewing of all the Gundam stuff. And if I wanted just minimal outfits or less, this might do the trick. But the breasts need blades, and the blades need breasts for this project.

M: Exactly. Like before with the snapper analogy, and the girls straddling the guns – if you can get me an anime that has both, or an anime that has each, as long as the fight is there, I can cut out the stuff that goes overboard. But there’s no way for me to make up for anything that falls short.

M: i just had a notion to round out the explanation of why Valkyrie Drive isn't working for me in general and this specific: there's no point at which the ecchi gets normalized, at least not yet in my viewing. compare to Agent Aika - crotch shots galore, but most of them aren't lingered over, not unless it actually applies to the plot. Valkyrie, though, doesn't let it go. every goddamn kiss is zoomed in on and eroticised. any arguable personal issue that may or may not exist aside, it wastes time and isn't either aesthetically or erotically beneficial. the zooms on tongues become blocks of single color because of the nature of the medium, and jolts all but the most hardcore enthusiasts of yuri out of the scene flow; you know what's coming, so you look away for a while til the show continues. you know what it's like? it's like calling a pile of sugar dessert. when you have nothing -but- sweetness, it doesn't matter how much of a sweet tooth someone has, it starts feeling bland. by contrast, Aika lets the perv become the norm - so even though everyone in the show is wearing some form of fetish outfit, it still can be outrageous or aesthetically awesome when it's called for.

M: or here's another way of putting it - it's like the people framing the shot wanted -every- frame to qualify as cheesecake at a minimum; and in doing so, lost the ability to catch the ebb and flow of movement that makes for good action. as a parallel, the photo shoots that produce a good swimsuit issue aren't exactly thrilling to watch in action.

M: i've been ranting for a bit, and you seem to have a grasp on the new commentary... try giving me a new list?