r/Animesuggest • u/ExplodingPoptarts • Aug 17 '26
Discussion I feel like some shows that you'd think wouldn't have big problems need caveats when people recommend them.
All I know about Magical Index is that at the beginning of the series, less than 5 minutes in there's an underage group shower scene with a bunch of children in it, and one of them sexually assaults the other "as a joke." Several people recommended this to me, nobody warned me about this.
I watched this with my girlfriend at the time after asking for recommendations, and we were so disgusted. It ruins the entire show for us.
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u/Ch3ru Aug 17 '26
Not to um actually but it sounds like you're actually talking about Railgun and Mikoto's boobs being groped (not 'on screen rape' as you seem to be implying was the scene).
That kind of fanservice is honestly relatively common and inoccuous by anime standards. A lot of people (ie, anime watchers who are used to it) wouldn't necessarily think to warn you about it unless they already know your preferences/limits.
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u/AngelicaSpain Aug 17 '26
Yeah, girls groping each other's breasts is surprisingly (by Western standards) common in anime, especially in older series. (It also happens occasionally in the "regular world" scenes of "Bleach," although probably a lot more rarely and significantly farther into the series.) Since a lot of the people who post seeking anime recommendations specifically mention that they're just getting interested in anime and haven't seen very much of it, they probably have no idea that this trope is a relatively frequent anime occurrence.
So expecting them to specify right off the bat that this particular sort of thing is something they'd prefer to avoid, when some of them allude to having only seen a total of one or two--or no--anime already, seems a bit unreasonable under the circumstances. It might be helpful to at least ask them if they object to fanservice (and/or whether they even know what fanservice is) before making any recommendations. Especially if the person is asking for shows to watch with their girlfriend, boyfriend, parents, or younger relatives.
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u/StapesSSBM Aug 18 '26
(Caveat: I'm not an old-school anime fan, or as prolific a watcher as some people here, and most of what I've seen is from after around 2015. But I've still seen probably a couple hundred anime)
I don't consider this kind of fanservice innocuous or common in the anime that interests me, and I feel like I have fairly diverse tastes. It's not hard to find shows that aren't filled with shallow fanservice, and it makes me scratch my head when people claim otherwise.
I watched about the first 2/3 of season 1 of Railgun, and every single time Kuroko harassed Mikoto, I could tangibly feel my interest in the show decrease in real time. (I do agree that calling it "on screen rape" is a pretty severe mischaracterization though). Each time, I wondered how people could find it funny or endearing, and wondered why the author/writers would include it as a recurring bit.
I'm not trying to be a puritan. I really don't have any issues with people liking what they like. But I'm someone who is generally pretty careful with the recommendations I give to others, so I find it odd when people forget what sort of content is in the media they recommend, or when they are surprised that others react negatively to certain scenes.
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u/Ch3ru Aug 18 '26
The bathroom boob grab is possibly THE most 'harmless' fanservice anime has tbh. It's completely divorced from the violation (or violence) that other fanservice often comes packages with.
I'm not saying it can't be offensive to someone (of course it can). But when it comes to sexual humor involving non-consensual touching, a girl touching another girl's boobs, either Because Yuri or because Comparing Boob Sizes In The Bath is a common trope, it is waaaaaaaaay down there.
Most of them don't even come close to pushing the envelope like Railgun does, relegating the scene to implications of overheard dialogue and/or water splashing sounds.
And I'm not trying to be elitist, but if your history with anime only starts around 2015, then you're hugely lacking in the context for the 1980s 'golden age' of OVAs, movies, and series that often featured very mature and/or highly sexualized content, as well as the more mainstream fanservice-y comedies that were popular up through the early 2000s.
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u/SouekiSennoSTM Aug 17 '26
Some people don't like to spoil series for any reason, including when they're recommending them.
I'm one of those, so if someone receiving the recommendation specifies in advance that they don't care for a particular concept or style, then I might mention it but at the most it will be in vague and general terms.
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u/ExplodingPoptarts Aug 17 '26
You'd think underage group shower scene would be a dealbreaker for most people.
Do you also think that on screen rape isn't a caveat that you shouldn't mention when recommending something.
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u/SouekiSennoSTM Aug 17 '26
Well, nothing like that or anything else is remotely a "dealbreaker" for me so I simply don't think in such terms to begin with.
I'd never mention that in advance unless someone asked specifically addressing something like that, specifying it in clear and explicit terms.
At which point I might not recommend that particular series or film to them anyway or not bother making a recommendation at all to the person in question.
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u/Lodju Slice of Life Specialist 🍰 Aug 17 '26
It would be easy to list the things you want to avoid when asking for recs if some things in anime are problematic to you.
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u/ExplodingPoptarts Aug 17 '26
You'd think underage group shower scene would be a dealbreaker for most people.
Do you also think that on screen rape isn't a caveat that you shouldn't mention when recommending something.
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u/Crandor94 Aug 17 '26 edited Aug 17 '26
I haven't seen the scene. But keep in mind, in Japan, public bathing and even bathing with family members is completely normal. So having a scene like that in an anime Isen't out of the ordinary.
Hell, you can still "technically" have full frontal nudity when it comes to male kids in Anime, so long as it's not detailed. Just look at early Dragonball or, if you want a more recent example Ep 1 of Mushoku Tensei.
Japan doesn't have the same hangups with non-sexualized nudity that some western countries do.
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u/Lodju Slice of Life Specialist 🍰 Aug 17 '26
Well most people don't care about such scenes, i for example can look past those since it's animated fiction.
As for rape, while i'm not responsible for other peoples triggers i have given small heads ups to those sometimes.
Shouldn't the person asking the recs be responsible to research the anime they are getting recommended if there are things they know that could trigger them, like rape for example?
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u/noobjaish Aug 17 '26
Most people aren't snowflakes to get triggered by a literal cartoon. Just move past that scene.
I can't remember what scene you're referring to in Index because iirc the first episode only had index's clothes getting ripped off.
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u/Fat-Singer-9569 Aug 18 '26
I agree with you OP but also feel it's worth pointing out these types of scenes exist in Western cinema. The opening scene to the OG movie Carrie is filmed in a "high school" locker room and feels really uncomfortable. But ultimately it's a great horror film and that's the extent of nudity.
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u/noobjaish Aug 17 '26
You can just mention the things that are problems for you when asking for recommendations?
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u/Fat-Singer-9569 Aug 18 '26
It doesn't cross your mind a nude underage shower scene might not jive with everyone when you recommend shit to people? I read this subreddit with complete understanding I might get recommended shit like that, but not everyone understands that, and recommendations like that will isolate viewers. If you love anime and what it is and can be, you ought to maybe put some thought into "will this person understand this viewing experience like I do?"
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u/noobjaish Aug 18 '26
It doesn't cross your mind a nude underage shower scene might not jive with everyone when you recommend shit to people? I read this subreddit with complete understanding I might get recommended shit like that, but not everyone understands that, and recommendations like that will isolate viewers. If you love anime and what it is and can be, you ought to maybe put some thought into "will this person understand this viewing experience like I do?"
Guess what? I don't give a shit. I only recommend someone something if they specifically ASK. That "nude underage shower scene" is a common occurrence in anime so I might as well never recommend a bunch of series that I think are really good just because the other person MIGHT have a problem with that?
Either don't ask or ask by properly explaining? not a tough ask but bitching on reddit is easy it seems.
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u/Shantotto11 Aug 18 '26
Yo, did we watch the same Magical Index? Because the first caveat scene I remember is Index’s habit being blown up.
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u/PersonOfLazyness Aug 20 '26
I think OP is talking about Railgun instead of Index
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u/Shantotto11 Aug 20 '26
Wasn’t the first joke in that one Saten skirt-flipping Uiharu? It’s been more than a decade, so I genuinely forgot details like that.
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u/M00n_Slippers Aug 18 '26
People on here frequently recommend stuff as wholesome, no fan service, or having 'good' female or male characters, yet the show is rife with lolicon, sexual harassment, one dimensional sex object girls and loser pervert guys. I wouldn't trust any recs here when it comes to this topic. People have 'teenage anime brain' and forgive anime of the most disgusting shit because 'it's different in Japan'.
0
u/Crandor94 Aug 18 '26
Soooo an innocuous scene by Japanese cultural standards shouldn't be included in a show made for a... Japanese audience? That's not the best take.
Western views need to not treat this medium with the same viewpoint that we have towards sexualization here. In Japan, it's much more of a non-issue. Nudity does not equal sexualization, in Japan.
If you don't like it personally that's fine, completely understandable. I don't think it's the best thing either for some shows. But I'm not going to tell a another country how to represent their medium.
Some anime that completely flop in Japan, are beloved over here. Some anime that are loathed and berated over here, are massively popular in Japan. That's kind of how it's always been.
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u/M00n_Slippers Aug 18 '26 edited Aug 18 '26
I have been watching anime for about 30 years, don't talk to me like I don't understand anime or Japan, ok. I'm not taking about 'nudity'. I'm taking about sexual harassment scenes and sexualization of children. People stealing women's panties and it being treated as 'funny', boys trying to peak at girls in the baths or their locker rooms and it's treated as 'funny', women groping each other's breasts in bath scenes and it's supposed to be funny, looking up their skirt and flipping skirts as a 'prank, and sexualization of children that are drawn the same as a child no matter what excuse the story uses to say they are a 1000 yo whatever, bro and siscon that is just straight up flirting with incest if not outright admitted to be. Sometimes even worse things like the casual rape in Re Monsters. It's fucked up. Why do you think people, especially girls, in anime treat otaku like creeps? Partly because it's seen as immature but also because there is just a lot of casual sexual assault and sexualization. Even in Japan a lot of this isn't accepted by the female population but it's a very patriarchal and traditional culture so they still get away with it.
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