12 Days, 12 Moments 2010: Endless Pleasure Sticks

Or, what better phrase than Otou-san’s “endless pleasure sticks” to describe the fine, long-legged ladies of two mid-year shows, Occult Academy and Ookami-san and Her Seven Friends?

In the summer came two shows that featured strong female protagonists, and, for some reason, offered plenty of thigh fan-service at the same time, as if they were connected. Both were grumpy tsundere types, both were excellent fighters, both were paired up with weak male protagonists, and both were in shows that did not live up to their potential in the end—Occult Academy in particular (though its final episode went some ways in redeeming it). The fan-service angle was notably more restrained than usual for current anime, confining itself  to the aforementioned sticks. An attempt to create a new fetish, akin to the knee kissing scene, perhaps?

Both Occult Academy and Ookami-san tried to break the mold somewhat: the former with a somewhat convoluted time-travel story, the latter by rearranging traditional fairy tales into modern moe anime archetypes. Both concepts sounded better on paper than they were executed, a malady of many a mediocre show. Occult Academy had a lot going  for it though: Maya is an interesting and sympathetic character, though she comes off as such mainly in contrast to ultimate-weenie Bunmei. There were even fewer interesting characters in Ookami-san, which I never managed to finish.

So why include “endless pleasure sticks” as a moment for the year? Admittedly, it was the phrase itself triggered the memory of the shows—a triumph of Internet phraseology and Otou-san’s creativity at the very least in the context of our little aniblog community. So the moment may be the phrase/meme itself rather than the shows it refers to. The community may not be a 2chan or Nico Nico or other huge fan community based in Japan, with its size and influence, but from one blogger to another, it’s cool to start mini-trends. 🙂 I’ll always think of the summer of 2010 whenever I remember those words from now on.

The “12 Days, 12 Moments” series is part of an aniblogosphere-wide project to blog about the most memorable moments in anime for the year in the 12 days before Christmas. It was started in 2007 by CCY of Mega Megane Moe. Others participating this year include Aorii, 8C, prototype27, Scamp, schneider, Borderline Hikkikomori, TWWK, Landon, Janette, digiboy, drmchsr0, doctordazza, Fawkes, FNSNA, super rats, Jubbz, RP, TheBigN, Jinx, mefloraine, Caraniel, glothelegend, Chii, Valence, dai1313, and bitmapchaos.