Akebi-Chan No Sailor-Fuku is a simple story of a girl from what even the cast of Non Non Biyori would call the sticks, who has spent the entirety of primary school being the only pupil in her class, going to the middle school of her dreams. A school her mother also attended, where she will finally get to wear a sailor uniform. She always wanted to wear one because her favourite idol wore one as well. And then it turns out the school uniform changed to blazers years before. Whoops. Luckily the head of the school allows Akebi-chan to wear her sailor uniform anyway, seeing as how much she wanted to and how much work her mother put in it to create it. That’s basically the first episode, but that simple story isn’t what you watch this show for. No, it’s the sheer pleasure and joy with which Akebi-Chan No Sailor-Fuku shows off its protagonist’s physicality, the confidence with which hair, clothing and body movement are animated:
Much of the craft shown in this first episode is explained by the presence of Megumi Kouno, who e.g. animated some of the best sequences in the original IdolM@ster series. It all looks great, a standout in a season full of duller, by the numbers series, but there’s something slightly uncomfortable about it. As Alex Henderson noted in their review it all feels a bit fetishy?
I’m sure it’s not an aspect that everyone will notice, and it’s not an aspect that will detract from everyone’s experience with the show. And it’s a fraught topic to discuss, because it’s not “fan service” in the traditional use of the word, not explicitly sexual imagery or framing or placing the female characters in compromising positions. There’s a scene of Komichi and her little sister in the bath together that manages to be very frank and un-leery about their nudity, which I was impressed by until I started noticing other things that the storyboarding did focus on with an adoring intensity: an extra-shiny pair of lips here, an extra-crinkly piece of fabric against a girl’s body there.
Then Komichi walks in on a new classmate mid-pedicure, and this habit becomes hard to ignore. And it… complicates things, because I genuinely do want to praise this show for its use of visual storytelling and characterization. I want to nod and smile and say this show did a great job using the visual medium to provide a window into the emotional day-to-day life of a pretty authentic-feeling young teen girl. I want to be able to celebrate the intricate, intimate picture this premiere builds without wondering if all this detail was put there for as fetish fuel for someone.
There’s nothing of the usual fanservice in Akebi-Chan: no leering camera angles, no accidental groping, no overtly emphasises busts or butts, nothing that we’ve learned to recognise as fanservice. Akebi-chan’s clothing, including her sailor outfit is more practical and far less sexy than that of most anime school girls. When there is nudity, it’s non-sexual: Akebi taking a bath with her little sister, Akebi trying on her new uniform. And yet…
Is it because we’re trained by other anime that we see some of this as fetishised, as sexual, like the pedicure scene Alex mentions? Or is this fetishistic but in a way we’re not familiar with? And if so, is this bad? Having read through the manga after having seen this first episode and pondering Alex’s review, I can’t help but think that it is the mangaka’s fetish, their obsessions that makes the series what it is. There are entire chapters that are little more than an excuse to show off Akebi in movement, dancing or running or playing. The author seems obsessed with making sure the way her clothing and hair move are as pretty as possible. To choose a girl in middle school seems dodgy, but it never quite felt sexualised for me? It’s more like the artist just likes to draw pretty people, something that becomes very clear with Akebi’s father, who looks like the sort of fifties deep in the closet sports hunk.
For me, if this is indeed the result of the author’s fetishes, I can live with that. Reardless of the author’s intentions, it doesn’t come over as wank fodder. What attracts me in both the manga and the anime is the beauty of bodies in motion and the way it’s depicted for me stays on the right side of creepy. Your mileage may vary of course; I can well understand that for other people this is too fetishistic, too reminiscent perhaps of how some people look at you in real life.
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