Articles with the Tag Akebi-Chan No Sailor-Fuku

Watching Akebi-chan no Sailor Fuku means you will see a lot of this sort of shot:

Yes, this is an anime that knows what it likes and one thing it likes is feet. It’s not its only fetish, but it is its most obvious. In general Akebi-chan no Sailor Fuku is obsessed with the ways in which its middle school characters move and act, an obsession taken straight from the source material, the manga by Hiro, which had whole chapters devoted to seeing a character dance. Anime of course has the advantage over manga of actually being able to show movement, but nevertheless the care and attention which it lavished on showing this movement is amazing. This is an anime that knows the appeal of its source material and knows it has to do justice to it. The character designs are spot on and lose none of their uniqueness in the translation from manga to anime, looking like no other slice of moe series. The sheer joy with which Hiro depicts Akebi moving and dancing has been captured perfectly. This isn’t fan service in the usual sense. The shot above may be fetishistic, but not sleazy. There’s a certain innocence to it, as I argued after viewing the first episode.

Consider the high light of that first episode, Akebi trying on her sailor outfit for the first time. There are elements to it that certainly are fetish coded, like her putting on her socks for example. But the overall scene is innocent and infused with the happiness she feels finally wearing the uniform she had waited so long for. There’s no feelings that this was drawn for somebody to get their rocks off to. It is indicative of the series as a whole, which always respects its characters even when (especially when) it focuses on them moving their bodies around. Much more than in many series, the characters act through their bodies as much as through their dialogue. You don’t need words to know what Akebi’s feeling in this scene. It’s this level of quality and attention to detail that made this my favourite series of Winter 2022, together with My Dress-Up Darling. It’s this that elevates it from a regular slice of moe series, when the story itself is as simple as “girls makes friends through the power of her sailor uniform”.

That’s after all what Akebi-chan no Sailor Fuku revolves around, as you might’ve guessed from the title. Akebi-chan has always been obsessed with sailor uniforms ever since her favourite pop idol wore one. That’s why she wanted to join her mother’s old middle school, not realising that the school had already moved on to blazers as its uniform until the opening ceremony. Fortunately for her and her mother’s efforts having made her uniform by hand, the kindly principal allows it as it is technically still the school’s uniform. It immediately makes her stand out in her class and the school, but it’s her personality and charm that really captivates her class mates. Throughout the series she functions as a catalyst, getting involved with a new friend every episode, getting to learn their stories. Week in week out it was a pleasure to see Akebi, who came from a primary school where she was the only pupil in her class, discover the fun in being in a class with your friends, getting to hang out with somebody else than your teacher or younger sister. I’d love to see a second season, if it can keep up the high quality.

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.