Monday, April 26, 2010

Embarrassing!


Situation 1: When I’m talking about the swimming pool episode, every anime fan will probably know what I’m talking about – yeah, fanservice. What could possibly be more fun than an episode full of skinny animegirls with various breast sizes (fitting every possible taste guys could have) and Body Mass Indices far under the critical value of 17 splattering around in the pool?

Situation 2: In the world of yaoi-fandom, two hot guys are having sex. They are both skinny, slightly muscular, with big, well-shaped eyes, postures and hairstyles that would turn anyone on. Gorgeous bishies.

Situation 3: A boy and a girl are sitting next to eachother. The boy is having a drink and offers the girl a sip before he finishes.

Question: What do these three situations have in common?
Answer: The sequels to these situations are all inevitably going to feature something like “kyaaaaah, hazukashii!”

Without fail.

Back to the swimming pool episode. When the girls are asked if they want to come to the swimming pool, they take a critical look at their perfect, way too skinny bodies and conclude that they would rather die than doing such an embarrassing thing as showing off their bodies while some random fat molecules might still be clinging to their lives in their bellies, butt or upper legs. Finally, when persuaded to come, the girls come out shyly in their very revealing bikinis, uttering things like ‘oh, how embarrassing, don’t look!’

Let’s move on to our little yaoi situation. The seme passionately makes love to his partner, who, at some point, covers his face in his hands. “Let me see your face”. Reply: “No way, it’s too embarrassing!” Softly, the seme whispers “I love you” into the ear of his darling. “Aaah, don’t say such embarrassing things”, the uke replies, flustered.

Moving on to the last situation, we all know how it’s going to end. The face colour of the girl flushes from normal to deep red, we all hear her thinking: “In... in.... indirect kiss???” and then she either punches the guy - who’s oblivious of the whole situation - when she’s a tsundere character or just runs away or in some rare cases actually takes the offer to take a sip. Without exception, they are all either saying or thinking ‘o my god, how embarrassing!’


For western, or at least Dutch customs, these situations are nowhere near embarrassing. While I know that the Japanese have some issues with honour, physical contact, feelings and direct statements, I have to say that it’s starting to seriously piss me off at times in anime. The girls have perfect bodies. Why aren’t they freaking showing off those bodies proudly? Why would a guy be embarrassed if his boyfriend is clearly showing his feelings during sex? Why the fear of intimacy? Explain me, what the hell is so embarrassing about sharing a drink with a guy or a girl? I do it all the time, I mean it’s just a drink, it really doesn’t have any sexual or romantical connotations.

During a summer camp with orchestra I sleep together with a guy and a girl in the same room, both good friends of mine. The girl and I are lazy so we just change clothes in the same room as the guy instead of going through all kinds of pain-in-the-ass actions to avoid him seeing pieces of naked skin. Nobody cares, seriously. When I go to a mixed bathing facility, I don’t feel embarrassed about my nakedness. Everyone’s naked in there anyway, so what’s the point? During my psychology practica of Social Skills you’re recorded and criticized during role playing ‘til the point that you obtain immunity to most kinds of embarrasment. You simply don’t have the time or luxory to feel embarrassed about those kind of acts anymore.

So, what’s my point exactly? Well, the Japanese don’t have a freaking clue about the meaning of the word embarrassing xD!

It’s embarrassing when one goes to orchestra without his/her instrument and not realising this until the very last moment.
It’s embarrassing when you’re having sex with your boyfriend, you’re practically climaxing and then your mum bumps in to ask something.
It’s embarrassing to catch a relative masturbating.
It’s embarrassing when you’re trying to bake an egg and actually forget the oil in front of the entire family.
It’s embarrassing when you manage to miss the soccer ball when you’re trying to kick it away during a very critical moment in the match. No, the ball was not moving T_T...

These situations all happened to me once at some point in my life.

So, to all the perfect anime boys and girls: stop whining about how embarrassing things are ‘cause you have no idea of the meaning of true embarrassment. Just get it over with and live on.

I have spoken, amen ^_^

4 comments:

  1. Haha, you hit the nail on the head with this one. Yes, Japanese culture is a lot more "touchy" (hah!) with things like intimacy, but they're seriously pushing it in their media. I refuse to believe that the average high-school student there turns red to the point of fainting at the thought of sharing a drink.

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  2. While your observations are good you're not only missing the point, you're looking at another culture thoughts the filter lens of your own very open culture. The reason for all the shy glances and embarrassment in young adult anime is because focus of the story is on the emotions of courtship. Its about those butterflies in your stomach before the first kiss or the anticipation and dread of not knowing if somebody likes you who you really want to like you.

    Finally, its a cultural turn on for the shy, passive parter to be conquered by the more confident individual. Realistically in Japan, the man is still a powerful figure and the female is a damsel in distress

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  3. in my opinion, those types of girls are better as they have modesty and self respect ^_^ and im a girl myself.

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