Fan service

Fan service (ファンサービス), fanservice, service cut (サービスカット), or simply service (サービス), is a vaguely-defined term primarily used for anime and manga to refer to elements that are unnecessary to the storyline. Fanservice explicitly refers to material that is designed to amuse or excite the audience with sexually-derived content. When such content fits within the storyline, it would not usually be considered fan service, but excessive content is usually considered gratuitous regardless of its justification.

Any gratuitous content included in some form of entertainment primarily to please a core group of fans is fan service. The term has been used in a broader context than just anime, including Star Wars prequels.

The typical, but not only, variety of fan service is racy or sexual content used to titillate the viewer, such as nudity or other forms of eye candy. Shower scenes are very common in movies, and in anime of the 1980s and 1990s, while many more recent TV series use trips to onsen (Japanese hot springs) or trips to tropical locales (or in some cases a swimming pool), in order to showcase the characters in bathing suits. All aim to depict characters in states of relative undress when it would otherwise be out of place with the tone of a series. In anime, two common types of fan service are the panty shot and jiggling breasts. Male homoeroticism, such as accidental kisses, is a common feature of fan service for females, and has been described as "easier to get away with" in terms of censorship than fanservice for males.