Keijo!!!!!!!! Review

I loathe fan-service. The only exception to this was Kill la Kill, but with that series the fan-service was satirical. So when I started watching Keijo!!!!!!!! –I think I counted the right number of exclamation marks in the title–I often asked myself “What am I watching?” I’ve seen the popularity of the show in my anime blog feed so I decided to check it out. Well, I found the fan-service in this series rather painful. At times it was satirical, but most of the time it tried to titillate. The anime also features all the elements of anime that can get annoying when overused. And overuse it did.

For those who haven’t seen the show, it follows a cadre of girls as they attend a school dedicated to teaching keijo, a sport similar to sumo that requires the women to use their busts and butts as weapons. They race, as they call it, on platforms floating in a pool. Of course, that requires them to wear skimpy bathing suits. The audience, mostly men, gamble as the teams of women smash and rub against each other. At times, this becomes more sexual than athletic. The story involves the characters becoming friends as they train and face an opposing keijo school.

Okay, let’s start with what I liked about the show. I liked how the show focused on women without male influence in the story. It shows how women can be strong athletes. The sport of keijo pokes fun at sports. If you’re a regular reader, you’ll know that I’m not a sports fan. The show pokes at how ridiculous sporting events can be and how much training it takes to be an athlete, even for a sport as ridiculous as keijo. I mean, baseball is a game that involves a ball being hit with a stick. When you think about it, its pretty ridiculous. I also enjoyed some of the comradery between the women. Finally, for a show full of fan-service, it features a variety of female body types, and all of them have what it takes to compete at the game.

Keijo is meant to be a comedy, but it joked without a smile. The show took all of anime’s tropes and stuffed them together. For example, the girls would yell their attacks, which all had silly names, amid seizure- inducing flashes of light. While the anime tries to pass itself off as a sports-anime at first, these attacks come straight from shonen action stories. You’ll see butts with spiritual demon dogs emitting from them, summoned butts filling the air, and other over-the-top attacks. All with names that try to be funny but end up making me cringe such as the obvious “Bust to Bust Attack” and “Vacuum Butt Cannon.” I don’t know. I guess I’m an old prude, but the early-teen humor grated. Some of the late attacks are downright painful. I mean, who would twist their nipple and breast and then let it drill into other? One attack that did leave me chuckling at the absurdity of it all used a hardened nipple to grab an opponent’s swimsuit and pull off a move from judo.

The animation style is well done aside from impossible poses. I have to give the series that. The animators took care to animate the softness of breasts and butts–too much care, but it’s understandable considering that is the focus of the show’s visuals. Again, the variety of female body types surprised me. Of course, the self-conscious small-breasted girl trope had to appear. For once I’d like to see a small chested girl have confidence and not care about her bust. Not all women “lacking” assets lack confidence or fret over their chests.

Anime likes to take strong, female characters and make them less threatening to male audiences through fan-service. Perhaps it’s because my hormonal teen years are long behind me, but efforts to make female characters attractive by showing their skin does the opposite. Intelligence, inner strength, compassion, and virtue makes characters appealing. The most memorable anime characters I know of don’t flash skin or, at the least, don’t plaster their skin all over each episode. Balsa from Moribito, for example.

Keijo! is meant to be a fluffy, ecchi romp aimed at boys and young men. And it has many good messages–self-discipline, friendship, persistence, female-strength–but it leverages anime’s negative tropes to the hilt. Anime’s focus on female skin, silly attacks, and stereotypes hurts its ability to extend beyond its core Western audience. Okay, I get it. It’s meant to be fantasy and fun. I also like a fluffy comedy time-to-time. But the preponderance of silly and immature anime stories damages anime’s ability to be taken seriously in the West. Fans know it can achieve near literary levels of sophistication, but the market reacts to what people watch and buy. Western fans need more diversity in anime–yes, anime already has some diversity available, but it could use more.

Yes, I’m ranting a bit here. I enjoyed some moments of Keijo!, but it too often turned around and ruined those moments. That appears to be a trope of anime too. It can’t allow itself to convey a message or reach an apex of tension without interjecting something to deflate the blimp. Keijo! is pretty creative in its portrayal of sports and how outlandish sporting events can be. I mean, look at sumo. Two giant men crash into each other in an effort to push each other out of a sand ring. Keijo! satirizes the arbitrary rules of sports well. We forget that the games can be anything we make them to be. Well, all of that aside, I often repeat myself here on JP. Much of what makes anime anime also keeps it from becoming a widely accepted form of storytelling. I criticize anime because I want more people to experience the ability to animation to tell stories in ways live action can’t do. I want mature-storied animated movies to break records here in the States as they do in Japan. Until anime gives up some of its tropes, and the western community pushes for more mature stories, anime will continue to remain a niche genre, one subject to ridicule and misunderstanding. Stories like Keijo! have a place, but anime has far more potential to inspire and tell stories beyond fan-service and fluff.