The Yuribou Guide to Fanservice for animators #13, Appendix 1 – Panty types

Posted on | September 11, 2007 | 6 Comments |

This section focuses on all the different types of panties that you will have to choose from. Panty choice is very important, since in a fanservice anime, the viewers will be seeing a lot of them and it is important that not only should they be nice to look at, but they should also fit with the character’s personality may even reveal a new side to a girl who seems the opposite. (c.f. Yue Ayase – Negima, Natsuki Kuga – Mai HiME)

1. Plain/white

The most common type of panty, plain white panties are the mainstay of most girls in schools from elementary right through til the end of high school. All in all, I would say that they are overrepresented in panty shots, since I would guess that Japanese girls, like other girls around the world, would start to buy more “interesting” panties once they reached high school and wouldnt rely on parent bought cheap multipack fare.

However, since they are overrepresented, it is clear that there is an advantage or tradition in having plain white pantyshots. The first would be simply that they are easy to draw and require no thought or imagination in their creation. The other obvious advantage is that they confer a degree of innocence on the girl that wears them, or at least an appearance of dependance on parents. A high school girl still wearing plain white panties would suggest that she hasn’t yet begun to think of herself as attractive to the opposite sex, or that she isn’t too bothered about relationships. In a yuri relationship, however, white panties are often used since they reflect the pureness of the coupling and the lack of male pen0rs.

2. Fancy/White

A variation on a theme really, fancy/white panties describe white panties that are not of the typical multipack bow on front type but of a more adult disposition. Things like lace frills and embroidery can lend a similar innocence bonus as with white panties, but also dissolve the illusion that the girl in question is not out to impress. Again, often used in yuri relationships since white reflects the colour of lilies.

3. Coloured

Coloured panties refer to plain panties that are of a colour other than white. Popular colours are usually of the pastel disposition (pink, green, blue). Though you may think that this would give the girl a more adult feel, coloured plain panties still give off a multipack vibe (they don’t just come in white, you know!) and so still confer a schoolgirl attribute to the wearer. However, it does give the viewer a bit of variety and in a multi-panty shot (such as in an Ecchi na Kaze moment), variety is of the essence, especially when trying to tell girls apart in a crowd! Other than that, coloured panties don’t give the impression of any particular character types. A popular device is to match panty colour with the girl’s hair colour for extra matchability.

4. Striped

Otherwise known as shima-pantsu, stripes have their own following on image boards and amongst fans. Striped panties fit very much into the high school girl niche in that they are different to the plain types, but do not confer any extra sensuality to the character – i.e. she is not out to try and impress with her underwear. Striped panties are often worn by genki/baka type girls as well as tsunderes and certain types of normal girls. They are usually not worn by quiet or ojou types and almost never by vamps since they lack smouldering sex appeal. They are always good to see though..

5. Cute motif (e.g. strawberry)

Cute motifs definitely place a girl in the elementary school column. In some ways, you might say that motif panties come before plain/white panties in acquisition across an anime schoolgirl’s lifetime. Finding a cute motif panty on an older girl suggests that either she doesn’t have enough money to buy new panties (Asuna Kagurazaka – Negima!), she has never really “grown up” (Saori Shikijo – Mahoromatic) that she is trying for “loli appeal” (only if she also has a loli body type compatible with this, obviously!) or that she has an unconditional fetish for cute things (Sakaki – AzuDai). Comon motifs include strawberry print, cats and bears.

6. Lacy

Now we start to get to the real nitty gritty. Lacy panties are the start of the types of panties that are worn with either the intention to impress or because the wearer really has some kind of sexy lingerie fetish (Yue Ayase, I’m talking about you!) Lacy panties do not intrinsically raise the sex appeal very much on their own, but are often linked with a matching bra and/or accessories such as suspenders, basque, stockings and corset. Wearing just lace panties implies that the girl likes to wear something attractive, but is not perhaps mature enough to require/be able to pull off the ensemble; whereas wearing all the accessories and matching underwear is generally the domain of the older woman Ojou types who have the bustline and sultry mannerisms to pull it off. Use liberally, but with caution in mind.

7. Lowleg

Something I am not aware exists outside of anime, lowleg panties are normal or string panties that sit below the hip. Somehow, their construction grants them the ability to defy gravity and they hang there, Wile E. Coyote like, mid thigh, without slipping and causing wardrobe malfunction (unless you wish it, of course). The obvious advantage to using lowleg panties is that you reveal more of the girl’s groin area with the effect that viewers will begin to start to imagine what lies beneath. More often used with smaller girls since on taller girls this just looks obscene. Best combined with a short skirt and zettai ryouki for maximum moe effect. Don’t feature commonly in anime but fairly frequently in artwork.

8. String

String (G-string, thong) panties are the mainstay of most normal girls in the real world around the mid to late teens to later in life, but are generally underrepresented in anime. String panties in anime actually raise the sex appeal of the character significantly (partly because they are so rare, and partly because, well, they’re sex in real life, so they are super sexy in anime (going by the general rule)) and somehow gives the impression that the girl may look innocent on the surface, but underneath is a boiling cauldron of repressed sexual frustration ready to leap out and smother the nearest girl. Did I say girl? I meant person!

9. Bloomers/cycle shorts

Although sexy worn with PE kit or on the outside, sporting bottoms are generally not very sexy when seen in your average run-of-the-mill panty shot, purely because there are no panties to be seen. However, both have the advantage that they are very flush to the skin, and so extra appeal can be gained from flashes of camel-toe – and anyway, there are a lot of people out there that like this kind of thing…

10. None

The not wearing of panties (or no-pan) goes back a long way in Japanese culture. Before they were banned there used to exist “No-pan-kissa” (Short for No-pantsu kissaten or no panty cafe) in which the waitresses all wore no panties and short skirts and the floor was tactfully mirrored. Ah, those were the days, eh? Anyway, no-pan is not usually the underwear that a girl chooses, usually the state in which she finds herself in (unless you’re playing an H-game, of course). No-pan shots are great devices for chaep embarassment scenes or generally increasing a character’s sex appeal, though due to their risque nature they are rarely used outside the realm of hentai (Natsuki Kuga, here’s looking at you kid).

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Category: Anime, Editorials, Humour?, Philosophy/Thoughts

Comments

6 Responses to “The Yuribou Guide to Fanservice for animators #13, Appendix 1 – Panty types”

Kaoru
September 11th, 2007 @ 9:37 pm

<3
Nemo
September 11th, 2007 @ 11:55 pm

Indeed.
Nemykal
September 12th, 2007 @ 8:25 am

Good pics ;]
Tori-chan
September 13th, 2007 @ 12:14 am

haha i lov this
AmexYohko
September 14th, 2007 @ 2:28 am

Lacy pic: Rin + Sakura = yuri = incest
nodame
September 17th, 2007 @ 8:00 am

lol love for this. brilliant.