Ask John: What are the Top Five Panty Shot Anime?

Question:
In your opinion, what are the top 5 anime that show the most panties? Panties seem to be getting very popular these days, eh?

Answer:
Actually, I’m surprised to admit that I had a slightly more difficult time coming up with an answer to this question than I initially suspected I would. Sticking to the precise stipulations of the question, and by presumption excluding overt adult anime, I actually immediately ruled out many of the most commonly cited examples of “fan service” anime such as Love Hina, Onegai Teacher, Amazing Nurse Nanako, and UFO Princess Valkyrie. These shows include plenty of bare skin and sexual innuendo, but relatively not a lot of briefly glimpsed panties.

Without further ado, my subjective list, based on my very fallible memory and my viewing experience:

1. Aika
2. Najica Blitz Tactics
3. Colorful
4. Hand Maid May
5. Idol Project, Ikkitousen (a tie, in my book)

Now for my reasoning and commentary. Aika and Najica, both from Studio Fantasia, raised the bar for panty shots to a height that no other anime is ever likely to even take aim at. Studio Fantasia’s anime TV series Stratos 4 also included sly panty shots, but after the excess of Aika and Najica, Stratos 4 seems positively prim and proper in comparison. I include Colorful in this list with reservations because unlike every other candidate for this list, Colorful is a sex comedy, and a borderline adult one at that. But Colorful made my list in part because I’ve never actually watched all of Sakura Dairies or Raimuiro Senkitan- both series which I suspect may deserve a place on this list. I excluded Dirty Pair from contention because the Lovely Angel’s uniforms are technically bikinis, not underwear.

The panty shot as innocent “fan service” in anime actually dates back to at least the 1970s with Nobita sneaking peeks at Shizuka’s unmentionables in the Doraemon anime. Jumping forward in time, the 1994 Blue Seed anime TV series made sneak peeks at Momiji’s panties a running joke throughout the series. Since the days of Blue Seed, we’ve seen a great number of anime series featuring playful panty shots including Evangelion, Burn-Up, GTO, Golden Boy, and countless others. But this relatively recent upswing in skirts may be due to a movement away from the common gratuitous nudity that characterized anime from the 1980s. Topless anime girls were so frequent in 1980s anime that the common setting actually became a legendary anime characteristic- the shower scene. Although recent anime series such as Mahoromatic and UFO Princess Valkyrie prove that female topless bathing hasn’t disappeared from anime altogether, full gratuitous nudity in anime does seem to have mellowed into more subtle and playful teasing than graphic nudity within recent years.

Addendum:
Julian Fong brought up the interesting and very relevant trivia that Yuji Moriyama’s commentary track on the Project A-ko special edition DVD credits director Katsuhiko Nishijima with starting the modern panty-shot trend in the fight scenes between A-ko and B-ko, and in the famous scene during which A-ko straddles a fighter jet’s cockpit canopy. Nishijima went on to direct Aika, Najica and Labyrinth of Flames.