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Panchira
From Spanking Art
Panchira (パンチラ) is a term used by Japanese women to warn each other that their underwear is visible, similar in context to the English expression "your slip is showing." The word may be described as a portmanteau of "panty" (パンティー, pantī) and "chira," the Japanese phenomime representing a glance or glimpse, and carries both humorous and risque connotations.
In relation to anime and manga, the term refers to an image in which a young girl's briefs are exposed for any length of time (in contrast to the original meaning, which stipulates a brief 'flash' of undergarment). In English usage, the term has become almost synonymous with 'upskirt', and is considered the most common form of fanservice in Japanese animation. Panchira also plays a significant role in games softwear, particularly in dating sims and visual novels.
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[edit] Panchira in Anime
[edit] Origins
In practice, panchira has been a convention of Japanese cartoons since (at least) the early sixties, when young girls (shoujo) were frequently portrayed with abbreviated hemlines. The convention was almost certainly 'borrowed' from American comics and cartoons, where the Little Girl archetype had been in place since the 1930s. Japanese animators adopted many of the stylistic elements common to Western 'toongirls', reinterpreting them for early shoujo characters.
One of the best-known examples was Uran from Osama Tezuka's Testsuwan Atom (Mushi, 1963); like her American predecessors, Uran-chan was designed with an upswept skirt, leaving her plain white briefs on open display. As Uran served as a template for many later female characters, panchira became standard practice within the medium - a defining principal, in fact, still employed to the present day.
Throughout the sixties, panty-shots were comparatively innocent, restricted mainly to school-aged girls (such as Mahou Tsukai Sally or Akane-Chan) - most probably because depicting a teenaged or adult woman in sexual terms would have been inappropriate at that time. Later characters, such as Mimiko from Hayeo Miyazaki's Panda Kopanda! employed the panty-shot for light comedy relief; but by and large, panchira was a simple visual convention, devoid of all sexuality. However, the turn of the decade would introduce a number of changes to the basic formula.
[edit] Sexual References
During the late sixties, the practice took on overtly voyeuristic overtones with the publication of Go Nagai's Harenchi Gakuen. Set in a high school overrun by perverts and psychopaths, Nagai's controversial manga was the first to depict teenaged girls in unambiguously sexual terms, breaking numerous social taboos and generating major dissent in the Japanese press. Coincidentally, the strip was also the first to show an adult woman being spanked in her underwear - an image obviously played for its humorous aspects, but considered shocking by the standards of the time.
It was around this period that animation studios began targeting teenagers and young adults, leading to a prevalence of upskirt takes, panty-shots and gratuitous bathing scenes. Panchira was incorporated into every genre of the artform, from mahou shoujo fantasies to sci-fi action/adventures (one of the more explicit series of the time - Fushigina Melmo - was actually used to teach sex education in Tokyo elementary schools as early as 1971).
As the decade wore on, sexual referencing became increasingly commonplace in anime, eventually leading to the development of ecchi comedies and mildly risque series such as Maicching! Machiko-Sensei (see below). Strangely, while various degrees of nudity had existed in television animation for several years, panchira still took precedence in the mainstream - due, perhaps, to the long association of panty shots with bishoujo anime - cartoons about pretty young girls.
[edit] Ecchi Comedies
The 1980s saw an expansion and diversification in Japanese animated media, establishing anime as a recognised artform (at least within Japan). Targeting a more adult demographic, various studios began pushing the limits of mainstream fanservice. Prime-time television series - including children's cartoons - could now be unambiguously sexual, engaging in farcical humor and patently ribald scriptwork. The debut of Maicching! Machiko-Sensei (Studio Pierrot) in 1981 took fanservice to an entirely new level, offering an endless parade of double entendres, gratuitous stripteases and nude shower scenes.
Set in a Tokyo elementary school, Maicching! Machiko Sensei was - in some respects - a milder version of Nagai's Harenchi Gakuen. Panchira was a major plot device in the series. Virtually every female character was shown disrobed at one point or another; even those below the age of 12. One of the show's running gags involved the incessent rivalry between the school's male and female students, yeilding an unending supply of skirt-flips, 'Marilyn' shots and similar panty-gags.
Phenonemonally successful during its three year run, Machiko opened the floodgates on ecchi comedy. Other studios soon followed suite, and ecchi comedy began to appear in even the most unlikely places, such as the popular 'ninja high school' genre (Sasuga no Sarutobi) or kiddie's fantasies (Gugu Ganmo). Significantly, this was the same period in which the stereotype Japanese schoolgirl (joshikosei) began to flourish in anime. Joshikosei were usually depicted with white cotton briefs; a direct reference to the Tezuka years, when shoujo characters invariably wore plain white undergarments (according to other sources, white was also suggestive of innocence and purity - ie virginity, which is still a major fetish amongst Japanese salarymen).
[edit] Sukebe Otaku!
Japanese popular culture gained a substantial foothold in the Western market during the 1990s due to numerous factors, including the creation of the WWW or the rapid assimilation of anime into American TV (beginning with Toei's Sailor Moon in 1992). Panchira was one of the many visual imports that arrived in the States via the internet, initially in the form of individual scans and screencaps. Technological improvements (such as bittorrent or emule), allowed users to download entire animated series to their desktops, along with ero games, KiSS dolls and other media unavailable outside of Japan.
Similarly, the development of wakata script in Japan had an almost immediate impact in the West. Multiple imageboard sites like 2channel were meticulously copied by American users, resulting in the creation of online communities such as 4chan. Allowing for anonymous posting and the mass uploading of graphic media, Chan sites attracted an enormous following of anime enthusiasts, gamers, fan artists, trolls and obsessives collectively referred to as otaku (after a Japanese term meaning ‘shut-in’). In some cases, entire boards were dedicated to panchira in manga, anime and CG, as was the case with the Pantsu board on WAKAchan.
Japanese animation studios had been producing adult-oriented anime since the late 80s, and were quick to capitalize on the growing otaku subcultures on both sides of the Pacific. Direct-to-video features were released to the international market; most featured varying degrees of fanservice. A number of ‘limited’ TV series focused specifically on risque humor: Najica: Blitz Tactics (2001), Love Love? (2004) and Smash Hit (2004) all featured unprecedented amounts of panchira. One of the earlier entries, Agent Aika: Naked Missions, (1997) contained one panty shot every 20 seconds. Each catered to an otaku subculture obsessed with animated cliches such as panty-shots or sociopathic violence.
[edit] Panchira-Spanking
[edit] The Sixties
Although spanking was comparatively rare in old school (pre-1970) anime, panchira was occasionally used in connection with corporal imagery, particularly in cartoons aimed at very young viewers. It is worth noting, however, that 1960s anime spanking was limited almost exclusively to young boys; girls were rarely subjected to physical discipline during this period (despite the rising number of shoujo-related programs). The reasons for this are unclear, but several explanations have been suggested.
Traditionally speaking, girls were perceived as requiring less physical discipline than boys, due to a common belief that females were naturally shy, quiet and retiring (and therefore less likely to get into trouble). This probably accounts for why most animated spanking imagery during the sixties involved only F/m or M/m pairings - girls were more likely to receive a verbal reprimand than a smack on the rear.
In addition, Japanese manga of the 1960s never really developed an analogue of the Naughty Little Girl archetype common to American comics - once again, due to the prevailing social perception of girls being 'naturally' well behaved. Shoujo characters of the classic era were usually represented as kind, virtuous, and possessing an innate sense of justice (there was at least one obvious exception, of course: Astro's sister Uran was at least as naughty as Lulu or Audrey, but paradoxically, she never received the spanking she so richly deserved).
[edit] The Seventies
Whatever the case, panty-spanking was extremely rare in Japanese cartoons until the mid-seventies, when older female characters began to star in their own series. One of the first examples of this shift in content was a well-known scene from episode 51 of Majokko Megu-Chan, (Toei Doga, 1974-1975). By this time, fanservice was an integral plot device in many children's cartoons, meaning that the show featured a generous amount of light-hearted panchira. Unlike many of her predecessors, Megu was a teenager rather than a little girl, meaning that the spanking sequence possessed a mildly sexual content absent from the shoujo programs of the previous decade.
Viewed from this angle, the corporal scenes in the Megu-chan series were rather exceptional - earlier depictions usually portrayed the spankee fully clothed. In this case, the fanservice angle was stressed over the corporal element; Megu's punishment was little more than an excuse to expose her underpants. In short, the main emphasis was on the panty rather than on the spanking.
At the same time, however, the combination of panchira and spanking was used to indicate Megu's juvenile status - at fifteen years old, she was still a child, and therefore subject to her step-mother's dominance. Despite her adolescent appearance, Megu is spanked over Mammi's knee like a little girl; pristine white panties on clear display. Worse still, her punishment is observed by her worst enemy Chou-san, who delights in seeing her weeping in child-like shame. Comical though the scene appears, it probably struck a chord with the show's female viewers, who could relate to Megu's dilemna - old enough to desire independence from parental authority, yet young enough to be subjected to corporal discipline.
[edit] The Eighties
This coming of age theme was taken up in several later mahou shoujo programs, including Studio Pierrot's Creamy Mami (1983-84). While classed as a lightweight shoujo fantasy, Creamy Mami subtly explored the frustrations of generational conflict. Granted the power to transform into an adult version of herself, nine year-old Yuu Morisawa lives out a common childhood fantasy; "growing up" before her time to become both beautiful and famous (as the teenaged pop-star Creamy Mami). Needless to say, this supposed dream come true had its inevitable drawbacks; Yuu's activities in the adult sphere caused friction in her everyday life.
In her juvenile persona, Yuu was a high-spirited tomboy who constantly squabbled with her friends and family. Sweet but rather wayward by nature, she was often in dutch with her parents and teachers; a situation exacerbated by her double life as Creamy Mami. One of the show's running gags, in fact, was Yuu's mildly adversarial relationship with her mother - a typically 'liberated' Japanese woman with a firm belief in tough love. The series featured three F/f spanking scenes, starting in the very first episode when Momma catches Yuu sneaking home late.
While obviously milked for humor, the scene was used to establish the characters' antagonistic personalities - strong willed mother vs headstrong daughter - setting the stage for several future confrontations. Despite her supernatural powers, Yuu is no match for her Momma and cannot escape maternal discipline.
The panchira further underscores Yuu's subordinant position in the domestic hierarchy: as Creamy Mami, she may be a successful, talented singer, but she still gets spanked on the panties when she gets home. It might be argued that panty-spanking in 1980s shoujo anime was part of a larger rite-of-passage motif, ie that childish discipline was one of many ordeals any juvenile has to endure on the road to maturity.
[edit] The Nineties
The 1990s saw an upswing of spanking imagery in Japanese popular culture. This was almost certainly due to the rise of the World Wide Web at the beginning of the decade: an enormous body of American pornographic material was suddenly available to Japanese observers via the internet – some of which was virtually unknown in Japan due to censorship laws or simple cultural differences.
Japanese otakus were quick to seize upon the new imagery, and anime-based spanking sites began to spread rapidly across the Nihon-web. As was often the case with this form of cultural assimilation, the Japanese variant was a reinterpretation of an American template, adopting many of the visual conventions present in the original.
Initially, much of it was produced by amateur illustrators and fan artists, but it wasn’t long before Western-style spanking imagery was absorbed by the mainstream manga industry – leading, in turn to its adoption into animated form. The process was quite literally self-sustaining; anime-based spanking fed back into the web, leading to the development of Oekaki sites (such as Mediaspanking). Spanking doujinshi appeared towards the end of the Twentieth Century, many of which were scanned and uploaded to the web – where, ironically, they became available to Western audiences (image).
This accelerated form of visual synthesis has yielded some interesting results. As the American template comprised mostly bare-bottomed material, present-day spanking imagery by-passed the panty-spanking ‘stage of development’ which dominated American comics and cartoons for at least four decades. For this reason, BB imagery tends to prevail in modern Japanese animation.
Similarly, the cinematic influences which impacted Western comics are absent from the Japanese reinterpretation. Whereas the spanking of adult women was a common theme in the West, Oshiritataki imagery revolves more around Joshikosei (teenaged schoolgirls) and preadolescent females.
[edit] Present Day
In the Twenty-first Century, bare-bottomed spanking appears to be the more common scenario in mainstream manga and anime. However, panty-spanking has not disappeared entirely from the visual landscape; a decades-long preoccupation with panchira seems to dominate various non-mainstream venues - doujinshi, games CG, and cyberspace, to name a few.
On the other hand, modern oshioki images bear little relation to the examples cited from the 70s and 80s. Whereas older depictions were mildly risqué, present-day representations are explicit in the extreme. Much of the imagery is hard-core, fetishistic and lavishly detailed – particularly the high resolution CGI employed in ero-games and visual novels.
Panty-spanking is referenced in numerous anime games, usually as a prelude to more unambiguously sexual activity. In a typical scenario, a female character is penalized for a trivial misdemeanor, initially with a spanking over the panties. Successive layers of clothing are removed until the NPC is naked, at which point the player may opt to engage in various penetrative acts (intercourse, rape, sodomy, fellatio etc). In effect, panty spanking is viewed as a stepping stone to the "main event".
[edit] Trivia
- At the time of writing, there is no specific term for "panty-spanking" in Japanese. The closest approach would be the phrase panty maru mie no oshiri wo tataku: "spank on the panties."
[edit] See also
- Panty flashing
- Panty shot
- Spanking in anime
- Spanking in manga
- Spanking in comics
- Doujinshi
- Anime game
[edit] Links
- Pantsu Imageboard
- Miho Chan Egroup
- Astrogirls Egroup
- Shoujo Imageboard: Toons
- Ikki Tousen AMV - Spank My Booty, a fan music video on YouTube Warning:
