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Panty
Raid When I first started collecting Japanese figures, I found a common trait that kept popping up over and over again. It was one of the most unusual things about Japanese toys that I'd ever seen. I never seen such an obsession over a such a small detail before. No, it's not big eyes, multicolored hair or even unusually large breasts. It has something to do with a small piece of female undergarment. What can I be talking about? That's right, we're talking about, panties! And what figures am I talking about? I'm not talking about some random hentai figure from some anonymous underground sculptor either. I'm talking about popular characters from anime, video games, manga and whatnot. Chances are if you seen a nubile female figure wearing anything similar to a skirt, you'd probably seen them wearing panties of some kind. When I first saw them on some figures I bought, I thought it was pretty cool that the sculptor/designer went further by adding these details. It's not everyday you see them in Western toys. But after a few years of collecting, I found it more and more prevalent. You can find them in all types of figures nowadays. Everything from statues to action figures to trading figures to gashapons. The sky's the limit. If they're female and they're not wearing pants, you'll see them.
Granted, some figures show their panties on purpose because they're merely reflecting the content of the source materials. Some good examples would be the Love Hina and Chobits series. They thrive on the whole aspect of perversion. But there are many other figures that show their panties just because they can. For example, Cardcaptor Sakura is one the cutest animes ever that thrive on the whole aspect of innocence. But there were a series of figures made that clearly showed their panties. Not so innocent eh? I'm sure many people would find it taboo to find young characters' panties visible. But not with Japan's toy makers. The details are sometimes downright ridiculous. I've seen highly sculpted panties on simple figures like gashapons. They didn't merely paint that part of the body white. No no no, that would be too simple. The figures would actually have crease and folds on the panties. They sometimes even include small patterns and designs too! What's even more crazy is that once you assembled most of these figures together, you wouldn't even see it! So why bother doing all that work in the first place? We may never know.
I really have no idea when toy designers decided to include panties as part of the details. But when I find a figure wearing a skirt nowadays, I always need to check to see if they made it. It's so common now that if I don't see it, I would consider it laziness on the designer/sculptor's part. Once you've seen it, you'd expect it. The main reason why I decided to delve into this topic is because I'm fascinated by this apparent obsession with panties in Japan (and other reasons ;P). We've seen it in all types of medium in Japan. Everything from anime to video games to manga. There are even magazines, photobooks and videos of girls revealing their panties to horny men everywhere. So it's pretty obvious that we would see this obsession trickle down to the toy market. It's a cultural phenomenon that I'm sure many others have explored before. In any case, panties are the norm whether you like it or not. Personally, I have no problems with it. :P 3/11/03 Related links: Here's an interesting article at Snopes.com which discusses certain aspects of this phenomenon in Japan. It went so far that they actually sold used panties in vending machines for a short while. Ewww... |
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