12 Days of Anime: Three Types of Fujioshi Bait

Yes, they’re all guys.

This year is the true revival of my fujioshi tendencies. It all started one day I was browsing Tumblr and as I scrolled past the crappy edits, the cheesy quotes, and the same gif set from the same instance in the same anime, I started to think about the anime I missed over the years due to moving, personal stuff, or whatever.

So I decided to sit down, this year, and watch this one anime I’ve always wanted to watch: “Princess, Princess”.

And honestly?

It’s not what I thought it was but it was still very much fujioshi bait. Everyone can talk about “Free!” and how not gay it is, wink, wink, nudge, nudge. We get it! We get it. Can you guys come up with a different joke now?

But after watching this, I’ve realized a few things:

• Holy crap, I love fujioshi bait shows even in my old age! There’s always that instance of “is he? isn’t he? I HOPE SO!” feeling in anime but when something like this comes along, a clear cut fujioshi bait, it’s so much fun imagining the different scenarios and the fanfiction that could be created from a lot of these scenes alone. And I love it.
• I am not as deep and pretentious as I thought I was and that’s okay. There was some deep stuff in this anime but it never went in too deep because it knew exactly where and when to stop. Granted, there was a limited time to do everything and not everything seemed to wrap up but that’s okay. The plots aren’t that good and it’s a good ride. Decent character development (for what it was) and it seemed to respect the characters a lot more than I thought. And it’s satisfying. I’m okay with it. There’s a lot to criticize from this anime, absolutely, but I realized after I watched this anime – not everything needs a deeper meaning (or even a meaning at all) and not everything needs to be thought provoking.
• Just shut the hell up and enjoy filler. People whine about filler a lot but honestly, it doesn’t bother me. In an anime that’s not meant to be taken as serious, especially, it doesn’t bother me. It’s actually to be expected. I mean, honestly, in an anime where the prettiest boys dress up as girls in an all-boy school – you’re going to expect to see them in different dresses and doing things that’s considered filler. It’s really not that serious.

After I watched it, I started to not take things seriously anymore. I decided to actually laugh at the dumb jokes, the obvious bait, and manage to roll my eyes at the pandering. It’s always going to be there and sometimes it’s really best to just shut the hell up and have fun with it.

So how does this tie in with the three types of fujioshi bait out there? Because, honestly, these are my favorite types so I can get recommendations: friendship, high school settings, & enough to make me want to fill in the blanks.