Wants series to have fans of all ages.

After a number of anime that were slated to premier in the summer were delayed due to pandemic-related issues, Japan’s fall TV season has begun with a full lineup of new series, including Wandering Witch, which aired its first episode last weekend.

Based off a popular light novel series, which in turn has an ongoing manga adaptation, Wandering Witch, also known as Wandering Witch-The Journey of Elaina, promises viewers a look into a world full of fantasy and wonder. What it won’t be providing, though, are a peek at anyone’s of the characters’ panties.

▼ Wandering Which preview (pantie-less)

While that wouldn’t be a noteworthy creative decision in many forms of media, the panty shot has a long tradition in the anime/manga industry. The no-onscreen underwear policy comes straight from Wandering Witch’s creator, though, light novel author Jougi Shiraishi.

In an interview with anime magazine Newtype, Shiraishi was asked about meeting with the anime’s production staff, and recalled:

“The only request I made was ‘Please do not, under any circumstances, show [the characters’] underwear.’ I’d like the series to keep a broad range of ages in its fanbase, and to be a show that people of a wide range of ages will watch. That was the only major request I made. Meeting with the anime staff was probably the most nervous I’ve ever been in my entire life…[laughs].”

While some might see the apparent need for the request as a depressing example of how nonchalantly lascivious anime’s visual direction can be, in Wandering Witch’s case a glimpse of underwear could have come about even without any particularly purposeful gratuitousness.

Unlike a novel or manga’s still illustrations, animation requires characters to be shown in a far greater number of perspectives and poses, and with Wandering Witch being a story about a witch in training who wears a fashionably short skirt and spends a lot of time flying around on a broom, an incidental upskirt angle is something storyboarders and animators might need to consciously avoid (even the heroine of Studio Ghibli’s highly respectable Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind has her underwear visible for a moment in the course of her skirted adventures).

Seeing as how the above-seen sequence from the first episode would have been a prime panty shot opportunity in a less wholesomely drawn show, it looks like the anime’s staff is taking Shiraishi’s request to heart.

Source: Newtype via Otakomu
Images: YouTube/KADOKAWAanime
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