Fanservice in numbers
This quantitative study examines fanservice in anime by using the ecchi genre tag as an operational proxy. Fanservice can occur across many genres, but analysing it directly is methodologically difficult without a fixed definition: what counts as “sexualization for fanservice” can be subjective and may vary across viewers and contexts. Using the ecchi tag reduces this ambiguity because it provides a standardised, database-level classification commonly associated with explicit fanservice content, allowing the analysis to proceed without sentiment analysis or other highly interpretive coding.
The analysis draws on user-catalogued data from https://anilist.co and https://myanimelist.net. These platforms represent a very large, yet incomplete catalogue of titles; therefore, the results describe trends within the sampled database records rather than the full population of all anime releases. The study investigates how the share of ecchi-tagged titles changes over time, whether the relationship between popularity and user score differs for ecchi versus non-ecchi titles, and which genres most frequently co-occur with ecchi and whether those genres exhibit similar popularity patterns without ecchi.
This quantitative section focuses only on anime titles (using the ecchi tag as a proxy for explicit fanservice). Fanservice in the idol/singing industry is analysed separately in the qualitative part of the project and is therefore outside the scope of this dataset.
Findings and analysis
Data sources
Data were scraped using Python, cleaned and aligned in OpenRefine, and visualised in Tableau Public. The dataset covers titles released between 2005 and 2025 and includes the following fields: title, year, genres, popularity, score, format, status and origin. The year variable is taken from the year of the release season.
For the final dataset, AniList and MyAnimeList records were merged. Titles missing from one platform were kept using the other platform’s record, and when a title was present on both platforms the values were combined by taking an average. If either platform labelled a title as ecchi, it was coded as ecchi in the merged dataset. Because both sources are user-catalogues and the extraction is not a complete census, the results describe trends in the sampled platform records rather than definitive industry-wide rates.
Operational definitions
To make the analysis consistent, the following variables are defined in a simple way. Ecchi is treated as a binary label: a title is coded as ecchi (1) if it is tagged ecchi on AniList or MyAnimeList, and as non-ecchi (0) otherwise.
Popularity refers to the platform popularity field included in the dataset (i.e., a user-based measure such as how many users have the title in their list). Because popularity measures are user-driven and tend to be skewed (a few titles dominate), popularity is interpreted as platform engagement rather than real-world audience size. Score refers to the platform’s average user rating for a title. Scores are interpreted as community ratings and can be influenced by platform norms and the number of votes. Year is taken from the release season’s year (first release year) to align titles to a single point in time. For the scatterplot analysis, years are grouped into three periods of roughly seven years to make comparisons easier and to reduce the “older titles have more time to accumulate popularity” effect.
Co-occurring genres are genres that appear alongside ecchi on a title. These are used to show which genre contexts ecchi most often appears in, and whether popularity patterns are similar when ecchi is absent.
Inclusion and exclusion rules
To keep the dataset as uniform as possible, duplicates were removed and titles with missing key values (e.g., year, popularity or score) were excluded to avoid distortions in averages. Only titles with their origin in Japan were retained.
Scope boundary: The dataset and analysis in this section are limited to anime titles recorded on AniList and MyAnimeList. Although the broader project also examines fanservice in the idol/singing industry, that topic is addressed qualitatively and is not included in the quantitative database analysis presented here.
Analysis plan
Each RQ (research question) uses a specific set of metrics and visualisations. They examine: composition over time (RQ1), reception and engagement (RQ2) and Genre embedding (RQ3). Ecchi vs non-ecchi is seen as a binary classification for this.
| Figure | Purpose |
|---|---|
| 1 | Ecchi share over time (RQ1) |
| 2 | Score comparison over time (RQ2) |
| 3–5 | Popularity vs score (RQ2) |
| 6 | Genre co-occurrence (RQ3) |
| 7 | Popularity within genres (RQ3) |
Results
Colour key (all figures): dark blue = ecchi-tagged titles; light blue = non-ecchi titles.
RQ1 – Share of ecchi titles over time
Figure 1. Yearly proportion of ecchi-tagged titles among all recorded TV anime (2005–2025).
(Interactive version: https://public.tableau.com/views/graph_t1/Percentageecchianimeperyear)
Figure 1 shows the yearly proportion of ecchi-tagged titles among all recorded TV anime (2005-2025). The share is slightly decreasing overall, with noticeable peaks around 2011, 2015 and 2019. Because the data-sources are user-catalogued and not 100% complete, this should be interpreted as a trend in the database rather than a complete census of the industry.
RQ2 – Popularity vs score
Figure 2. Average score per year for ecchi and non-ecchi titles.
(Interactive version: https://public.tableau.com/views/graph_t1/Scoreecchinon-ecchiperyear)
Figure 2 shows the yearly comparison of average scores for ecchi-tagged titles versus non-ecchi titles (2005–2025). Overall, ecchi titles score lower than non-ecchi titles, with small exceptions around 2016 and 2021. One possible reason is that ecchi titles may have a more niche audience, leading to different rating behaviour compared to widely watched mainstream titles. However, yearly averages can also be influenced by changes in how many titles are released and recorded each year, so the pattern should be read as a database-level trend rather than a causal effect.
Figures 3–5. Relationship between popularity and user score for ecchi and non-ecchi titles across three periods: 2005–2012 (Figure 3), 2012–2019 (Figure 4), and 2019–2025 (Figure 5).
(Interactive versions:)
- Figure 3: https://public.tableau.com/views/graph_t1/PopularityscoreAnime05-12
- Figure 4: https://public.tableau.com/views/graph_t1/PopularityscoreAnime12-19
- Figure 5: https://public.tableau.com/views/graph_t1/PopularityscoreAnime19-25
Figures 3-5 consist of three scatterplots (each covering roughly seven years) showing the relationship between popularity and user score for ecchi and non-ecchi titles. Across all periods, the relationship appears weak to moderate, meaning that more popular titles are somewhat associated with higher scores. Higher scores, however, do not necessarily imply a high level of popularity. Comparing groups, ecchi titles tend to cluster at lower popularity levels and lower scores than non-ecchi titles. The difference is most visible in the first period, where ecchi titles show a score ‘limit’ around 80 and don’t compare in popularity to bigger non-ecchi titles. Overall, the faceted view suggests that any ecchi vs non-ecchi difference is quite stable over time rather than driven by one specific period. Only exceptional ecchi-titles rarely compete with non-ecchi. Since popularity is time-sensitive: older titles have had more time to accumulate users, so period comparisons reduce (but do not fully remove) this effect.
RQ3 – Genre relationships
Figure 6. Most frequent genre combinations with ecchi.
(Interactive version: https://public.tableau.com/views/graph_t1/Mostprevalentgenrecombowithecchi)
As seen in figure 6, ecchi is most often packaged with light/entertainment genres (comedy, romance, action, fantasy) and is much less commonly combined with darker or serious genres (thriller, psychological, horror).
Figure 7. Average popularity per title by genre, split by ecchi vs non-ecchi.
(Interactive version: https://public.tableau.com/views/graph_t1/PopularityGenreswithwithoutecchi)
Figure 7 compares the average popularity per title within each genre, separating titles with the ecchi tag from titles in the same genre without ecchi. Overall, the figure shows that ecchi-tagged titles are more popular on average than non-ecchi titles across most of the included genres. The difference is most clearly visible in adventure, fantasy, and mecha, where ecchi titles reach noticeably higher average popularity compared to non-ecchi titles in the same genres. However, the pattern is not uniform across the full genre list. In thriller, the ecchi-combined group shows much lower average popularity than thriller titles without ecchi. A likely reason is that thriller + ecchi is a very rare combination in the dataset, meaning the ecchi subgroup contains only a small number of titles. With such a small sample, the average popularity per title becomes less stable and can be strongly influenced by a few low-popularity titles; in other words, the low value may reflect limited data volume rather than a strong genre effect. Overall, these results suggest that ecchi’s relationship with popularity depends on genre context: ecchi is typically linked to higher platform engagement within many genres, but rare genre combinations should be interpreted cautiously because small subgroup sizes can distort averages. Because this graph uses averages, a small number of very popular titles can increase the mean, so the pattern is best interpreted as a general tendency rather than a rule.
Limitations
This study deals with some limitations in different fields. Overall Fanservice occurs outside the ecchi genre as well; ecchi captures explicit and recognised fanservice but misses more subtle or mislabelled cases. Older titles have had more time to accumulate viewership and popularity. This can impact the comparison against newer titles. The splitting in periods reduces the problem but does not negate it. The sources are user-catalogues. Therefore the popularity and scores reflect more so platform communities rather than the full audience. The data have been merged into one, with set rules on which data to keep. Only looking at Japanese origin and complying with a request limit when scraping lowers the overall coverage. These choices prioritize comparability and interpretability, but they also mean the findings describe trends in the sampled platform records rather than definitive industry-wide rates The reason for leaving out a quantitative part on the idol industry is mainly because of the extreme difficulty in collecting, measuring and framing the corresponding data.
Discussion
Overall, the results suggest that ecchi-tagged anime form a consistent but slightly declining share of recorded TV anime between 2005 and 2025, with several short peaks (RQ1). In terms of reception, ecchi titles tend to have lower average scores than non-ecchi titles, and the scatterplots indicate that ecchi titles are more concentrated at lower popularity levels and rarely reach the highest-popularity range (RQ2). Finally, ecchi is not distributed evenly across genres: it most often appears alongside comedy, romance, action and fantasy, and it appears much less often alongside thriller or psychological genres (RQ3).
Taken together, the results suggest that explicit fanservice (as captured by the ecchi tag) is linked to specific genre packages and shows different engagement patterns depending on genre context. While ecchi titles cluster lower in overall popularity in the scatterplots, the genre-level comparison (Figure 7) shows that average popularity per title is higher for ecchi in several genres—most visibly in adventure, fantasy, and mecha. Thriller is an exception, which may be explained by the fact that ecchi-thriller combinations are rare and therefore based on too few titles to produce a stable average. Because the data come from user-catalogued platforms and ecchi is used as a proxy, the results should be interpreted as trends in platform records rather than a complete picture of all anime releases.
Connection to group project
This quantitative section complements the project by adding a “macro” view of fanservice: instead of analysing individual scenes, it shows where explicit fanservice (using ecchi as a proxy) sits within larger anime trends across time, popularity, and genre combinations. These patterns provide context for qualitative arguments about how fanservice is used and received. In particular, the genre-based results suggest that fanservice works differently depending on genre context (e.g., stronger engagement patterns in some genre packages than others), which can be explored more closely in the qualitative sections.
Conclusion
By using the ecchi tag as an operational proxy, this study provides a scalable way to examine explicit fanservice patterns in anime using AniList and MyAnimeList records. Across 2005–2025, ecchi titles make up a slightly decreasing share of recorded TV anime, and they generally show lower scores than non-ecchi titles (RQ1–RQ2). The popularity results are more mixed: scatterplots suggest ecchi titles cluster at lower popularity and rarely reach the highest-popularity range, but the genre-level comparison shows that ecchi titles can have higher average popularity per title within several genres, most visibly in adventure, fantasy, and mecha (RQ2–RQ3). Ecchi also appears most often in specific genre combinations, especially comedy, romance, action and fantasy. Although the findings are limited by platform coverage and the proxy approach, they show that ecchi is a genre-embedded form of fanservice whose reception and engagement patterns depend strongly on context.