I don't immediately dismiss a show just because it has a lot of fan service. Love Hina had it in spades, and I still found a lot to like there. Rosario+Vampire had triple the amount of fan service from Love Hina, yet I still put up with it because of some of the characters struck a cord with me for some reason. So, despite not being in the target audience for shows that trade in fan service, I'm generally not turned off by them- I ignore the stuff that bores me, and just focus on what else is there.

The one thing that makes me drop a fan service-heavy show like a hot potato is a complete lack of respect for the female characters on the part of the writers. I'm not talking about mere objectification; that's to be expected. What I'm talking about is when the characters cease to even be characters, and become automatons who exist solely for the purpose of having breasts. Sometimes, I don't get the impression that the writers made any attempt to get inside the female characters' heads whatsoever, and that's just bad writing. Despite Jon's tepid recommendation, Ladies vs. Butlers is a horrible offender in this category; hell, Ladies vs. Butlers makes Rosario+Vampire look like freakin' Grave of the Fireflies. I realize that only one episode of LvB has aired at the time of this writing, but it would take a helluva lot for that show to convince me that anyone involved really gives a crap about what the girls are thinking.

Despite panty shot after panty shot, Chu-Bra! does not completely disrespect its' cast; if anything, it's the opposite. Whether there are any female writers or not, there seems to be a deeper understanding of adolescent girls here than I'm used to seeing. There was that time, before I was a woman but I could no longer pretend to be a child, when suddenly I had to wear a bra and it was weird and I didn't really want to think about it, but I would walk past five lingerie stores in the mall and wonder what was going on, and this show brought me back to that time. One girl soliloquizes, "Whenever I put on underwear, I feel like the world is calling me dirty", and, sad commentary on society or not, I remember that feeling.

It's not cool to want to wear sexy underwear, right? Only bad girls do that. But then, why is there so much of it? Why do I pass three Victoria's Secrets and only one Toys R' Us on a regular basis? If I'm not supposed to care about it, why is it impossible to ignore?

Nayu, our panty-obsessed protagonist, is rumored to be a middle-school-aged hooker because of her notoriety for wearing sexy underwear under her school uniform. I don't think I'm spoiling much when I tell you that Nayu is nothing of the sort, but instead just an underwear connoisseur. If you think about it, it's really no different from being into designer shoes, or other items of clothing that people like to obsess over. While the show definitely makes fun of Nayu for her unusual obsession, I got the distinct impression that the show was saying that there's nothing wrong with being interested enough in underwear to know how a bra is supposed to fit. Girls shoving on bras and not worrying about the fit, because they don't want to think about it (remember, thinking about underwear is PERVY and WRONG), is absolutely a real problem- I don't think I had a bra that fit properly until I was 24. Even though it's perfectly logical, no one (except perhaps Nayu) wakes up and says to themselves "Maybe I should get my breasts measured again today?"

In addition to, surprisingly, taking a bat to the ridiculous virgin/whore dichotomy that many girls internalize from a young age, you have to give this show credit for truth in advertising. So many anime just want to show bras and panties and come up with incredibly stupid excuses for it, whereas in this show they came out and said "You know, if we want an excuse to show girls in their underwear, we could just do a show about women's underwear." However, if the show is so baldfaced about its purpose, then why do aspects of it seem to be targeted at people like me, who probably would be just as happy to never see another panty shot ever again?

It's not a great show; it might not even necessarily be a good show. If it wants to keep viewers like me, it's going to have to do more than just proclaim "Hey, women's underwear is actually kind of cool!", and people who really want hardcore fanservice are honestly better off watching Ladies vs. Butlers; unless lacy panties are your idea of scandalous, the content of this show is pretty mild so far. There are even cute animals, even a clone of Love Hina's very own Tama-chan, which makes me doubly confused about who this show is supposed to be for; this can't be a show for girls, look at all those up-skirt camera angles! B-but look at all the cute animals!

Like several other shows so far this season, I'm afraid that Chu-Bra! is going to take a nose dive and I'll feel stupid for having ever said anything remotely nice about it. But I have to be honest and say that, thus far, I'm pleasantly surprised by what they've done here: I think, while trying to make a show about women's underwear, they may have accidentally made a show about young women. I just hope the first episode wasn't a fluke.