Friday Funbags, the history of Lewd Cards!

Content warning: Boobies.

Weiss Schwarz is a game based on anime. Anime has big ‘ol anime tiddies. Weiss also has big ‘ol anime tiddies. Has Weiss always had big ol’ anime tiddies? Let’s take a trip down memory lane exploring how Weiss has incorporated, then embraced, lewdness.

2008 to 2010: Tasteful Lewds

Despite being populated heavily by harem VNs, the nudity levels are at most titilaing. The most erotic part of 2008 is Da Capo giving us a woman taking her bikini top off in a kind of lewd way and nipples through the swimsuit. What’s amazing is that the most a literal porn expansion for a VN gave us was a hiked skirt and some cleavage. Fate’s VN set even focuses on the story! Fate Hollow Attraxia gives us some swimwear, but for a story about Avenger porking everyone, it’s pretty tame.

The non VN sets tended to be less lewd than the series they came from. Every character in P4 has a swimsuit, but nothing more than that. Haruhi only a single instance of Haruhi harassing Mikuru, and little other service. The video game entries are light on pecs for the bara crowd.

Lewds were there, but were dispersed throughout the set and rather low key, with the exception of Da Capo. This is the tasteful lewds era of Weiss.

2011 to 2014: Ramping up the Lewdness

Sets from 2011 on presented a change in the source of lewdness, any set could have lewds.  Macross Frontier rung in 2011 and had all sorts of lewdness in it, which was  new for a non VN set. This isn’t too suprising for fans of the series as Sheryl is known for having a sexy stage persona. Sheryl eating ice cream with some dripping onto her barely covered chest. The Universal Bunny climax shows her bare ass. A card where Sheryl is bottomless. More risqué than previous offerings, and this appears to be a signal of a Bushiiroad more open to lewd cards.

Show based sets were starting to include some of their more lewd moments. Naked Yukine Chris and Fine’s underboob feature prominently in Symphogear’s first set. Nisemonogatari has a climax combo based on the infamous tooth brushing scene. Shin Chan’s penis is a RR. We were seeing more lewdness in sets, but the sets were still mostly tame…

2016 to 2018: Light bars keeps it decent, right?

And then To-Love-Ru happened. To-Love-Ru is an ecchi show that follows the Sacred Blacksmith’s Blu-ray sales tactic of Mystical Light Bars in the TV version, nipples on the Blu-ray. The full nudity, which is featured in about ten percent of the cards, is hidden behind light bars. But there’s other lewd stuff that isn’t hidden, including camel toes, letters stuffed in cleavage, and courtesy bubbles. This set truly pushed the lewd envelope, and was noted to have done this at the time. Other sets followed suit. A mainstay from the tasteful lewds era, Da Capo, included see through towels, a girl lusting over a banana, and bare side-boob.

Not only were the sets getting lewder, the official Bushiiroad sleeves and deck boxes were too. The KonoSuba second set’s extra merch for Darkness was based off of Darkness wearing a string bikini. This was arguably lewder than the light barred stuff in To-Love-Ru which covered most of the exposed breast. Bushii also released a set for No Game No Life with naked lolis and a lot of barely obscured breasts. Lewd had gone primetime. Before being adapted to English Weiss, No Game No Life had to be edited to clothe the lolis or it would not have been legal to sell in Canada. In JP Weiss, Lewd has become the norm.

Present: The lewd train has no breaks

We are seven sets into 2019, and two have them have been notably lewd. The first set of 2019 was Yunna’s Hotspring. This is a set cut right from To-Love-Ru’s cloth. Lots of light bars, girls grabbing their own breasts and things that are really lewd but can get away from the censor. Somehow, this turns out to be tame by 2019 standards.

Before writing this article, I had a joke predication in mind: full female frontal nudity by 2020 you cowards! And then I looked at Sneaker Bunko. A set where the card with full female frontal nudity somehow isn’t the most scandalous card in the set. That’s because there are cards that depict full on sex acts[1], a first for Weiss, and the nudity on the card is actually tasteful.  There is another Kadokawa set coming that includes Amagi Brilliant Park, where the author was known to draw dojinshi of his own characters, so it’ll be interesting to see what comes next on the lewd train. As far as service is concerned, the sky is the limit.

Concluding Thoughts

Lewd cards have been part of Weiss since the beginning, however, they have become lewder and more common since 2008. We now have full frontal nudity and sex. I can’t say if this is for better or for worse, to be honest. Anything to do with sex is inherently personal and general boundaries for a group are very hard to draw. I personally don’t mind the cards, and they’re fun to make good natured banter about the player playing the set. However, it can make some folks uncomfortable, and communities should be cognizant of that. Playing these new lewd sets with tact and respect is a must

 

I would like to dedicate this post to my boy JL. Keep reppin’ those anime titty cards at weeklies. Too bad Twitch will ban us if we let him on stream.

 

[1] Man, I need to read more books.