As the anime fan base grows older and wiser, our expectations of anime tend to be a bit stricter. When you see an anime labeled as a harem, you can probably guess it will be filled with fan service, pantsu shots, and nosebleeds from oppai overload. Could it be that anime companies are afraid that putting the ecchi tag on a series will immediately make certain viewers turn away? This might sound strange but let us explain using a recent series that is 100% ecchi but filled with numerous other elements.

The Quintessential Quintuplets has several cute girls—let us know which is your favorite in the comments below—and they are constantly in some rather…ecchi-focused moments. Some of the girls will be seen getting out of a shower and other times they will be barely clothed! Yet, on MAL, The Quintessential Quintuplets isn’t defined as an ecchi! Neither season 1 or 2 of The Quintessential Quintuplets is ecchi yet it clearly has ecchi themes!? We think maybe the anime community wants The Quintessential Quintuplets to be seen for the romance and comedy it has first and foremost rather than be titled as yet another ecchi harem anime. That would make some sense so viewers go into it with a bit less jaded mindset.

Here’s something many hate, the overly obvious. In the anime world when a series has girls with giant oppai or harem, then viewers already know what to expect. No one is going to see a series like The Hidden Dungeon Only I Can Enter or Mother of the Goddess’ Dormitory and not know it has ecchi. It’s very possible various websites and studios don’t feel the need to label something as ecchi—or advertise it as such—because from the trailers/images alone one could guess a series will have ecchi sewn into it.

Want a surprise anime that isn’t labeled as ecchi? We know many of you have seen a pretty mature series called Domestic Girlfriend—which released in 2019 to mixed reception—and that anime is filled with sexual content left and right. Besides the home release—which has uncensored oppai—Domestic Girlfriend was not shy showing off its ladies with half their clothes or in proactive situations. Could it possibly be that many anime fans aren’t considering mature sex-orientated scenes as ecchi? In their minds, ecchi is for teenagers and/or goofy rom-coms. Maybe adult anime want to shy away from the ecchi motif to show their series is more for those of an older persuasion.

What if—and this will sound radical—a show that doesn’t have every other scene with oppai or nosebleeds now isn’t labeled as ecchi? Maybe, just maybe anime that is to be considered ecchi must have a quota of nosebleed-inducing moments to really be warranted as ecchi. That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime has tons of perverted moments, characters, and women with oppai that define the laws of nature…yet the series is not labeled at all as an ecchi. We don’t doubt that many anime viewers who want ecchi and expect it, only see series with tons of perverted moments as good enough for the ecchi seal of approval. All other anime that don’t meet the quota of ecchi will now not be considered good enough for it.