Ah, there is that, yeah. I hardly pay attention to that segment. (Den, either, for that matter, but it’s harder to miss the nudity in Den.)
alphaboi - yeah, I think you are thinking of the comics.
Interestingly, there are a whole host of American print and web based publications which feature nudity. Frex, Tarot, Witch of the Black Rose, Budd Root’s Cavewoman (not naked in all productions, but in some), Eros Comix out of Seattle which publishes a LOT of adult comix, Dark Horse comics (which published Frank Silke’s ‘Betty Page, Queen of the Nile’ which is about the best nude comic out there, and a lot of others I can’t think of offhand.
Unlike Japanese adult manga, you don’t see American adult comics being made into animated features.
I find this absolutely fascinating. While a lot of nudity has appeared in American animation, it seems to be strictly limited to one of two categories.
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Non human/ mythological: This seems to get a pass because the images are either representing an abstract concept, are considered to be “cultural or artitstic”, or far enough away from the standard human that they aren’t subject to the taboos of human society.
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Gratuitous/Shock Value: *Family Guy, SouthPark, Drawn Together, and Heavy Metal * all fall into this slot. The nudity is used as a deliberate pushing of the envelope, or a thumb to the nose of the censors. In this sense the characters are involved in situations that are just simply another sort of vulgar joke, or nudity is simply used for it’s own sake.
It’s interesting that casual nudity often observed in japanese animated comedies,(think Ranma 1/2, Tenchi Myuo) is perhaps the biggest sort of taboo to an American audience. While obviously Hentai/porno style anime isn’t truly suitable television fare, It’s interesting that sexual humour and nudity only seem to conicide in a vulgar or gross manner on American programming. Perhaps a subtle reflection of the traditional meme that sex is dirty?
They have loosened up in recent years, IIRC, though I don’t know all the details.
Come to think of it, there was quite a bit of underage nudity in the animated movie The BFG, and that actually made it onto the Disney channel when I was a kid.
The Big F***ing Gun?
Ah, that sounds a bit more Disney-ish.
I was listening to Robert Clampett talking about Warner Bros. cartoons on the latest Golden Collection DVD the other day…he said that Tweety was originally supposed to be a pink, featherless baby bird, but Warners made them color him yellow because he “looked nude.” Clampett then pointed out that no one ever complained about Porky Pig not wearing any pants.
I’ve mentioned this before, but it bears repeating.
In Disney’s 1940 Fantasia they cover up or simply eliminate the nipples on the centaurettes. It’s surprising, because if you lookm at the conceptual art for Fantasia you can see nipples.
But you can see nipples in the movie – at the end, in the Night on Bald Mountain sequence, you twice get fleeting visions of swooping harpies with green nipples. It sweeps by fast, but they fill the screen. The Harpies are obvious hell-creatures, swooping down and eating other hellspawn.
In the Disney universe, you can only show female nipples, then, if they;re oddly colored and evil.
Bears repeating? See post #7. 
Sorry, dz – missed your mention of it. But I have brought this up many times before on this Board.
Ha!
I must disagree with the OP about his/her categorization of the nude scenes in Heavy Metal. Shock value, heavens no! Why, without that one perky nipple, The Birth of Venus would be just another Botticelli!
To answer the question in the OP, I personally think going the extra step of nudity is the only logical choice. I mean, we’re a looooong way from Thundercats aren’t we?
In my opinion, the genre is so dominated by the bondage element that any attempt at clothed sexiness almost always ends up looking like a few penstrokes away from a ball-gag. I am particularly biased because I have a peculiar affection for Liquid Television’s Aeon Flux, and while I confess no appetite for BDSM, she has always been much sexier than any of the cartoon nudes I’ve seen.
Not just her top; let’s just say, the carpet matched the drapes.
In the U.S., there’s still an assumption that animation = entertainment for children.
There was a debatable frame in Who Framed Roger Rabit where we might arguably see an upskirt glimpse of Jessica’s pubic hair. But you’d never know it without a frame-by-frame. Or, of course, an Internet where others go frame-by-frame. The official explanation is that it was a coloring error, and was intended to show only her undies.
In an episode of Lupin the Third airing on [adult swim], Lupin and Goeman (and also “Pops” the detective) are ensnared in some kind of pleasure dome situation (while elsewhere in the compound, Kikyo, acting on her own, is attempting to steal whatever treasure they have). Anyway, there’s a big communal bath scene, with several topless babes, and not a nipple in the bunch.
Admittedly, it’s anime, and the Japanese can be somewhat – inscrutable, if you will, in the area of what they permit their artists to depict, but manga doesn’t seem to have any problem with nipples.
Any chance the cartoon might have been subjected to a nipple scrub before its American broadcast? It might have been intact in its primary market.
Possibly, I suppose. I’ll decide whether I think it likely once I’ve seen Heavy Metal play on Cartoon Network.
'Course, unless somebody who watched Lupin in Japan during the '70s wants to weigh in.
Didn’t they also include a frame of Betty Boop dropping her top, which was edited out before the movie hit the home video market?
Hey now i’m no prude! I’m all for more unedited animation and freedom of expression. I mas merely confused at the nipple-less solution. Frankly, heavy Metal WAS about being both artsy and shocking. It was a different and far cry from the children’s fare Americans considered animation to be at the time. I doubt very much that the nudity in the shorts that composed the film were integral to the plot at all.
