Definition of "ecchi" [ecchi]

• Erotic, lascivious, lewd, naughty, sexy, suggestive (adjective)
• A genre, especially of anime and manga, featuring playful, tongue-in-cheek usage of sexualized imagery and situations such as double entendre or flirtation, while remaining non-pornographic. Often used to differentiate from hentai which features overt sexual themes. (noun)
• Blanket term used to describe such media (noun)
• A situation within a story, especially anime and manga, which ventures into the ecchi genre. (noun)

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• "As an aside, that's why I decided not to call this a fan service show and use the better fitting term "ecchi"."
• "Tokyo Reporter, has an interview with a couple of great hentai (or maybe just 'ecchi'?) manga artists,"
• "It's full of animated nudity and astonishingly nasty violence, blended with an cutesy anime tradition of sweet little girls who love their papa, blended with hi tech action gunplay, with dollops of morally dodgy but hilarious scenes which draw upon the ecchi tradition of anime (basically, soft porn.)"