“Fanservice — GACKT” Japanese Media and Popular Culture: An Open-Access Digital Initiative of the University of Tokyo by Miranda Ruth Larsen Fan service unites disparate acts of narrative and celebrity expansion, seemingly bringing audience and performer closer together in a variety of official and unofficial contexts. Intrinsically intertextual, fan service often references and becomes something to reference simultaneously, extending beyond one moment into other texts and the interpretative strategies of the fan. The gravity of fan service is unsurprising given the wider turn toward the service industries, where emotional labor is linked to all exchanges of value (Hochschild 2003). Fan service celebrates these exchanges as conversations between all parties involved in the media text, encompassing a wide range of nodes to further engagement and strengthen emotional investment. Despite the industrial enthusiasm for certain outlets of these exchanges (usually lucrative and policed spaces like conventions), fan service is frequently dismissed as pandering to the core audience demographic that has an emotional investment in the media franchise. Fan service is usually rendered problematic by particular groups invested in regulating the meaning of a text or the accepted understanding of a performer. Common examples of fan service include the post-credits stinger scene at the end of Marvel Universe films that hints at the next adaptation (Suskind 2014) as well as exchanges such as meet-and-greet opportunities with stars at Comic Con or interacting with fans on social media. Each example requires us to consider the effort that goes into fan service from everyone involved. Critiques of fan service, as I have mentioned, often focus on the audience and their “demands” for content from media producers. The term is often used in headlines as a disparaging label for narrative or visual content intended for a dedicated fan demographic —locating a problem at the site of media consumption. But fan service critically requires the performer’s affective/emotional labor and engagement, “the management of feeling to create a publicly observable facial and bodily display” (Hochschild 2003, 7). Though fan service may be surprising initially, the narrative of the performer usually makes the act