I can relate to that. But I don't think Nodokathon is merely a fan-service. Nodoka elaborated her intention in detail here.
As in, she's trying to "break character and shell of everything" to save everyone from given inertia and inanity. I believe in Chandler's Law she talked about same thing. Nodokathon is no exception, all part of her experiment to find more intriguing aspects of character to help her understand and distort the world.
I found myself agreeing and disagreeing at the same time. Agreeing part is that Nodokathon didn’t happen without a deeper reason. I don’t really mind why those six girls showing up despite the very recent Io incident; some wouldn’t understand the full picture, some might not care at all, and most of them have personality weaknesses that could be easily tapped by Nodoka via invitations. They showed up for her experiment unbeknownst to them.
The disagreeing part is how poorly defined this
experiment is, or how intentionally hidden an explanation is behind content wall higher than the walls surrounding Kumon-mi, to a point that believing her experiment becomes a tough pill to swallow. Saying this is because her experiment can be summed up to “rebelling against this strange world and understanding Kyoko’s words via all female sexual contests”. Like WHAT? How does that make any sense? How did she come to this conclusion that this
particular experimental procedure might’ve brought the results she sought? It’s exactly 1-yr anniversary of Nodokathon and has she really learned anything from it? Has any participant become any “different” related to this purpose after Nodokathon? Did any potential insight provided by Nodokathon partially help her reach the roof? If yes then how? Does Makoto backing down or not affect her conclusion of this experiment? If no then why? Would you(Selly, not you) mind explaining how exactly Nodokathon could achieve Nodoka’s goal?
(If there actually is mention somewhere that indicates Nodoka learned something via Nodokathon pls slap right in my face; I’ve never stopped judging this event chain and I’d like to change that if possible)
I care less a lot why she does things and care a lot more how and why certain experiments can do just that. For this I have a million more questions for Nodokathon. But because I have not been convinced that Selly/Nodoka can answer them properly and Nodokathon itself doesn’t seem to really on-screen help Nodoka become one step closer to her goal, I have no reason to believe this isn’t just a mindless fan service and it’s no wonder that many of us think Nodokathon is just that. Let’s face it, THAT is what we received and you’ve really gotta just hardcore believe in Nodoka and Selly without a doubt to just buy everything Nodoka said that night as if Nodokathon was some secret villain plots that don’t need to make any sense to the audience (“it just is okay it makes perfect sense stop asking you don’t know shit” kinda deal). And this pisses me off to no end; it’s like Selly doesn’t know how to make Nodoka smart so he forces his audience to be stupid.
edit: oof wake up to a bunch of bad grammar