Shimoneta to Iu Gainen ga Sonzai Shinai Taikutsu na Sekai

With the introduction of strict new morality laws, Japan has become a nation cleansed of all that is obscene and impure. By monitoring citizens using special devices worn around their necks, authorities have taken extreme measures to ensure that society remains chaste.

In this world of sexual suppression, Tanukichi Okuma—son of an infamous terrorist who opposed the chastity laws—has just entered high school, offering his help to the student council in order to get close to president Anna Nishikinomiya, his childhood friend and crush. Little does he know that the vice president Ayame Kajou has a secret identity: Blue Snow, a masked criminal dedicated to spreading lewd material amongst the sheltered public—and Tanukichi has caught the girl's interest due to his father's notoriety.

Soon, Tanukichi is dragged into joining her organization called SOX, where he is forced to spread obscene propaganda, helping to launch an assault against the government's oppressive rule. With their school set as the first point of attack, Tanukichi will have to do the unthinkable when he realizes that their primary target is the person he admires most.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Kajou, Ayame Main

Ishigami, Shizuka Japanese

Nishikinomiya, Anna Main

Matsuki, Miyu Japanese

Saotome, Otome Main

Arai, Satomi Japanese

Okuma, Tanukichi Main

Kobayashi, Yuusuke Japanese

Onigashira, Kosuri Main

Horie, Yui Japanese

Fuwa, Hyouka Supporting

Gotou, Saori Japanese

Binkan-chan Supporting

Ogura, Yui Japanese

Gouriki, Raiki Supporting

Miyake, Kenta Japanese

Tsukimigusa, Oboro Supporting

Uesaka, Sumire Japanese

Nishikinomiya, Sophia Supporting

Ohara, Sayaka Japanese

Cook, Justin Producer

Fujishiro, Atsushi Producer

Sudou, Koutarou Producer

Kawakami, Ryuutarou Producer

Reviews

Sep 19, 2015

HaXXspetten

Recommended

"What's the point of dirty jokes anyway if they aren't 'wrong'? They're appealing *because* they are wrong. They excite us *because* we have to be secretive. Because they're devilish, they shine. Because they're twisted, they entice us. That is why I vowed to become the 'devil' to crush this boring world where the concept of dirty jokes does not exist!" – Kajou Ayame

At first glance this may sound like a pretty stupid quote, but when you think about it there's a lot of truth behind it. In fact, Shimoneta as a whole functions in more or less the same way as underneath the hyperactive, wacky ... comedy there are a lot of shots fired not only against many societal norms, but also the censorship laws of Japanese media.

First thing first though: let's be honest here, how many people actually thought this was going to be a good anime before this season started airing? My guess is not so many, but Shimoneta came roaring seemingly completely out of nowhere and proved itself as one of the funniest comedies I've ever seen in anime, but also one of the strangest ones. The setting is honestly pretty similar to 1984 of all things, as it features a totalitarian, dystopian society with heavy governmental censorship. In this case however, the censorship is solely about sexual content. In fact all forms of pornography, sexual education, or anything along those lines has been completely banned from society for the last decade, and every citizen is forced to wear a vocal monitor at all times which summons the police to arrest them should they ever say a dirty word. Enter Kajou Ayame, a.k.a. the lewd terrorist “Blue Snow", a self-proclaimed freedom fighter who distributes sexual material wherever she goes in an attempt to educate people. Alongside our unfortunate protagonist Okuma Tanukichi whom she blackmails into assisting her, the two of them initiate a campaign of obscenities against the government with the hopes of one day managing to reform society to what it once was.

I could go on for days talking about the utter lunacy of Shimoneta, but I'd rather just recommend you to experience it for yourself as there is no way you can properly express its sheer absurdness with mere words. All I'll say is that it although it is fairly uneven, when it peaks it's without a doubt one of the best comedies ever.

What is definitely worth talking about though is the underlying message that the show is very clearly trying to send. After all, in a nutshell the entire story is essentially about fighting against the government's violation of freedom of speech and getting rid of all forms of censorship throughout society. It doesn't exactly take a genius to figure out what the author is trying to say with that. I'm pretty sure most people who watch anime on a regular basis are very familiar with just how severe the censorship can be for it. Whether it's about gore, sexual themes or anything else, there are always tons of things that have to be left out. Not only does this hinder the authors' and illustrators' ability to express themselves properly, but it can also severely neuter the experience for the series' viewers. And really, in this day and age even a kid can access essentially anything via the internet, so it's not like you're actually “protecting" anyone from graphical content by blocking it out anyway, not to mention that if someone didn't want to see that kind of stuff they wouldn't be watching the anime in question in the first place, censored or not. Shimoneta feels a lot like an author who had gotten fed up with the current system and who decided to write this story out of spite. Whether or not that is actually the case I do not know, but the fact that there are a lot of political messages in this story is undeniable. Although if it's really true that the author came up with the idea for Shimoneta when he was drunk like he claims to, then that only makes the whole thing even more peculiar.

Either way, regardless of whether you're watching this anime for the absurd comedy or the underlying messages, Shimoneta does a great job at both. It stands out as one of the most positively surprising anime I have seen in an extremely long time, and it will be remembered for being both hilarious and thought-provoking at the same time. Not many series can boast with that achievement.

Now sadly I don't really think the awareness that Shimoneta might raise will be enough to do anything about the censorship laws in Japan, but at least it stands up for itself and dares to make a statement. It's a step in the right direction at the very least, and I can only hope that more series will have the guts to do the same in the future.

Reviewer’s Rating: 9

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Nov 4, 2015

matic12345

Mixed Feelings

Lately censorship has become completely unreasonable and an anime tackling this problem sounded promising, but oh how wrong it all went.

Lets start with the story.The anime takes place sometime in the future when Japan has banned all things “immoral”. Our main character Tanukichi Okuma has just transferred to the elite public morals school where he is quickly summoned to join the student council to help fight the terrorist organisation SOX that is fighting against censorship, but he almost immediately gets blackmailed by one of the council members Ayame Kajou, who is actually one of the terrorists, to join the terrorists and commit obscene acts.

Well the ... whole concept is not all that bad and could be made perfectly enjoyable, however the sheer amount of unnecessary profanity made the whole thing barely watchable. First off why should every other sentence spoken in the show reference either sex, masturbation or intimate body parts, that might be funny the first few times but after less than ten minutes it started to get old and after the first episode it was just painful. Most of the episodes were abysmal, but the surprising thing is that the ending was quite enjoyable and the anime ended on a positive note so I couldn’t give it an even lower score.

Sometimes a bad story can be offset by great characters, but that sure as hell does not apply here. Our main character is one of the blandest out there, he manages to have no defining traits, we know next to nothing about his backstory and even his actions are dictated by someone else most of the time. Are the others any better? Well they are, but they are still poorly developed and completely one dimensional. The members of SOX can’t even speak normally without obnoxious sexual references. The one character who shines is Fuwa, as she manages to be the only one who is not overly annoying with her jokes and is one of the only reasons I managed to sit through this travesty, but unfortunately her screen time is limited. The relationships between characters are as poorly developed as the characters. One relationship stands out the most and that is the one between Okuma and his crush, the student council president Ana. The scenes between these two made me want to puke at times, it was just so wrong and disgusting.

The animation was nothing to write home about, but it still managed to work well enough. Here I want to touch the absolutely retarded way of censoring in the “uncensored” version with stickers that looked like the body part it was covering. I have no idea who thought that it would be fun, but it just came out as immature as the rest of the series. Still that does not mean there was no fan-service as it was plentiful and completely tasteless, why would one want to constantly see bodily fluids of our characters. The soundtrack itself was not bad, but the opening was just awful, the ending was not much better so neither made their way into my iTunes library.

All in all watching this has been quite the ordeal and it was probably the worse anime I have ever seen, and if it wasn’t for the last few episodes this would have surely gotten a score lower than 3, but considering the ending was not even bad it just manages to scrape up a score of 5 out of 10. Do I recommend this to anyone? To be frank no, I do not think it is worth your time as there are so many better shows out there. In the end it was sad that I found an anime that fights against censorship, to be one of the best examples why some form of censorship is sometimes needed.
I really hope you enjoyed reading the review and I kindly ask you to leave some feedback so I can improve my writing. If you liked the review you should also check out my ever-growing collection of reviews.

Reviewer’s Rating: 5

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Sep 19, 2015

StigmataSasha

Not Recommended

"Nothing is disgusting....nothing" - Okuma, episode 12

Shimoneta and Prison School have got to be the dirtiest and lewd shows this season, or this year. But Shimoneta sucks and Prison School is far superior. Why do I say this about two shows that are about on par in sexual content? Well then, read the review.

Shimoneta's premise is that all that is lewd and sexual has been banned for over a decade, and any use of sexual things via words, or objects will get you into legal trouble. Now our 'heroes' are off to fight a war and take back the justice which is all that is ... erotic that Japan is in dire need of. I hate this show not because it has ass and titties and panties...and other sex stuff, it's because of the characters poorly delivered dialogue, development, and just plain character. The story has no connected ideas, it's goes from point A to Point C, D, and B. Our cast is going around spreading erotic pictures and magazines to spread knowledge of the ignorance the country is in. The end of the series doesn't resolve anything really. There is this supposed huge conflict against the government baddies that's hardly ever explored, and the other terrorist organizations who are barely mentioned or shown for 2 seconds. The idea of the show is good, it's loosely reflected upon Japan's lack of sexual interaction among the young people with the declining Japanese population. But just because the idea behind the story is good, doesn't mean the execution is the same.

Shimoneta prizes itself with its pathetic characters who have no range nor substance. There is a complete lack of immersion and characterization. Okuma is every FUCKING reluctant brown hair male archetype, who is so plain and unoriginal, he has no quality to him. Any of the four boys from Prison School would've made a better protagonist. While Okuma is a terrible main character, Kajou has it worse. A character with substantial motivation and promise only to be hindered by her vastly pointless use of dialogue to spout unnecessary lewd words for the sake of it. You can't go one fucking sentence without her saying dick, just because. "Oh but it's the point of the show".......no, that shit is just bad writing. There are times where her lewd talk is appropriate in the situation but that's already when you're tired of her speaking. Additionally, Kajou's characterization and development is nonexistent. Actually, no character in the show has development, at all. Essentially, what we get is a plot that achieves nothing substantial enough to justify the span of 12 episodes.

Dialogue in general is terrible, TURRIBLE. It is unashamedly cheesy, while it should be ashamed, for how immature it handles immature use of sexual content. And it fails miserably. The comedy is just more dick and pussy jokes that get tiring really fast. Even for someone, myself, does the same thing, I don't expect that kind of amateur writing in entertainment. Other characters such as Anna is completely defiled as a one dimensional sex obsessed freak in the most annoying way possible. She's not Sarutobe Ayume from Gintama who actually is far better and actually funny, being obsessed with Gintoki just as much, just not as lewd and disgusting (nothing is disgusting). Even Tsukimigusa who has a sort of might not be interesting back story to him, it's totally under utilized. The only real character I enjoyed was White Peak. Somehow he didn't bother me, he was actually the epitome of what this show could've been. I loved every moment of his character, and then he's gone, forever. Sad times it is.

I have nothing bad to say about the art, it's fine. Subjective? I guess, whatever. I suppose you could say the sound in the show is good. Voice acting is well done and it sort of conveys the characters and setting until the characterization of the characters ruins it.

This show is a bile of sticky white love nectar, earning itself a 3/10. It's a dick of show that can shove itself up it's own ass. Get it?! AHAHAHAHA...it's not funny. This show killed what potential that could be sexual humor in the next stage of evolution. But I think that statement is a far stretch. This show is off the charts of shows I can recommend and earns my shitty of shit face seal of approval.

Reviewer’s Rating: 3

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	Poll: Shimoneta to Iu Gainen ga Sonzai Shinai Taikutsu na Sekai Episode 4 Discussion ( 1 2 3 4 5 ... Last Page ) Stark700 - Jul 25, 2015	382 replies	by Akinksy »» Nov 24, 9:46 AM
	Poll: Shimoneta to Iu Gainen ga Sonzai Shinai Taikutsu na Sekai Episode 1 Discussion ( 1 2 3 4 5 ... Last Page ) Stark700 - Jul 4, 2015	344 replies	by Dynameou »» Aug 14, 7:41 PM
	Poll: Shimoneta to Iu Gainen ga Sonzai Shinai Taikutsu na Sekai Episode 12 Discussion ( 1 2 3 4 5 ... Last Page ) Stark700 - Sep 19, 2015	276 replies	by SGandalf_Otaku »» Mar 21, 6:20 PM
	Poll: Shimoneta to Iu Gainen ga Sonzai Shinai Taikutsu na Sekai Episode 11 Discussion ( 1 2 3 ) bastek66 - Sep 12, 2015	144 replies	by vinnywizanime »» Mar 4, 3:09 AM
	Poll: Shimoneta to Iu Gainen ga Sonzai Shinai Taikutsu na Sekai Episode 10 Discussion ( 1 2 3 ) Stark700 - Sep 5, 2015	140 replies	by vinnywizanime »» Mar 3, 12:10 AM

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