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Sep 26, 2024
Space Captain Harlock is a show about a suicidal man and his wacky friends as they engage in piracy, defend the Earth from alien invaders, and send people off to die needlessly.
The show is, at its core, an inventive and lavishly presented example of the space opera genre. It features unique alien species, ambitious space battles and the sort of worldbuilding that more or less demands to be taken seriously. Many elements of the show's art style and animation seem dated, and the action is not quite as crisp as other shows that came out around the same time, but the one thing it commits
...
to is a unique and interesting visual style. I have not seen anything quite like Harlock, and its feel can be picked out of a lineup with relative ease. Above all else, Space Pirate Captain Harloc is a unique show.
That having been said, the plot of Harlock is... strange. "Facile" is the word that continually springs to mind. A million and one situations arise where realism is elided for the sake of the plot or the show's broader philosophical message. Nearly all of mankind is said to be "spiritless." Why this happened is a question that has a different answer, depending on who you talk to: the reasons I caught involve things like environmental destruction, nuclear war, extreme post-scarcity decadence, subliminal messaging in television programs and the existence of crossdressers. Regardless of why it happened, the effect is obvious: when a group of alien invaders drop a declaration of war on Tokyo, in the form of a neighborhood destroying glowing black orb with their name on it, there are (conservatively) about one hundred humans in the whole galaxy who give a shit.
A ton of episodes feel frustrating in that they lack a critical element of consistency. The Mazone are an invading alien force who announce their presence in the form of a genocidal opening attack... but they also hide in the shadows and kill anyone who can blow the whistle on their invasion plans... despite the fact that nobody on Earth will listen to anyone who correctly predicts the Mazone invasion. The Mazone are a race of all female plant-based lifeforms... until the show introduces "civilian Mazone" who we're supposed to sympathize with, which apparently includes regular looking dudes. For a good four-fifths of the runtime, the Mazone do bold plan after bold plan, putting Harlock, his crew, and his ship in mortal peril... only for everyone to come out the other side without anything more than a couple of scratches. The show introduces a race of weird warrior aliens with a funky egg-headed design, and then immediately turns them into slightly green-skinned humans the moment one of them is supposed to be in love.
A lot of my problems with the show's plot has to do with its philosophy. What that philosophy is, I can't quite pin down. I think it's just a general screed on being manly and doing man things. Earth is full of soft people who won't fight back when aliens invade and the only people who can save the Earth are people who are "looking for a place to die." Harlock, on multiple occasions, lets perfectly good fighters throw their lives away on pointless solo attacks against the whole of the Mazone fleet, an act that's treated as unavoidable and tragic despite the fact that Harlock can often trivially prevent it. I'm supposed to look at this man, who will gladly throw Earth away to save a girl he otherwise leaves in the care of abusive authority figures, and think he's "the good guy," and not some deeply troubled individual who everyone follows because he's friends with the ship's computer.
In the end, I didn't like Harlock, very much. I've seen that this show has quite a vocal following, and it was influential enough to get spinoffs and remakes, and I can certainly see why, with its sheer inventive energy. Ultimately, however, I just couldn't see this as anything more than forty-two episodes of an old man, vaguely rambling about "kids these days" and their "loose morals," except it's in space and the old man shoots people.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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Aug 25, 2024
Isekai Harem Anime is a show about a teenage boy's abortive attempts to be cool and smart and not a roiling ball of hormones.
This show is a prime example of what is now a seemingly well-calcified genre of anime. The MC turns on a new videogame and finds out that he can't log out, so he decides to carve out a new life for himself inside the game world. While he's here, he'll buy slaves, kill trees, murder people in their sleep, kill trees again, invent bathtubs, kill yet more trees, make soap... did I mention the killing trees part? The show goes for a
...
deliberately slower pace, with our protagonist focusing more on building an ideal life together with his dog-girl slave waifu. While there is the occasional nod to fantasy adventure, the occasional plot that involves actual risk-taking or stakes, much of the show is spent with Michio grinding out the same few floors of the same dungeon, experimenting with the game's mechanics, gathering up money exclusively to spend on ordinary things like housing and clothes and custom-made, harem-sized bathtubs...
I feel like I'm burying the lede, a bit.
See, in most anime, the word "harem" is used with a bit of fun irony. It's not a literal harem; the protagonist just so happens to naturally attract the attention of women, usually by virtue of being a Very Good Boy. Isekai Harem Anime is not being cute, when it uses words like "harem." The female lead, Roxanne, is a literal slave, and Michio is her owner. It is stated in the show (notably, by someone *other* than Roxanne, herself) that Roxanne is a willing participant, that being a slave is Very Much Her Jam, but it does introduce a layer of creepiness to the exchange that many audience members will be turned off from. Personally, I find it hard to get too offended at the fact that the softcore hentai is indulging in sexual fetish material, and the show does not shy away from the fact that Michio is otherwise morally bankrupt. The fact that the show gave even a nod to Roxanne's consent puts it head and shoulders above its contemporaries, especially the more explicit contemporaries.
The pacing was... interesting. The novel and the manga are apparently beasts of a publication, and like them the show takes forever to get anywhere. By the time this run of episodes has finished, Michio has gathered the second of what will eventually be nearly a half-dozen waifus. Either the show was just *that* confident they'd be picked up for a second season, or they were just *that* dedicated to keeping the slow, homey vibe that they were willing to let the show run as slow as it needed to. Considering the last episode just montages the rest of the slaves being gathered at once, in a hasty and poorly executed sequence, I'm almost willing to believe the answer was the first one.
I think my biggest problem with the show is that the main character fucking yaps. This is par for the course in isekais. Especially in LitRPG ones where the writers get most of their word count in by assuming the audience has never played a videogame in their life. However, even if I wasn't familiar with the mechanics of a basic RPG, I think I would have much preferred for Michio to not have to explain every little thing. Sometimes, it's okay to just let the audience figure shit out for themselves, using all the context clues you're leaving around. The way the RPG works in this setting is vaguely interesting (I wouldn't say no to playing a game that had rules like the ones shown), but not to the point where I need the manual read to me every episode.
Michio's yap potential gets even worse, during the sex scenes, because of course he doesn't shut up then, either. I'm going to say something slightly controversial: I would have liked Michio more if he had just been a dumb horny bastard. If he was unabashedly like "Hell yeah, having sex with people I own is epic poggers 420 blaze it," and just so happened to be surrounded by women who were actually into that, that'd be ideal. Instead, we're given a listen into his own head, where he seems to be inordinately worried about what we, the audience, think about him. There's a constant, overwhelming desire in Michio's head to rationalize what he's doing, to act like every grope and pass he makes at the woman he owns is part of a grander, more romantic plan. The first night they spend together, he spends so much time worried about Roxanne's consent, doing everything in his power short of actually talking to her, hashing out her boundaries like a normal person. There's also an entire sequence where he pretends like rubbing soap on Roxanne's tits inspired him to write shitty amateur poetry about "snow on the mountains." It doesn't have the intended effect, is the problem. The writers wanted me to look at Michio's inner thoughs and think "oh, he's the good guy, actually." Instead, I just get the impression that he's just painfully insecure, a horny brat who isn't going to *stop* forcing himself on the woman he bought, but who really really doesn't want you to think he's being the bad guy, about it.
And then I remember that he's literally 17 in this show, and I think to myself "or, he's just acting like what he thinks a cool person is because he's a dumb teenager." Either one, really.
Overall, Isekai Harem Anime was... an anime. The worldbuilding wasn't terrible, and something about the slower, warmer vibe of a guy building a comfortable life in a fantasy world put a good taste in my mouth. The sex scenes (while a bit tedious at times with their running commentary), were decently varied and unobtrusive. Roxanne, moreso than her master, is an enjoyable character to be with. However, it's clear that this show was going to struggle to find an audience. Hentai fans may not appreciate its slower pace and wishy-washy protagonist. Isekai fans are going to be hard pressed to recommend a show who's main subject matter is dubiously consensual sexual slavery. Take it for what it is, and try not to think about it, as hard as I have.
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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May 31, 2024
Gunparade Orchestra is the heartwarming tale of Hardboiled Penguin, the greatest character to ever exist in the history of anime.
Hardboiled Penguin is an anthropomorphic penguin in a trenchcoat and fedora. His role in the plot is not dissimilar to that of the famous Greek Chorus. At regular intervals, he stands on the sidelines of the story, where he says something vague, tough and philosophical that might or might not be related to the life and times of mecha pilots who are also high school students. Nobody acknowledges his existence, and he does not talk to anybody. He is the only anthropomorphic character in the entire
...
show. Hardboiled Penguin is a mystery, but two things are clearly certain:
1: He is a penguin
2: He is Hardboiled.
Naturally, the writers realize just what sort of beast they have created, and so do everything they can to contain the awesome power of Hardboiled Penguin. He only dispenses his hardboiled wisdom twice per episode, and after the first arc of the show, he is quietly and conspicuously removed from the story, altogether. The decision to have him standing around, making goofy faux-tough-guy platitudes, is clearly because he is too strong a character to be allowed to affect the plot directly. The alien invasion that is so dire that it requires conscripting literal teenagers wouldn't be a threat, in the face of that powerful beak.
The problem with sidelining your best character, however, is that the plot of the show rests entirely on the remainder of your cast. GPO tells three different stories, in three different parts of Japan. Every military unit we're forced to sit with is comprised almost entirely of stock, cliche anime tropes. Blatant insubordination runs rampant in the army, and is allowed to fester unchallenged for seemingly no reason other than for the sake of drama. Every group we follow seems to be its own flavor of incompetent, on the back foot of a war that has no end in sight and which the good guys are clearly losing. It is not until the last third of the show that we encounter a group of people whose personalities are even slightly refreshing. "The World According to Satomi" might be the best standalone episode because it at least managed to make me laugh for a minute.
Enough about the plot. I want to talk more about Hardboiled Penguin.
I have so many questions. What is Hardboiled Penguin? Is he an alien? A genetically altered creature? The whimsical fancy of a teenage girl, in over her head? Why does he dress like a film noir detective? Does he solve crimes? What kind of crimes does he solve? He must be doing good for himself, since that jacket of his clearly needs to be custom tailored. Where did he get all his pearls of wisdom? Does he have a Hardboiled Sensei somewhere that taught him how to be the Penguin he is today? Is Hardboiled Penguin single?
I desperately need to know if Hardboiled Penguin is single.
Overall, Gunparade Orchestra is an absolutely mediocre show. It is unoriginal and does nothing new or innovative, except for Hardboiled Penguin. If I were crowned Queen of Anime, tomorrow, I would require more shows feature Hardboiled Penguin. I want Hardboiled Penguin in all the most popular anime, standing on scenic vistas overlooking major battles while spouting one liners about how women are scary and how little fish don't understand the whims of big fish. I am so dedicated to this bit, I have removed every single one of my Favorite characters from my MAL profile, because none of them deserve to share a screen with Hardboiled Penguin.
I give Gunparade Orchestra a "Hardboiled Penguin" out of ten. Somebody please tell me if that guy is single.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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May 31, 2024
Darker than Black's first season was a moody supernatural spy thriller with gripping characters and visceral action sequences. The second season continues that proud tradition, and adds in some JRPG-level plot contrivance to spice things up. Also pedophilia.
The headline to take away from this review is that the show is still good. I found myself binging the series almost in one sitting, The new contractors introduced in the show all have interesting abilities and enough was done with returning cast members to keep them interesting. Certain fight scenes still stick out in my head for being lavishly animated and ambitious. The focus of the show
...
being on a new character offers us a chance to see the world of contractors from the perspective of somebody who (at least at first) lives on the outside of that world. The issue I have with the show's driection doesn't stem from the fact that it suddenly became shit. More specifically, the fact that I've gotten so ingrained in the show's world makes the decisions it takes with its story strange and questionable.
This is the part where the spoilers happen. Skip to the last paragraph if you want to avoid excessive rambling.
Between the events of Season 1 and Season 2, the world of Darker than Black takes a hard right turn into what I can only describe as "some real JRPG bullcrap." Remember Yin? The emotionless Doll who's main defining moment in the first season was her slow and tragic humanization? Well, I guess the writers wanted a bit of a mulligan on that. Turns out that one episode I like where we finally get a glimpse into her humanity didn't happen because Dolls are actually more complex than the writers originally led you to believe. It turns out the reason why she has emotions is because she's Izanami, the Shinto creation goddess, and her evolution into a floating, soul-harvesting, world-destroying specter was prophecized by some random Japanese guy we haven't met, some thirty years before the first Gate even showed up. Yup, there's prophecies now. The Syndicate were the good guys, actually? If you really think about it? They weren't trying to kill all the contractors because they were evil, they just wanted to stop some 50 year old poem from coming true! Obviously!
The show tries to humanize contractors by showing us multiple characters who either become contractors in the course of the plot, or who have done so recently. However, it raises more questions than it answers. Apparently, perfectly happy and normal teenagers turn into the clinical definition of psychopaths, literally overnight and with no transition between the two. Our focal point character changes personality so abruptly, it almost happens off-screen. She still shows signs of emotions and caring about things, and she seems to be chagrined at that. She actively complains that she's not as "rational" as everyone seems to think all contractors are. The seasoned contractors around her, who've admitted in the past to still feeling emotions, seem to take this as proof that she's a super special girl and not that (as I've already said) the mechanics of this world are more complex than the writers originally led us to believe.
Did I mention the JRPG level bullcrap? The main character is a twin with super special powers that lets her do a magical-girl style transformation from "girl" to "girl with anti-tank rifle." Her brother is a super-specialer boy who's contractor power seems to be "making the plot more confusing." The whole thing ends with a frankly ridiculous sequence about... the main character losing her memories? And it's very sad? And then something something another world, something something Yin in a suit with short hair, something something Hei realizes his true potential.
They brought Mao back, and now he's a sugar glider. It was clear that the original artist really liked cats, and drew them with a charm that can only really speak to a love of the things. The artists for this show struggled a lot more, when it came to drawing sugar gliders. Mao only exists in this show to be a wacky funny cartoon character (but, you know, only engaging in "rational" slapstick).
There's a non-binary person in this show. And that's all I'm going to say about that.
I have a problem. When I like something, I tear it to shreds. I would not have gotten this close and this in depth with my problems with the show, if I didn't ultimately like what I was looking at. To try and sum it up quickly, Ryuusei no Gemini is a fine and good continuation of the series. It stumbles pretty hard at points, especially towards the end, but when you get past the pseudo-philosophy it is still a damn fine thriller. People who can shut their brain off more than I do should very well like it. For the people like me, well... at least it'll give you something to think about, for a few days.
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
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May 15, 2024
Japanese Family Guy is a show that proves that the key to succeeding in the entertainment industry is to never stop screaming.
At first blush, the show felt like the kind of thing I should have been super into. The setting is a chaotic hodge-podge of feudal Japan, modern society and intergalactic sci-fi. Samurai rub shoulders with aliens of every conceivable shape and variety. It's the kind of eclectic backdrop that lends itself to a great deal of possible adventures and wacky scenarios, perfect for the show's action-comedy vibe. However, the show didn't work for me at all, primarily because the action was half-baked and the
...
comedy was crushingly unfunny.
Starting with the easiest problem first, the action in the show is non-existent. The show primarily goes for a slapstick vibe, with most of its runtime dedicated to over the top physical comedy sequences of the Tom and Jerry variety. That's not terribly objectionable, but on those rare times when the show decides to get "serious" and do a real fight, it winds up being unimpressive and far too brief. I encountered about two legitimate fight scenes with choreography more complex than "guy runs up to other guy, shot of guy after getting the big blow." Both of those fight scenes were towards the end of my run, deep enough to where I was long since checked out from the show. Not because of the action, mind you. The reason I gave up on this show was its comedy.
Gintama is a show full of jokes. I can see the jokes, as they're happening. And if those jokes were being performed by competent actors, the show might even have been funny. But they weren't, so it wasn't. Most of my problems with the comedy boils down to the delivery. The actors all talk like they're being paid by the word. Every line has a million superfluous words jammed into them, requiring the actors to spew out non-stop, rapid fire dialogue. What's more, they deliver all these overstuffed and overbaked lines at the top of their lungs, because I guess screaming is funny. The only character who's ever consistently gotten a chuckle out of me was Okita, because his character gimmick is subdued enough to where he can actually do something surprising, now and then. For everyone else, their horrible delivery ruins what could otherwise be perfectly good jokes. A great example happens early in the show. Main character Gintoki tries to give his friends a speech about commitment and what it means to be a man of principle, only for the speech to quickly devolve into a nonsensical tirade on the merits of wetting the bed. Had that monologue been delivered by John Cleese, it would have been perfect insanity, but instead it's delivered by Gintoki, who has to get a novella sized block of text out into the air in order to pretend like the lip movements match up.
And yes, for the record, I watched the dubbed version of this show. I know that's bad practice, for some reason, but it felt important that that's how I experence the jokes. Sure, it would have been slightly more palatable if everyone was speaking a language I don't understand. I could read the subtitles and amuse myself to no end, fantasizing about what the lines would sound like if they were delivered properly. The thing is, I've seen funny anime before, and the ones that are funny are funny because they're well written. Gintama is funny because it references other media, has a bunch of rude humor and marks the punchline to every single joke with either a character screaming, or a character being assaulted. They are not the same.
To sum up my thoughts, Gintama was a show I wanted to like. Its occasional glimmers of fun and potential are floating in a sea of mediocrity. I only watched as far as I did so my review score would actually count in the metric. While I didn't *hate* watching it, I spent most of my time blankly staring at it, unengaged, and that may or may not be an even worse feeling.
I give this show a "Potato Chips" out of 10. If the first couple episodes aren't the funniest shit in the world, to you, then don't bother tackling this behemoth further. Despite what others say, it doesn't really get better.
Reviewer’s Rating: 4
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Apr 6, 2024
Rose of Versailles is an anime that achieves the lofty but unexpected goal of being a decently written and structured fanfiction. Based in France in the years leading up to the start of the French Revolution, it stars Original Character (do not steal) Oscar Francois de Jarjayes. Oscar is a hyper-competent woman whose unique talents put her in just the right spots at just the right time to have a front row seat to several of the most interesting points of French history. While there, she interacts with several notable figures, arguing philosophy with Robespierre and calling King Louis XV's lover a hobag and perving
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on Lord Fersen. The whole thing is a pretext to fill the plot with love triangles, scandalous gossip and really weird gender takes. Were it not for the fact that this anime was made in 1979, I would have made the guess that Rose of Versailles could trace its pedigree to whatever the Japanese equivalent of Wattpad is.
To get around the fact that the writer wanted a female protagonist in a military role (a bit of an eyebrow raise at that time of French history), Rose of Versailles uses the farcically paper-thin excuse that Oscar was "raised as a man." What this means is in no way explained. I had assumed, after watching the first episode, that Oscar's gender identity was going to be a significant plot point, that effort would have to be expended in keeping the secret. However, the "secret" only seems to exist for one episode before the show quickly throws it aside. Nobody but the inattentive thinks Oscar is a man, and they're usually corrected the moment they start to talk about her. Oscar herself seems to go out of her way to do so, when they assume she's anything other than a woman. It's not even an open secret, which might have worked and been interesting. The writers only bother to wrangle in her gender identity as a part of her character towards the end, where she starts talking some bullshit about how she wants to be a man so she doesn't have to suffer from the curse of having feelings. Granted, this show came out in the late 70's, so it would be a bit much to expect the show to have groundbreaking trans representation. But considering the show seems to think that her being a woman means crying when she's sad and letting her husband define her path in life, I find this element of the plot to be disappointing.
Many of the other elements of the show range from "good" to "different." The animation is very good, with appealing (if sometimes indistinct) characters, fluid fight scenes, and oftentimes striking visuals. The plot, centered as it seems to be around a semi-sympathetic depiction of Marie Antoinette, serves to illustrate the French Revolution in a way that's compelling. Parts of it play out in soap opera fashion, and while a few of these elements were, in my opinion, overbaked, I was certainly not bored.
Overall, Rose of Versailles is a show that I kind of like, but I could see being a hard sell for people. History buffs might not approve of the softer, prettier, more romance novel inspired elements that plague this show. But people coming in for that more paperback feel will have something quite good to occupy their time. Finally, anybody who just wants sometihng different will find it in Rose of Versailles. I have not watched anything quite like it, in some time, and I expect I will not do so again, for some time. If that sort of feeling appeals to you, pick it up and give it a try.
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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Feb 2, 2024
Blue Seagull is a collection of things that happen in sequence, and I'm pretty sure that some of them are connected to each other.
This is a movie that is bad. On basically every level it is bad. The best part of the movie is probably the animation, which I would describe as "charmingly primitive." Characters are semi-competently designed, in that they are very distinguishable, and while the whole thing is rife with awkward stilted action, it's not that much worse than a lot of shows it was contemporary with. On regular occasions, the program switches to the kind of CGI that wouldn't look out of
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place as a tech demo for the Sega Saturn. Not only are these scenes incredibly dated and ugly, they often serve no point to the story other than to communicate things like "this girl drives her car to work" and "the police exist" and "the animators aren't really sure what the difference is between New York City and Las Vegas."
The story is very unfocused. Nothing ever really feels like it connects to anything that came before it. Ha-il just sort of meanders his way from place to place, until it's time for the Die-Hard style siege on a mafia stronghold. It's a very "and now for something completely different" style of storytelling. Not helping is the fact that the only version of this movie I could find had possibly the worst subtitles I'd ever seen. Half the time, they didn't even form a coherent sentence, let alone tell me anything about what was happening. They were so bad they actually wrapped around to being funny, at points.
Despite all its flaws, I found myself kind of low-key enjoying this movie. There's a sort of doofy earnestness to the whole production. The CGI sequences, as laughably bad as they seem in the modern day, are lavishly presented, as if the people who made them were just so proud of what they could do with their computers. The end credits are full of B-roll footage of all the people who worked on the film, being the very hardest workers, in their cramped little studio full of posters they made of the movie they were currently working on. The film is loaded with product placement for Korean brands like Daewoo and Samsung, which makes me think that there's an undercurrent of patriotism. As if this movie about a handsome, hyper-competent Korean stud travelling to America to recover the sacred treasure of Korea from the American Mafia *might* have been trying to play to its audience, just a tad.
Overall, I would say Blue Seagull is bad, but it's not irredemably bad. It's boring and incoherent at times, but it has a certain charm about it. I give it a Daewoo out of ten.
Reviewer’s Rating: 4
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Jan 14, 2024
This isn't really a review. I just have a question to ask the gallery: why?
The original VHS tape of Offside Girl did not land in a cornfield, somewhere. It was not magically spawned from the unfocused lustful thoughts of Japanese salarymen a la Warhammer daemonic incursion. This was made. Somebody (almost certainly some *group* of people) decided to make this. On purpose. It was a deliberate process. Someone sat down at a computer and said to themselves "let's make an animation."
So why
did the animators
refuse to animate anything?!
This is a recurring theme, among the dregs of hentai projects. It's something that occurs in other genres of
...
anime, to some degree or other, but it seems to be an absolute plague, here. Offside Girl is a collection of maybe semi-passable still images, that have had lazy tween and morph tool effects added to them to vaguely imply they're alive. Characters in visual novels have smoother and more life-like animations to them. NES sprites have more realistic and dynamic ranges of motion. The whole thing is so antithetical to the creative process. Both of these episodes are held together with something like two dozen pictures, with the Flash morph tool doing the rest. And, like, I can't wrap my head around it.
Is this a scam? Was this like a Yakuza fronted business that just needed to produce something so they could launder money through creative accounting? It can't have been that somebody actually wanted to make a quality show. This has the hallmarks of a product made by a company that didn't want to make hentai. Perfectly understandable. What *did* these guys want to do with their lives? What wonderful lifelong dreams were being put on hold, while they used the transparency tool to simulate teenage girl lactation? Did making Offside Girl *help* them do that, in any way? Did it at least give them enough money to fend off the landlord for another month? I hope they're doing all right, all of them.
I had this conversation with someone, where they basically said that "nobody expects quality" of certain genres of media. All anybody wants from porn is for it to make the pp hard, and it's foolish to expect things like context or story or likeable characters... or even just signs that the artists wanted to make something. This confuses me. I can't imagine somebody making things they have *no* desire for. You don't form an indie hentai studio by mistake. But looking at shows like Offside Girl, it's blatantly obvious that, even if my friend isn't entirely right, this *does* seem to be the state of play, at least to some degree.
Which brings me back to the question for the gallery: Why?
Reviewer’s Rating: 2
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Nov 21, 2023
I watch bad hentai for fun. I've seen a lot of ways a hentai can fail. So, when I went to MAL's listing and searched for the highest rated hentai, I was looking forward to see what passes for "good" in the medium. Unfortuantely, Long Title Hentai proves to be bad in perhaps the worst possible way a hentai can be bad: being boring.
The title of this show roughly translates to "(Main Character's) House Becomes a Gal Hangout Spot for Some Reason." In retrospect, it might have been a red flag that a group of people whose job it is to make an animated story
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decided to wave their hands and put "for some reason" in the title of their show. Make no mistake. I'm not stupid. I know that the reason that the MC's house becomes a "Gal Hangout Spot" is because it creates a scenario where a horny, virile young man lives in his own place, surrounded on all sides by dominant, sexually aggressive women. I know the reason it shakes out like this is because it makes the artist's pp hard. My complaint with the show is not that things were poorly explained. Rather, they were explained a bit too well, too often, and with a passion that frankly destroyed the bedframe.
The writing staff is critically uninterested in establsihng anything other than how wet the protagonists get. On mujltiple occassions, they change scenes to any one of a handful of stock locations (apartment, hot springs, love hotel). They don't do anything with these settings. At one point they build an entire episode around visiting a hot springs only for Main Character to declare in narration that they spent basically the entire trip in their hotel room. There's a shortage of foreplay, is the main issue. All three of our female leads have the self-control of a grey goo scenario. If there isn't a gallon of semen on-screen at any given time, the showrunners clearly feel like they're wasting their time and ours.
Speaking of girls, they aren't anything. Their personalities are basically interchangeable, and while some degree of that is fine (friends typically don't have sex in front of each other on a regular basis unless they agree on *something*), they're all just the same character with different colored hair. They're all dominant, sexually liberated, hyper-libidinous and prone to an occasional need for validation and sentimentality from their shared love interest. See, most harem anime (which I would otherwise call this show) tend to focus on the girls, taking steps to point out how they're different, what their stories are. This is done in order to create a sense of investment, to allow audience members to pick and choose their favorites. Doing that here, however, would get in the way of the all-night marathon sex sessions that any given interaction between these characters naturally devolves into. Clearly, that's a non-starter.
Now, I can hear the complaints from the gallery. My criticism that this hentai seems to focus too much on sex probably sounds like a really dumb idea. And so, this is the part where I feel like I have to give the show credit where it's due. By the standards of hentai animation, this show is above average. The characters are modestly well designed, the animation is relatively complex and detailed, and those few times where it missteps and does something weird, it's a kind of weird that's par for the course for hentai. I want to know which artist was Patient Zero for the "Boob-Windmilll Effect," that plagues this show in particular. The voice acting tends to get repetitive, but only because so much of the show's runtime is dedicated to nothing but sex noises. Depending on what you came into the show for, that would probably be a plus, not a minus. It has, quite possibly, the best animation of fluid dynamics I've seen in a little bit, whenever MC cums in a girl's womb and his stuff parts and swirls in modestly realistic fashion. I feel like I'm damning with faint praise, here, but believe me when I say that this is all good, and that it could get *so* much worse.
In short, Hentai with a Paragraph Long Title is the hentai that your mom thinks all hentai are. Excessive, vapid and devoid of substance, a transparent power fantasy without even the barest shred of legitimization. If you want context-free animations of penises going into vaginas, the internet has been able to provide you with that for years, now. I came into this show expecting something with a little more substance, and I have been sorely disappointed.
I give it a rating of "pulled muscle" out of ten. Somebody get that boy a water bottle, for God's sake.
Reviewer’s Rating: 4
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Oct 17, 2023
This is an anime that's so bad, it was actually difficult to track down. The only torrent of the video always stopped downloading at the last megabyte, as if worried that completing the download would install a gypsy curse on my computer. Nearly every archive of the video is either dead or behind a suspicious paywall. And, the cherry on top, I ultimately had more fun trying to find this obscure piece of forgotten media than I did actually watching it.
This is the only review that will likely ever be written for something this completely horrendous, and so allow me to do the solemn duty
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of explaining what you're not missing. Hokenshitsu de Aimashou is a hentai about some girl. She goes to the nurse's office because her deep, frothing sexual attraction to Generic Anime Brown Haired Boy is making it impossible to focus, and Blue Haired Nurse, either because she's negligent or because she's a cool lady who understands what a young woman needs, leaves her alone in the nurse's office so she can have vivd, but terribly animated fantasy sex with her love interest. But, what's this? Said love interest comes in to the nurse's office, and he's with another woman! Now they're fucking in the nurse's office, while the first girl is hiding, but wait! The nurse comes back and BUT WAIT! Now the gym teacher's here and BUT WAIT! Now there's a foursome happening in the middle of a school nurse's office between Blue Haired Nurse, Brown Haired Boy, Brown Haired Boy's Girlfriend and Muscle Coach, while the girl from the beginning just hangs out under the bed and cries a bit BUT WAIT! Muscle Coach is trying to make a move on Brown Haired Boy! That's nowhere near vanilla enough for this late 90's hentai! First girl saves the day, somehow, for which she receives the ultimate reward; no longer being in this stupid series.
Hokenshitsu de Aimashou is pure bargain bin material. The animators, to an almost fascinating degree, steadfastly refuse to do their job. Dialogue consists of still shots of characters rigidly standing in place, while their mouths play a looping three frame animation of a mouth opening and closing. The sex scenes largely consist of still images, with varous three-frame animation bits and bobs added in a style reminiscent of shitty point and click adventure game pop-in animations. Panning and tweening is used to suggest movement, at times, but only when the animators are feeling up to it. At regular intervals, the show awkardly splices in live action footage of real people having sex on top of a random matress. These interludes, as you might expect, are both the only well-animated thing in the entire show and generally have fuckall to do with the scenes they're placed in the middle of. The combined effect of all these cut corners and shortcuts is a show made by a company of people who quite clearly didn't care. Nothing about this program suggests even the slightest hint of artistry or investment; it's just a product, meant to be banged out and shipped as quickly as they could make it happen.
In short, do not bother finding this program. It's existence adds absolutely nothing to the space of hentai. Not even controversy, as some pieces manage to lean on. I give it a solid "panning back and forth in a way that might suggest thrusting if you squint" out of 10.
Reviewer’s Rating: 1
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