Studio(s): MS Pictures (Offside
Girl)/Obtain Future (University Girls)
Offside Girl based on a manga by Ippon
Nagare
Voice Cast for Offside Girl: Nene
as Miyajima, Kenkou as Akira, Nanami Natsukawa as the Coach, Ryoko Tanigawa as
Nanami
Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles
Attempting to cover what most
know it as "hentai", alongside any self-consciousness you may feel in
whether it presents a negative image of you to strangers or not, is confounded
with how like some erotica, they focus on their subject, the act of sex, even
if the story is very simple or pushed to the side. In a case like this, you are
also confounded by the fact that, combining the two episodes together, Offside Girl makes up less than thirty
minutes, and University Girls is
only twenty two minutes as one single piece, neither being continued and
leaving not a lot to work with. But there is something worth prodding even if
you will get into NSFW content with how these works, and erotica in general,
say a lot about people, more so as the reason I wanted to cover these was not
really to cover hentai just by itself. I wanted to cover them as much because
as of November 20231, these are the lowest ranked hentai anime on Anime News Network's list of lowest
ranked anime, which means as per viewers of the site, this pair is in
handshaking distance to notorious works like M.D. Geist (1986), Tekken:
The Motion Picture (1998) and EX-ARM
(2021) which have gained infamy. The hentai is itself is less likely to be
as talked about as titles which could get a wider range of access without the
restrictions on selling hardcore materials, which makes it interesting to
wonder how they got on that list. Among hentai in terms of premise, when many I
would even want to touch with a barge pole let alone ever witness, thankfully
these two are tamer in ideas, even if Offside
Girl gets into curious kinks, and all their notoriety comes from their
production.
Truthfully, we watch action films
as much for set pieces as much as the stories, horror films for the vicarious
and gruesome moments, and erotica for their sensuality, and with outright
pornographic content, in mind to all the issues of their gender politics and
attitudes, the ideal is an idealised and in cases exaggerated take on human
desire, even if dealing with fetishes and kinks which may come off as weird for
some viewers, meant to deal with these ideas in a consenting construct between
creator and viewer. That is one of the reasons "hentai" is a term I
feel less happy to have to use as its literally the Japanese term for
"pervert" and ridiculous to implement, when "eroge" for
Japanese erotic video games is one I wish I could steal for this review but
have to keep to the parlance we use in the West to avoid confusion. Animation
has the advantage, even if it may cause viewers to feel weird to feel desire to
figures that do not exist and can be un-human in look, to inherent emphasise a
creative fantasy, something to bear in mind as Offside Girl and University
Girls are ultra low budget works who struggle with this, and that is why
they got the bottom ranks. One of the issues with eroge anime too is that, like
live action pornography, the medium is pushed more for content than to try to
emphasis artistic content, ostracised in society and with the medium a way for
people to access them. This is not to dismiss the potential for this in the
medium or manga, let alone live action erotica, as you can envision purely titillation
in work made with authorial creativity and a wider scoop like LGBTQ themes, but
in mind that it has become a genre, as much as live action where it has been
attack and forced to be its own industry selling the sexual content, you have
an uphill struggle in making a large budget an acceptable choice in terms of a
market. The best example of this in hentai was when the acclaimed illustrator
and manga artist Satoshi Urushihara
co-directed a high budget hentai Another
Lady Innocent (2004), a melodrama set in the period American South, only
for one episode to ever to be created in his life time due to how its production,
legitimately well made as an animation work, likely cost too much time and
money to make when anime in the industry can be made quicker and sell the sex
in a faster time. The two being covered today show an extreme which did not
gather very well regarded reactions to them, in trying to make erotic anime for
audiences in a compact time, but even if the artistic side of the genre should
not be dismissed, so much is made and not really talked of that it is like a
crap shoot trying to pluck something out, let alone two chosen here for this
review as the "worst" for some of their kind.
Offside Girl was the more interesting one because of its premise,
and to pull back the curtain was meant to be the single title covered until University Girls turned out to be lower
in the rankings, in which its lead, a female student, is smitten with a guy far
more interested in being on the men's soccer team at their school. Soccer is as
popular in Japan as globally, and imagining a tale of a young woman having to
work around his obsession is interested in any genre. You can have a sex comedy
premise about this in Britain, where it is called "football", and
there is in fact a film called Fever
Pitch (1997), a romantic comedy, in which actor Colin Firth played a man obsessed with the sport, based around a
memoir by Nick Hornby and set around
the team Arsenal's First Division championship-winning season in 1988–89 and
its effect on the protagonist's romantic relationship. It is a far more curious
premise though to mix porn with sports, just to imagine if you let the soccer
nerds get away with references to the sport, and parodies of franchises like Captain Tsubasa, one of the biggest in
terms of Japanese manga and anime for the sport, without getting into copyright
trouble, against what is effectively a tale of two people who discover they
like each other very quickly physically. He tricks her into becoming the
manager of the team as part of its comedy tone, effectively the dogsbody who
cleans the uniforms and keeps their spaces clean, but when they are forced to
hide in a cupboard, soon into the first episode their crush becomes a physical
one, and baring in mind aspects of this I would understand being criticised and
viewed as sexist, this effectively suggests as a premise two young people,
around the sport of soccer, realising they love each other but in a very kinky
and polygamous way. The immediate issue is that, if you were expecting the
soccer references, be disappointed as you do not even see a soccer ball,
barring a musty one in their main team building, nor any sports, as this barely
has any content beyond the set-up.
Neither expect more than this.
You get barely any context beyond the basic interactions, and most of this is
actually depicted in close-ups where you do not see many feet let alone soccer appropriate
footwear on people, and it is here the true reason this got so low a rating
really comes in on Anime News Network,
in that Offside Girl also at times feels like a motion comic or actually a manga if
the speech bubbles are replaced by the voice acting. Some of the illustrations
of the cast, mostly drawn in minimal close-ups, do look wonky, our female lead
finding herself eroticised but also distorted physically in a work which had
few resources to work with. The studio behind this, MS Pictures, have made anime beyond this and before, titles with
evocative names like Fleshdance (2007)
from the same year as this, and yes, that is clearly a pun on Flashdance (1983). They were not going
to lose sleep over this production, one where it feels as if the production
became less a priority or was allowed to fall down, as this is insanely raggedy
for any level of budget.
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It actually emphasises the
commitment the cast have to put in, even before we get to the absurd dialogue,
the voice actresses especially having to go from nought to up to eleven to get
this exaggerated form of eroticism over in their bellows. This is where, if I
had been worried as a viewer being viewed as a perverse covering this, or
anyone was to be put off the subject, you cannot dodge covering the sexual
content itself as the driving force of the animation. You have to factor in
with both of these works that, with millennia of objectification and oppression
of women, this factor will always effect a person's reaction to a work that is
geared clearly for a male heterosexual audience, in its eroticisation of the
female figures even as mere drawings; like the two female leads in University Girls this follows a fixation on larger bra cup
sizes, here with the obvious concern that this is a figure in school despite age
being vague this never dares get into, and to how when the second female
character is brought in, they can have sexual relations in a fantasy scenario
for men, but this would have not teased with male bisexuality too. In mind to
all the issues surrounding erotica for their portrayals of the subject, it is
clearly exaggerated and unless one is documenting one's own real sexual
experiences, the bigger issues alongside confusing this with the reality of
sexual relationships is when they forget that people (men and women) are fully
formed people, and even if the issue is a bias towards focusing on certain
audiences and stereotypes, it is also in mind that many do not play to this to
their better in letting the cast even in a fantasy for a heterosexual male
audience feel like they are in on the pleasure as the male character/audience.
This is more of an issue here as, whilst I would utterly understand someone
labelling Offside Girl sexist, it is
pretty tame baring touches, and the greater issue alongside the like of time
and budget this had is that you do not get characters even as broad
stereotypes. Especially with the female lead, who should be the focus on the
character dynamics and journey in this tale, where she comes to appreciate
soccer and also discovers her own sexual desires, this should be as much where
she gets to have fun as the lead, not just go through the motions. Clearly,
because this barely establishes the story let alone actually tells one, you
cannot tell the direction this went unless you go to the original manga by Ippon Nagare, but even here, you could
have had a few more touches to her in what little time you have.
Some would argue, if they saw the
second episode where a female coach is introduced with a fetish for managers of
all kinds, male or female, that it crosses a line when she could be seen as
molesting the lead, and then is "punished" by a male member of the
soccer team. In context, the scene is frankly evidence of the production's
flaws, vague and confused, and a huge issue with erotica in general where,
unless you are dealing with something legitimately misogynistic in tone, you
are dealing with fantasies without the appropriate sense of the construction of
a consenting world between characters, and between the work and the viewer,
where arguably the issue here is also one you need to challenge anime outside
of hentai in general for the same issue, as unfortunately that type of scene is
one found as the "joke" for many works even into the Millennia. The rest
of it comes off more like a really kinky four person fantasy scenario despite nearly
edging the line too closely; the "punishment" moment surrounds
everyone on the team being aware of their female coach's interests and one of
the other players being in a relationship where this is played to, whilst in a
scene which did not feel uncomfortable at first, it would be our female lead
role-playing being "helpless" to the female coach, rather than play
it as what comes as the one really problematic scene in all of this. Whilst not
a lot is here, a moment of tone-deaf writing comes in to emphasise that no one
was thinking through how to not make a scene nearly become gross.
There is also the surprise
inclusion of a lactation fetish, but with mind that the female coach is not an
older woman who has had children, nor there being any other female characters
until the last scene of the final episode being introduced. It involves the
titular protagonist herself, where her love interest even asks when he discovers
this of her whether she is pregnant. It is a curious inclusion, a kink which
may put off some, or cause others to roll their eyes as it is a young female
student where the fetish comes in, as in reality, it is rarer outside of
childbirth including chemically induced methods for this to physically be
possible. The fact that it is separated from motherhood, whilst could be accused
of a fetish not accepting the reality of human life, also factors in how it is
nether for the pleasure of anyone else but the "Offside Girl" herself,
where there is a kink about being touched and caresses whether by herself, as
in the first scene of the first episode, or by others. These quirks, even if
this is porn not thinking hard at all about the accidental symbolisms, can be
read into for how you could have gotten something that fully embraced a more
bolder, progressively kinky tone even if the reality is alien to this and not
helped by its complete lack of budget. A heroine with the discovery of how
tactile touch is central in her fantasies is a premise with a lot to write
about, seriously and comically, even if you are not going to more here baring a
nod to the idea, which is the problem in general with all anime, let alone
hentai, where you have one-off or stray episodes to a premise never allowed to
ever grow into a full narrative.
University Girls, also known as Joshidai Ecchi Sōdanshitsu, is a more conventionally plotted tale,
a one-off erotic story. Madoka, our female lead, is also a student, despondent
when she barges in on a male teacher she is attracted to on the university
campus mid-coitus with another female student, later to get advice from her
friend Yokko to be more confident with him. The set up, with student-teacher relationships,
has become more taboo over time even between adults, and this short anime is
not going to pass the Bechdel test for how the leads talk mostly about sex and
men, but it is a surprise even when this comes to the final scene punch line
where it goes, in that this story is about sexually confident women in charge.
This is in mind, with most erotica targeting heterosexual man, you are dealing
with work that plays this with the female as figures of fantasy, but this still
gets into how Yokko, helping her friend, is in a BDSM relationship with the
psychology teacher where he is completely the submissive, to literally be
walked on, to pleasure her and Madoka when invited to be an additional
dominant, and leading to that aforementioned punch line where to Yokko's dismay
the hot male teacher wants to be a willing submissive to her after a trip to
the love hotel.
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Even details like this, whether
accidental or not, make something like this which most would not sit through
more interesting. In terms of BDSM, with one man being stepped on in shoes, a
whip used in multiple ways, even when it comes as an improvised prostate
examiner, it is strong if you have never seen a depiction of this, but is also tame
when one is aware, with careful rules in place in the BDSM community between
the dominant and the submissive, you can get into things like blood play,
piercings, confinements etc. in a healthy way, making this look vanilla. Hentai is not a topic I want to
cover mostly because of the stuff that would even challenge my belief in the
freedom of art, by way of permanent banishment from record with fire, and sadly
Obtain Future in their short
existence did tap into themes which I am creeped by myself, but it also comes
with this sense of them literally throwing anything at the way to see what
sticks, leading to University Girls
inexplicitly being about strong women in control for their pleasure even if, in
context, I suspect no one was necessarily thinking about that as the driving
force of the title, just the fantasy of men being dominated by men plus some
more conventional sex scenes. Most of their work is also on the bottom list of Anime News Network, and in this case, we
cannot ignore the animation elephant in the room as, even if trying to be
positive, even I have to admit to thinking Offside
Girl looked like a step-up in animation in comparison. Best way to describe
it is early Flash animation, homemade, which managed to be released on DVD in
the USA by Adult Source Media. Adobe Flash animation was able to let
some very talented creators make both animation and web browser games from
them, from the likes of Foster's Home
for Imaginary Friends (2004–2009) to the game Frog Fractions (2012), allowing anyone to show incredible talent,
but it was also a way to let anyone animate regardless of resources, and
undeniably, flash animation on the likes of Newgrounds
also includes pornographic work, capable as much artistic quality but also
something like University Girls. The
voice acting at times even feels like friends or people the creators knew
earnestly trying their best next to the performances in other work, especially
the actress playing Madoka when she has to cry in one scene. In a work which
inexplicably references Sigmund Freud
at one point, this feels like with hindsight a work unfairly forced into
daylight as an actual DVD release, which unfortunately put in its the
crosshairs of anyone gathering the hentai releases from that time.
This review has to factor in how,
yes, these titles do come off as crass at points, more than sexist or even
misogynistic. Works like this as it stands, even if you could get past their
lack of animation budgets, has the issue too with a lot of erotica with how ridiculous
the dialogue is, which could be embraced for the exaggerated humour but here
feels like it was trying to be serious. The moment in Offside Girls the lead is complimented in having "amazingly indecent
breasts" was where this managed to get absurd, only to manage to top
itself later on, and in University Girls
Madoka is asked about her cup size mid-coitus, which shows as well the
obsession with bra sizes in the fantasies of anime in general, let alone these
more explicit titles. Ideally, porn if not trying to be serious should embrace
a hyper-exaggerated form where, with balance in depicting everyone male and
female, it images the idea of everyone being happy with sex so proudly lurid
and passionate. Even if merely drawings with voices here, the characters should
be symbolic of real people and representing what viewers would be able to have
with their own significant other(s) in real life even if it also means
screaming the roof off, embracing bodily differences and fetishes/kinks in a
consenting environment.
Offside Girl is based on a one shot manga but never gets beyond the
prologue to a larger story, where the previous female manager of the team is introduced
never to get anywhere further, so it is really impossible to say whether the
premise would have gotten to this ideal, instead the anime if you ever watched
it being something you cannot pass the animation and production of. University Girl, which is not more than
a short erotic tale, an original narrative, is just as stuck with this problem,
and between them is the ultimate issue that, even if one was to argue with the
noble idea of positive sex wanting to be depicted, these merely help think of
the ideal whilst they even struggle with the animation. They do not feel like
the "worst" anime ever, if because neither is uncomfortable to watch
barring awkwardly rendered sex scenes, University
Girls the more likely to break someone for this, and together at an hour as
a double bill, barely any life feels wasted away. Neither, thank God, ever got
into content I would regret watching, and if it seems strange to have such a
long review speculating on what-ifs to what are, frankly, titles most would
mock for the animation, it is because sexuality is a topic that is so diverse
and expansive in human culture whether we want to be proud of it or not. Between
them, University Girls is the one
rightly lower in the totem pole, but it feels mean to mock these, when more
repugnant hentai unfortunately exists, and there is entertainment here between
them even if they get so much wrong.
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1) Anime News Network's Anime
Top 100 Worst Rated (bayesian estimate).
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