#222: Another Lady Innocent (2004)

 

a.k.a. Front Innocence

Studio: ARMS

Director: Kinji Yoshimoto and Satoshi Urushihara

Voice Cast: Kazuhiko Inoue as John; Kumi Sakuma as Faye; Hiromi Hirata as Eichel; Kaname Yuzuki as Aine

Viewed in English Dub

 

Here with a Moonrock production, released by H.M.P., a company whose logo looks like it has three stone cherubs peeing, we are covering eroge ("hentai") anime, but with a distinct name involved. Known directors and actors, even voice actors, have worked on hentai, whether it was the likes of Hiroyuki Kitakubo cutting their teeth on the Cream Lemon series in the eighties, to Masami Obari around the early 2000s helming Angel Blade (2001-3). Satoshi Urushihara is the centre of Another Lady Innocence, co-director, Art Director, and Character Designer. He is a manga artist, anime director and illustrator with a very distinct art style, one which is not only known from anime he helmed like Plastic Little (1994), but also his work on the JRPG franchises like Langrisser and Growlanser. He is unapologetic though his female character designs and content of his work throughout the decades in depicting eroticism, which makes his decision to co-direct and be an auteurist voice in a pornographic straight-to-video series not that absurd. This is not the first time he worked on hentai either, as he was one of many cutting his teeth in the Cream Lemon days, a character designer on New Cream Lemon (1987), episode two called White Shadow.

The thing is, and connects with Another Lady Innocent as it was titled in the West for release, Urushihara's art style is exceptional, and he fetishes everything. The costumes for female characters, even armour for men and women, is resplendent; his male characters, as John in this show, can be just as elegant in their designs, and he is as obsessed with his female characters' faces and expressions, as is probably one of the more notorious aspects of his art style, the undeniable fact, without being too crass, he has gathered the title "Master of Breasts" at one point¹, the kind of title honestly which would suggest far crasser work than he does. That title does raise a concern, when dealing with an artist whose male gaze is undeniably here, but is contrasted by how, if you look up his art whether sexually explicit or not, is also very good. This side of him, being very much obsessed with eroticism, but being insanely precise as an artist, is exactly what is at the centre of this title, a hentai release unlike many others that was well made, looking like it took years just to get this one episode created when hentai, truthfully, in the animated form can be rushed out as cheaply as live action porn can be.

Moonrock are a distributor for eroge anime, but also involved are ARMS, an animation company who would transition to mainstream anime this year even if they still kept their toes dipped into ecchi and sexually franker work even in this territory. I had known them, without knowing, for Elfen Lied (2004), a notorious but cult anime series, a company until its 2020 bankruptcy who could go from production assistance on Naruto entries as they were involved lurid titles like the Queen's Blade franchise. This, set within the North American past, meant to evoke a Southern melodrama like Gone with the Wind (1939), is unabashedly pornographic, as for most of its twenty nine minutes the work is the sex scenes themselves. There is a story here, which follows the lives of Faye, the daughter of a wealthy landowner, and two childhood friends, Sophia and John, the later dubbed by both young women "Big Brother John". Faye and Sophia are childhood friends but are, as ends the episode, romantically linked, and both are in love with John. Faye has returned home, and as a prologue to the main story, we see a sinister person named Lord Mark who clearly had intentions to have Faye all for himself, in a narrative we never were able to see as only one episode of this was ever completed and released.

The tone is exaggerated despite its period setting, one chosen clearly for the choice of elaborate period costumes, but with Faye's father living in a stately manor where all the young maids working there are both well dressed but not dressed at all, exposing everything on themselves erotically. Even Faye's costume is closer to other Urushihara female characters in style than Scarlett O'Hara, including a giant red bow that looks like red elf ears. The show is still meant to be porn, a show when released in the West had an English dub with actors credited as Pete Meat and Dick Hardon in the voice cast, the performances for my wish to not bury anyone just doing their job frankly terrible, including Miss Jane, an older matriarch Faye views as a sister and barely seen, literally monotone in her line readings.

There is a weird incestuous edge to the work as well, in that for a really icky joke, as the older patriarch has maids happily serving his needs and enjoying themselves, Faye does barge in on him mid-orgasm in the study, with two of the maids working for him, in an unintentionally funny (and icky) moment. He will also be spying on Sophia with her and John getting up to a lot in the stable, which emphasises a kinky transgression to the proceedings. Even if this was not there, if you are put off by porn, I do not recommend this, nor if you find animated drawings meant to be erotic off-putting too. The difference here, which makes this production interesting though, is how incredibly well animated and designed this is, which was likely the reason too why a second episode and any continuation did not happen. When hentai is usually very cheaply made, this production's aesthetic high bar clearly was not enough to sell, and too time and financially straining to continue with.

These are Satoshi Urushihara's designs fully, and it is an ode to the sexual act, uncensored for the Western release, as painstakingly drawn as it is as explicit as possible, all without crossing over into the unnatural barring that, like real life porn, certain considerations especially for the time period it is set in, like concerns of contraception, are ignored for the logic of porn regardless of the country of origin. It is also an ode to a relationship between two women and one man, a childhood friendship which became a sexual one for all of them, which is not something to criticise and is actually something that is in the work's favour even beyond being erotic fixated on animated sexual acts. If it may put some viewers off this very explicit erotica has flashbacks to these characters as little children meeting, and developing these earliest friendships, it is at least the show developing these characters so you care for them. Even if the short almost entirely, for this sole entry, is almost all the three having a lot of "activity" in a variety of ways, it is set around these three lovingly each other unconditionally in consensual sex which they all engage with. That the animation is actually well done, and intricate, to be frank, in the depiction of the human body in movement, this could have been so much worse, and the taboo of depicting the sexual act between human beings is the only thing that undercuts that, yes, with a male gaze involved that Satoshi Urushihara is painstakingly creating this ode to this act here and not slouching in the production quality.  In fact, this even takes a risk even having most of it set in a stable, as horses are by accounts some of the most difficult animals to render in animation in general, making them (not even seen with heads) in the background swaying and eating hay the closest to the budgetary ambitious stretching.

What this can be credited in having virtue for is to its credit, including the relationship between Faye and Sophia which, with the later acting like a maid to Faye out of preference, also is a physical one they devote themselves to. Even the incestuous aspect is less a taboo here, not like other hentai which does fetish the subject, or even non-erotic anime which does this as well, but more an icky comedy and that it is hinting at Faye's father being as attracted to Sophia as well. The only moment here which did concern me was problematic, an out-of-place introduction to Lord Mark, a character who would have been involved, where he and a gang of men in the countryside, whilst Faye passes in horse and carriage in the distance, have a women stripped on the grass with an uncomfortable sense of being a prelude to molestation or a gang rape.

This is something which sticks out in what is, even with the scenes like Faye bursting on her father having sex, very wholesome and celebratory of sex, the caution that, unfortunately, one of the reasons I myself have avoided eroge anime, alongside being not readily available to access in the United Kingdom, is that there are quite a few taboos including non- consensual sex which I want to distance myself from, sad knowing that a market for material which would welcome people to enjoy their sexuality, even if with some kinkiness, is welcome and probably exists more readily in manga. There is an end-of-credit preview for what would have been Episode 2, involving a masked costume ball that likely became an orgy, but it also notes at Lord Mark having his way, including a distressed Sophia in a shot with voice acting, likely an uncomfortable touch into non-consensual content that is a huge issue with hentai narratives and, even if this would have told a melodrama, could have easily made Another Lady Innocent a title for many to avoid for glamorising this type of content.

The other issue is that this is set during or around the American Civil War. There is no explicit reference to this being within a Northern or Southern state, nor any references to slavery, which presents a concern. This feels like a Southern melodrama, like Gone with the Wind, but as anyone can attest to with that film decades on, including in film criticism, such works are problematic for glamorising a period of deeply problematic culture, the American South, and depending on what Lady Innocence went could have added an additional moral quandary. Either it does not mention this at all, and would have become problematic, or it did, and either somehow managed to be a pornographic work that subtly tackled the issue with clarity, which would be a once-in-a-blue-moon moment, or be just as offensive. But that never came to be. Another Lady Innocent/Front Innocent never got a sequel. Satoshi Urushihara would go onto the likes of Key Animation on the Ikki Tousen franchise sequels, and there is a sense the hard work to even make one episode here was not worthy financially to be continued. A lot of what-ifs are here, and honestly, in the perfect world, no one would complain if there was a work set in North America, even in the past with all the problematic issues of their history their citizens have to struggle with, which was just a melodrama which some drama, but a lot of it being the romance between two women Sophia and Faye, in their master-maid relationship, and their protective boyfriend John, and had as much sex in as many different ways as we just get in twenty nine minutes here. No uncomfortable undercurrent of non-consensual content, choose a plot type that could dodge or nod to uncomfortable historical concerns, somehow do well enough to animate more than one episode this well, and let everyone enjoy.

Instead it is a curiosity, one with the sadder realisation, than unlike a regular straight-to-video one-off, that porn as in other mediums is done so quickly and cheap that, alongside trying to preserve or comment on it, trying to make something more artistically minded if like trying to push a boulder up the hill like Sisyphus.

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1) For an example of this nickname appearing, whilst looking at his work from an artistic standpoint, is Langrisser I & II Review: Legendary Weapons With A Side Of Tarnish, from Bella Blondeua, published by The Gamer on March 3rd 2020. With a review like this never mentioning where Satoshi Urushihara got the "Master of Breasts" name from, it feels like an elaborate Chinese whisper for a nickname which could undercut how, in the video game world at least let alone animation and manga, his work is as much a spectacle for how lavish and beautiful it is without the sexual content. Considering the review is a burial of replacing Urushihara's older art with a revamp from a new artist, his illustrative style clearly has more fans beyond their sexual content.