#244: Eiken (2003)

Studio: J.C. Staff

Director: Kiyotaka Ohata

Screenplay: Tomoyasu Okubo

Based on the manga by Seiji Matsuyama

Voice Cast: Akeno Watanabe as Densuke Mifune; Miwa Oshiro as Chiharu Shinonome; Emi Yabusaki as Yuriko Shinonome; Mai Kadowaki as Kyoko Morooka; Marina Ono as Komoe Harumachi; Masumi Asano as Kirika Misono; Touko Itou as Lin Grace

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

 

J.C. Staff are a prolific company who have worked on some acclaimed titles - the TV series Revolutionary Girl Utena (1997) and Azumanga Daioh (2002) spring to mind - but they are still a company who worked over the years, leading to an eclectic catalogue which includes legitimately curiosities, ones you may have never heard of and others that you will scratch your head about. The straight to video work is a great example of this.  You can have Cat Soup (2001), a highly regarded and surreal avant-garde animation based on the work of manga author Nekojiru. You can however also have Garzey's Wing (1996-7), a notorious Yoshiyuki Tomino work, and they are a company who have put their hands into a curious number of tangents. Probably one of the most infamous, least in the USA because Media Blasters released this two episode work and the manga, is Seiji Matsuyama's Eiken. Eiken, if you just look at the screenshots, will lead to many running far from it as far as possible. Hell, the still images may even cause problems for those who maintain free blogging sites, unless you have the warning page for sensitive content up. Eiken, with fair warning for someone expecting this to be a review just viewing it as a gross perversion of anime sex comedy tropes may be mortified that this review, dare I say, may even become pretentious. Not to defend the anime at all, but from someone who viewed it only in mind to a morbid fascination, and left finding it a sexual nightmare tale masquerading in cute clothes with a lot to unpick. Even in terms of Matsuyama's accidental contributions as a manga author in real life Japanese politics, Eiken is a perfect example, whether a good anime, a bad anime, or an infamous one, you could write so much about even if entirely personal opinion, and it is all worth having written down.

This all also stems into the past. Let us not kid ourselves, even if the later sentence will sound crass, but anime and manga over the decades has had an obsession with the female bust, and this leads to the term "bakunyu", literally "exploding breasts" and means "enormous breasts", when you take the fixation found in many cultures for heterosexual males to its most extreme level. Eiken is infamous, even when larger busted characters have become commonplace within anime and manga, for being the one title to bring bakunyu to Shonen manga as, yes, this was targeted to adolescent boys in Weekly Shōnen Champion. The story is complicated knowing that its most notorious creative decision, the bust size of a lot of its female cast, was not from the get-go, but a decision made with the editor (with the author's interest) to redraw the characters from volume four in the manga tankōbon onwards, which is also notably where, in the US releases, Media Blasters' publications had to switch from an age rating of 16 plus to 18 plus¹. Even if I advise caution against anyone watching this without warning, I came to this anime fully aware of what I was getting into, and finding rather than feeling dirty, as I will warn most will, the anime adaptation fascinated for what it inadvertedly became. The entire thing by pure accident comes as an adolescent male sexual neurosis onscreen even if that is clearly not the intention of the production at all, all with a perverse air to it that is more interesting to have witnessed for myself than the shock many would have with this title. 

It is not a parody, as it was clearly made as a tale with sex appeal if one with a kink or two few have, and as we will get into later, Seiji Matsuyama created a manga much more controversial, with wide scale effect on Japanese censorship, which is likely to be less defendable and place a more damning eye on this title too with hindsight. Coming to this, Eiken has all the tropes of other anime and manga which can be questionable and clichéd, the high school romance a common story line which can be done well and has questionable aspects to challenge, including the obsession with having so many and the idea one's high school life in a fantastical form is more worthy of anime over the worlds of adults. The difference is that this is anime high school if filtered through an adolescent hormonal nightmare. Our lead Densuke Mifune is so bland, like so many male protagonists in these in terms of his meek inability, that he is immediately set upon by the notorious Eiken club and its leader Kirika Misono on his first day at Zashono Academy, a place which is literally located on a blatant Freudian landmass. It is not redeemable as an anime, but the stereotypical clichés over these two episodes are here and they find themselves being more scrutinised due to how tasteless this show gets, exaggerating them to an extreme whilst still disguising itself as cutesy. The clichés are found in other shows - cute love interest Chiharu Shinonome, who is shy and Densuke crushes on, the school competition that could bring them closer, the former student who studied in the USA who is a threat as another romantic interest, and Densuke's own unfortunate curse to stumble into every clichéd moment of anime sex comedy at the worse moments. The differences beyond its lewdness could almost have been notable changes that the show never actually winked at, in that the most notorious part of the show, the breast sizes of several key female characters, could have just been shown onscreen and everything about the plot could have played out without ever raising the character designs as the anime actually does constantly, forcing one to register it and react with how even a crass choice undercuts everything. This anime is not subtle in the slightest so instead with Chiharu, the bakunyu change forces her to become distorted, the change turning these characters into hyper exaggerations that for a viewer may be a step into the off-putting. And some of the characters are younger and more ridiculously proportion, which makes this even moe perverse let alone more dubious in general before those aesthetic touches. 

If it was not obvious this was a bizarre product beamed from a specific series of circumstances, the alternative world version of this, which was more focused on being a twisted little parody, would have been inspired if off-putting for someone. Even in this dubious form it is in reality, I cannot help but view it like a two episode nightmare from another television show, censored for television censorship, where our lead dreams all of this in a state of delirium, representing all of his sexual anxieties and hang-ups as a teen boy, before he wakes up and encounters these characters with sensible proportions and with less lewdness onscreen. In another context, this would have still be uncomfortable viewing, but could have been a really twisted satire less on these tropes but on teen hormonal anxieties. This is more so considering how many anime sex comedies already have the curious "reward-punishment" trope that I find more and more curious to witness. Far from embarrassment, when I get older as an anime fan, watching work with fan service content, a lot of it is now, if not defendable as good sex comedy, becoming more psychologically compelling to unpick for how they represent sexual hang-ups and relationships. Whether the lead deserves it or by pure accident, any encounter with the opposite sex in terms of something lewd or sexual usually involves a male lead being humiliated and/or beaten up afterwards, something which has come off as more an anxiety of sex in general the more I see it in these stories, whether they are defendable or not.

Even the obsession with breasts, exaggerated here to an incredible extreme and an obsession for many men, filters through this anxious accidental tone; the idea that, whether any psychological or sociological reasons this part of the female anatomy is an obsession for many heterosexual men erotically, a large part of this likely as much due to an integral part of adolescence being how we all go through significant physical change. When one goes through puberty, male or female, your body physically changes and these changes, even if you suddenly become taller or stay short, become the aspect which others take in as they themselves physically and emotionally change, sometime they exaggerate in how they perceive you; this is including those who become attracted to you, and what they may take into consideration, as they themselves suddenly feel attraction to the opposite sex unless they go through the discovery of being gay or bisexual. All of this is amateur observation, so heckling in the comments is acceptable, but it is apt that, if this was a parody, Densuke's nightmare distorts the most prominent features of the girl he has a crush on. These are her shyness, with the Japanese vocal performance from Miwa Oshiro, a model whose only voice acting role is this show, exaggerates through the timidness in her high voice, and her figure, which if this was a sensible show, and not a fetish work, would be through the mind's eye of how one teen boy views her through this over-the-top physicality as the other female characters with similar proportions. Considering the hair styles of the female cast, regardless of figures, is just as exaggerated with how large they are, it befits this distortion. Someone like the leader of the Eiken club Kirika Misono and others are even more exaggerated in their proportions, and even with those which are not, their seemingly sexual openness, whilst not subtle and well done, could have been in a satire his fears of girls he is attracted to but are absolutely more aware of themselves physically and in desires then he and most of the males in the school ever can. The crass phallic food jokes do not help among many moments in this show, particularly with Kirika's obsession with things like bananas and not eating them conventionally, sight gags that you the viewer will hope no one comes into the room (with the whole work) when you are watching this; even those though would make sense if this was an actual satire if still crass. That being Densuke a case of someone with a sudden desire for the opposite sex but is terrified of them as confident, hypersexual figures in his view of them.

This is all death of the author logic, but I am coming to this title with its legacy being hyped, that I had heard for years this was to be approached with caution, a title you would scratch your eyes out in immediate contact of. Instead I watched Eiken only to find myself admitting I was not affected by it at all, even with some of the worse jokes that appear between the two twenty plus minute episodes, even finding a sick sense of humour to this with distance for how unintentionally un-erotic it is. My tastes for readers is also one that, appreciating the best of art, is also being someone with the taste for the weird, even a cinematic trash panda who can try to wonder what formed work that is never going to win many people. Again, let sanity come and point out this is all a viewpoint to a work proudly, and brazenly, perverse on purpose, but still I find one of the stranger moments in this anime was not sexual at all, that among the duo of female commentators on the sports events, both classmates, one of them decides to hold her finger to her top lip like a moustache and talk in a faux deep male voice to sound like an expert, which is stranger than anything else that is lewd and sexually symbolic. Far more disturbing for me is that the male student returning from the States is a predator, someone claiming to be Chiharu's knight in shining armour but emotionally twisting her, and forcing her to be intimate with him in the sports games in a non-consensual way as a team. That content is more problematic over the years in anime, making his punishment (even with the cheap joke at bald people) actually justifiable. 

This is all in mind that, even if you manage to get through episode one, episode two is going to be more off-putting for some. The first has a yoghurt water slide as a challenge, which is sexual innuendo giving up subtlety, but the later has a chocolate waterslide, which is unfortunate in what it looks like instead, and one off jokes, including involving eels, which will cause even those who got through that first episode to give up the anime broken. Yet it still feels like the sexual nightmare of Densuke, causing me to wonder why Seiji Matsuyama for his manga made most of the humour, if accurate to the manga in the adaptation, a male lead who is the butt of these jokes. There are moments when Densuke has some very kinky fantasies of his own about Chiharu, but they truly feel adolescent and are constantly undercut by how at a disadvantage he is in every situation, like a guy whose learnt of these in a dirty mag but would be in the deep end in an actual relationship with another human being. This is probably the one thing in this entire anime arguably close to real life even if I do not want to give Eiken credit for being smart. Even jokes that it has which are eyebrow raising, such as Chiharu's younger sister being openly flirtatious with him, are a) jokes we need to critique in other anime for having too, and b) itself another of the moments this show accidentally feels like one poor boy's hormones being his own enemy. The entire "gag" (with air quotes) of Densuke  being forced to wear a woman's swimming one piece (with ponytails) for the chocolate water slide challenge is loaded in itself, and would be still the same even if Seiji Matsuyama was to have admitted, if from the manga, he never considered anything more to it beyond thinking it a "gag" to casually include for one chapter.

A weird amount of sexual anxiety comes into anime even when it is playing to questionable tropes of girls being seen undressed or nude in changing rooms for a joke and titillation, not forgetting hot springs episodes or when by pure accident a slip of clothing in a pratfall transpires. There is likely afterwards to be the scene of the guy being physically injured in the transgression, or in this case Densuke constantly at the end of humiliation and belief from others he is a pervert. The Japanese voice performance, unlike the one from Bryce Papenbrook in the English dub, is a female voice actress Akeno Watanabe who plays him uncomfortable young in how high pitch he is, like a middle scholar including in his short height, but it adds to the sick joke of the poor lad trying to wrap his head around this world of hyper-figured women even taller than him let alone with a few wrapping him around their fingers. Suffering at the cruel hands of the writers (and manga author Seiji Matsuyama) falling back on the dated tropes of sex comedy, that this still feels like a conventional comedy barring its lewd details adds to this adds to this twisted nature. With its early 2000s look of bright colours, its nineties mah-jong videogame music score, and how cute it is all meant to be, the idea this is all meant to be like a regular anime comedy is weirder than any of the perversity onscreen. There is even a bear creature no one raises questions about being in the Eiken club with everyone else just to toy with any viewer who can tolerate how extreme it is, finding a new way to baffle.

Considering the stuff I have sat through where I have found more disturbing content in more inappropriate places, I find Eiken just perverse. Anime with uncomfortable levels of non-consensual eroticism like VS Knight Lamune & 40 Fresh (1997), a straight to video work which presents itself as a sexy action show only to be nasty in misogynistic ways in tonal whiplashes, make Eiken a lesser of two evils, more curious to prod as an oddity. It is tasteless and one I understand the reactions to, that it is gross and deserves the most negative reviews; the only things are that I have suffered through worse, and that this is a weird artefact too loaded with psychosexual aspects and unintentional weirdness that are compelling. It is not pleasant to watch the anime, but it was compelling in its own way. If someone like Guy Maddin made a story like this in live action, imagining now the perversity and surrealism of the Canadian filmmaker of Careful (1992) adapting this story, Eiken would be a film that would put people off, but it would one damn curious trip, considering that a film like Cowards Bend the Knees (2003), one of Guy Maddin's more transgressive films dealing with sexual kink, was a film about male sexual neurosis if by way of ice hockey. The fact this has no actual nudity either adds to its tone too. It is tame in what you do not see, but has content kinkier here than in actual animated porn, which will make people feel very filthy for watching this but adds to this perverse feverish idea even if entirely from this viewer's perspective. There is a lot of anime and manga which is entirely with this tone, meant to titillate with having sexy schoolgirls with ridiculous proportions and near undress, which has its own moral and gender issues rightly to unpack, but also usually come with a need to punish its male characters as if to punish the male viewers.  It is fascinating to watch what is held as one of the most notorious straight to video anime for many people and, rather than take it as it is, imagine what Sigmund Freud would have thought of it. Even if Freud's ideas on sex and women were always dubious, just to see him trying to figure it all would have been something I wished happened.

The one sobering point though, and this is something I have been wary to reach, is that the history after this for Seiji Matsuyama would let to him get into legitimate controversy with another of his works, a title called Oku-sama wa Shōgakusei (My Wife Is an Elementary Student), which, yes, does raise alarm bells as a premise even if a gag comedy. This controversy over this manga and others in 2011 was connected to a revised bill to amend the Youth Healthy Development Ordinance², one that not only restricted those manga³ but was marked with concerns, under its new revised guideline, to restrict the sales of materials that were considered "to be excessively disrupting of social order"³. Bill 156 as the final revision became, through failures and revisions beforehand, was controversial, and whilst the material it targeted includes work which for many is difficult to defend, including manga that involve sexual relationships with minors, unfortunately one of the men who helped this revision finally get passed in 2010 was then-Tokyo governor Shintarō Ishihara. Ishihara, until the end of his tenure in office in 2012, is an incredibly problematic figure, a former novelist whose beliefs have been slammed as racist^4a, misogynistic^4b, and pertinent to Bill 156, included openly homophobic comments from 2000 that homosexuality was abnormal^4c. The problem with Bill 156 at the time was a conundrum; that the materials it targeted would be incredibly difficult for many to defend, such as work in the lolicon and shotacon genre, minority genres of manga yet ones that challenge what freedom in manga as art is, but that it could have been abused for censoring LGBTQ voices under the auspices of protecting children, alongside those promoting views on controversial subjects done with intelligence and grace. Especially as difficult work for many, even those who believed in the freedom of art, could be pointed to as evidence to justify the censorship, the bill could have had great lasting damage, and considering it was Seiji Matsuyama's Oku-sama wa Shōgakusei that was shown on television by Tokyo Vice Governor Naoki Inose as corrupting and needing to be restricted⁵, part of a campaign leading to the birth of this bill, Matsuyama got his fingers burnt by this and it does reflect back on Eiken. Whilst it is its own perverse little thing, least in this short anime adaptation, the tone of Eiken if accurate to the manga does show a lewdness, including that it was sold for teenage boys, could have gotten more confrontational if he was allowed to push the envelope. It was a different title of Matsuyama's which got him in hot water, but he could have raised controversy from certain groups even from Eiken if remotely like the anime. 

Eiken itself managed to return, least the anime adaptation, when Media Blasters came back from a long hibernation in 2020. Media Blasters, who were founded in 1997, are fascinating as the little independent distributor in the United States who has never refused to give up the ghost, and despite a long period of absence, founder John Sirabella has kept the company afloat, coming back with a vengeance in 2020. The manga arm of the company is gone, but Eiken got a Blu Ray re-release that year^6a and would be made available to watch on Crunchyroll for streaming by the end of 2020^6b. I would not be surprised , whilst Media Blasters sells actual porn anime and lewd ecchi anime, that Eiken's re-release comes with the knowledge of its notoriety after the passing time. Eiken is the title which, after its first release and its manga being published in English in the US, could be seen as the ultimate infamous title to dare to watch for some, the one too weird or perverse for others to see, and in my case the notorious title I spied with the aforementioned morbid curiosity. It is to be approached with caution, and if this had been a full television series of just thirteen episodes, my comments from these two episodes may have lead instead to me becoming a husk of a demoralised anime viewer after my initial cockiness. Considering the manga had eighteen volumes, even my perverse interest in the title may not want to know where it went with this premise beyond these sixty minutes, and knowing full well this is loaded with innuendo, sometimes something shorter is less painful over something significantly longer in terms of watching anime. As I have found, short anime, even those considered the worst, do not have that much power for me because they do not take too longer to sit through. At sixty minutes, Eiken is the kind of show John Sirabella's Media Blasters could re-release and take advantage of even negative legacy, and honestly, I admire them for taking advantage of this even if other people may not, probably regretting watching this even if they ignored warnings like mine in this review. 

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1) Who Was Responsible For This Anime?, an insanely (and applaudably) detailed and intelligent YouTube documentary on Eiken from Hazel ("@hhhazel"). The video here and the channel here.

2) Full Tokyo Assembly Passes Youth Ordinance Bill, written by Egan Loo and published by Anime News Network on 15th December 2010.

3) Akamatsu's J-Comi Site Posts Adult Manga Restricted by Tokyo Law, written by Egan Loo and published by Anime News Network on 3rd October 2011.

4a) Alternative Report to the First and Second Periodic Report of JAPA on the International Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination. Section "3. Control of expression, incitement and violence related to racial discrimination", under "(2) Absence of provisions regulating and punishing discriminatory expression by public officials", under "C. Position of the JFBA". Written by the Japan Federation of Bar Associations  (JFBA) in January 19, 2001 and published online by Nichibenren.

4b) Committee on Elimination of Discrimination Against Women, The Third Consideration of Japanese Governmental Report: Proposal of List of Issues for Pre-sessional Working Group, written by the Japan Civil Liberties Union and published on 27th January 2003, archived on 23 November 2012.

4c) FEATURE: Ishihara's homophobic remarks raise ire of gays, written for Japan Policy & Politics and published April 3rd 2000. Archived on the Free Library.com

5) 4,000 Protest Takashi Murakami's Versailles Exhibit, written by Egan Loo and published on Anime News Network on 30th August 2010.

6a) Media Blasters to Release Eiken, Jungle de Ikou!, Jubei-Chan 2 Anime on Blu-ray Disc, written by Crystalyn Hodgkins, and published by Anime News Network on 21st February 2020.

6b) Crunchyroll Adds Eiken Anime to Catalog, written by Rafael Antonio Pineda and published by Anime News Network on 25th September 2020.

#235: Hantsu x Trash (2015-16)

 

Studio: Hoods Entertainment

Director: Hisashi Saito

Screenwriter: Keiichirō Ōchi

Based on the manga by Hiyoko Kobayashi

Voice Cast: Maaya Uchida as Chisato Hagiwara; Yūma Uchida as Yōhei Hamaji; Kenta Matsumoto as Nakajima; Saki Yamakita as Maki Hayami; Shizuka Itou as Manami Miyoshi; Yurika Kubo as Mai Shinozaki

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

 

Hantsu X Trash is not really defendable. It is neither a full work, as these are three episodes (two over twelve minutes, the third over fourteen) are part of a trend of creating tie-in anime that comes with the manga, the first bundled with the 8^th volume of the manga on October 6^th 2015¹, the second bundled with the 10^th volume of the manga in June 6^th 2016², and the third and final one bundled with the 11^th volume of the manga on November 4^th 2016³. Together, they are not politically correct a sex comedy about the high school male water polo team who is more interested in the female water team, though maybe it is my cynical nature, but considering some of the far more tasteless and sexist content I have unfortunately come across, the less of two evils argument is here. It is still indefensible, as jokes include spying on the female team bathing, which is sexual harassment in real life, but somehow pales next to worse content.

It feels like a throwback, the source manga published originally in Weekly Young Magazine, a young men’s publication which published the likes of the original Akira magazine, but also in the 2010s with this published titles with names like Does a Hot Elf Live Next Door to You? (2019–2021) by Meguru Ueno, sex still something which sells as in the past and still now, only with this one feeling like it has inherited clichés that came from decades earlier. Episode One introduces Yōhei Hamaji, a poor guy doomed like many male protagonists in these sex comedies to have constant head trauma, a young man who has one clear love, his senpai Chisato Hagiwara⁴, one of the committed members of her team, even if like the other men in his team, he is also one with a fixation on breasts, as those making these shorts clearly were. Hoods Entertainment made their bread and butter on titles like this, whether explicit in content or implied. From them are the likes of The Qwaser of Stigmata (2010), infamously the animated show about breast milk powering one’s super abilities, or Mysterious Girlfriend X (2012), a truly bizarre series for me to experience in that, for all its sex comedy, it is actually a sweet romance between a guy and an unconventional introvert of a girl, which however involves her saliva having addictive qualities to it. They are an animation studio who has no qualms in the slightest to even unconventional fetishes let alone lewdness, this in comparison tame even if it does not help defend the content either.

These are part of the modern OVA movement, the straight-to-video era into the 2010s involving for more tie-in extra episodes or specials for existing shows, or tie-ins to manga we never get over in the West, rather than adaptations or unique titles we were still getting into the 2000s but have dwindled out. A lot, as here, are also entirely for the sake of animating nudity, these three episodes not even lewd ecchi, neither hentai, but devoted entirely to bared animated breasts. TV series are censored for television, they sell their physical releases for this content being uncensored, in this case only the sense this was a far obscure work which someone felt was not able to sell for a full television series. What is also is, even if of a different culture, is the equivalent of the American high school sex comedy into the 2000s, like Road Trip (2000), tame works baring their brief scenes of nudity, and with all the potential issues of sexism and their tones to consider upon actually watching them.

Episode One warns of this in the content, though as I will get to, this is following the trope that, whilst still objectifying the women, the men are punished painfully for comedic effect, which has always been a curious side to Japanese anime and manga in their sex comedy in that they constantly undercut their male characters, in work targeting men in their gazes, in being completely immature figures. Even what could be seen as a gay panic running gag undercuts itself in presentation, where Yōhei keeps imagining erotic fantasies of Hagi-chan, whilst recuperating in the nurse’s room, only to keep envisioning Nakajima, a team member looks in his late thirties with sunglasses permanently on, because of the strange tone to it. The main joke for that first episode, whilst Hagi-Chan is the woman he loves, Yōhei is someone clearly who has both an obsession with large breasts, and that due to the tone of this joke, far from homophobic it comes off like he is denying his bisexuality. If not latent desire to buff his team leader’s nipples, his super ego denying his sexual desire is a really unconventional, a mind which envisions Chisato being seduced by one of her teammates Shinozaki, someone who is very physical with her friends, and in a more complex show than the fragments we got would have been compelling, even if tasteless, for imagining the sexual id of a guy who is confused in a lot of ways about his sexuality even if there is one girl he loves dearly. That is as much trying to stretch out a sex gag which most would roll their eyes by excusing it through a layer of amateur interpretation, but that becomes the most interesting thing, even if by accident, how much of this does become a curious gag anime about the strangeness of the male libido, even if the work is not great.

This is still an anime about the male water polo team being perverts, even with episode three having them trying to spy on the female team so Yōhei learn the nipple colour of the woman he loves, words I cannot believe (or defend) recording as dialogue. This follows however clichés common in anime, including that this always leads to the men being punished as already mentioned, one going too far in his delirium seeing one girl naked he even gets a baseball bat up a painful area. It is a strange paradox of getting away with behavior in real life with these fictional characters which would not be (rightly) justifiable, more problematic by the time these episodes were being released, with explicit nudity here shown to the viewer, only to punish the male characters for their libido. The female teacher for both teams is neither helping in breaking teaching ethics too. In Episode Two, she even made a promise to let the male team touch her breasts if they won a match, three seconds only each, and has a desire for Yōhei beyond the boundaries of teacher-student relationships, only with the issue that he loves Chisato and wants to keep his virginity except for her undercutting this.

None of this has aged well as, least in the English speaking world, content like this is considered more and more taboo even if this title is from the 2010s and was an obscure title which is not commonly available. Most would rightly not want to watch this, which comes up just past the thirty minute mark only, but it is here too though, so I do not come off as a hypocrite, where I admit I did laugh. Every time it was entirely when a clear theme was up front as the joke, of how every male character here is as thick as a brick, even Yōhei, whose obsession entirely to breasts is to the point they all believe touching them is enough for an orgasm for a woman, which is comical and in an actual relationship would been the most embarrassing reality check they all could have. It is the kind of premise which, for all the content here with is clichés from previous anime and not aging well, still hits close to home as a joke at mocking the male heterosexual libido. More so, as I have seen titles which have casual edged into sexual violence and far more misogynistic content, this feels more antiquated and with this Super Ego slant to how the joke always punished the male characters, even if the plots here are not defendable and yet reward with their explicitly topless nudity, Here there is a scene of all the swim team on the floor just from touching their teacher’s breasts, or that she has beaten them all up for not following the three second rule, the exaggeration here of these male character coming off as something itself ridiculous to laugh at, that image in itself the encapsulation of what is clearly the joke but also unintentionally the theme, even a neurosis, running through this.

It is sexist? Yes, though this crude OVA accidentally nods to this paradoxical tug of war between titillation and punishment which is interesting if perverted. A story is also here if there ever was a sense of trying to tell one out of this, the romance between a sex fixated Yōhei who yet wishes to be a good person for Chisato, a romantic triangle set up in the finale episode with another girl on the water polo team with a crush on him. Not many of the cast are set up beyond this, though the premise of a sap like Yōhei trying to balance between water polo and his libido is a premise that could be good, as most could, is focused and were trying for more than clearly here. That this is not really a water polo genre story, and likely is not in the source manga, is itself disappointing because, as a genre hybrid, a sports show combined with absurd sex comedy and romance would work, or least be something really original.  

What you get here, just over thirty minutes, could have been a pilot if released separately into three parts. Its content, even if I found aspects funny, does come with my own guilt that, absolutely, and that episode two does at times look rough. It is fascinating though, as a lot of shows still had this tone of sex comedy, even the badly aged content, over the decades before into the modern day, this one fixated as much on the stupidity of its male leads as much as clearly exist to sell its titillation. I cannot help but contrast this too, back to the concern of the lesser of two evils argument, in mind to other anime I have seen which have more problematic content, where this is still not the place I wish sex comedies were in, but with far worse out there. I think of the first season of High School DxD (2012), which I once watched to cover for a cult film blog I wrote for anime rated for eighteen year olds in the British Isles, where alongside one of the female characters (at least one) being uncomfortably young looking, there was an extensive Pokemon parody within one episode with tentacles that I could have done without. I think of the shock of an obscure series like Sakura Diaries (1997) when I returned to it; for the most part a sweet natured toned sex comedy even if about cousins, it abruptly (including its ADV Films English dub) enters some horrifying misogyny and the male lead nearly considering raping his cousin, only to brush that aside for the rest of the premise. No, the gag of spying on the female water polo team bathing is not justifiable as a joke, but it is antiquated like an American Pie film inexplicably appearing in the cinemas in the 2020s, rather than just uncomfortable to sit through.

Instead this evokes Colorful (1999), a micro-series anime. Whilst the question of whether its content is defendable means revisiting it, its humour was less sex humour, vignettes about men trying to see women in their underwear, or the garments under their clothes, but the jokes entirely about how ridiculous these men were, and the punch lines making them look like egits. Whether that has aged well or not is to debate, but you look to these works which are as much the joke is a guilt reflex of the creators, and they are fascinating even if Hantsu x Trash is very conventional even in the genre. In the perfect world, these types of sex comedies would not involve this type of sexual harassment humour – where even Hood Entertainment with Mysterious Girlfriend X, with its fetish some will find off-putting, managing to have at its center a pair who really liked each other and embraced this quirk of the relationship. Yet that is the only sin of Hantsu x Trash, a slight production, one which will likely be forgotten as an actual anime production, but managing to produce far more here on paper than what these thirty plus minutes should have produced because there is stuff here of note it accidentally spells out. That, and because one wishes there was an erotic water polo sex comedy out there which was more wholesome and progressive with this tone even if still breast fixated.

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1) Hantsu x Trash Manga Bundles Original Anime DVD, written by Karen Ressler and published by Anime News Network on August 23^rd 2015.

2) Hantsu x Trash Risque Water Polo Manga Bundles 2nd Original Anime DVD, written by Karen Ressler and published by Anime New Network on April 24^th 2016.

3) Risque Water Polo Manga Hantsu x Trash Bundles 3rd Original Anime DVD, written by Rafael Antonio Pineda and published by Anime News Network on September 9th 2016.

4) Maaya Uchida and Yūma Uchida, the voice actors for these lead characters, are siblings, which is somewhat an odd casting choice as romantic leads. That is not a slight against either of them, Maaya the older sister, both prolific in their careers, just an odd choice which I hope they found funny in hindsight to what happens in the show. 

#171: Futari Ecchi (2002-4)

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#168: Butt Attack Punisher Girl Gautaman (1994)

 

Directors: Iku Suzuki (Episode 1), Hiroshi Yoshida (Episode 2)

Screenplay: Yū Yamamoto

Based on a manga by Masakazu Yamaguchi

Voice Cast: Yuri Shiratori as Mari Amachi; Miki Itō as Saori Minami; Tomokazu Seki as Ryo Tobishima; Akiko Yajima as Hibari Misora; Kenichi Ogata as Buddha; Kenichi Ono as Kyoshirou Inemuri; Kinryuu Arimoto as Vice Principal; Kouji Totani as Pope; Ryūzaburō Ōtomo as Dark Vader; Tomohiro Nishimura as Mutsugorō; Tsutomu Kashiwakura as Scary Newspaper Man

 

What's Buddha doing here?

From the ultra obscure realm of anime OVAs, a two part straight-to-video work, Gautaman is a title which has only been available in the West up to the 2020s on German DVD and only known to anyone if they have found it online. It is, after years of wanting to see both parts, upon finally seeing it a work which lived up to being utterly insane but also something with two aspects to consider. One is that, unfortunately, it has content as I will get into which people will find inappropriate and uncomfortable for good reason, as this belongs to the area of anime where jokes and scenes about women being forcibly undressed and molested are found, especially feeling bolted on to a work which could have just stayed as a weird and kinky parody of superheroes with some sex comedy without this content. The more positive thing of note, and the reason why I would actually recommend people track this down if they can pass the former concern, and why I wish this had a proper Western release, is that it is compelling. It is shambolic at times, skirting copyright precariously with jokes which are just strange, but managing to juggle genres and even have emotional whiplashes. There is nothing like Gautaman even if the premise is not original, in which to protect a school for all future religious leaders, a shy Catholic girl has to dress in a stupid hero costume because Buddha of all deities rather than the Virgin Mary answered her prayers. One which manages in two forty plus minute episodes has a lesbian (yuri) subplot with a fellow Hindu roommate, henchmen like "Dark Vader", and even a bitter sweet ending.

At this school, where all major religions coexist in harmony, naturally it has an evil cult known as Black Buddha among them, who indoctrinate members by kidnapping students, to the point they even develop new personas with masks in case they need henchmen. Mari Amachi is a Catholic and a new student, insanely shy having been brought up in a Catholic school before, and having not been around men baring her father and school principals beforehand. Gautaman for all its dumbness has virtues, including a lead character I wanted to follow and wished had more stories about, someone who is the zenith of stereotypically awkward yet cute figures, with her big red hair in a ribbon and long dress. Adding to her character with another interesting figure, Mari immediately finds a friend in Saori Minami, a practicing Hindu student she shares a room with and is eventually hiding a romantic crush from Mari.

When the Black Buddha decides to kidnap Saori, because she stopped a member indoctrinating Mari by intriguing her with religious discussion, Mari's prayers on her knees does not get the figure she would presume. She gets Buddha of all people, and if you have knowledge on the religion, it is not actually Buddha himself but someone who people confuse the Buddha for she receives for help, the jolly rotund figure, here a gold talking statue who floats, who was originally Budai, a 10th-century Chinese monk who, unlike Siddhartha Gautama who is Buddha, is a different figure honoured in Chinese and also Japanese Buddhism. He is still a figure of high regard, getting the name of "the Laughing Buddha" even if it might be confusing, which is why he is parodied here in a way which is a bit crass and profane. I would prefer to call this Buddha neither Siddhartha Gautama nor Budai, even if Budai is referenced and the name "Gautaman" Mari's alter-ego is called is clearly based on the former, as it makes more sense in this bizarre comedic anime to have this parody be his own thing. This is an incompetent deity who, floating in the background abruptly when unexpected, gives away her weakness to the villains continually and leads to a sentence of someone hitting Buddha taking place in dialogue, something that would not make sense anywhere else expect here.

Contextually this anime has a lot of similarities to the 1991-2 OVA adaptation of Kekko Kamen; Kamen was a Go Nagai creation, which managed to spin off into numerous live action films too, a concept meant to have been a joke he sent to his editor only for them to actually like it. Kaman shares this show's unfortunate interest in non-consensual sexual content in a jokey, eroticised form although was far more extreme. The titular Kekko Kamen herself, a girl with a secret persona to protect her fellow classmates at the evil Sparta Academy, was a mask with a scarf, gloves and shoes with nothing else on, completely naked beyond this. Mari as Gautaman, protector of religious freedom, is covered in costume but is more ridiculous - wearing a turban, wraparound shades, a sports bra, and Mari's power source, a sumo belt with nothing underneath.

The show, to be crass for once, is from the same well as Sir Mix-A-Lot found his inspiration for Baby Got Back, the ode to women's behinds even though this show has none which are rendered as large. Black Buddha do attempt to find out her real identify from a plaster cast at one point in the first episode, of her behind left on an unfortunate victim as a result of her special move; leaping in the air and moving herself in a jack knife with her legs to her head to do what we, in professional wrestling parlance, sometimes have called the "thump" with the gluteus maximus to the chest at high speed. This is, again, crass, but just in all I have put, you could have easily removed some of the unpalatable moments, like a Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles parody with squid tentacles molesting the female students, and easily turned this premise into just a sex comedy parody of superheroes instead. It would have improved even if still juvenile. Particularly as, whilst not nuisance and with her religious beliefs never really coming into play, the premise of Catholic schoolgirl, from a very restricted upbringing, being stuck having to become this very sexually upfront super heroine, because she does want to help people, is still amusing especially as the character is interest and the Black Buddha clan is full of oddballs and parodies in terms of the opponents.

Split into two separate OVAs, the first which is just called Butt Attack Punisher Girl Gautaman, is merely an introduction but does show the two sides. One that unfortunately the production had to fall into perverse content that is not palatable today, such as following Kekko Kaman a little and having Saori in compromising positions including being whipped. Thankfully it also emphasises that, with some re-adaptation, the story could have easily jettisoned this content entirely unlike Kekko Karman¸ which is work that is far more problematic even if managing to be released on DVD in Britain in the 2000s. It also emphasises already how odd the OVA is, the sense Gautaman was never meant for an international audience beyond Japan. Our two lead characters Mari and Saori are named after famous female idol singers who were still very much alive at the time, which causes you to wonder how those real women might have reacted, and for a future release they had to censor the real name of the school this story is set in, suggesting immediately that the writers crossed a line in terms of Japan's copyright laws even for parody, something which has been an effect on older titles which were more flagrant in referring to real life pop culture¹.

The antagonists themselves, led by a leader who is one of the male students Ryo Tobishima, are also a motley bunch of strange parodies and concepts, based upon students being brainwashed and gaining new personas to go after Mari (or in one case, "Frankenmuscle", never even getting to see action as, in a funny joke, Tobishima just bats him into a wall so his second in command, the vice principal of the school, stops interfering with his plans). When the first you encounter is literally "Scary Newspaper Delivery Man", whose secret weapon is a newspaper which is lethal to read, there is a lot of cultural aspects that have clearly been lost in translation to why that is a villain to have, either that or either the original manga author or the creators of this OVA went for something ridiculous. That is the case with an identical group of elderly students whose names are puns on Japanese numbers and whose main attacks are to impersonate animals. Yes, that is just the beginning of how peculiar this show gets, and this I would rather have than those aspects leanings towards Kekko Karman, which again is a much more problematic show considering its first villain was a Nazi dominatrix teacher. Instead here, just from the first episode, you have an explicit parody of the "Sleepy Eyes of Death" Nemuri Kyōshirō, a famous pulp samurai character known for his purple clothes who, replicating the samurai character in Kamen who cut women's clothes off, is here as a villain alongside the aforementioned Dark Vader, a giant sumo with a very suspiciously familiar looking helmet of a Disney owned property.

It does establish as well that, whilst not reinventing the wheel, there is a lot here I liked as well even if it befuddled me. There is a lot of comedy, with the usual trademarks of characters breaking from their usual forms for exaggerating which is always amusing, especially as the duality of Mari against Gautaman, who gets attention both as a hero in the school but also wearing very little, does leave the poor girl with a lot of concern and a lot of obvious jokes which still work. It also sets up the potential drama of how Tobishima actually meets Mari outside his evil persona and they fall for each other, despite neither knowing their masked identities. Episode two, titled Butt Attack Punisher Girl Gautaman R, escalates the plot and just escalates the tone. With a different director on board, it increases in how bizarre it gets, how much more perverted the content can be, and how the emotional tone gets surprisingly serious somehow in spite of most of the work being unable to be taken seriously at all.

What was a light hearted sex comedy, with some unfortunately dated content, gets a lot more explicit, both with a scene of Mari and Saori sharing a bath with the eyebrow raising subtitle of "bottoms touching", and a parody of the famous Dream of the Fisherman's Wife ukiyo-e woodblock print by Katsushika Hokusai, as that trope of squid ninja, a Mutant Ninja Turtles parody that gets the joke across with its own designs², have an expanding squid as their secret weapon against Gautaman. Again, the lewder content does put one off; the absurd moments, like a fantasy in Episode 1 of Mari being burned like a martyr on a pyre of butts rather than burning wood, is lewd and weird but comes from a more digestible and more entertaining in its weirdness rather than creepy. If it had just been as mad as a box of frogs, I would be less concerned with this review having to stress that it does cross the line a few times, where even some of the "WTF" levels of surprise would still be acceptable even if very dark in its humour. Like the likelihood one set of villains are defeated by being cooked on a giant pan in the middle of a class and being eaten by their fellow students, which I suspect was cannibalism³. A joke like that, from the second OVA, is at least tasteful in that it does not feel inappropriate, just twisted in a palatable way to surprise anyone with not datedness to its shock value.

It feels especially as if the production team were doing whatever they wanted with peculiar results. So the real final fight involves a Terminator parody, with a character design that really looks like Arnold Schwarzenegger with a T-800 underneath which perilously inches towards the copyright line. So, even when the story gets serious with Mari and Tobishima ultimately having to fight despite being unaware of each other's real identities, you randomly get the sight, whilst he is ritually preparing under a waterfall, that Tobishima possesses something the size of a tree trunk between her thighs which is never a plot point and is dumbfounding as a sight joke. What you get instead of what you expect for this light hearted and dumb premise is the surprisingly bleak conclusion, where Mari risks being removed from the school by her father if she turns into Gautaman again. How he is introduced, and reveals how he knew of her true identity, is uncomfortable and definitely part of that side I wished the OVA did not have, but where it leads to with the finale suddenly turning into a drama, with Saori the sympathetic figure in love with Mari sincerely, was a surprise. One in fact that actually left the anime etched in my thoughts as much as the bizarre content before.  

The two episode production is not that elaborate - distinct but certainly not one of the higher tier OVAs in terms of artistic quality - but it definitely shows just how unpredictable the format was. We thankfully still get anime like this, good or bad, in the modern day with television series, but the OVA era of the eighties to the nineties as seen here saw such unexpected combinations of genre released straight to video, both here the memorable in a bad way but also in a way which legitimately surprises. The original manga, Dengeki Oshioki Musume Gōtaman, lasted for six volumes, and is obscure despite its author Masakazu Yamaguchi having one of his works Arm of Kannon (1998-2003) available in the West through Tokyopop, so whether this adapts the work accurately or trailed off in its own direction is a question for another day. Something like this is not necessarily the best, and I could completely understand people who hated it, especially as some moments are cringe worthy. And yet I wish it was more easily available, not likely to perish outside of bootlegged digital copies, because it definitely is memorable in positive ways and for the moments you were not prepared for.

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1) Japan's laws on this and how it can affect anime can be summed up in a famous modern day example. For the 2015 update of Osomatsu-kun, a sixties comedy manga adapted into anime about sextuplet brothers, called Mr. Osomatsu, their first ever episode parodied multiple other work such as the insanely popular manga/anime franchise Attack on Titan. It was so explicit that the first episode has effectively been cancelled due to copyright, including for home media, regardless of it being for parody.

2) Knowing that Japan did try at their own licensed and official adaptation of the Ninja Turtles, in the 1996 OVAs Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Legend of the Supermutants, adds an additional humour to the squid villains, especially when the official anime adaptation did not turn out well at only two episodes and was weird itself.

3) [Major Spoiler Warning] Those unfortunate squid ninja find themselves in that fate, and it definitely comes off as one of the moments of Gautaman you will remember, especially as they are clearly students wearing living squid masks, thus making it actual cannibalism [Spoilers End].

#145: The Island of Giant Insects (2020)

Director: Takeo Takahashi and Naoyuki Tatsuwa

Screenplay: Shigeru Morita

Based on the manga by Yasutaka Fujimi and Shu Hirose

Voice Cast: M.A.O as Mutsumi Oribe; Chiaki Takahashi as Mirei Jinno/Misuzu Jinno ; Marina Inoue as Inaho Enoki; Misato Fukuen as Ayumi Matsuoka; Momo Asakura as Mami Miura; Rika Tachibana as Chitose Naruse; Takuya Eguchi as Kazuhiko Kai; Wataru Komada as Atsushi Kamijō; Yurika Kubo as Ai Inō

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

Immediately into the 2020s, we have ended up with this curiosity, which is still having its history written and is still managing to soldier on. The Island of Giant Insects has also been a production that has benefitted from the Kickstarter era, which does mean that unlike years before, there is a target audience who have been waiting for this over the time. The title, adaptive from a manga, is a throwback to old school OVA or at least the idea, as this is not remotely like those late eighties and nineties titles but firmly in the era where shows like High School DXD (2012) get sequel after sequel, the not-quite-porn sold on nudity.

From the first trailer it was obvious, in this tale of students stuck on a literal island of giant insects, the main selling point was the transgression of nubile female characters being molested by the likes of giant bees and grubs. Does it say something bad against others and me that we even watched this? I admit a fascinating with the perverse, but by this point, there is a very different nature to "adult" anime in the 2010s from decades earlier, where whilst the older titles can be far more problematic (like Violence Jack), there is something significantly more insidious with a lot of the OVA level work of today, which is more tame in some areas but questionable, as well as a sense they are being manufactured to a target audience knowingly rather than some of the madness you got in older work.

Initially the film existed as a 2019 release short, not a short film but twenty minutes in the middle of the finale feature length work, knee deep into the hell hole of giant butterflies who suck people dry and other content that appears in the final work, just to provide a taster. The film itself is also not the entire work, merely early chapters of the manga, following a group of stereotypes from a manipulative older girl who uses her physical allure to a macho jock, the movie taking a fifties American b-movie but adding a lot more animated nudity and greater nastiness. There are nicer characters in the fold, the heroine Mutsumi Oribe luckily an insect enthusiast who is really of use on an island like this, to the point that whilst others like those above are stupid enough to try to continually get her killed, one male character immediately comes sympathetic because early on he realises her importance and listens to her.

The inherent issue with The Island of Giant Insects is that it is a paradox, between being very scuzzy but also in a very generic way. That sentence might raise some questions, but I am a defender of ero-guro-nonsense and all the deviations in Japanese pop culture, which proves an issue as Giant Insects is both just lurid for the sake of lurid, but not as shocking as it thinks it is and pretty average, not exactly more than trashy and not standing out in creativity. I think, in honesty having seen images, that even if the manga was not great it might be a superior version as that has more of the perverse surrealism that I appreciate even in this type of work. Especially if you check pages of it online, the art style is more distant and the content is stranger in a ghoulish way. The author in particularly really likes insects bursting out of peoples' face, none of which you find in the adaptation but is at least more memorable.

Said insects, as well as being cheesy CGI figures, are not used with interest either. It says a lot that I can just refer to the franchise Earth Defence Force, one of the few video games I have played as an adult, which are cheesy b-movie games which are not the best in graphics and content (at least in the one I have played), but made up for it by having hordes of ants onscreen even if they were also cheesy computer effects. In terms of the premise, the creatures in this are barely used to their fullest, especially in light of all the strange and unique traits of the insect kingdom has, all in spite of there at least being one person or a few involved providing some entomology research. One exception, the one good scene in this entire project, is the horrifying and real life concept of the Leucochloridium, that of a parasitic worm that invades snails' eyestalks, imitate those organs, and mind control that poor host to be out in the open to be eaten by passing birds, all with the intention that the worms breed in the birds' stomachs.  Naturally imagining this happening to one unfortunate human character, as it does here with additional gibbering, is the one single moment Giant Insects ever gets around to the kind of gross, weird and wonderful side of Japanese horror that the likes of Junji Ito or many an ero-guro creation does. If only this had happened more in the story.

Clearly of more interest is nudity, as this film does not hide it, even finding an excuse for all the female cast to bathe nude after a giant tick incident. The odd thing about the production though is that the twenty minute piece was uncensored, whilst the feature length version censors some sex, and almost completely censors the violence, obscuring it off-screen or in black. It could sound more progressive, as someone who has always found it problematic violence was more acceptable than sex, but it comes to the point how this is not like the old lurid titles at all. Say what you want about old titles that painstakingly drew the most grotesque detail in gore and organs, but a lot of OVAs nowadays are tie-ins to existing titles and usually an excuse for more nudity only. The censorship also does not mean these works cannot get away with some problematic content and tones even for me.

None of these characters are particularly memorable, another title with insanely generic female character designs which is always the worse sign, with even the ero-guro aspects deeply problematic for myself. The only sexuality that is nothing to do with the grotesque aspects is not a lot. The evil manipulative woman is not exactly feminist, and the curious lesbian subplot about a timid idol singer who is secretly manipulative too, taking advantage of the female track star in the group being likely gay, is jarring both in that one of the two is not probably a good character either and that it never goes anywhere. There are also the unsavoury moments. It is one thing to have the erotic-grotesque aspect of female nudity against insects, but that should not be the only thing, for the sake of both gender politics and true transgression. Then there is the scene where the evil female character and the jock go full evil, to which a certain piece of dialogue about gagging another female character with something below the belt is completely implying what that suggests, only to thankfully not happen.

It is strange to think that, for all the problematic content, a work like The Legend of the Overfiend (censored or otherwise) can be more defensible for pieces of it than this, but there is always something more problematic for me about anime which follows the rules dictated, i.e. censoring nudity for television, but still sells the uncensored releases and still gets away with some gross content in the censored broadcast. Likewise, a title here that had no excuse being censored, thus not experiencing a full version of the premise promised, which also has questionable content really comes off as hypocritical and far more a concern than a fully offensive work which people are warned about. A scene like lingering on a female character wetting herself in fear in detail just before a butterfly gets her, as seen here, is something which feels a lot grosser to witness than any titillation or gore you could throw at myself.

The production itself is also incredibly bland, and not in the cheap and compelling type. Even the music is terrible metal guitar licks which are off-putting for a metal fan like myself, egregiously cheap when I have heard solidly put together music even in incredible cheap anime. There is even a sequence which is an extreme form of padding, just of the lead character walking down an endless corridor with this music playing, and of nothing more which is pretty offensive in how pointless it is. The real baffling nature of all this is that this has managed to soldier on. As a b-movie premise, I can think of many other ways this could have been made, imagined versions which is better, but this managed to get a feature length cut and has been acquiring funds for an English dub. A complete lack of memorability is found here, but with the aspects there that leaves one feeling dirty rather than provoked. It is strange as well that, due to the unforeseen circumstances about COVID-19, which has effected everything including production of entertainment industries like anime, The Island of Giant Insects could be by accident one of the most prominent titles we know of from the year. That is maddening and baffling at the same time.