ぼくのぴこ + ぴことちこ / Boku no Pico & Pico to Chico

Warning: this show is paedophilic gay animated porn. Read on only if you can get past this rather disturbing premise.

I’ve written nearly one hundred of these little reviews, but this is the first time I’m reviewing any hentai. In fact, this is actually the first hentai I’ve seen right through; other than this, I’ve only ever watched clips of Eva porn in an AMV, clips and bits and pieces shown to me for comedy value. People may be sceptical when I say this, but it’s true – hentai really doesn’t do it for me, doesn’t turn me on, and doesn’t stimulate me as a piece of storytelling…but then anyone who’s seen hentai will know that the last assertion is just stating the obvious.

Even well-known hentai like Bible Black, or ones that spark a lot of discussion like Kite, just don’t interest me. Because if hentai isn’t utterly stupid, then it’s really disgusting. And it’s usually both.

Along comes Boku no Pico. A laughably ropey plot allows for lots of gay sex scenes – an adult male meets an adolescent boy who acts like a little girl. They have sex, then have more sex, then have an argument, then have make-up sex. That really is it. To my surprise, unlike most yaoi, especially with this sort of age dynamic and seme/uke pattern, and in spite of its fanbase in the West, Boku no Pico was not made for women to enjoy. It was made by and for men. Although Pico is a horribly blatant caricature, the pretty, extremely submissive teenaged boy as a sexual ideal is intriguing, being such a taboo, and though ‘Mokkun’ treats the kid in a pretty dubious, objectifying way, it’s mostly only so that Pico’s soft personality can come through.

Let’s face it, Pico is an idealised girl with boys’ pixellated genitalia, in the typical moé mould of absolute submissiveness with just a touch of headstrong selfishness than can be resisted later for maximum sweetness.

But oh good lord, the sex scenes are not appealing. Leaving aside the bizarre errors concerning how the male body works (no, you can’t do that with a foreskin, my dears. I can see what he’s doing behind that pixellation, and it’s not possible!) and the effectiveness of spit as lubrication, why on earth is it supposed to be sexy to see an ephebe ejaculating about a litre of spunk that’s stickier than wallpaper paste? They’re good for just one thing, laughter; Boku no Pico can be sexy only until it becomes porn, and even then not very much so.

Then comes the sequel, Pico to Chico. Pico goes on holiday and finds an even younger boy, who looks about seven, and they have sex! Pico, the most submissive character ever conceived, gets an uke of his own! Well, some of the time – he’s so feeble that the seven-year-old can be the dominant partner at times. Pico and Chico have lots of sex, dress up as girls, and Chico’s sister masturbates while she secretly watches. Charming. The animators don’t seem to know that prepubescents don’t ejaculate, because Chico, too, is bursting with yucky wallpaper paste.

This kind of thing is legal in the UK at the moment, though will quite probably cease to enjoy that status within the year, as our beloved politicians know what it’s acceptable for the nation to see, of course, and John Reid has announced that underage cartoon porn will soon be criminalised. (Hundreds of teenaged girls around the country, take note.) No-one’s ever going to believe that Pico is 18, let alone Chico, but I need not fear breaking the law, because there’s nothing that makes Boku no Pico worth re-watching, and it won’t be on my hard drive.

Hentai featuring huge boobs, exaggerated cocks or tentacle rape: delete at once.

Hentai featuring a cute teenaged boy: watch it all the way through, shake head and delete.

Hentai featuring a the boy having sex with a pre-teen: watch shaking head, sneering or laughing, then delete.

On the other hand, it does give me a desire to see other shounen-ai, if not yaoi. It was, after all, the yaoi that ruined the shounen-ai. As long as it’s not crap like Loveless or Gravitation, anyway.

(Originally written 22.8.07. A third in the series has since been released. I have in fact found more uses for the show as it has since become more infamous: it's occasionally very funny to show it to the wrong people at the wrong times)