パパとKISS IN THE DARK / Papa to Kiss in the Dark / Kiss in the Dark with Papa

These pervy shotacon anime are not for me, I fear. The closest one has come to working was Boku no Pico, and that was more hilarious than anything else. Actually, Enzai probably worked best, but would have been vastly improved if the shotacon part that was its whole reason for being had been taken out. I can understand the appeal of the concepts behind these, but in execution they’re mostly terrible. I realise I am not the target audience – these are (Pico excepted) written by Japanese women for Japanese women, the so-called fujoshi who cross the cultural divide in the form of yaoi fangirls in the Occident. But at the same time, I’ve found lots of manga on these subject I really enjoy, from short doujin to full anthologies by the likes of CJ Michalski, which take the time to set up a good scenario and care about character development. More mature takes on the general themes, like the current divisive success No. 6, also work far better.

But Papa to Kiss in the Dark is a two-part OVA all about a 15-year-old boy’s love affair with his father. It was rubbish. I really disliked all the characters except the childhood friend. And it wasn't the least bit sexy, or naughty, or in any way enhanced by the element of incest – which was very unpleasant anyway. I also dislike how the weaker of these stories all have a central boy who everyone in the vicinity seems to love and adore for the most superficial reasons – I’m looking at you, Loveless – and the most artificial drama gets injected through cheap storytelling methods revolving around jealousy – bow your head in shame, Gravitation.

Papa to Kiss is just one in a sequence of samey shotacon teasers, only with an additional layer of unpleasant incest overlaid on it – or two layers, really, when you find out more about the actress. It’s only 50 minutes of fluff, so hardly too much to bear, but there’s little to recommend it. Like other Boys’ Love anime, though, it will have its vociferous young female fans who have very little to compare it with, so will find it both fulfilling as a story and erotically satisfying. It is, I suppose, good they can enjoy it and need nothing better-written to please them, but I can’t count myself amongst them.

(expanded from impressions, 6.12.07)