お金がないっ/ Okane ga Nai / No Money

Here it is, then. The worst piece of animation I have ever seen. Stephen Fry writes in his autobiography about the guilt he felt giving a book a bad review, but I feel no compunction calling this the worst anime I’ve ever seen: it’s not anyone’s personal baby but the mangaka’s, and after all, it’s the lowest sort of trashy porn so I seriously doubt she has any great attachment to it.

Yes, this is another review of a hentai – although I suppose it may be trying for shounen-ai rather than yaoi, featuring as it does ridiculous arty angles and shining lights rather than pixellated genitals. And yes, it’s another homoerotic one, although it’s actually been a while since I last watched anything like this, unless you count the tedious Junjou Romantica – which I suppose it has more in common with than, say, Words Worth.

You may point out that I always seem to give homoerotic anime a hard time. I didn’t like Papa to Kiss in the Dark, I stressed how much better Enzai would be without the porn and Boku no Pico remains more funny than anything else. Loveless and especially Gravitation really tried my patience, and Sensitive Pornograph was dire. So why keep watching them?

Well, the fact is that there are good stories along these lines out there. This show covers similar themes to many a CJ Michalski or Yamakami Riyu publication, only with everything that makes it unique also being everything that makes it utterly horrible. Why animation companies should choose to animate a manga like this and not something decent I don’t know. So I am not naturally predisposed to hate these shows – they are just very bad examples of their kind.

Okane ga Nai – and I sigh as I write this – is about a girly-boy university student who looks like a mutant little girl stretched out and given ten thousand eyelids around his terrifying eyes. He is voiced by the seiyuu who did characters I really like, like Riku in Onmyou Taisenki, Gauche in Tegami Bachi and Albert in Gankutsuou, which makes me strangely sad (and he was also Grell in Kuroshitsuji, which makes me mostly confused). Through no fault of his own (a reckless family member), he is in debt by millions of yen to a huge scary (but handsome) 'businessman' (One Piece’s Arlong and Naruto’s Asuma…). Unbeknownst to the boy, he once showed kindness to the man at his most vulnerable, so the man is actually in love with him. The man thus decides to express his love by saying that the boy can pay off his debt by moving in with him and becoming his whore.

Romantic as this may sound, it gets worse. Not only does the man keep his feelings hidden for some reason, making the boy feel he is being mercilessly raped, he has powerful enemies. Thus, the main crisis of the OVAs comes when the boy gets kidnapped, drugged and the bad guys strip him with intent to rape him on camera. The man comes sweeping in to save the day – too late to stop the boy being violated by a suppository and exposed to the camera, and with the great plan of bringing in one of the rapists’ daughter and threatening to slit her throat. And then just using brute force instead. To celebrate the boy being saved from almost being raped on camera, arrangements are made to make a nice sex tape of him, now that he’s found out the man actually genuinely has feelings for him. This is, of course, supposed to be hilarious.

I hate everything about this, except that it was only four episodes long. I hate the art, with the absurd giant seme and ridiculous stick-limbed uke. I hate their faces, one some sort of golem and the other with creepy eyes that look like an unkind anime parody – though the original manga seems to look less terrible. I hate the rape fantasies even more than I hate them in just about all erotic anime (as it’s sadly prevalent) – this time it’s even more of a nonsense because a few words would totally change the issue. I hate that the boy is supposed to shrug off the fact a whole room of men saw him abused and violated. I hate that he’s supposed to fall for his abuser. I hate that the characters are such distorted ideas of lovers.

This is really like banging my head against the wall. I’m aware that it’s like watching a live-action porno and complaining about how unbelievable the plumber’s character was and how the naughty nun’s lines didn’t ring true. But dammit, this sort of thing is a huge industry in Japan, and straight hentai is getting surprisingly good. Yaoi has its big names, and some of them are big because their art, story and characterisation is good. So why is rubbish like this still made?

痴漢物語/ Chikan Monogatari / Public Harassment Story / Legend of the Pervert (hentai)

Another hentai review from me! I’ve never found animated porn much beyond ridiculous and ugly, but this one from 2007 at least manages to be attractively-drawn, decently-acted and with good character designs. It’s also interesting in that it got distribution for the US, so this particular slab of filth can be bought Stateside with mosaic censoring removed – which in all honesty is never much of a positive in hentai, because what you don’t see tends to be much more appealing than what gets revealed. While hentai doujins have in recent years featured smaller and smaller censor bars and better-drawn naughty bits, anime has yet to try its luck in that regard and perhaps because they know nobody in Japan will see the actual drawings, they tend to be…less than impressive.

Plus Legend of the Pervert had an interesting footnote (no pun intended) in that it had an extended scene cut from international distribution because it depicted underage sex. Thus, only a censored version of this part exists; I can’t see it being anything other than funny either way, revolving as it does around an adorable little boy with enormous equipment.

There are two episodes here, and the theme – obvious from the Japanese title but not the English – is sex in public places. The first episode, which contains the cut side-story, is the otherwise conventional story of an office worker who is bullied by his domineering female boss. She is just letting out pent-up sexual frustration, though, and masturbates when she thinks she is alone. Of course, Hakushiki sees her and one thing leads to another. Meanwhile, his little brother is coerced into showing a girl his ‘dekachin’ late at night in school. To avoid discovery, they hide in a toilet cubicle before having their first real sexual experience…which may possibly have been cute if not for all the OH GOD BLOOD EVERYWHERE and screams of ‘itai!’ and ‘muri, muri, zettai muri!’, going way beyond my squick limits.

Part two starts with a very cute boy and girl in a restaurant where the waitress uniform is, of course, a maid outfit. The boy, Akao, embarrasses the girl when she’s trying to order, and then in not-entirely-clear ways, they manage to have public sex there in the booth, without everyone seeing but with the risk still there. Akao goes home but his sisters have heard about him teasing his girlfriend, so teach him some humility by playing with his genitals with their feet, tying him up naked outdoors and having sex. The final scene is back with the girlfriend, largely a fantasy scene where Akao imagines more sex.

For all hentai tends to be incredibly silly and non-sexy, and for all I’ve always found the preference for drawing bodily fluids like cake mixture to be nauseating rather than attractive, this at least looks good. Only one character in Wordsworth looked anything other than terrible, it’s dodgy art as much as nasty non-con that kills Enzai and even the Boku no Pico OVAs, for all their slick production have a tendency to make the faces look stupid once sex scenes start. Legend of the Pervert at least has its art going for it, and to be honest, it’s all the plot and characterisation porn needs.

But I also don’t hesitate to say that, as with Countdown to Delight, the strange thing here – in episode 2 – is how hentai for guys centres on a pretty, girly, very young-looking boy who reminded me of Joey from Heroman. Again, it seems as though the idea is to play into fantasies about being dominated and humiliated, but it all ends up coming over like the one who’s centre of sexual attention is the boy, not the women. Suits me okay, and it’s actually quite nice to see both the boy and the girl being very cute. I actually probably only watched it because of this novelty.

I don’t write many impressions about hentai, partly because there’s not much to say but mostly because I just don’t watch much of it. Legend of the Pervert is probably on the better end of what’s on offer, though – especially as it caters for all sorts, quite possibly more than it actually intended to. That, coupled with the interesting point of what goes too far for a Western audience but is permissible in Japan, make this something quite interesting to watch.

爆発寸前！！ 天使のカウントダウン / Ready to Explode!! Angel’s Countdown / Countdown to Delight

Time to slip impressions of a hentai in between two slightly more respected older anime, albeit possibly not much. From Green Bunny, the great minds behind Wordsworth, and apparently farmed out to be animated in Korea, comes a hilariously plotless pornographic comedic anime that can’t quite decide who its audience is. Like so many ecchi series, Countdown to Delight gets most of its laughs by having a main character who doesn’t want to do anything sexual getting aggressively pursued – only here, the sex actually happens. And it’s remarkable how much less erotically charged things are as a result.

The plot, such as it is, is divided into two parts. In the first, our hero Motoki cannot get his homework done because his sister insists on having loud lesbian sex in the next room. Poor Motoki – not only is he pretty and childlike, with an unbroken voice and almost no body hair despite being in junior high, but his best friend has decided they ought to be gay lovers. On top of that, his sister’s lesbian lover decides that she ought to seduce him. His best friend walks in on this and has a hilarious jealous reaction. The best friend's sister came along, too, wanting a threesome with the two girls, but they decide on a fivesome instead. Motoki doesn’t like this idea, so runs away. While in this state of distress, he is almost hit by a car. In the second, this situation leads to him getting tutored by a beautiful rich girl, who of course turns out to be dominatrix fond of sadism. Poor Motoki is tied up, whipped and otherwise abused, until the three girls come to the rescue in silly magical girl/sentai outfits and prepare to fight – only for the meta humour to kick in as they declare nobody wants to see action scenes in a comedic hentai, so they have an orgy instead. And the poor gay kid gets no action at all.

It’s actually quite refreshing to see a hentai that’s actually meant to be funny. Though the humour is derivative, it makes everything much more pleasant to watch and at least avoids being self-important. On the other hand, playing it for laughs makes me wonder what the point of the existence of this episode is. I’m not one for hentai in general, it never…doing it for me, but I can’t see how anyone finds this erotic.

Plus it seems odd to me to have Motoki at the centre of it all. I guess he’s supposed to be easy to identify with, and it’s the fantasy of having four aggressive girls actively pursuing you (even if one is your big sister) that’s supposed to appeal, but…in the end, because he’s at the centre and always getting subjugated, it ends up seeming like he’s the object of sexual desire, and the whole thing is actually straight shota rather than the intended fantasy for straight boys.

I don’t think it bears overanalysis, though. A hentai to watch for laughs – like just about every other hentai around.

ワーズ･ワース/ Words Worth

There are people who take animated porn seriously, it’s true. But even amongst them I doubt anybody genuinely thinks Words Worth anything but a joke. I can't even imagine most fans consider it erotic. Certainly the reason I saw it was as a joke between friends, and the horse-headed Stallion has become a bit of an internet meme with his memorable line ‘Your resistance only make my penis harder!’

While it mostly involves an idiotic central male character stumbling about and finding girls who are vulnerable, then having his way with them – often finding them in this state because someone else has just raped them – it is worth remarking that Words Worth at least attempts to elevate itself with an ambitious fantasy plot.

The story takes place in a high fantasy world where the Tribe of Light and the Tribe of Darkness are at war. The prince of the Tribe of Darkness, Astral, works hard to become a swordsman, and despite apparently being in a world where everyone is constantly raping everyone else, has never before had sex. Then in a few hours he has sexual encounters with two women – a prisoner who he rapes and his childhood friend. Going off to fight, he goes up against the king of the Tribe of Light, who is of course busy with some rape, but he is then hit by a spell from the woman he had previously raped. He is blasted away and loses his memory, returning twenty years later to the Tribe of Light, where they take him as one of their own. But what is his true lineage, and what will happen to his child, bourn by the childhood friend? And what of the Words Worth tablet, which when reassembled may reveal the words of God and put an end to centuries of conflict?

If this sounds like an epic tale, though, it’s really incidental. Because Words Worth is about putting fantasy elf-girls and cat-girls into positions where they can have sex. Mostly the girl is unwilling, which presumably for the sake of fantasies of dominance seems to be preferred in anime porn – because girls going ‘No, stop, I don’t want this!’ is apparently erotic. Ick. And if it sounds like Astral getting blasted away as revenge for the rape is supposed to be didactic and teach him a moral lesson – nope. He carries right on doing it, and the gaiden just has more of the same.

It’s all stupid masturbatory fantasy, and honestly extremely unpleasant to look at, with all sorts of nasty close-ups and a preference for making the women really subjugated by having them violated by increasingly disgusting men, so really, a viewer must either take it as hilarious or despair of it. Either way, this has become one of the most widely-known and widely-mocked pieces of animated porn, and for that has a cult following. It’s just definitely not my thing.

冤罪/ Enzai / Falsely Accused

Well, I thought that having seen Boku no Pico, I was all done with shotacon hentai, but there was one more to see, - one that seemed to be in almost every way the opposite of Boku no Pico. Where Pico tries to be achingly cute, innocent and even wholesome, Enzai is dirty, gritty and disturbing. Pico is plotless fluff that leads to boys having sex. Enzai is a murder mystery with several scenes of prison rape. And while I can say without hesitation that the two-episode OVA would have been far better without the sex scenes, it’s also true that I probably would never have heard of the title without them.

So it goes like this. In a clearly Les Miserables-influenced revolutionary France, a young gamin named Guys is arrested for shoplifting, but is then accused of murder. Convinced by a corrupt official to admit to the crime, he is locked up and brutally raped by inmates and authority figures alike. However, working with the friends he makes behind bars, who happen to have the specialities he needs to link the clues at the murder scene together, he regains hope. In his clever and handsome lawyer, he eventually finds his path to freedom and, just to cheapen everything else, his true gay love.

Although its production values are far less impressive than Pico’s, it is a much more satisfying watch, for while its animation and much of its art is sub-par, actually having a half-decent plot makes it a far more appealing prospect.

But then comes the necessary remembrance that the rape scenes exist only to titillate, not to inspire sympathy for Guys and the others who get violated, but to turn the audience on, that these same rape fantasies recur wherever there are fujoshi (female otaku, literally rotten women), be it in Harry Potter fanfics or FMA doujinshi. I can laugh at the silly, soft-focus, exaggerated childishness of Boku no Pico and its sequel. But I stop short of rape. I definitely stop short of resultant bleeding. ‘Squick’ is the fandom term – it repels me and starts being deeply unpleasant.

Enzai could have been a very good anime if, like the majority of straight H-Game adaptations, the sex had been taken out to be replaced by a focus on the story, lots of sexual tension and suggestiveness. Porn just makes everything cheap and tacky.

I suppose Boku no Pico works better overall, having set out to be nothing more than straightforward plotless porn. Enzai is a much higher concept and made up of far better ingredients, but disappointing in that it could have been so much more.

And frankly, while the idea of anime boys having sex may have some appeal in principle, as does that of anime girls doing the same, in execution it always becomes a vulgar and ugly display, and deeply silly. Hentai, even fringe stuff like shotacon or lolicon, is just not for me.

(originally written 30.8.07. Impressions of the visual novel the animation was based on here)

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)

Sensitive Pornograph

No need for a long review here. Sensitive Pornograph is only half an hour long, and doesn’t even have enough material for that. It’s two fifteen-minute stories, and yet still manages to be horribly boring.

This isn’t the first time I’ve done a review of pornographic anime, and it won’t be the last. But this has probably been the worst of them all. Not because it’s more reprehensible or ridiculous – I’ve seen Boku no Pico and Wordsworth after all – but just because I cannot see how this could appeal to anybody.

The first story is about a 22-year-old mangaka who is approached by a very pretty guy who calls himself a fan. Over coffee, this guy reveals himself to be another manga artist. Despite appearing to be around 17, he is in his thirties. They go home and have some really lame bedroom scenes, argue about promiscuity and meaningless sex, then make up. The second story is about a young pet-sitter who instead of a rabbit finds a weird-looking guy tied up in a closet. He’s been set up by a pervert into humiliation who wants them to have sex. Knowing he’ll get in trouble if they don’t, he forces himself on the pet-sitter, who of course enjoys it and apparently never considers the fact he’s being seen. Later, the abused guy makes a mockery of being scared to defy his perverted dom by leaving him anyway, seeking out the pet-sitter at school to start a friendship. So many psychological issues left unexplored there…but that’s not the point.

I decided to watch Sensitive Pornograph mostly because it was uncensored and I couldn’t remember seeing any Japanese gay porn (for women) that was unpixellated. Turned out that it would have been better left blurry. Ridiculous mushroom things for penises being sucked up by monstrous egg-tube anuses, the familiar weightless sexual positions of…well, all animated porn, and that horrible fixation with body fluids so universal in hentai.

The other animated porn I’ve seen mostly makes me laugh, but with the ones I mentioned, even with the cringey Enzai or limp Papa to Kiss in the Dark, I can see how this might hit kinks and appeal. But Sensitive Pornograph isn’t cute, isn’t edgy, isn’t hot and frankly has the ugliest character designs I’ve ever seen getting their kit off. Badly made, plotted and conceived, it manages to mix all the worst tropes of porn for men and porn for women into a huge mess.