Soon...

"I like this place and willingly could waste my time in it"

Ever shit yourself in a public place? That instant feeling of regret and fear all pooled into the back of your pants, dribbling down your thigh, making its way down to your calve... At that point it's no longer poop, that's concentrated emotion. That's what these shows are like. Every one of these shows I watch find a new, untapped level of crazy for me to subject myself to. After a while you'd think to yourself "oh, there's no way this show's gonna gank me over with the rape aspect again, I mean, the last one was literally called "Good Luck This Rapesgiving Watanabe!" and it featured lesbian nuns from the core of Mars, so surely NOTHING could ever..." And then it hits you... 3rd episode in, you done been ganked.

You've gotta understand, I love old-school, hand drawn animation. CGI makes my balls hurt. A lot of good has been done with 2D over the decades (Ralph Bakshi, Hayao Miyazaki, Chuck Jones, everyone behind Heavy Metal... Hey, at least that movie was honest with itself). There's even a decently solid bastion of anime made in a time when tits in animation was a special thing, and there always seemed to be that one copy of that one particular OVA at the video rental store that you'd trick your mom into letting you rent every so often just so that you could spank to the freeze-framed naughty bits... I've lost m'self... Anyhow, The thing I'm trying to get at here is that Anime diluting the 2D gene pool, so I and a few honored guests will be taking it upon ourselves to start the new world order... The only remaining issue is I wouldn't know where to start...

Nevermind...

 

Experiment 01
Sekirei

Tokyo, Japan- the near future (as ever). 19-year-old Minato Sahashi has twice failed his college entrance exam, is awkward around women, and perpetually unemployed. In mere moments, he has proven to the audience that he's worthless by every metric society uses to judge a man, which means it's time for the anime version of a rom-com meet-cute. The Meg Ryan/Julia Roberts/Diane Lane/Rene Zelwi... Zeilweg... Bridget Jones literally falls from the sky... crotch first... onto Minato's face. Yes, before he even knows the girl's name he knows what her taint feels like resting against his nose.

Now that the surprise sexual assault is over with, it's time for introductions. Musubi is a missile-titted teenage girl with super strength and nigh invulnerability- part of a secret race of warriors known as "Sekirei." She's running from two other Sekirei with lightning abilities, but becomes so suddenly enamored with Minato that she's can't help herself- she steals a kiss, which nonsensically grants her magical wings and amps her powers significantly. Musubi beats her pursuers, and drops an exposition bomb: That kiss proved that Minato is her "Ashikabi." It's kinda like the Minicon thing in Transformers Armada- he's a human with special genes that allow Sekirei to use the power of love to fight other Sekirei in a secret underground elimination competition. So, actually it's kind of like Highlander. Anyway, in the competition is organized by the chairman and founder of the mysterious/powerful MBI Corporation, which has secretly bought Tokyo from the government and has been sealing it off to create a battleground for their super-fights. The MBI corporation has set it up so that each Sekirei that loses their battle is separated from their Ashikabi for all time, and removed from the tournament. We soon discover that an Ashikabi can have more than one Sekirei partner— and the more you collect, the better your attack deck... wait, now it's Pokemon. Did they seriously turn women into pocket monsters? Yep! They even have different attack types... Musubi is a fist type (AHAHAHAHA). Others are fire, plant, water, you know the drill. This series is Transformers Armada Pokemon Highlander. No, it's not as good as that sounds.

Anyway, Our Hero and The Tits luck into free room and board that also happens to house other Sekirei who end up falling all over themselves for our hero's affections. The characters are uniformly irritating, but over time they kind of grow on you (like fungus). The Sekirei inexplicably drawn to our hero are:

Sasami Kusano- the obligatory little girl for that lucrative pedophile demographic. In a strange twist, she's not THAT irritating (depending on how mopey they make her for dramatic purposes), and is actually used for comic relief. She'll randomly be dressed in big, cute, poofy animal costumes, or fight for Minato's attention in childish ways rather than the attempted-rape that the other girls employ.

Washu Matsu- the smart, horny one. She sits in her secret room, watching monitors when she isn't trying to piss the other women off by attempting to rape the main character.

Tsukiumi- the one that hates the main character, but just can't help that her body craves his bodily fluids. She initially wants to kill him rather than be soiled with his penis (which is, of course, the correct reaction). But of course, she later realized that kissing him upped her power substantially, so now she's decided that kissing = marriage, and that he should only pay her attention- comedy ensues. She also has a faux-Shakespearean style of speaking that reminds me of Marvel's Thor.

Musubi- the first Sekirei that Minato acquires. She's dumb as a bag of hammers, and eats alot, because, you know, nothing is funnier to the Japanese than being dumb and eating a lot. Yes, she's gender-swapped Son Goku.

There are other girls in the house that already have Ashikabi, and a head mistress of the house who is very conservative and supplies the threat of death that keeps this show from turning into a full-on hentai.

In a fascinating twist, the nudity is kind of well balanced for this sort of show. If you're watching this, you know you're watching it for the promise of surreptitious boobies and butts n' such, and it doesn't fuck around in that department. Also, unlike Queen's Blade, none of the characters are being raped to death, or peeing, or just generally being humiliated when their tits flop outta their clothing. Those who wonder how The Hulk's purple pants stay on while he's in super-battles will be glad to know that most of the sexy happens because super-punches are very hard on cotton/poly mix fabric, or Musubi's brain-dead innocence keeps her from being prudish. The violence, sadly, is rote for this kind of thing- big ludicrous attacks that are flashy and cause collateral damage, and you ab-so-fucking-lutely must announce the name of whatever it is you're doing while you're doing it. Boring.

Dumb plot and characters out of the way, this series isn't entirely terrible. The animation has a decent budget (and the art style is leaps and bounds better than the manga, which you can peruse online), and the characterization isn't GREAT but by the time I was done with the show I didn't want the characters to be separated from the weird little anime version of Full House they'd become. That said, there's something that really skeeves me out about this show. Our hero is the worst kind of person that the Japanese can imagine- SOMEONE WHO FLUNKED THEIR COLLEGE ENTRANCE EXAM TWICE! JOBLESS! Someone who would have to prove themselves competent outside of those institutions in any typical western show or movie (usually with his fists). However, this character is actually what he appears to be in the beginning of the show: whiny and pathetic, and you should hate him. It is obvious that he's supposed to represent the target audience, which is kind of fucking bizarre when you think about it. Consider that Arnold Schwarzenegger has commented that his films were successful because of the rise of feminized manhood- that his hyper-masculinity brought in crowds of men who were stuck in a world that had turned away from John Wayne, and has almost zero use for alpha males. We wanted to be Conan, is the point. And this is logical- we want to be the hero of our own narrative. Neo, or Luke Skywalker, or Spider-Man (or if you're not too bright, Travis Bickle, or Tyler Durden, or Paul Kersey, or Patrick Bateman...). It's a power fantasy, giving us what we lack in our mundane world. It's probably not an entirely healthy thing, but it is what it is. This shit, though, is on an entirely different level. The only (alleged) redeeming qualities Minato has are loyalty and kindness. Which are the exact two qualities that your mom can point out when you complain that none of the pretty girls will give you the time of day, and your grades aren't good enough for a scholarship, and your job prospects are all minimum wage and zero-respect positions. Sure, you're unattractive and nobody wants to be around you and you're never going to amount to anything, but you... um... you're loyal! And kind! You're a special snowflake, and it's everyone else's loss that they don't know just how sweet you are. It's like getting a participation trophy for being born to someone that loves you enough that she doesn't want to hurt your feelings (or admit to herself that she either sucks at parenting or has garbage genetics). But luckily for our hero, that's all he needs. A dull-witted set of sexy ladyparts fell from the sky and just smelled his specialness, her instincts overwhelmed, and without any effort whatsoever on his part, she kisses him full on the mouth. Instantly his unique genetics make her a whole being, capable of taking on greater challenges, unlocking her full potential. Every single ounce, every scintilla of work that normally has to happen for a woman to open her heart (and her mouth) to you is magically evaporated. Yes, you're worthless to every other person on the planet, but to her, you're the most important person in the world. And it's ok that you're weak and useless, because she can be strong for you. Even better, MORE absurdly gorgeous women just stumble across his path- a sexy drunk, a horny girl who spends all her time on the internet, a warrior woman who wants nothing to do with men but by God your specialness has turned her. Generally speaking, I'm not the type that gets their panties in a twist over 'toxic' ideas in media- I don't think anyone's going to watch this and then just give up on finding a normal relationship. I don't think watching violent movies or racist movies or sexist movies turns people into monsters. However, I am a thinking creature- I do consider the media I absorb. I do think about this stuff (too much, clearly). What bugs me is that this is clearly created for a specific market. This market- the otaku market- is so face-down-in-the-dirt sad that it's vacuuming up media that clearly has zero respect for it. This kind of fantasy is the sort of thing that, if you have self respect, you never admit to anyone. You don't write it down, you don't draw pictures of it, you don't send it to publishing companies. Yet, someone did that. And that publishing company showed it to an animation studio. And then that studio spent thousands of hours painstakingly animating frame after frame of the saddest fantasy I can even imagine. And then they put it out into the marketplace, where it was accepted with open arms. Not even a buffer of irony there so that the audience can point and laugh at the feeble beasts that would even harbor such a fantasy. It's not some weird, fucked up porn that you secretly watch by yourself and prey nobody finds, it's a show that was on national TV in Japan, and is doing well enough here to get dubbed and run on Netflix. I can't even.






3 H. Jon Benjamins out of 5.

Okay, I'm back! So, what'd I miss while I was gone?... 42 page views... 'Kay, not bad, I can work with this. Again, I'm pretty sure I disappointed a pervert or two with the misleading title, but hey, it's free press... Well, with that out the way, it's time to take things to the next level.... Behold: My official ranking system and method of review!

Base/Ground Rules (more TBA): No Real Hentai.

The point of this experiment is to seek out the worlds worst Harem/Ecchi Anime. NOT Hentai. As afformentioned, we've got a rep to uphold. Also, it is to prove that Anime (and Manga) as an art form is dead. Akira was great, Metropolis was a neat experiment, Dragonball was easily one of the funniest things I've ever read, and the most invested in a story I've ever been, but then Z had to come in and dry rape it like a drunken birthday clown with a vengeful erection, taking out years of scorn and frustration on the pristine, innocent butthole of its predecessor...

No Blue Balls.

The show must be willing to show some skin (not because I want to see it, but because it's a fucking cocktease if it don't give it up). You're CLEARLY not watching these types of shows for the damn plot, so it may as well be honest with itself and give you what you're coming to see (if you know what I mean?).

The Benjimeter.

All shows will be measured by the Jon Benjimeter. This is a measurement of just how many fucks the show gives. The more fucks, the lower the score. The less, however, the higher the Benjimeter. Not too difficult to follow, nay?

If anything else pops up, I'll be sure to let you guys know more about the ground rules section (still currently under development). But as always, be sure to keep comin' back to Borderline Hentai for The worlds ONLY WEBSITE dedicated to funny Anime reviews which point out how strange Eastern culture is (it's funny because it's different!).

If you were hoping to find cartoon porn here, sorry, no dice. We're classier than that here at Borderline Hentai. As such, to whomever bothers to stick around and read my drivel, I wholeheartedly thank, and welcome you to the ONLY website on THE WHOLE INTERNET dedicated to reviewing guiltless borderline Hentai (otherwise known as "Harem" anime, or perhaps even "ecchi"). Now, who on God's green Earth would even consider such a feat, and why? Seriously, what kinda Numbfuck McDumbnuts would even bother put the pen to paper on the heated, spit lubed clusterfuck that is the Harem/Ecchi genre, let alone anime? I mean, it's the same 3 to 5 stories regurgitated time and time again! Loser is forced to be around an army of hot chicks, tough guy gets progressively tougher through martial arts training (or rage, or both), monsters, robots, magic, adolescent girls, on and on, on and on, ON AND ON, ON and FUCKING ON! IT'S THE SAME ARTLESS, SOULLESS FUCKING THING, YOU BRAINLESS FUCKING SAPS!

... Anyhow... So, who would bother to comment on a popular trend in a day and age where doing so can get you cyber-lynched within an inch of your life? Well, it's a relatively simple answer. Me. I'm doin' it. And maybe (just maybe) I'll throw in a guest speaker or two to lighten the mood. This place is purely about the love of hate, and the hate of Anime, so if you're cool with that, maybe hang around a post or two? Maybe tell a friend or two? Either way, good on ya for stoppin' by.

I'll be coming out with content as soon as possible, and I already have a line up of truly gnarly stuff on its way, but suggestions are always welcome. I'm constantly in search of the worst possible Harem/Ecchi/anime in general planet Earth has to offer, so if you know something I don't, then why not feed me a stray comment? I'll be sure to have something worth reading by January at the latest, so don't worry, there's plenty of hate to go around. Until then, I leave you with this...

EDIT: The unedited video I'd intended to run with was bumped off YouTube almost overnight, so I present to you the watered down alternative to the authors artistic vision...

Next Post: Rules... Lots of Rules...