Reviews by Fernando Leonel Alba

AVGN aside, I was never much of a fan of toilet humor and lost almost every piece of appreciation for it when I passed my 13 years or so, which translates to me, now, not liking Aachi & Ssipak for most of its duration, but that does not mean that I hated the movie since it also packs a lot of something that I definitely enjoy since I was a kid, long and frenetic action scenes.

The movie does not hold back when it comes to that, lots of chase scenes full of gun fire and lots of splatter, and since the protagonists can’t defeat any of their enemies by their own, they have to make every little dirty trick and use whatever shit they can find on the nearby to even start thinking of fighting against deformed gang members and a cyborg police officer, all while defending a porn actress. Combine all that with a fast pace and the splendid animation and direction and you assured yourself a fine brainless action flick if that is all you want.

Now that I mentioned that, let’s talk about the production values. Starting with the obvious, despite being on every major anime database, this is a South-Korean film, which means no generic character designs at all in the medium it belongs to, two ugly punks, a deformed woman, a transvestite, a cute little girl with a fucked up look for a Mayor, and some Smurfs-like creatures for antagonists, oh, and the cyborg, who surprisingly has the least interesting design in the whole movie. All of which made on purpose to look cartoony, creepy and, yeah, ugly. But it does not stop there, at all; the place where the story takes place is also a completely rotten country that looks crude, ugly, broken and dirty, while also having lots of references to Hollywood movies thrown-in there. But what good would all of that be in an action film if it doesn’t have fluid motions? And it does have it, starting with the vivid expressions and movements of the characters and finishing with the crazy but no random camera movements during action sequences; add to it references to Hollywood iconic films and a nice blend between 2-D and 3-D and you got one of the most remarkable visual departments in anime.
But just like it happens with A Kite, the sound department is not as good, the sound effects are awesome, as they are reminiscent to Hollywood action films sound effects, but the voice acting and music aren’t special, despite being extreme and fitting with the setting and tone, too much superior competition out there when it comes to this (you know, Panty and Stocking, Dead Leaves, Redline).

Speaking about the setting, I realize I didn’t even mentioned what the hell this movie is about, well, take this, a future where natural resources are gone and the government of a certain country uses the excrement of its citizens as an energy resource, while giving them candy-like drugs to people as a reward for all their shit. There, our two protagonists, the ones that give the movie its title, steal and sell said drugs, which ultimately results in them being chased by the police and a terrorist group composed of those people that consumed so much of those candies that they became addicted to them and transformed into some weird creatures…whatever. As you can imagine, the plot is stupid and an excuse for the action BUT is not crap. Is not really evident but the film is actually a satire of post-apocalyptic, action and political films, making fun of all of it clichés while making them into something completely amoral, hell, even the premise is making fun of those titles, a typical post-apocalyptic premise where everything went to shit, low resources, social control from the governments to people, social critique about the greediness of capitalists societies…and everything is literally about shit. I said before that the film references Hollywood action films but forgot to say that does not references only that, but also ideological movements as well, but it does not just show or mention them, but presents them as the worst thing ever.

Even the cast is atypical; they try to make a living in this rotten world just like in lots of post-apocalyptic stories…by stealing and selling drugs and being completely unlikable assholes that all they want is money and would betray even their partners for that. You don’t really want them to succeed, but seeing that their enemies are worse, what other option is left to you?

And above all that, despite its relatively short duration, it managed to bring a closure to every plot point it presents, not in a really solid way, since the film is still a brainless action flick with lots of bullshit unrealistic things; but a serviceable one.

So, in the end, is a satire of post-apocalyptic films with lots of gross humor and very little critique to capitalism shown in the most ugly, stupid and unrealistic but also the most creative, unique and entertaining way. Leave it or take it as it is.

There was a time when A Kite (or Kite) was the most famous porn anime before it was completely overshadowed by Sei Shoujo’s creations (especially Bible Black) and why not? I mean it is an adult oriented movie that is not only porn, but also a heavy action packed film, a crime thriller and a psychological drama too! Sounds amazing on paper but its execution is far from being equally good.

The plot is about two teenagers, a guy (Oburi) and a girl (Sawa), who work as assassins for two corrupt private detectives, and she is also constantly abused by one of them and carries with a tragic past.

The main problem this film has is its duration; it lasts for only fifty minutes and tries to pack all of the aforementioned elements, what could go wrong, right? Well, almost everything, but let’s go by parts, starting with the few positives things I can say about this title.

The production values are very good, even impressive for a hentai title, and even more when you take in count that this was the first work that studio Arms made, yes, there are some quality drops but to the most part it has a very solid visual presentation. The character designs are rather unique and there’s a lot of detail to them, even in their genitalia and body fluids, the motions are really fluid on the action sequences, which are packed with a lot of detailed and very well drawn graphic violence and big explosions. The sex sequences have good motions too, along with lots of positions and camera angles. And I must not forget to mention that the film did a good job depicting a neo-noir aesthetic with its rotten city filled with dark colors and the use of lots of shadows, everything accompanied with a splendid direction, at least when it comes to visual department…

You see, the sound department is not as polished, the sound effects and voice acting are overall good, but the soundtrack is not. Actually it’d be more accurate to say that is great but is terribly handled, as if they just told the guy that played the saxophone: “ok, do it” and they didn’t know how to integrate it to the movie afterwards, it even results in some unplanned comical moments.

Visual department and sex sequences aside, there’s nothing more that I could praise about this film; the good ideas were there but the handling of them wasn’t good at all. I can sort of accept that the plot is actually dark and the tone remains serious to the very end, but even that is debatable. With a runtime this short and so many things to portray, the plot comes off as rushed and the characters feel inconsistent. The movie spends most of its time in sex scenes that not always serve a purpose in the story and action sequences that, even if they are well animated as I said before, last for too long and take valuable screen time that is not invested on Sawa’s personal drama; and are also so over the top that you can’t take them seriously from a certain point. Her story is shown mostly in briefs flashbacks; because sex and gore seem to be more important in the director’s mind. The whole story doesn’t even have a good ending since it ends with a cliffhanger.

Sawa is the most inconsistent character here, the first time she appears kills someone with ease, then feels sorry for an old woman, then seems to be an android that can kill easily, have her eyes wide open and never looks at Oburi and looks at the camera instead with a soulless expression, then she jokes with him while you can tell that there’s a romantic relationship building up between them, and all of that in only the firsts 13 minutes of the movie! Imagine how much she is rewritten throughout the whole film. As for the rest, they are not even worth to talk about, the two antagonists are complete one dimensional assholes so the viewer can easily hate them right away, and then there’s Oburi, a guy that overreacts and shoots at a basketball for a stupid reason and there’s no more information about him, seriously.

So down to it, the movie is just a mess. The action is not good because it’s too exaggerated and you end up laughing on those scenes; the thriller part is not captivating because of how little time there’s invested to it, the drama is boring because you barely know something about the characters, and the one you know the most about is constantly being rewritten, the plot is erratic due to a short runtime wasted on style instead of substance, and also lacks a proper ending, and the tone is not so serious either, because of how unintentionally comical the film is sometimes. The only solid things in this ambitious movie end up being the porn scenes and the visual presentation.

A Kite is just bad and does not deserve its praise, I know that it shocked people for being an animated porn movie with plot, but if this is how well it can handle it, then it should have aimed for something much more simple yet polished, like 15 bishoujo, and lots of other hentai did.

And the worst part of it is that it received a sequel ten years later that doesn’t even have any well-made sex scene or good animation; Kite Liberator is just a complete disaster in absolutely every department.

A Kite 3/10
Kite Liberator 1/10

15 Bishoujo…something… has almost everything that a hentai needs to be considered watchable, at least for me.

-A quick setup: Here you have a guy and fifteen girls on an island and of course they fuck because...well because this is porn and it’s not trying to build any form of plot whatsoever, or is it? I’ll get to that later.

-Great pacing: This guy gets to fuck like…4 girls or so, on the very first episode, and yes, like the title implies, he gets to fuck the fifteen girls at the end of the series.

-Lots of sex scenes packed with lots of positions and different camera angles: This partly has to do with the fact that there are lots of girls here but that alone does not guarantee that there will be variety in sex scenes, if you watch, let’s say, Ane to Boin, there, as much sex scenes that title have (and trust me, there are a lot), most suffer of being composed of one position and two or three camera angles at best, not here, the protagonist fucks the girls in lots of different ways and the viewer gets to see it from different perspectives, and that’s a nice detail.

-Good animation overall: Well…as good as a title like this can have with its budgets, the girls looks good, their bodies’ proportions don’t change weirdly like in other titles and the motions are ok too, the show even bothered to have finished backgrounds (most of the time, at least), which is weird in a hentai…yeah I know I’m not supposed to be looking at that in a title like this but I do because to me any hentai is like any other anime, ok? If there are things that can be criticized in this department, those are: the protagonist’s design, which changes a little throughout the show, and that is weird, it could be excused that since he was in an island who knows how much time, he changed, but still…oh, and the character designs are bland and generic overall, and finally, since it came out after 2007, the fucking censorship on the genitalia which will always be stupid.

As for the sound department, it’s forgettable but it works, I guess, voice acting is good since they hired voice actors that actually worked on tv series and not just porn.

Well now let’s talk about the little plot this title is not even trying to have: you won’t ever know why these people are on that island and how they ended up there and there are even two androids and dog-like girl...but at least you’ll know what’s the relationship between the main character and SOME of the girls and how he gets to fuck all of them, it’s not much but there are porn series that don’t even bother to clarify that. This show also has a lot of comedy, even the way the mc gets to fuck the girls is hilariously stupid, and that’s a good thing, it shows that this series is aware of its bullshit and don’t try to be dramatic, something that in most hentai ends up being facepalming; and fortunately, it never throws off-putting comedy during sex scenes.

Another thing that I consider well done in a hentai is when it has a lot of different girls and everyone has her own look, body proportions, and, most important, personality. To me, by doing that, a porn movie or series will guarantee its major appeal to a wider audience, and this show succeeds at that to the most part.

As I said earlier, this show is not even trying to have a coherent plot and cares more about presenting a quick setup and go ALL THE WAY UP right away, and thus,  and since the maximum rate I give to a title like this is a 5/10, I can’t give it a higher score, but it is still watchable for what it is. As a contrast, the next title I’m going to review will be a famous and influential porn movie that tried too much for its own good.

Juuichinin Iru gained some fame along the years for being one of a kind movie, at least when it comes to anime. It has an amazing setting and premise consisting of ten people from different galaxies, planets, and races taking a final exam on a spaceship in order to graduate from a space academy and the situation goes out of control when they realize that there are actually eleven people so they will have to find out who is the infiltrator.

The biggest issue with this movie is its short duration, is only one hour and a half long so there’s no time to explore its vast setting and so many characters properly. Some of them have a bit of their backgrounds and motivations revealed but the viewer will only get the names out of the majority of them. Only a few get some development and since the movie is too short, it feels more like they were rewritten instead of having a natural and progressive change. Their personalities and interactions, though, are strong; everyone is completely different in behavior and they need to work together and use their different knowledge and skills in order to surpass difficult situations such as having to deactivate bombs planted on the spaceship or fix said spaceship’s computers and it never feels like someone is useless, they are all capable people about to graduate after all.

The production values are good for the time the movie came out, the character designs are very simple and, few aside, they all have a generic look from a shoujo manga (this movie is an adaptation of one after all). The motions are weird, it can be excused in the beginning since they were in space but for the rest of the movie, it just feels like the characters’ movements are really slow, to the most part at least. There are noticeable quality drops and the special effects are poor as well. When it comes to body language though, the film does a good job, especially in its comical situations, but the best part of this department are definitely the backgrounds, the space academy, the space station, the spaceship, its different levels, the computers, etc.; as expected from a 80’s anime movie, everything that has to do with mechanical designs looks great.

As for the sound department, it is ok, nothing really special when it comes to voice acting or music, and the sound effects are rather weak.

On the second half is when the film starts to feel rushed; all of a sudden the characters’ motivations change for something completely different with extreme ease and the mystery is resolved in the laziest way possible, with asspulls and no foreshadowing of who was the eleventh at all, even the presentation of the outcomes of the characters is lazy, still images with short descriptions under them, as if it was a videogame from that time. Hell, it even has a completely pointless and out of place food war in the middle.

It’s not a bad movie, it’s actually watchable and enjoyable and definitely better than that bullshit closed door mystery that was Rokka no Yuusha, but it is not even a shadow of what could have been if it was a series and could explore its characters and setting properly.

The ecchi genre exists since the beginning of full-length anime series with its first show coming out back in 1963 and that fact alone seems to be enough for its fans to justify everything about it. Overused to death clichés, terrible pacing, no characterization whatsoever and constant cocktease? It doesn’t matter, that’s what the genre was always about and you CAN’T judge it for that. Lots of derivative and repetitive shows coming out at the same time? It was always like that so SHUT UP.

Well no, it wasn’t and here are four points to prove that:

1-The amount of ecchi shows coming out weren’t as much as they started to make since the early 00’s. If you look at the ecchi list on the site called My Anime List and display them for its started date, you will see shows from the 60’s and 90’s on the last page, which means they weren’t as much as today. Granted, there are ecchi shows from those decades not tagged as such, but even if you include those, the amount just isn’t nowhere near as much as today.

2-The focus of early ecchi were about slapstick comedies full of red humor while ecchi shows today are way too close to being porn that you just end up asking yourself why don’t they just make porn with those budgets? Well because they couldn’t show it on tv and then sell the Blu-rays versions without the censorship, that’s why.

3- The characters weren’t just walking fetishes that only want to jump on some beta male’s dick in early ecchi. Compare Honey Kisaragi or the female characters from Rumiko Takahashi’s stories with the characters from High School DxD or Sekirei and you’ll clearly notice the difference between them.

4- No, I’m not saying that there weren’t SOME shows like the ones that come out today back in the day, but even those should be judged with another mindset for two reasons: One: they were the first ones doing that so the concept was somewhat new and refreshing and; Two: they never aimed at being more than silly comedies, unlike ecchi from today that are about epic wars between mystical creatures, deities or inhuman species or, even worse, high school students, as if they are fighting shonen buried under done to death jokes and sleazy moments. What? That there were war dramas in space that showed some boobs already on the 80’s you say? Yes but never that much and never in the middle of serious moments expecting you to take them seriously like High School DxD. What? There were also shounen like A-Ko that were all about fighting and nudity you say? Yes, but they weren’t trying to be anything more than that, and, again, they were the first ones.

Well that was a long introduction and I didn’t even started to talk about the title I’m reviewing but it was all to make a point, which is 1+2= Paradise being one of those ecchi shows that I talk about in the aforementioned point #4. Is a retarded story about a beta male that out of nowhere has to live with two retarded big-boobed twins that the only thing they do is trying to seduce him and nothing more. And even this show does it better because the male main character (mc from here onwards) has an excuse to be afraid of women (an unbelievable, retarded and fucked up one, that is) and the girls don’t really just appear out of nowhere in his life because it is revealed that it was his father’s intention from the beginning and the girls knew him since they were children. Yup, that’s it; it went for the overused childhood friends cliché but, again, it was one of the firsts doing it.

The same thing can be said about its comical situations, they are the same overused jokes of today but for its time they were somewhat refreshing and I also have to point out how these jokes are used in a different manner, more extreme and over the top, but without feeling as if they belonged in a porn movie, they aren’t just guy walks in the bathroom and see girl naked, she then screams and slaps him, no; here the girl purposely goes to the bathroom with the guy, gets undressed and tries to seduce him, and they end being tied up together and almost get drowned in the most ridiculous way while the mc tries to fight against his trauma in order to save their lives.

So, if I excused all the bullshit in this show regarding its premise, humor and characters (at least for the mc) why do I give it a low rating? Because, believe or not, it betrays its premise and lacks continuity. In the second ova the protagonist stands the twins and they go to school together, not afraid of women all of sudden? Well no, he is still afraid of women. In the second ova a super popular school girl appears and wants every male to submit to her, mc included, something that Ranma ½ and Magic Kaito were doing before in manga format. He obviously rejects her due to his phobia but he’s ok with the twins for some reason and no, it is not any form of development because the change is too sudden and not even consistent and permanent since he still does not like being surrounded by the twins despite being already capable of live and go to school with them. Decide how you want to portray your mc already! Also, this turned into a generic school comedy now? Not even the art style looks remotely the same as the one from the first ova, it makes it feel like a completely different thing. Oh, and it lacks an ending, obviously.

So yeah, despite being a much better erocomedy than most of the bullshit pretentious soft-porn of today it’s still a generic ecchi that betrays its premise, doesn’t have much of a story and yet changes completely without having a proper conclusion with shitty characters. Oh, and since it came out during the economic crisis that Japan was going through in 1990, it looks terrible. Sound department ranges from passable to awful as well.

1001 Nights is a movie that came out in 1999 and should not be confused with the first hentai film ever that came out thirty years before it. It is loosely based on the famous collection composed of different tales of the same name.

It is necessary to clarify that this movie is essentially a musical film in the likes of Disney’s Fantasia, so its main focus is to present great visuals and music instead of a good story. In fact this movie was thought as an interpretation of an orchestration and nothing more so the visuals and music flows together spectacularly. Speaking of those elements, they consists of classical music and a mix between 2-D and 3-D art, more specifically, colored pencil drawings and early CGI; they somehow managed to make it right, it looks gorgeous.

As for the story…well, it barely has one (if even). If you’ve read the original tales you can find references to some of them thrown in it but if you haven’t all you will see is erotic sequences with a most trippy art style that equals(or even tops) the sex scene from Mind Game. You could think of it as a couple dealing with the internal demons of their relationship…or just them wanted to make love but all of a sudden are being chased by an angry demon in a really intense adventure.

Anyway, this movie is a great example of art in its pure form both visually and musically and one of the most unique pieces in anime and that alone makes it worth watching despite not having much of a plot, or any.

2/7/23 update: After watching the likes of Pale Cocoon, Angel's Egg, Cat Soup, Junk Head and Mad God, I decided to stop giving a pass to movies like these that are just visuals, sound, and a setting, if your movie has nothing to say, its plot is very loose, and there are no characters in it, then it doesn't get a base score from me. Bye