Bogus contracts forced on women brings them into the world of adult entertainment and shady men.

What They Say
The intimidating Shigeki Kagami runs a loan company. Because he’ll do anything to collect his money, he strikes fear in the hearts of creditors everywhere. Sometimes, he will accept sex with creditor’s wives as payment if they can’t pay up in a timely manner. Once these hapless women are in his possession, fear is replaced by lust and the humiliated wives soon become his sex slaves.

The Review:
Audio:
The audio presentation for this release brings us the original Japanese language track in stereo along with the English language dub, both of which are encoded at 192kbps. The show is pretty low-rent in general with its production values so the dialogue only piece, moans included, is certainly serviced well enough by the encoding. There’s nothing to really stand out here as it’s a full/center channel mix that gets the job done but nothing else beyond that. Dialogue is clean and clear throughout and we had no problems with dropouts or distortions during regular playback.

Video:
Originally released in late 2007 and early 2008, the transfer for this OVA series is presented in its original full frame aspect ratio. With pretty basic production values, Humiliated Wives doesn’t get a strong encoding mostly because it doesn’t need it. With the bitrate averaging in the fives, it captures the standard colors pretty well and keeps them generally solid outside of some noisy backgrounds. There’s little in the way of issues with the transfer beyond some mild line noise during some panning sequences. In generally, it’s a decent transfer of mediocre at best materials.

Packaging:
Like a lot of adult releases, Humiliated Wives certainly has an attractive cover as it features Ayane in her mild nurses uniform with her legs spread wide. Soft colors combined with a design that hints at things more than shows anything explicit, it’s appealing in the way that it makes you want to see what it’s really all about. The back cover isn’t more explicit but it does show a more sensual side and points out fully that it is a very erotic show. The character designs in general look good here but there are spots where the weaknesses show through. The summary covers the basics and tells you all you really need to know about the paper thin plot while the remainder rounds out the technical information and production credits. No inserts are included nor is there a reversible cover.

Menus:
In keeping with tradition, the menu design here utilizes the artwork from the cover with Ayane while zooming in on her design. Ayane comes across better here than the front cover with sharper detail in the lines and a lot more vibrancy to the colors, even the softer ones. The navigation strip is simple with there being nothing on the disc beyond the show itself and some trailers so getting around is a breeze. Submenus load quickly and the looped instrumental does set the mood for the show fairly well. Due to the labeling of the subtitle tracks, player presets are fairly pointless.

Extras:
None.

Content:
Part of the Vanilla Series stable of titles, Humiliated Wives is a two part show to come from the Digital Works production folks. Digital Works can be fairly hit or miss with their material as they have both some really good shows overall and some of the worst that I’ve seen in a number of years. Humiliated Wives sits dead center in all of this by being mediocre – at best.

Humiliated Wives runs with a paper thin plot and no real characterization at all. Of course, it is an adult show, but there are a number of series out there that at least play it out better than this. Humiliated Wives has the feeling of amateur hour when it comes to basic plotting and scripting. We’re introduced to Shoko, an attractive all too young wife with a high school age daughter. Her husband is stuck in the hospital with a serious condition and to help make sure things are safe for her husband and daughter, she gets caught up in a bogus contract to produce something like twenty adult videos.

Of course, it’s not that easy as the man behind the bogus deal, Kagami, uses the women to his own advantage. Not only does he get them to perform in the videos, but he gets them to believe that they can get out of their contracts or shorten them if they have sex with him and submit regularly. It doesn’t work that way and eventually he does tire of them and moves on in ways that is certainly not to their benefit. Sometimes there are perks to this for Kagami though as the women have daughters and they often feel that they can help out by taking on some of the burden as well, though that just means one more person to manipulate.

Along the way, another woman is introduced with a husband in trouble and kids that are needing to be protected. Like Shoko, the back story is beyond weak and it’s told awkwardly, enough so that when they do reveal in the most basic bits about it you don’t care. Death abounds in the show eventually and there’s even a fairly cruel method of killing that closes out the show which leaves a bad taste in my mouth. The strangest addition to the series is Ayane, a nurse that has the hots for Kagami and works for him in a way that he seemingly tolerates at best. The way everything is connected isn’t even paper thin unfortunately and the plot takes a fair bit of time to actually kick in as the first ten minutes is spent with Shoko getting forced into the a situation with Kagami.

Thankfully, bad plots can be saved by really great sex scenes. That is why we’re here after all. A good plot and story can make it all the better and elevate it to something more. Unfortunately, Humiliated Wives doesn’t have good sex either, just mediocre sex at best. The character designs are somewhat basic, what you expect from a number of Vanilla Series titles, and they suffer from unattractive menu performing acts on them. The men aren’t hideous, but with the women complain right from the start about the stink and they can’t seem to do anything good with them, it doesn’t exactly work well to excite you. Nothing here is consensual which isn’t a problem but when it’s done in a way as poor as this, it’s not something you can get behind. Unless it’s to push it off a cliff.

Summary:
Humiliated Wives doesn’t have much to offer with bland sex, mediocre character designs and a plot that is told haphazardly at best. Unfortunately, there’s not much more than that to be said about it. Nothing here clicks or works in a way that excites the viewer or compels them to follow it. If viewed just for the sex, it’s a fair disappointment. If you’re watching it for the character designs or to see a bunch of wives humiliated, you get something mediocre. Something that’s striving to be mediocre sometimes. It’s a show that works with basic production values and has a feeling of amateur hour when it comes to the plotting and writing as well as the dialogue, though at least some of that could be blamed on the adaptation. It’s hard to imagine “fat one” being used regularly within Japanese sex slang.

Features
Japanese 2.0 Language, English 2.0 Language, English Subtitles

Content Grade: C-
Audio Grade: B+
Video Grade: B+
Packaging Grade: B+
Menu Grade: B
Extras Grade: N/A

Released By: Kitty Media
Release Date: August 12th, 2008
MSRP: $29.99
Running Time: 60 Minutes
Video Encoding: 480i/p MPEG-2
Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1

Review Equipment:
Sony KDL70R550A 70″ LED 1080P HDTV, Sony PlayStation3 Blu-ray player via HDMI set to 1080p, Onkyo TX-SR605 Receiver and Panasonic SB-TP20S Multi-Channel Speaker System With 100-Watt Subwoofer.

Interpersonal relationships at a new studio are where all the news is at as one young man manipulates the system to rule the roost.

What They Say
This just in: TV studios are a haven for the sex-crazed. A whole slew of beautiful and sexually vulnerable women are trying to break into the TV news business, and there are just as many men trying to break into them! A helpful yet horny handyman is looking to stake his own claim as he makes the rounds bedding one hopeful nymph after another. But he’s not the only one. Pretty much every male at the studio is looking for a piece of the action. You won’t need a teleprompter to know what (and who) will be coming next.

The Review:
Audio:
The audio presentation for this release brings us the original Japanese language track in stereo along with an English language dub, both of which are encoded at 192kbps. There isn’t much to hear here beyond dialogue and some mild ambient music so the stereo mix is very much a simple center channel piece along the forward soundstage. Dialogue is clean and clear throughout on both tracks and we had no problems with dropouts or distortions during regular playback.

Video:
Originally released in 2006, the transfer for this two part OVA series is presented in its original full frame aspect ratio. This series is filled with a good amount of bright and vibrant colors which when given a better than average bitrate it will come across quite well. The show averages in the sevens and hits eights quite often which has led it to be a very clean looking presentation. Adult material tends to suffer in the bitrate area at times and this shows up strongly in the backgrounds that tend to look alive. For this release though it’s very solid and vibrant looking when appropriate. Colors are strong, cross coloration and aliasing is essentially non-existent and overall it feels just as strong as a mainstream release.

Packaging:
The front cover works with the TV idea by framing the shot of Yui in lingerie as being seen on a rather poor quality TV with a purple filter applied to it. News strips run along the top and bottom, there is a volume increase bar and the channel number, 69 of course, is in the upper right corner. It all fits well in theme but the color design for it really feels quite weak. The back cover gives us the image of about sixteen TV screens in which shots from the show are used, all of them featuring the channel piece in the corner and a volume bar. It’s definitely the best way to utilize the theme to present the character shots and it works great. The summary is just below it which is pretty minimal but at least gets the point across. Minimal production credits and warnings round out the bottom along with a good technical grid covering the specs of the release. No insert is included nor is there a reversible cover.

Menu:
Not unlike every other Kitty release out there, the menu design takes the cover elements and reworks them a little bit. The main menu uses a close-up of Yui from the front cover and really pushes the idea of interlacing lines on it. The navigation strip is cute as it feels like a TV setup menu being brought up. There isn’t really anything here beyond the show and some trailers so moving about is quick and easy and problem free. The disc correctly read our players’ language presets and played in Japanese but with the sign/song subtitles as it was the first English tagged subtitle track.

Extras:
None.

Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
Horny Ladies and the News brings us two very simple elements and combines them together. When you have horny ladies and you have a TV newsroom, you’re invariably going to have problems. Sex in the workplace is certainly nothing new and the way this show plays out has plenty of basic office intrigue and politics to it as one young man manipulates each and every woman to achieve his goals of moving up the corporate ladder.

The two episodes features a very wide variety of women who are involved in all sorts of shenanigans. At the core of it is a young man named Kazuya Mano, an assistant director who wants to make it big someday. He’s a very unassuming young man with a pleasant smile and a sense of innocence about him. Almost everyone he comes into contact with who is a woman ends up getting closer to him for one reason or another. An up and coming young woman who is trying to move beyond being a pop idol is thankful to him for helping her out when one of the bigwigs is giving her tips on how to carry herself by fondling her breasts. She becomes smitten by him and begins a lengthy sexual relationship once she gets past her initial shyness.

Kazuya also ends up with Kyoko, the wife of the top tier director at the station who happens to be having an affair with the anchorwoman Yui. Kyoko isn’t aware of this when she falls into a sexual role with Kazuya after he offers to help her out with anything she needs due to the way she seems to be so frustrated. Kyoko has that slightly older woman feeling to her and she’s tickled pink by the idea of a young man being interested in her since it reaffirms that she “still has it” in that department. There’s also another woman in the building who does make-up that is very interested in Yui and is doing all sorts of silly and stupid things to get closer to her since she wants to be as intimate as possible. She’s not strictly in it for the girls though as Kazuya comes to her for advice on women and she offers to teach him what he needs to know.

So in essence, everyone is sleeping with everyone else and you can start to see how Kazuya is manipulating various women into doing things that will expose the others. His ascent from an assistant director to the top level isn’t exactly swift as it takes some time for all of this to play out, but when he goes from what feels like a nobody to a top director who is marrying the beautiful lead anchorwoman, you know he’s been working the game. Even more telling is that several people have to fall along the way and they do so in a hard manner as he nudges everyone to where he wants them to be. Some make out for the better when it comes to their job and position, but in the romance department, it seems like only Kazuya and Yui really get what they want. And even then Kazuya isn’t quite sure about what he’s really ending up with.

Horny Ladies and the News has a good variety to it when it comes to the character designs which keeps it fresh and fun. You have the bombshell in Yui with her classic and elegant looks while Kyoko has the role of the older woman who knows how to carry herself. The younger girls are all bouncy and vibrant and the pop idol even goes about wearing ribbons in her hair. Just about every standard “fetish” can be pleased here and even a few unusual ones as there’s some golden shower material as well. Girl on girl, young girl and old man, the boss and the employee and so forth. The variety is quite good but the way it all holds together is the weakest element in the show. With the passage of time being poorly handled between scenes and the changes that occur as well as the way people rarely refer to each other by name just has it feeling somewhat disjointed at times.

In Summary:
Though not a standout renaming by Kitty Media, Horny Ladies and the News is something that certainly makes you do a double-take when you see it. The show itself is decent overall if you’re looking for something with a lot of variety and not much in the plot department. Character designs are solid but personalities are weak to non-existent for the most part. When the make-up girl has more of a personality than the anchorwoman who graces the cover you just might have a problem or two. This series looks good in a number of ways and will likely please a decent sized audience but it just failed to really click properly for me.

Features
Japanese 2.0 Language, English 2.0 Language, English Subtitles

Content Grade: C
Audio Grade: B+
Video Grade: B+
Packaging Grade: B
Menu Grade: B
Extras Grade: N/A

Released By: Kitty Media
Release Date: August 21st, 2007
MSRP: $29.95
Running Time: 60 Minutes
Video Encoding: 480i/p MPEG-2
Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1

Review Equipment:
Sony KDL70R550A 70″ LED 1080P HDTV, Sony PlayStation3 Blu-ray player via HDMI set to 1080p, Onkyo TX-SR605 Receiver and Panasonic SB-TP20S Multi-Channel Speaker System With 100-Watt Subwoofer.

Following-up on the first part of the OVA series, the strange new family must deal with the arrival of daddy.

What They Say:
Taketo returns for another competition with his father to see who can bed Yukie, and as many members of her family at one time and how often. Will they be able to call a truce, or will the sisters be caught in the crossfire? And when Yumi, his father’s secretary, gets in on the act, a six-way is inevitable.

The Review:
Audio:
The audio presentation for this show is done up with its original Japanese language track along with an English language dub, both of which are in stereo and encoded at 192kbps. The stereo mix is fairly standard for this kind of release where other than the music, very little of it really uses the stereo channels in any really effective way. Incidental sounds and dialogue are primarily center channel based and comes across clearly. We didn’t have any problems with dropouts or distortions during regular playback of either language track.

Video:
Originally released to video in 2003, the transfer for this two OVA series is presented in its original full frame aspect ratio. Much like the original OVA series, the quality of the animation is great here and the transfer shows of much of the beauty with the colors and the designs. The transfer isn’t flawless and nor are the masters in a sense as there’s a bit of aliasing going on in a few scenes that’s pretty minimal but some will notice it. The other is that recent trend of shows that have their brightness turned up, which means we get a couple of scenes where all the women are undressed and their already pale bodies seem to glow because of how the masters are. It’s all how the animation was done so it’s not a transfer issue but it’s something that continues to bother with the releases that are like that.

Packaging:
The design for the cover is nice and continues to show that the folks at Kitty & Media Blasters love to use the length of a cover whenever they can. This time it’s got a really good shot of the two sisters together (and the detail holds up much better here than when used in the menu) with plenty of panty showing as they get to embracing each other. There’s an obscured shot of one of them in throes of passion to the left underneath some roses and the covers use of pink just works perfectly. This is a great looking cover all around. The back cover goes back to the normal layout and provides a full strip of images from the show along the right while one on the left does a full length shot of Yuki getting it from behind. The minimal plot results in a minimal summary and the rest of the cover is filled out with the production and technical information. No insert is included with this release.

Menu:
The main menu is a decent looking static piece with a bit too much aliasing along some of the hair line areas but it’s still an attractive piece as it has the two sisters getting close and their already shrunken clothes moving about in the right way. It’s all set to a brief loop of the vocal song from the show and the menu navigation is pretty straightforward and simple. Access times are nice and fast and the disc correctly read our players’ language presets and played accordingly.

Extras:
None.

Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
The first couple of episodes of Immoral Sisters was the type of show that certainly garnered a number of fans due to its slick animation, deviant plot and the way that it managed to just have the lead character subjugate all the women in the household while the man of the house was away. Over that series Taketo managed to pretty much get what he wanted and with the help of Yumi, more than he certainly expected.

So where do you follow-up from there? Daddy’s coming home! The entire family greets him at the airport – even Taketo – and the situation gets tense right from the start. Yukie introduces him as a new member of the family that’s helped out a lot while their father was away but he’s not liking what he sees in Taketo or the changes that his family seems to have undergone while he was out on a business trip again. These trips appear to be quite frequent and as we come to learn, part of the reason is that he’s impotent in regards to his wife Yukie. This leads him into a shame spiral and she feels that she’s not able to provide him with what he needs so there’s some raw feelings between the two that just never seem to get fixed.

With Taketo there, his brusque nature allows him to push things out into the open. He just barges into the room when Yukie was with him and trying to arouse him to no avail and he simply starts in on Yukie right there, showing his ownership of her. Even worse, he had just been in the hall with Tomoko where she had been watching her parents and getting off on that, so her father now sees her there half undressed. And wouldn’t you know what gets daddy going? Yep, you guessed it.

Apparently he’s even gone so far as to take her school swimsuit with him on all his trips so it’d be close to him. He’s got quite a thing for Tomoko but has never acted on it for the fear of what would happen afterwards. Events lead in that direction however and Taketo nudges them along nicely so that he can entrap him into doing what he wants to do thereby giving him plenty of ammunition and blackmail material if needed. Slowly but surely, the entire family starts screwing each other over and over, privately and publicly, leading to all sorts of interesting and arousing situations.

But it’s all ok really because even though it’s a family, nobody is actually a blood relation! How convenient! The daughters are adopted and obviously the marriage isn’t by blood, so everyone gets to fulfill their desires but still keep it all in the family. Tomoko gets to scream out all kinds of daddy related material while he’s screwing her on his desk and he gets to hear it and enjoy it even though it’s not technically true. Even Rumi gets into things when she realizes that sleeping with her stepfather will allow her to let go of the fears of being kicked out of the house. Yukie’s got it the roughest for a bit as she’s mostly just teased along but even she finally gets to experience something she hasn’t had in ages in being screwed by her husband.

There’s one really great sequence where Taketo, Yumi and Tomoko hit the ferris wheel and all three of them engage in quite the sequence. What’s amusing is that they actively point out who’s watching and that only serves to arouse them more even though they deny it. This was one of the highlight sequences of this volume but it has a lot of really good material all the way through, right down to a massive family orgy at the end. It really helps that the character designs are attractive and the animation is pretty fluid and without many noticeable shortcuts so you get to doubly enjoy the experience. This set of episodes basically takes what came in the first couple of episodes and carries through to the logical conclusion without flinching.

In Summary:
The material here may make some queasy while others will just chuckle at the cute way out of making it really offensive and instead making it pretty simple and technically innocent. The family here is an amusing one that’s dealing with a situation that’s beyond the normal and finds that what’s considered acceptable by some may not work for them and they have to figure something else out. These two episodes wrap things up fairly nicely but there’s always room for more. Though a long time in coming, it’s definitely worth the wait for a sense of conclusion to the show and to see what happens when the man of the house gets involved in his kids.

Features
Japanese 2.0 Language, English 2.0 Language, English Subtitles

Content Grade: B
Audio Grade: B+
Video Grade: A-
Packaging Grade: A
Menu Grade: B
Extras Grade: N/A

Released By: Kitty Media
Release Date: June 28th, 2005
MSRP: $29.98
Running Time: 60 Minutes
Video Encoding: 480i/p MPEG-2
Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1

Review Equipment:
Sony KDL70R550A 70″ LED 1080P HDTV, Sony PlayStation3 Blu-ray player via HDMI set to 1080p, Onkyo TX-SR605 Receiver and Panasonic SB-TP20S Multi-Channel Speaker System With 100-Watt Subwoofer.

Doctor Sugiara finally arrives at the hospital where his nemesis resides and his hidden agenda comes alive!

What They Say
Makoto has studied his whole life to become a doctor. He’s looking for revenge, on the doctor of a failed operation who has a scalpel scar across his left hand. After finally being assigned to the right hospital, Makoto finds that the entire staff is involved in something suspicious. He decides to sleep his way to the truth, squeezing a confession out of one nurse after another until he makes his way to the top!

The Review:
Audio:
The audio presentation for this release brings us the original Japanese language track in stereo along with the English language dub, both of which are encoded in stereo at 192kbps. The series has a fairly standard stereo mix where the dialogue is very much center channel based with little really filling the stereo channels while the music and ambient sound effects are the ones that work those channels nicely. There’s a lot of dialogue in this show so the center channel gets a good workout. Dialogue is clean and clear and we had no problems with dropouts or distortions during regular playback.

Video:
Originally released in 2004, the transfer for this OVA series is presented in its original full frame aspect ratio. The source materials for this show are in fantastic shape with a crisp clean transfer. The colors are full and vibrant with a smooth look throughout that has practically no real noise or break-up throughout it. Each of the episodes are left in their original form and logo as well as the end credits while being followed at the end of the second set of episodes with a translated credit scroll. The transfer is free of pretty much any of the usual problems as it doesn’t have any noticeable aliasing or cross coloration, leaving you to just enjoy the visuals.

Packaging:
The front cover artwork is an interesting piece as it has one of the nurses in a state of ecstasy as she bends in a nearly inhuman manner, but it’s the way it’s done with a pinkish purple filter and the full black background combined with the small logo strip along the bottom that gives it a really interesting feel, one that really stands out strongly. The back cover mixes a string of different shots of the girls across one end to the other that look great with lots of detail and colors to them set against a white background. The summary is very minimal with the rest of the space taken up with production information and the technical grid. No insert is included in this release.

Menu:
The layout for the menu takes the character elements from the front cover with a close-up of her face ” complete with the string of… saliva ” while the navigation strip uses the thin style of the logo from the front cover set to a bit of techno-style music. It’s a very simple but effective menu with a great look that sets the mood perfectly for the show. Access times are nice and fast and the disc did not read our players language presets correctly as the first subtitle track is sign/song and not the full track.

Extras:
None.

Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
Internal Medicine is another in a long line of the varied adult medical anime field. Unlike a lot of them, though, this is the kind that can serve as a bridge from the more basic and standard fare to some of the nastier fare out there as it does quite hit the scatological material but in the immortal words of the kids from South Park, it’s a sticky situation.

The two episode show is focused around the relatively young doctor Sugiara who has been working his way through the medical profession at different places with a hidden agenda. Through flashbacks interspersed throughout the show, we learn of how as a young boy he and his mother learned of his sister’s death when she had gone in for some simple electrolysis but ended up dying on the table. Sugiara didn’t know the doctor’s name (nor apparently could ask his mother) but he remembered the double-handed handshake and became a doctor so he could track down the guy and make him pay for what he did. After all this time, he’s now landed in a new hospital where the director has just introduced him and given him a double handshake, revealing exactly who he is.

With a patient in the past that died in such a strange manner, it’s not surprising that the doctor had other issues along the way before he moved up to the position of director and basically became hands-off with patients for the most part. He’s ended up with people that have kept his secrets and have their own, such as one of the other doctor’s in the hospital who has his way with some of the nurses and a group of nurses who are actually the director’s own daughters. When Sugiara uses his less than honest means to start figuring out how power is held in the hospital, he starts making his plans to take down each of the daughters one by one and making them his sex slaves so that he can have the leverage he needs against the director and exact his revenge.

The plot for the show is obviously paper thin and there were probably hundreds of different ways that Sugiara could have figured out who his sister’s doctor was without becoming a doctor himself but the end result is that we do get a nice fun little adult medical show here. The shows sex scenes are of the standard explicit nature but they bring in some of the medical stuff such as opening the girls a bit wider at times. Unlike some of the hardcore medical shows, there isn’t any real scatological material in here but Sugiara has a real fascination with the back ends of the girls, hence the sticky situation we talked about earlier. As he makes his way through the various sisters, he comes up with different methods of dominating them but he always gets something inside of them where they least want it.

With this not being a top tier adult title, you can imagine that the English language adaptation is less than accurate in a few ways. While the main storyline remains intact, the bulk of the rest of the dialogue is very liberally adjusted to make it more… well, comical is the only thing I can imagine because the thought of people becoming even more aroused by the script writers idea of “dirty talk” almost makes me laugh even more. During one scene where one of the nurses is being taken from behind, Sugiara in the Japanese version is either saying very little or just grunting, but in the English adaptation he’s saying things such as “You’re a train and I’m going to ride you! Choo Choo!” When he flips her over onto her back and resumes his business, his phrase is “Now we’re going uphill!” This isn’t even the tip of the tip to the kinds of changes that are the norm for the secondary level titles that get dubbed and the changes could fill volumes of awful dialogue.

In Summary:
Internal Medicine is a pretty solid mid range adult title that has some good looking character designs, solid animation, good sex scenes and paper thin plot that allows you to watch it without any serious commitment. It runs between the hardcore medical stuff and the more tame material out there so that those who’ve gotten a foothold into adult anime don’t get completely shocked when going up to the really nasty stuff out there. This is an easy one to recommend for an hour of decent fun with cute girls getting their medical check-ups.

Features
Japanese Language, English Language, English Subtitles

Content Grade: C+
Audio Grade: B+
Video Grade: B+
Packaging Grade: B+
Menu Grade: B+
Extras Grade: N/A

Released By: Kitty Media
Release Date: November 29th, 2005
MSRP: $29.98
Running Time: 60 Minutes
Video Encoding: 480i/p MPEG-2
Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1

Review Equipment:
Sony KDL70R550A 70″ LED 1080P HDTV, Sony PlayStation3 Blu-ray player via HDMI set to 1080p, Onkyo TX-SR605 Receiver and Panasonic SB-TP20S Multi-Channel Speaker System With 100-Watt Subwoofer.

Continuing in name only, Immoral Sisters journey’s down the path that only those close together can enjoy.

What They Say
Katori is attracted to an enigmatic new student at her University named Koshiro. She remembers his face from when he saved her younger sister from a band of rapists in the past. However, rumors abound that Koshiro is sleeping with his teachers, and has some kind of hidden agenda against the school and her mother. When Koshiro’s plan goes into motion, Katori, her sister, and her mother will all be in on the action.

The Review:
Audio:
The audio presentation for this release brings us the original Japanese language track in stereo along with the English language dub, both of which are encoded at 192kbps. The stereo mix is fairly standard for this kind of release where other than the music, very little of it really uses the stereo channels in any really effective way. Incidental sounds and dialogue are primarily center channel based and comes across clearly. We didn’t have any problems with dropouts or distortions during regular playback of either language track.

Video:
Originally released to video in 2004, the transfer for this two OVA series is presented in its original full frame aspect ratio. Similar to the two previous series, the animation quality is pretty good here but not quite as good as those overall. The transfer isn’t flawless and nor are the masters in a sense as there’s a constant amount of cross coloration and chroma noise going on here that affects nearly every scene. Many of the backgrounds simply seem alive with movement while anything that’s red, such as the title of the book we see early on, shimmers strongly. The character designs have a mixed amount of cross coloration going on from where it’ll look just a little fuzzy to full blown rainbows along them.

Packaging:
Using one of the promotional pieces for the second episode, the front cover is angled slightly and features a lengthwise shot of the two sisters in embrace with their clothes slowly falling down from them. It’s just erotic enough without revealing too much but still hitting the mood just right. The back cover goes back to the normal layout and provides a couple of shots of the various women from the show in different states underneath the brief summary of the shows premise. The rest of the cover is filled out with the production and technical information. No insert is included with this release.

Menu:
Using some of the artwork from the back cover in line form, the static menu is definitely interesting to look at here with its mixture of whites and pinks.. It’s all set to a brief loop of the instrumental song from the show and the menu navigation is pretty straightforward and simple. Access times are nice and fast and the disc correctly read our players’ language presets and played accordingly.

Extras:
None.

Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
The latest in the series to use the name Immoral Sisters, the third series feels the weakest so far but mostly because it doesn’t have a sense of real urgency or danger to it, something that the first series had in spades. While it misses that, it does have plenty of good material about a pair of sisters who get caught up in a young man’s lust and a young professors lusts.

The story doesn’t have any true center I don’t think but enough of it revolves around Shouichi, a student at the academy where this takes place. He used to be part of the swim team and a decent student but lately he’s quit the team and his grades are slipping. A lot of this is attributed to the affair he recently started up with Professor Morisawa, an attractive young female professor who has plenty of fun with him. Shouichi’s running into some trouble now though due to his grades getting so low so he works with Morisawa to steal the test questions from the principal office while he’s away for a few days. It goes flawlessly until one of the former swim team members, Kotono, catches him in the act.

This actually works in Shouichi’s favor in a strange way. Not long ago he rescued Kotono’s sister from a group of rapist students but neither of them really said anything about it. Her sister, Suzuyo, has been pining in a way for Shouichi since and the two of them are aware of this to some level. So using Professor Morisawa’s help, he’s able to lure Kotono into a place where she can be taken advantage of by the principal in which case he has dirt on her now to keep her from going to the principal with what he’s done. It all starts spiraling there as there’s a plot about the principal’s financial dealings that comes into play as the two sisters mother is actually on the board of the academy and she’s come down to the school to find out exactly what’s going on.

The plot for all of this is fairly straightforward but it takes a little bit for it to get going to the point where the show has a sense of danger and urgency to it. The first episode is decent and the cast is introduced but it just feels like it’s lacking something. When it hits the second episode though, things go far less well for the women in the show as they’re dominated from every which way and their mother is brought in to be dealt with as well. It turns into quite the family affair as Shouichi has his way with everyone in the principal’s private dungeon. There are a few agendas working through the storyline from different characters though they all for the most part break down pretty fast as it turns into the only thing that can resolve it all is sex, sex and more sex.

The character designs for the show are pretty good in general, though they are marred a bit by the cross coloration that shows through here, with the sisters in particular coming across quite good. The professor has an interesting look to her but in general all of them have slightly rounder than normal faces to them which accents them a bit. The mother brings some classic and traditional feel to the show since she strolls about in her full kimono outfit with her hair up but they show her nasty side just as well when they strip her down. One of the things that makes the Immoral Sisters stories what they are is having the family members either working each other over or forced to watch and this show doesn’t avoid that at all in the second episode.

In Summary:
While the weakest of the series so far, Immoral Sisters does play to what has made the series fun and that’s family members doing the naughty under coercion. Though there are some flaws with the video that can detract, the show does manage to hit the high points in the story and action that I expected. There’s also the added bonus that the English language adaptation follows fairly closely with hardly any significant deviance or “dated” remarks. This isn’t the best of the series but it’s certainly a worthy entry in the genre.

Features
Japanese 2.0 Language, English 2.0 Language, English Subtitles

Content Grade: B-
Audio Grade: B+
Video Grade: C+
Packaging Grade: B
Menu Grade: B
Extras Grade: N/A

Released By: Kitty Media
Release Date: February 6th, 2006
MSRP: $29.98
Running Time: 60 Minutes
Video Encoding: 480i/p MPEG-2
Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1

Review Equipment:
Sony KDL70R550A 70″ LED 1080P HDTV, Sony PlayStation3 Blu-ray player via HDMI set to 1080p, Onkyo TX-SR605 Receiver and Panasonic SB-TP20S Multi-Channel Speaker System With 100-Watt Subwoofer.

After being convicted of a crime he says he didn’t commit, Kouichi returns to exact his revenge on the women involved.

What They Say:
On her morning commute, a young woman witnesses a guy molesting a woman on the train. Though she does not try to stop him or call for help, she does do something about it: she pleasures herself. She soon gets caught up in the pervert’s world, becoming a willing victim and a recruiter for his dirty games. She then ups the ante, luring her hot friends into the trap. All aboard!

The Review:
Audio:
The audio presentation for this release brings us the original Japanese language track in stereo along with the English language dub, both of which are encoded at the standard 192kbps. Kitty Media continues to get dubs for its adult releases, this time from Swirl, and that side of the show pretty much mirrors the Japanese side when it comes to the technical presentation. It’s a dialogue driven show with nothing really here outside of the music to give it any life, so the standard stereo mix serves the material well. Dialogue is clean and clear throughout and we had no problems with dropouts or distortions during regular playback of either language track.

Video:
Originally released in 2007, the transfer for this two part OVA series is presented in its original aspect ratio of 1.78:1 and is enhanced for anamorphic playback. The show has a lot of very vibrant colors to it with the character animation and almost harkens back a touch to the overly digital shows rom years ago. The colors are quite varied and done in a real world style for the backgrounds. The transfer captures this quite well as there’s really little issue here outside of some background noise in a few scenes and a touch of cross coloration for an instant or two. This release doesn’t feel like some other shows with a very polished feel, but it has a strong look to it and the transfer brings that out well.

Packaging:
This cover does look a bit more like the visual novel games than an anime release in some ways because of the character design and the style used. The only character here is Kanon as she’s all tied up and hanging in chains as her outfits is being pulled away from her and she has that weak and slightly scared look to her. The logo done sideways and uses the electronic format that you do see in trains and subways which looks fun and nicely done though a bit awkward at first. The back cover is a fair bit simpler as it’s mostly made up of stills from the show that let the women stand out as well as the guy. The summary is very small but that’s understandable considering the actual plot. The production credits round out the bottom along with a very good technical grid that’s very clean and clear. No show related inserts are included nor is there a reversible cover.

Menu:
The menu design takes the character artwork from the front cover and puts it to one side. The artwork looks more vibrant and detailed here than on the cover and it certainly sets the mood for the show. The navigation strip is along the side and it has the basics that you’d expect since there isn’t anything on the disc besides the show and some trailers for other series. Submenus load quickly and it’s easy to navigate but unfortunately the release did not read our players’ language presets and defaulted to English with sign/song subtitles.

Extras:
None.

Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
One of the more popular subgenres of the hentai world is that of the train fantasy where so many wonderful things happen. The Last Train to Gropesville obviously deals with the train and they deal with some fairly predictable material there. With the two episodes here, there is an underlying story to what’s going on but it isn’t until the last ten minutes or so that it starts to really come out. That’s not necessarily a bad thing as it means that the bulk of the show is about the sex and the situations. Without that little bit of back story though, it isn’t given anything bigger to hang onto in order to tell the story. You’re left wondering – maybe even hoping – that there’s a real reason behind all of this.

The story for this revolves around a slightly older gentleman named Kouichi who is out to have revenge. Revenge isn’t what everyone realizes he’s out for at first though as he’s taking advantage of an attractive young lawyer woman who he has an issue with. Tormenting and teasing her on the train in public view is humiliation to be sure but she can’t fight back against him since if she does, everyone will know what’s going on and really see her. All of this catches the eye of young Kanon and she can’t help but to watch. She’s getting turned on by the situation and the realization that Kouichi knows that she’s watching all of this happen. When she finds herself on the train with him later on, she knows that she knows him from somewhere and she can’t help but to give in to him as he ravages her there for her first time on this empty train. The entire situation turns her into a very willing subject as she starts talking about making atonement and repayment to him for past sins.

It’s from here that things go from bad to worse as Kouichi uses Kanon in order to get to her two older sisters, Nao and Kyoko. He uses his time with Kanon to get Nao to follow them and he takes her down quick in an elevator with a very willing Kanon. This leads to Nao being tied up in a secret room where he bends her to his will and puts his plans into motion for bringing Kyoko under his control as well. And once he has Kyoko, he has everything he wants for his revenge as we start to get the back story on why he’s so angry and wanting revenge on the trio and the lawyer. Even that section doesn’t get all that much coverage and it adds to the general feeling of unease about parts of the show. The women all give in to Kouichi so easily that it lacks that kind of real threat about it to make it believable. That they are so willing and eager afterwards only makes it all the less interesting since the connection isn’t there. Some show spend a lot of time showing the domination of the female characters by the male, but here it’s just skimmed over.

The sex in the show is pretty much as you’d expect where it’s fairly graphic and non-consensual. The women aren’t terribly abused here as you might see in some other shows, but they’re tied up and held down repeatedly and there’s ample use of toys and devices on them. There’s only one male in the show and the four women and he works his way through all of them, though he also makes sure the women work each other over as well. The toys are well used from time to time and the girl on girl aspects are fun as well, though it all comes down to it having a similar problem (for me) in that the women seem like they’re mindwiped once they’ve been turned to his side. There’s just little appeal in seeing zombie women doing someone’s bidding. Especially when said someone has a far too-red member in hand.

The character designs for the show do have that feeling, at least to me from when I got into the adult anime world more thoroughly, of those that were popular when the video game adaptations were becoming prominent during the traditional to digital transition. They’ve very polished in a way but lack that kind of realness about them. They don’t exactly feel like they’re within the world that they inhabit but rather are gliding on top of it. The designs are certainly appealing looking and they hit all the right marks, but when you combine that with the zombie aspect of their personalities as it goes on they aren’t exactly characters to connect with or really enjoy. They’re simply toys to be used. Well designed and good looking toys at least.

In Summary:
The Last Train to Gropesville is about what I expected from a show of this nature, though it doesn’t take place entirely on a train which breaks tradition a little bit. It’s got some good looking character designs and some enjoyable sex scenes, but it lacks good characters and people that you want to watch in these kinds of situations. This is one of those shows where it is sort of just there, especially after you watch something that does titillate and interest you a lot more. There’s nothing terribly wrong with it, it accomplishes what it sets out to do in a genre that it wanted to be in with no surprises, but that’s the problem. It’s just one more thing that we’ve seen before in different shows without much difference.

Features
Japanese 2.0 Language, English 2.0 Language, English Subtitles

Content Grade: C
Audio Grade: B+
Video Grade: B+
Packaging Grade: B
Menu Grade: B
Extras Grade: N/A

Released By: Kitty Media
Release Date: February 24th, 2009
MSRP: $29.99
Running Time: 60 Minutes
Video Encoding: 480i/p MPEG-2
Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1

Review Equipment:
Sony KDL70R550A 70″ LED 1080P HDTV, Sony PlayStation3 Blu-ray player via HDMI set to 1080p, Onkyo TX-SR605 Receiver and Panasonic SB-TP20S Multi-Channel Speaker System With 100-Watt Subwoofer.

Nothing says lovin’ like family.

What They Say:
After a natural disaster, a young man, Haruomi, temporarily moves to stay at his relative’s house that he shares with three sexy sisters — Natsumi, Akina, and Mafuyu. Suddenly his ordinary, peaceful life turns into an exciting erotic adventure!

The Review:
Audio:
The audio presentation for this release brings us the original Japanese language track in stereo along with a new English language dub, both of which are presented in uncompressed PCM form. The show is one that’s naturally dialogue oriented as well as moan oriented so it’s not one that stretches itself in certain ways. What we do get is a show that comes across in a very clean and clear way with good levels to it so that you enjoy every moan that comes from them and all the other sexually oriented sounds. It has a mostly center channel feeling to it but the end result is a property that has a good sound design to it for the show that it is and it’s free of problems. We listened to it primarily in Japanese but the sampling of the English dub has us looking to revisit it in that form as well.

Video:
Originally released from 2009 to 2011, the transfer for this OVA series is presented in its original aspect ratio of 1.78:1 in 1080p using the AVC codec. Animated by Studio Eromatick, the project has a great look to it with some bold hentai familiar color design work that gives it a lot of pop. The fluidity of certain movements is strong and character design with detail is pretty great, all of which the encoding captures well. Colors are solidly vibrant throughout without becoming oversaturated while the detail holds up well with no breakup or noise to be had. It’s a very clean looking encoding the delivers a strong looking show that makes for an enjoyable visual experience from start to finish.

Packaging:
The packaging for this release is one that certainly sets the tone well as it brings us our three main female characters together wearing just their stringy bikinis as they’re all pressed up against each other. With the soft pink background and the colorful logo, the amount of flesh on display here is strong and the expressions definitely set the tone right. It’s one of those highly attractive covers with great artwork and design with detail and color that catches the eye and stands out. The back cover has several shots from the show blended into some action material and we get a brief summary of the premise. Most of what we get is visually oriented, as it should be, along with the remind that this title contains nudity. And oh does it. The production credits are simple but clear and the technical grid breaks everything down in a clean and easy to read way. No show related inserts are included with this release.

Menu:
The menu design for this release uses the pinkish background from the cover design but changes up the actual artwork so that it’s not just a repurposed cover piece. What we get here is the logo through the top middle that’s big and colorful with the navigation below it. The two sides feature the three main girls with a lot of detail to them and some nudity as well, which you don’t usually see in menus. It’s definitely an appealing menu that showcases what you’re going to get with the designs and overall look of it. Navigation is all functional but moving to submenus is a bit slow as is returning to the main menu, something you don’t see happening often these days.

Extras:
The extras for this release are fun as we get some bloopers, which always brighten my day in general but more so when it comes to hentai. They’re always worth checking out and this batch certainly is.

Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
Based on the visual novel of the same name from Crossnet, Kanojo x Kanojo x Kanojo originally saw release from 2009 to 2011 as three separate OVAs and then got a full version release in 2013 as a single movie experience. What we get here is the original three OVA releases, which is definitely preferable for many as there’s certain timing and structure to these things that can get a bit wonky when blended together as a total work. With so much hentai being re-releases over the years, getting fresh (relatively) and new material is something of a real treat. This project is one that definitely provides for some good material to it and should be a welcome addition to anyone’s hentai library.

The premise is familiar as we’re introduced to Haruomi, a young man that has found himself moving into the Orifushi household, a place that was familiar to him as he spent a good part of his childhood there where he was practically (but not truly) family. Due to a natural disaster, he’s being taken in here and will end up working in the restaurant that the family runs to help out, so it’s fairly standard material there. The gimmick, of course, is that the family that’s currently living there are the three sisters that he grew up knowing. And boy have they grown up since then. Each is a distinct beauty in their own way and while not all are truly excited about him being there since it does shake up the family dynamic a bit, it’s all rather standard material in this area.

It does not take long for the sexytimes to ensue.

The one that’s most aggressive toward him is Akina, who he ends up at school with and discovers. It’s here that we get introduced to a couple of other girls that he gets involved with to varying degrees, which is the area where it felt like the show was pushing its credulity (HAH!). This provides for a little variety in the mix to some degree but you could easily imagine that the creative side could have made each episode solely about one of the sisters. But with plenty to draw from when it comes to the source material, well, they included some things that fans of the original visual novel will like. While we do get some fun with the awkward and almost comical interaction with Haruomi and Akina, the other girls up the ante in what’s to come while also knowing there are two more sisters out there.

The other sisters get their own special time with Haruomi though there’s naturally curiosities. Mafuyu is one that he ends up sort of accidentally peeping on as she’s enjoying herself with the door open just a bit and she kind of uses that to bully him a bit, but mostly in ways that puts them together far more intimately and awkwardly. That bath scene! When it comes to Natsumi, there’s a lot of fun there with the kind of middle of the road character that she is, coming across as more of the “Belldandy” of the group in a way. All of it culminates perfectly though as the trio decide to mess with him for messing with them individually, and what better way to do it than dressing up as maids and totally going to town on him and working him like nobody’s business. Yes, predictable, but goodness did they ever animate it well. With lush character designs accented by great color design and some solid movement throughout, this is a show that largely delivers on what it promises.

In Summary:
With a title like Kanojo x Kanojo x Kanojo, you pretty much know what you’re going to get. Kitty made it clear from the cover, and provided good shots that represent the show on the back, and the property itself really does deliver on it. With appealing designs, fun sex scenes, and a bilingual release done up in high definition, this is exactly like how I want all of my hentai. And I want a lot more of it. Is that so hard? Fans of hentai will enjoy this one but it’s also a title that’s very accessible to new audiences without anything that really goes into anything truly squicky, though the one minor scene of one of the high school girls peeing in the garden I could have done without.

Features:
Japanese 2.0 Language, English 2.0 Language, English Subtitles

Content Grade: B+
Audio Grade: B+
Video Grade: A-
Packaging Grade: B+
Menu Grade: B
Extras Grade: B-

Released By: Kitty Media
Release Date: August 30th, 2016
MSRP: $34.95
Running Time: 90 Minutes
Video Encoding: 1080p AVC
Aspect Ratio: 1.78:1 Widescreen

Review Equipment:
Sony KDL70R550A 70″ LED 1080P HDTV, Sony PlayStation3 Blu-ray player via HDMI set to 1080p, Onkyo TX-SR605 Receiver and Panasonic SB-TP20S Multi-Channel Speaker System With 100-Watt Subwoofer.

In a mansion full of gorgeous women, Tatsuya doesn’t need much encouragement to dominate those there to fulfill his mission.

What They Say
When a crooked politician dies, his nine wives expect to get his large inheritance. But the money ends up going to his daughters instead. This makes his youngest wife jealous and angry. So she teams up with a young, especially well-endowed man whose father has fallen ill after the politician ruined his career. Together, they use the young man’s ample gift to manipulate the daughters into relinquishing their fortune.

The Review:
Audio:
The audio presentation for this release brings us the original Japanese language track in stereo along with an English language dub, both of which are encoded at the standard 192kbps. Each track has the usual kind of sound design to it that we get with a hentai show and it certainly services the material well, but it’s not something that stands out strongly. The bulk of the show is either dialogue or mood sounds and they’re essentially center channel driven, giving it a full feel overall without much placement. Dialogue is clean and clear throughout and we didn’t have any problems with dropouts or distortions during regular playback.

Video:
Originally released in 2006, the transfer for this two episode OVA series is presented in its original full frame aspect ratio. The Immorals features a really strong piece of animation overall with some great colors and character designs and the transfer here shines with it. There is some noise in a few backgrounds here and there, but it’s minimal overall. There’s a lot of rich colors to this at times and a lot of variety to rooms and outfits which has it feeling like a quality release from the start and the transfer captures that. This is a very solid looking adult release.

Packaging:
The cover design for this release is really interesting and somewhat unusual in how it’s broken down. The front cover has the four main women here, all wearing white, but it’s done with a letterbox angle to it that obscures them along the bottom a little bit and pushes a bit more of the sexuality in a way that I can’t quite put my finger on. The main appeal here however is the character designs and they look fairly close to this in the show itself. It’s very seductive yet simple in its approach. The back cover is a bit more colorful with the four women laid out differently and with far less on them. With the red background and the girls all showing a lot of skin, it’s very hot looking. There’s a number of strategically placed shots from the show to obscure most things but that only pushes the eroticism more. The remainder is given over to the usual production redits and a clean technical grid.

Menu:
The menu design uses the same artwork as the back cover, expanded slightly, with a bit of instrumental music tied along to it. Similar to other Kitty Media titles, it’s not exactly strong with what it does but it looks good and it sets the mood just right for what’s to come. Submenus load quickly and with little else on the release outside of a selection of trailers, getting around is easy and problem free. The disc unfortunately didn’t read our players’ language presets properly and defaulted to English language with no subtitles.

Extras:
None.

Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
Immorals, a two part OVA series, brings out the character designs of Takuya Matsumoto and I’m very glad to see that. Sometimes the quality of the character designs and a solid piece of animation can overcome other issues and the Immorals is just such a title. The show has some faults to it to be sure, but the things it does right outweighs that in a number of ways. The story here is almost painfully simple, but that just means we get more time for the actual action and character interaction.

The premise of the Immorals revolves around a governor’s mansion where the governor has died at the ripe old age of eighty-eight. His reign as governor in this modern age was laced with rumors and mysteries as he had many daughters over the years that are all different. He was married again when he died and that’s left some concern about how things will now progress with the position of governor. The wife, Sumire, has brought in the son of a former employee named Tatsuya to do her bidding. With some mild coercion and a sweet smile, Sumire has convinced Tatsuya to take advantage of all of the governor’s daughters so he can control them for her, thereby making sure she retains proper control of the mansion and all that it entails.

It’s from here that the show delves into his slow conquest of all the women. Each of them are different and his approach is different. The first episode deals with two of the sisters who are aware of what he’s doing but can’t resist him because of how he goes about it. The second sister, in a particularly ravishing red floor length dress, finds herself being blackmailed by him as he uses photos of her with the maid to get what he wants. She’d been abused by the governor and she hates me so she’s trying to get away from the idea by forcing herself to be with women. To make sure he really gets his way, he turns the maid over to his side first since she’s not interested in women but she’s not exactly hot for Tatsuya either as she’s being forced into all of it.

Where the show gets a little wonky is in the second episode where they recap a good part of the first episode. This is generally bad, especially with the amount they cover, but they change it up a little by doing it with new animation and showing it from different angles. I rather liked this since it changes the dialogue slightly as well and it does give me more of the two women I found to be the most attractive. After that, Tatsuya begins to work down the other women and we see why he’s so amenable to doing all of this during a flashback that explains everything in a rather simple and complete manner, so long as you don’t really look for real world details. The remaining sisters aren’t all that interesting, and they introduce a mild bit of scat into it, but they do tackle Sumire as well as the story reaches its climax with Tatsuya performing as instructed.

While the story is weak and simple, the character designs and the overall visual design is very solid. I really found the character designs to be highly appealing overall, though some of them do run with the overly large breasts. They balance that out with some that are less which helps but it’s all complemented by the great costume designs and the settings. The actual action scenes are just as well done, choreographed well and done in a way that is quite erotic and explicit enough. This may be a case of style over substance, but it’s a genre where it does work out well and it’s hard to complain about it.

In Summary:
It’s empty when it comes to plot and story, but Immorals ranks high when it comes to eroticism and style. Great character designs, lush and intriguing settings and a series of scenes that really do a great job of being different from each other while still working with a central theme. The Immorals is that kind of show where if you’re not looking for plot but rather for a show that excites and titillates, it succeeds on those levels. I feel like I’m in the awkward position of defending an empty show, but it’s a show that achieves what it sets out to do and it does it with great style. I can’t help but recommend this as it was exactly what I was looking for, a show that doesn’t come by all that often with these kinds of designs and sexiness.

Features
Japanese 2.0 Language, English 2.0 Language, English Subtitles

Content Grade: A-
Audio Grade: B+
Video Grade: A-
Packaging Grade: B+
Menu Grade: B
Extras Grade: N/A

Released By: Kitty Media
Release Date: March 24th, 2009
MSRP: $29.99
Running Time: 60 Minutes
Video Encoding: 4980i/p MPEG-2
Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1

Review Equipment:
Sony KDL70R550A 70″ LED 1080P HDTV, Sony PlayStation3 Blu-ray player via HDMI set to 1080p, Onkyo TX-SR605 Receiver and Panasonic SB-TP20S Multi-Channel Speaker System With 100-Watt Subwoofer.

A pair of standalone stories make up this rather well done show about the fun that sex can be.

What They Say:
Some days it’s hard to get into work early, especially for Hakushiki: his strict female boss masturbates hot and heavy every morning when she thinks the office is still empty. Luckily, Hakushiki has some plans to make office time more productive. Akao is a bit effeminate, and all the women pick on him. Usually this means putting him through the wringer and forcing him to engage in every sex act imaginable!

Stories like these happen every day, and these are only the beginning.

The Review:
Audio:
The audio presentation for this release brings us the original Japanese language track in stereo along with the English language dub. The two language tracks on this release are fairly standard in terms of what they offer in the stereo mix but even the music is fairly light in its impact. Most of it is just basic piano pieces that are softer than instrumentals in other series. Both tracks are pretty good with what it’s presenting but there isn’t anything that really stands out here. We didn’t have any problems with dropouts or distortions during regular playback.

Video:
The transfer for this two episode series is presented in its original full frame aspect ratio. What isn’t original though are the edits in it. The first episode is missing about six or seven minutes due to one of the segments being cut. Outside of that however, the transfer for these episodes is in very good shape with lots of bold vibrant colors and clean line work. Backgrounds maintain a good solid feel with minimal noise while cross coloration and aliasing are pretty non-existent.

Packaging:
The front cover has an odd feel to it in its design because of the lighting but there is a certain attractiveness to it. The central image is from the first episode with the two characters getting into the mood of things. Behind them is a wall of shots from both episodes of the various characters involved done in a some sort of grayscale. The lighting on the main characters gives it an overly soft feel but the woman has an interesting design not often seen. The back cover is basic with just a number of shots from the show along either side while a summary of the premises is down the middle. The usual boilerplate is included as well as the production information and technical grid. Due to this show being edited, the boilerplate is obviously wrong but it’s easy to see how it made it on there. Hopefully if there are any future releases of this the packaging will be updated. No insert is included nor is there a reversible cover.

Menu:
The menu design takes the layout of the front cover and rearranges it slightly here while adding a bit of music. The foreground character artwork looks a lot better here though it still has that soft feeling because of the lighting. The backgrounds are naturally soft in their look since they’re supposed to be slightly obscured but they do look good in the overall design. The navigation strip is quick and easy to use though it was unusual to see the Play selection not at the top or bottom. The language selection section was also a nice change in that it had separate selections for the subtitles, making it easy to do English with English subtitles. Access times are nice and fast and while the disc did read our language preset correctly it grabbed the first subtitle track which was signs and songs.

Extras:
None.

Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
Legend of the Pervert is a rather surprisingly fun little show that has two standalone stories which are pretty enjoyable. But it also has the problem in that an entire scene has been cut from the first episode which is a dealbreaker for a great many people for obvious reasons.

The first episode revolves around a young salaryman named Akagane who finds himself getting tortured at work by an attractive woman named Namami. With her being his boss, she’s taking out some of her frustrations on him which means he has to put in a lot of extra time. Akagane’s actually lucked out with her though because he caught her in the office early that morning getting herself off. He lets that slip and she tries to trick him into a bad situation to deal with it but it turns into something a lot more interesting, erotic and entertaining as it plays out. Nanami is a great looking character in that she doesn’t look like most others in how her hair design is done. Something as simple as that can set a show apart easily. Even better is that while the show does get a bit crude towards the end, the two really work well together, particularly in the English language adaptation.

The second episode doesn’t fair quite as well but is still a good bit of fun. It revolves around a young man named Hifumi who is rather effeminate looking. He’s not decidedly feminine but he has some of the structure and could be mistaken at first glance. This has led him to some less than fun sexual encounters in the past with women who have taken advantage of him. He ends up in a rather good public sexual encounter at a restaurant with his apparent girlfriend but this ends up leading him to a couple of redheaded girls that put him through the wringer even more. But not until he gets reprimanded about perversity in general from the harsher of the two of them. This episode is weaker than the first but the girls are all pretty attractive and even Hifumi manages to have some foot. If you’ve got a thing for foot fetishes though, this is a winner.

The big issue for this release, which it will be forever known for now, is that the first episode is edited. While Akagane and Nanami are the central characters in it, there is an additional storyline as well. That one revolves around his younger brother Suzu who has himself a girl he’s interested in. With that scene cut I can’t say what it’s like first hand but there are screenshots available on the Japanese production company’s site which you can view. The characters look like they just stepped out of Kodomo no Omocha in terms of their age so it’s little surprise that they’re cut. Even worse, Suzu’s genitalia looks like it came off of a horse in how huge he is. As one person commented, by the time he’s of legal age he’ll need a third leg on his pants in order to walk.

I am by no means a fan of edited or cut shows and for the most part I agree with the premise of, if you have to cut it for release, don’t license it in the first place. Even still, though, this show proved to be so much fun and very enjoyable that I’d hate to think of missing it. The scene that was cut doesn’t change the impact of the show at all and having seen some stills from the cut scene it’d turn the whole thing into a combination of an even bigger comedy because of his penis size. The two episodes on this volume have great looking character designs, great looking animation and fun stories with great consensual sex scenes. The scene that was cut would feel very out of place here I think.

In Summary:
With a title like Legend of the Pervert, I was expecting something like another entry in the Kisaku series of titles. Instead I got a show that was funny, sexy and very well animated. The first story is the one that works the best I think but in watching the second one a couple more times it ended up being just as enjoyable in the long run for different reasons. This is a really fun show that is easy to recommend even with the edit. Kitty Media won’t take the chance on releasing it uncut for obvious reasons when you see the stills and it’s a case of what’s done is done. At least they mitigated the cut by pricing the show ten bucks lower than normal.

Features
Japanese 2.0 Language, English 2.0 Language, English Subtitles

Content Grade: B+
Audio Grade: B+
Video Grade: B+
Packaging Grade: B
Menu Grade: B
Extras Grade: N/A

Released By: Kitty Media
Release Date: April 24th, 2007
MSRP: $19.95
Running Time: 60 Minutes
Video Encoding: 480i/p MPEG-2
Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1

Review Equipment:
Sony KDL70R550A 70″ LED 1080P HDTV, Sony PlayStation3 Blu-ray player via HDMI set to 1080p, Onkyo TX-SR605 Receiver and Panasonic SB-TP20S Multi-Channel Speaker System With 100-Watt Subwoofer.

Working with a dark story, Legend of the Wolf Woman is a violent show that doesn’t shy from mixing the sex with it.

What They Say:
Rina is a SWAT officer who is faced with a series of bizarre murders. The victims have chunks of their flesh bitten off, and are often found eviscerated or slashed with claws. Then a new string of crimes begin, the murders are similar but the targets are all men and it appears they have been seduced.

At about the same time, Rina’s best friend, a beautiful stripper named Kata, has begun acting very strangely. Rina races to crack the case before her boyfriend becomes the killer’s next target.

The Review:
Audio:
The audio presentation for this release brings us the original Japanese language track in stereo along with the English language dub, both of which are encoded at 192kbps. The stereo mix that’s used is fairly standard for an adult title with most of the dialogue being center channel based. The music and some of the sound effects do use the left and right channels though and provide a good warm full feeling but the bulk of the dialogue doesn’t have much of a real sense of depth or placement. Dialogue is clean and clear throughout and we had no problems with dropouts or distortions during regular playback.

Video:
Originally released to video in 2003, the transfer for this series is presented in its original full frame aspect ratio. The transfer for the show looks really good throughout both episodes. While there are plenty of daylight scenes and brightly lit areas and colors, a lot of the show is very focused on darkness, shadows and filtered lighting. These areas are the more difficult ones to work with and it comes across well here with mostly solid backgrounds and very little blocking in foreground character animation. The transfer looks to be free of cross coloration and has only a few normal smudges of aliasing going on in a few scenes that’s very brief.

Packaging:
The front cover mixes the two main leads of the show together with good effect for an attractive but dark piece. The right half has the SWAT team member in just her underwear and her back to the viewer but with the added plus of her gun and work gloves. Contrasting that is a close-up of the wolf woman with blood splattered across her fingers and extended fingernails while between the two is a view of the city. Very nicely laid out and really eye-catching with all the reds. The back cover is done with a few shots from the show and character pieces mixed together next to a single paragraph describing the premise. The remainder of the cover is filled out with the production information and the ever solid technical grid. No insert was included with this release nor a reverse side cover as the keepcase is a clear one.

Menu:
The main menu basically zooms in on and reworks what’s on the front cover while bringing the buildings and the moon into it more strongly plus a little bit more blood. A bit of music is set to it from the shows instrumental track and the menu overall is decent and not one you mind lingering on too much. Access times are nice and fast and the disc did not correctly read our players’ language presets and played in English with sign/song subtitles as its default.

Extras:
None.

Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
Legend of the Wolf Woman is one of those kinds of titles that while it definitely is an adult title, it’s one that takes advantage of being able to do the full on sex to combine it with a story that can utilize it. Of course, it gets completely trippy weird at the end but before it gets there it’s a bit like most other thrillers or cop dramas except you see the full on sex instead of just implied lurid shots meant to tantalize.

Taking place in New York City, a version which has kogals for some ungodly reasons, the show centers around SWAT team member Linda. It kicks off with her taking down a pedophile who had killed some little girl and is seemingly part of a string of recent murders. She’s really bothered by the entire incident so she needs some relief which she gets by hitting a local strip club bar with her friend Mary who works in the CSI division in the city. At the club she meets up with her boyfriend Brian while Mary stays behind to talk with their mutual friend Kata, a very attractive tall woman who is one of the performers there.

What nobody knows at this point is that there is some sort of virus that’s going around that Kata has that turns people into wolf-like creatures. Kata’s resisting against the changes she’s going through but finds herself being attacked and can’t help but fall into it. The show really seems to like to focus on very unusual or violent themed sexual situations; for example, when Linda and Brian leave the club to hook up, he’s teasing her with the knife she keeps in her best, sliding it all over her which gives her a thrill. But they take a step further by having him pull out her loaded pistol and slip a condom on it and proceeds to use that on her from behind. A similar thing happens later when Brian finds Kata laying in the rainy street begging for his help, he takes her to his car and hooks up the cars battery to her and starts running voltage through her. Naturally, this only starts her changing again but it brings Brian into the fold and his sick sense joins the fray.

The plot revolves around this as we see the CSI folks trying to discover what the virus is about while Linda tries to stave off the growing number of wolf-creatures in the city. There’s some weird subplot that brings in the US military that just makes you shake your head (Hey, let’s launch missiles into Central Park!) and the giant black guy who seems to know how to stop everything by going to the source and screwing it into submission. The show does have a weird sense of humor as well. When the first scene finishes out and Linda watches the CSI folks come to check it out, they all look like, probably a good half dozen of them. I mean, it’s like cookie cutter with slight height changes. It’s so weirdly comical that you don’t know how to react. There’s another scene where Mary is overly distraught about what’s going on so the black guy simply picks her up to his level and kisses her which seems to calm her down. It’s just out there.

At its core, there does appear to be a plot that could be good but it feels like it was handled someone whose never written a script before. I haven’t seen much from the Cherry Lips folks before but in that department they really failed badly here. Where they make out good is in the character designs which are attractive but not beyond description and the animation in general is pretty solid and better than a lot of the more cartoonish kinds of shows that have been coming out around this time. The sex scenes are somewhat varied depending on what you’re looking for as they’re mostly violent in nature or at least within that realm. There really isn’t anything that’s done with a sort of positive nature to it but that wouldn’t fit in the story all that much.

In Summary:
Legend of the Wolf Woman is part of the adult genre that we don’t see too often and has been far better done in such series like Oni Tensei. There’s a good core idea here with the thought of a virus that spreads a wolf transformation gene among people but it’s so haphazardly handled across the two episodes and has so many general weird and odd ideas to it that it doesn’t really feel like it’s a complete though but more a jumble of ideas that they managed to barely string together. The designs are good and the action, while violent, is well animated but overall the whole thing just didn’t appeal all that much. There isn’t a lot of shows like this out but most of them are better put together than this.

Features
Japanese 2.0 Language, English 2.0 Language, English Subtitles

Content Grade: C
Audio Grade: B+
Video Grade: B+
Packaging Grade: B+
Menu Grade: B
Extras Grade: N/A

Released By: Kitty Media
Release Date: July 26th, 2005
MSRP: $29.95
Running Time: 60 Minutes
Video Encoding: 480i/p MPEG-2
Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1

Review Equipment:
Sony KDL70R550A 70″ LED 1080P HDTV, Sony PlayStation3 Blu-ray player via HDMI set to 1080p, Onkyo TX-SR605 Receiver and Panasonic SB-TP20S Multi-Channel Speaker System With 100-Watt Subwoofer.

What’s a woman with big breasts to do? How about a once and future wet nurse?

What They Say:
Get ready for some liquid love! To relieve herself to the pain of her unsuckled mother’s milk, she takes a job as a wet-nurse. But she is abruptly dismissed when she is found to be too attached to her young charge. . . Years later, Kyoko tells her teenaged daughter Marika that she breast-fed one of her classmates, a boy named Toji. Intrigued, Marika approaches Toji, and brings him home for dinner. Kyoko and Toji’s passion for each other is reignited, while Marika can’t get her new big brother out of her head. Discovering the truth about Toji and Kyoko, Marika demands that Toji choose between them. Little does she know that her mother has a way of becoming violently jealous…

The Review:
Audio:
The audio presentation for this show is done up with the original Japanese language track and an English language dub, both of which are encoded in stereo at the standard 192kbps rate. The show has a very basic stereo mix where the bulk of the dialogue is very much center channel based and with hardly any noticeable directionality while the stereo channels are pretty much reserved for the music and some ambient effects. The English track is pretty much in the same boat from what we sampled of it. Dialogue is clean and clear throughout and we had no problems with dropouts or distortions during regular playback.

Video:
Originally released in 2004, the transfer for this series is presented in its original full frame aspect ratio. The show has a fairly decent look to it but it’s not one of the higher quality visual series and the materials do show that. The transfer for the show looks good overall though there is a fair bit of aliasing throughout it which is the only main issue that crops up. Colors look decent if uninspired, shading and lighting is minimal but the colors maintain a mostly solid feel throughout. The shows openings and endings are left in tact with a brief translated scrawl afterwards for the credits. I was amused that English was spelled Englesh however in the copyright section.

Packaging:
If there’s ever an award for honest in advertising contest, this title is definitely a contender. With a shot of Kyoko laying on the tiled floor in some of her lingerie, she’s holding onto her massive breasts which have wildly flowing rivers of milk coming from them. It’s like a couple of gallons exploded and her breasts are most definitely more than a handful. The back cover is split down the middle with the left half showing a more realistic shot of Kyoko in a state of undress while the right side has the summary of the premise and a few choice shots from it. The discs production information is pretty much tossed out the window here but we do get a basic technical summary. No insert is included nor is there a reverse side cover.

Menu:
The main menu has a close-up shot of Kyoko with her breasts practically exploding milk as she tries to lap it up while the background is just indistinct colored tiles, all of this set to the instrumental end song for almost a minute. The layout is cutely done with the navigation along the bottom hung by chains with arrows pointing to them. Access times are nice and fast and the layout, simple as it is, is very easy to navigate and get around in. The disc correctly read our players’ language presets as well.

Extras:
None.

Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
An entry from the Vanilla Series, Milk Money takes a dip into the genre that the fans of lactation enjoy the most. With large breasts, flowing milk and some serious nanny worship going on here, it’s a nurse show without the nurses themselves as it’s all about wet-nursing. Oh my poor eyes

The central character of this two episode OVA series is Kyoko, a woman in her thirties whose had a bit of a rough life and it’s really messed her up. Back when she was young and pregnant, she was involved in a car accident that caused her to lose the baby. But instead of making the situation a complete loss, she took on the job of a wet nurse for a baby named Toji and breast fed him. Though she lost her own baby, she was pregnant again soon enough and gave birth to a girl named Marika. Now years later, Marika’s a full grown young woman and living with her mother while Toji has left his parents with whom he doesn’t get along with and lives in a fairly messy apartment.

His life changes when Marika finds out what her mother did when she was younger and discovers that Toji is in her school. She takes him on as a brother of sorts, a milk brother, and the two become pretty good friends and along the way she falls in love with him. Toji’s a decent enough guy, doesn’t take advantage of anyone and in general is a good enough guy. He does get that Marika’s interested in him but he’s not sure about bringing that into his life so he keeps her at a bit of a distance even as close as they get. Marika’s finally able to get him to come visit at her house though and bringing him back into the life of his “nanny” at long last.

That’s the mistake though and while Marika tries to seduce him properly when he visits, it’s Kyoko that manages to bed Toji and he’s extremely compliant as he has that sensation of being back where he was when he was little but taking it all the further. Marika eventually manages to seduce him as well once she finds out that her mother has been bedding him but when Kyoko finds out about this she takes things into a strange Reservoir Dogs like realm. In between all the nastiness that happens between mother and daughter there’s a fair amount of sex going on as Kyoko has a dungeon in her house where she tries to ensure that Toji is beholden only to her. There’s some side plot material about a missing boy that comes into play and the background gets expanded on what Kyoko was like as a younger woman, all of which explains part of what’s like now, but in the end it’s all just creepy in its own way no matter what.

The character designs for the show are pretty decent but nothing exceptional. Kyoko obviously plays up the needed large breasts which are of course the main focus of things so she gets plenty of goods in that area and about half the time they aren’t all that overwhelming. But when they start having appliances hooked up to them and become the main focus they do get pretty big. Marika, though her daughter, doesn’t have the same ample features and that’s good since she’s a pretty good looking character otherwise. Toji’s fairly average but his character isn’t exactly a stud but he’s not a milksop either. The animation for these episodes is pretty decent and there are some obviously good scenes throughout here but otherwise it’s a fairly standard show.

In Summary:
Milk Money isn’t a title that really appeals since I don’t care for the oversized breasts or the entire lactating thing. Things go even a bit further into unwelcome territory with the whole nanny aspect of the characters. The dub plays it even more loose and comical with lots of added dialogue that makes it even less fun in the end. For those that do find it appealing, this release will be right up your alley as it’s decently done and problem free. For everyone else, it’s probably something easily avoided just based on the cover artwork alone or something you’ll want to try if it piques your interest. For me, it’s a sizeable pass.

Features
Japanese 2.0 Language, English 2.0 Language, English Subtitles

Content Grade: D
Audio Grade: B+
Video Grade: B+
Packaging Grade: B
Menu Grade: B
Extras Grade: N/A

Released By: Kitty Media
Release Date: October 25th, 2005
MSRP: $29.95
Running Time: 60 Minutes
Video Encoding: 480i/p MPEG-2
Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1

Review Equipment:
Sony KDL70R550A 70″ LED 1080P HDTV, Sony PlayStation3 Blu-ray player via HDMI set to 1080p, Onkyo TX-SR605 Receiver and Panasonic SB-TP20S Multi-Channel Speaker System With 100-Watt Subwoofer.

The life of a Japanese computer businessman on the fast track has a lot to deal with when it seems like every man he comes across has the hots for him.

What They Say
Mochizuki is a diligent young office worker with a kinky knack for falling into bed with his co-workers, clients, and bosses. Kept under the thumb of his dominating supervisor, Mochizuki tries his best to keep the office running smoothly. Will he ever get to spend some time alone with Fujita, the one man who wants him for something other than his body? Or will he remain a slave to Honma’s desires forever?

The Review:
Audio:
The audio presentation for this release brought us just the original Japanese language track in stereo encoded at 192kbps as at the time dubbing of this kind of material just wasn’t happening, though hentai in general almost always got a dub. The track is pretty standard in what to expect without much in the way of noticeable directionality since it’s mostly just dialogue and the occasional scream or two. The track is clear and free of distortions and dropouts during regular playback.

Video:
Originally released way back in 1995, the transfer for the three OVAs here is quite good. There’s some slight cross coloration that creeps into the character art in a number of areas, but its very minimal and almost comes across as aliasing at times. The color palette is set in a real world style so there isn’t a lot of vibrancy to work with, but the balance comes across nicely with a solid series of colors that aren’t over saturated.

Packaging:
The front cover lets you know exactly what you’re getting into with a shot of Mochizuki getting manhandled by his boss Honma set against the backdrop of Tokyo as well as another potential lover. I’d say it’s an eye-catching cover on the shelf but you won’t see this one on many shelves to begin with. The back cover has a few shots from the show and a simple summary paragraph of what to expect. The information box lists all you need to know though the running time is off by about twenty minutes too much (disc playback says 110, the package says 130 and most online retailers list 90). The insert has a listing of the chapter stops set to the stock index page of a newspaper design while the reverse side showcases a series of other yaoi friendly titles (entitled ‘Your One Stop Yaoi Shop’).

Menu:
The menu layout uses a few parts of the packaging, such as the newspaper imagery from the insert as the backdrop with the menu selections as well as the shot of the two leads from the front cover on top of that. With no animation or music as well as nothing on the disc but the show and the trailers, this is a very simple menu that works well for what it has. Access times are very fast and moving around is quick as can be.

Extras:
None.

Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
Well, crap. I can’t go eating corn on the cob anymore thanks to this show.

My Sexual Harassment has been one of those yaoi shows heralded for several years as something that would never be licensed for release in the U.S. as well as being one of the shining examples of good yaoi. Having taken in the three OVAs for this series, I can see why people thought it wouldn’t be licensed for awhile, at least until the entire market changed enough to allow things like this through, as well as why it’s held up as a good piece of yaoi. Mostly because it’s full of some good pieces of ass as well.

The story is fairly straightforward and pretty interchangeable for a lot of areas if one of the genders changed. We’re introduced to a young up and coming systems development businessman named Junya Mochizuki. He’s got the skills to get ahead quite far and the looks and personality to really cap it off. A year after starting at the company he’s in, he’s found himself being seduced by his boss, Mr. Honma. Mochizuki has been long admiring Honma since he started there, professionally and personally, since Honma is not only excellent at his job but he fits the idea of the tall, dark and handsome man perfectly. So when Honma starts feeling him up late at night in the office one time, Mochizuki’s confusion gives way to his curiosity.

What follows over the next several months is a series of encounters between the two, but also with others in the company as the way to get ahead in this particular business and company is to use your body, right up to the president and vice president. Mochizuki isn’t interested in this since he’s just been attracted to Honma, but the situation becomes bigger than himself and he gets very caught up in it, to the point where some blackmail from the vice president gets him into that bed, a bed where things Mochizuki most definitely doesn’t like begin to happen with toys and more. Add in a good friend in the company who also has the hots for you but hates seeing you being used and an attractive woman who doesn’t believe the rumors and thinks he’s straight and tries her best to get him to notice her and you have an interesting cast.

But the show decides to go a bit further than that, but having Honma and Mochizuki eventually get transferred out to Boston, with Honma going to the executive side while Mochizuki moves up in the systems development side. Thinking that he’s free of things for awhile and a chance to really get ahead on his skills alone, Mochizuki finds that there are things even worse than what happened in Japan as his new boss, Niimi, takes advantage of him in a lot more ways than before. With things being taped after he uses chloroform to keep him in his house, Niimi tries a full range of fun on young Mochizuki, causing him to shift hard between pleasure and pain and disgust and attraction.

Naturally, Honma comes to save the day for him, and the two continue their journey upward in the corporate world, but there are prices to be paid along the way. It’s usually Mochizuki paying them, though there is some payback when Niimi gets tricked by Honma over what had happened in Boston. Bottles and corn on the cob are used in fun ways to get a point across while Mochizuki looks on and tries to understand what it is Honma is teaching him. The rules of business are no different in the end, according to Honma, and you have to play things both ways sometimes.

My Sexual Harassment, being from 1995, isn’t as explicit as a lot of shows are these days. This is something I’ve seen in what little yaoi has been brought over or most shows that go male/male. After years of seeing the insides of women from a tentacle eye point of view, these shows just feel so very tame. Even with this one, genitalia is generally absent from the picture or obscured by positioning and so forth. Even when the corn on the cob is used, you don’t really see anything. It just looks like one half of it has a heck of a lot of butter on it.

In Summary:
Boys-love and yaoi material on the animated side, and even shounen-ai material, has always been hard to come by and that’s unfortunate – but not surprising. While hentai in general gets a lot of variety, this side tends to be a bit more narrow in what gets animated and that can be somewhat limiting. My Sexual Harassment is a fun little title that doesn’t really explode the senses and would be considered softcore if it was male/female instead. The lack of explicitness isn’t a bad thing but you wish that it was treated the same as hentai in general and fans could get the same kind of treatment. Fans of this genre probably already know or have this title in some form or things more hardcore, but hopefully it’ll receive enough sales to merit looking into more titles that can expand this market.

Features
Japanese Language, English Subtitles

Content Grade: B
Audio Grade: B
Video Grade: B
Packaging Grade: C
Menu Grade: B-
Extras Grade: N/A

Released By: Kitty Media
Release Date: December 23rd, 2003
MSRP: $29.95
Running Time: 110 Minutes
Video Encoding: 480i/p MPEG-2
Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1

Review Equipment:
Sony KDL70R550A 70″ LED 1080P HDTV, Sony PlayStation3 Blu-ray player via HDMI set to 1080p, Onkyo TX-SR605 Receiver and Panasonic SB-TP20S Multi-Channel Speaker System With 100-Watt Subwoofer.

SoftCel Pictures has picked up another release that will be coming out this year with Oppai no Ouja 48, which is being localized as King of Breasts. The two episode OVA series from 2010 will be getting a Blu-ray release on August 8th, 2017 priced at $19.98. It’ll be in its original Japanese language only with English subtitles.

Plot concept: Naoya likes breasts. In fact, he’s so obsessed with them that he can recognize any breast from just a picture. But while that’s an impressive ability, who would expect some mysterious patrons to set up a game where Naoya has to locate five championship breasts from among all the girls in the city? Oh, and to have a lot of sex too. That’s exactly what happens when a girl named Nir shows up and gives Naoya the rules and a stack of free sex vouchers. That certainly doesn’t suck! Or, actually, with his free vouchers, that’s on the table too… With everyone from his teachers to the girl giving out free samples on the corner as possible “game pieces,” Naoya’s going to have a long, hard and very probing time ahead of him as he seeks to prove that he’s the KING OF BREASTS!

Suffering from short term amnesia, Ayase finds himself now in the hold of a man who paid the princely sum of 120 million yen for him and seems to know and desire him intimately.

What They Say:
Because Tetsuo has to pay off his debts, he hands over his cousin, Yukiya Ayase, to a Yakuza group. Yukiya is auctioned and sold to Kita Kano, who owns a finance business. To regain his freedom, he and his cousin must pay two million, including the auction fee and their debt. But Yukiya, of course, doesn’t have such money. So, Karino gives his suggestion instead…

Contains episodes 1-2.

The Review:
Audio:
This release has gone the route of a single language, which isn’t a surprise for a boys-love title as the market there is still small and hard to grow with dub fans. The included Japanese mix is pretty good even at 192kbps as it provides a good forward soundstage in its design. It is mostly just a dialogue piece but there is some good placement and sense of depth along the way that adds to a couple of scenes. Dialogue is clean and clear throughout and the opening and closing songs are some of the stronger moments. We didn’t have any problems with dropouts or distortions during regular playback.

Video:
Originally released in 2007, the transfer for this OVA series is presented in its original aspect ratio of 1.85:1 and is enhanced for anamorphic playback. No Money has some solid production values to it and it shows in the transfer here. It averages in the high sevens for the bitrate and has a very clean look to it. Outside of a few instances of line noise during panning sequences and some background noise in solid colors that are often difficult, this is a very attractive and smooth looking presentation. The animation isn’t exactly active often so there is an advantage to that but the colors and solidity of the program really works well here in presenting something that stands out. Interestingly enough, the original end credits are given a constant bit rate of eight and maintain a very theatrical feel to them with the scroll. When the English credits roll afterwards, it drops down to four and looks horrible with how fast they go by.

Packaging:
While the cover may not scream yaoi at first, a bit of examination will show just that. Ayase isn’t exactly effeminate but it may not be apparent at first glance. The pairing of him and Kanoh works nicely here as money floats around them and Ayase’s outfit is soaked, something that plays nicely in with the fact that he’s wearing a collar and his hands are bound to it. Kanoh has a certain menace to him which balances out the innocence that Ayase has. The back cover is fairly traditional in that there are a few pieces of character artwork shown softly in the background while the foreground has the usual summary material and a few shots from the show. Not unusual for a Kitty release, at least one character name is spelled differently here than within the show itself. The extras are off as well as it lists a clean opening as available but it’s not. The bottom portion is rounded out with the standard production credits and an accurate technical grid.

Menu:
The menu design is simple enough as it uses the money theme to good effect. Thousand yen notes are spread out across the background while the logo itself has some coinage to it, all of which is set to a portion of the opening song. Though it’s a static piece and it doesn’t feature any of the characters from the show, it works well since the money is a major issue within the show. No setup menu is included and everything defaults to Japanese with full subtitles. No sign/song subtitle track is included. The extras are also accessible from the main menu which is a plus in navigation for a show like this.

Extras:
A couple of really good extras are included in the form of omake shorts. These take place after the two main episodes and serve as a comedic follow-up to events. The first couple are well animated for shorts but after that it shifts more to stills. They still have some good moments to them though as it gives us an idea of how life progresses for the characters.

Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
Based off of the manga with the same name that’s done by Hitoyo Shinozaki and Tohru Kousaka, No Money is a four part OVA series that’s out this year. It’s actually somewhat rare to get a four part adult series done these days and even more so to get all four parts done within the same year. It started in February 2007 and the fourth episode is scheduled for December 2007. What’s even more unusual is how high quality the animation and design of this is which speaks to how well regarded the source material must be in Japan.

The series is a bit awkward at first as it introduces us to Ayase, a very wispy and small young man who has big deep blue eyes. He’s being auctioned off in front of a number of very disturbing older gentleman who want this pale young man in chains to be theirs for the taking. The bidding gets high right from the start but it’s all outdone by a man named Kanoh who drops a hundred and twenty million to buy Ayase. As it turns out, Ayase had rescued him in some way awhile ago and the two have been together closely since then. But when Ayase was abducted and thrown into a car after falling into an issue caused by his less than reputable cousin, some of his memory went out the window and he has no recollection of Kanoh at all.

The disparity between the two man is fairly standard as Kanoh is tall, broad shouldered and has those dark smoldering looks. His profession of loan shark has him involved with unsavory types but he carries it off with well tailored suits and an air of respectability around him. Getting Ayase to his residence and working to get the drugs out of his system, he’s caught in a problem by wanting to carry on with Ayase as he always has yet not being able to because Ayase is scared to death of him. Even worse, Ayase can only talk about his cousin and wanting to try and make things right there. That sends Kanoh into an angry fit which doesn’t help the situation at all.

The show moves through the awkwardness of their relationship while also touching upon Ayase and his cousin’s relationship as well as that of the business itself. Everything is tied together in some way and that leads to the big men working things out in a way that involves gambling and huge sums of money. All the while Ayase is pretty much dragged along as he doesn’t know what to do or who to trust. Toss in a pair of twins that work for Kanoh and a transvestite client who comes across as quite familiar with all of them and it’s a fairly amusing and interesting cast of what are essentially stock characters. They’re given enough personality with the brief bursts of humor but also plenty of emotion when required by the scenes.

No Money features some very strong character designs to it that has a real sense of presence. Though it does use the normal shortcuts of stills and pans in order to create mood and movement, this is the kind of show that you can get away with it since it fits into the way it feels. Each of the characters has a good memorable design for those among the leads and the animation itself when it comes into play is pretty good. The strongest area tends to be that of Ayase’s eyes as they really do seem like little worlds within his sockets. Unlike some other shows, you don’t mistake who is who here (except for the twins maybe) and the lack of female characters really doesn’t come across as unusual or out of place.

An area that’s certainly important to cover is just how explicit the show is. Similar to other yaoi shows, it goes only so far in actually showing you what’s going on. There are sex scenes to be sure, but it plays more to the idea of the sex than the actual visualization of it. It’s similar to the idea of regular porn made by women for women in that it’s the feelings that are conveyed in the characters rather than seeing the penetration. You may have Kanoh spending some time suckling Ayase’s nipples but you won’t see either of them sucking hard on anything, well, hard. Shadows provide for key moments and there is often a focus shift to the expressions on their faces and their thoughts at the time.

In Summary:
Originally, No Money wasn’t a title that I knew was a boys-love one until I saw the logo on the back of the cover as I unwrapped it. What surprised me the most about it was that it feels like a rather high budgeted yaoi OVA with an opening and closing sequence. It’s rare that you see opening sequences in adult material in general and even less so ones with vocals for it. The series has some really good production values to it across the board and the end result with the release is probably the strongest and best boys-love/yaoi OVA that I’ve ever seen. While it may lack the explicitness of regular adult anime, it conveys more reality in its situations and better mood and atmosphere than most. While there are two more episodes to go, this volume has a good sense of closure to it but you’ll still want to see more of these characters. Very highly recommended.

Features
Japanese 2.0 Language, English Subtitles, Omake Theater

Content Grade: B+
Audio Grade: B
Video Grade: B+
Packaging Grade: B+
Menu Grade: B
Extras Grade: B-

Released By: Kitty Media
Release Date: October 30th, 2007
MSRP: $29.95
Running Time: 60 Minutes
Video Encoding: 480i/p MPEG-2
Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1

Review Equipment:
Sony KDL70R550A 70″ LED 1080P HDTV, Sony PlayStation3 Blu-ray player via HDMI set to 1080p, Onkyo TX-SR605 Receiver and Panasonic SB-TP20S Multi-Channel Speaker System With 100-Watt Subwoofer.

Kanoh continues to do his best to bring Ayase over to his side and what better way than by putting him into adult films.

What They Say
Ayase, still deep in debt, continues to be at the mercy of Kanou and the dark underworld that surrounds him. In order to reduce his debt, Ayase has to subject himself to humiliating situations that he never could have expected. Meanwhile, the relationship between Ayase and Kanou grows more and more complex. How much more can Ayase endure, and will he ever be able to regain his freedom?

The Review:
Audio:
This release has gone the route of a single language, which isn’t a surprise for a boys-love title as the market there is still small and hard to grow with dub fans. The included Japanese mix is pretty good even at 192kbps as it provides a good forward soundstage in its design. It is mostly just a dialogue piece but there is some good placement and sense of depth along the way that adds to a couple of scenes. Dialogue is clean and clear throughout and the opening and closing songs are some of the stronger moments. We didn’t have any problems with dropouts or distortions during regular playback.

Video:
Originally released in 2007, the transfer for this OVA series is presented in its original aspect ratio of 1.85:1 and is enhanced for anamorphic playback. No Money has some solid production values to it and it shows in the transfer here. It averages in the high sevens for the bitrate and has a very clean look to it. Outside of a few instances of line noise during panning sequences and some background noise in solid colors that are often difficult, this is a very attractive and smooth looking presentation. The animation isn’t exactly active often so there is an advantage to that but the colors and solidity of the program really work well here in presenting something that stands out. Interestingly enough, the original end credits are given a constant bit rate of eight and maintain a very theatrical feel to them with the scroll. When the English credits roll afterward, it drops down to four and looks horrible with how fast they go by.

Packaging:
With a few brighter colors this time around and utilizing the manga style artwork, the cover for the second installment of No Money is quite good as it features both men in some wonderful finery with hints of a mean in place. There’s a lot of great detail and warmth to it in general which makes it very appealing. The back cover is fairly traditional in that there are a few pieces of character artwork shown softly in the background while the foreground has the usual summary material and a few shots from the show. The extras are clearly listed this time around and are actually on the disc which is a nice change from the first volume. The bottom portion is rounded out with the standard production credits and an accurate technical grid.

Menu:
The menu design is simple enough as it uses the money theme to good effect. Thousand yen notes are spread out across the background while the logo itself has some coinage to it, all of which is set to a portion of the opening song. Though it’s a static piece and it doesn’t feature any of the characters from the show, it works well since the money is a major issue within the show. No setup menu is included and everything defaults to Japanese with full subtitles. No sign/song subtitle track is included. The extras are also accessible from the main menu which is a plus in navigation for a show like this.

Extras:
A couple of really good extras are included in the form of omake shorts. These take place after the two main episodes and serve as a comedic follow-up to events. The first couple are mildly animated for shorts but after that, it shifts more to stills. They still have some good moments to them though as it gives us an idea of how life progresses for the characters.

Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
While the first volume of No Money with its two episodes were pretty well self-contained, there is always more room for story when you’re dealing with a very pretty man and an absolutely pretty young boy. No Money doesn’t dig deep into things here in terms of their relationship, but it rakes young Ayase over the manly coals in order to break him. And just like the first volume, there’s really not a lot of explicit material to be found here but they do introduce a good bit of funny material towards the end to balance all the serious stuff.

The relationship between the two men has been amusing to watch as Kanoh has really worked him over and marked him pretty severely at times. Ayase still isn’t a willing partner in all of this, though he is certainly changing his tune little by little. But that fighting back aspect is something that’s likely appealing to Kanoh since he gets to truly dominate the rather fragile young pretty boy. Ayase’s intent on getting out from all of this however and is apparently willing to do anything and everything he can outside of having rough hard sex with Kanoh.

It’s not a surprise however that he balks when Kanoh introduces him to his brother, Gion. The rather outgoing blonde man is brought in to put Ayase to work in one of his adult videos, which will, in turn, earn Kanoh money that Ayase will use to pay him back with. Since Ayase refuses to have sex with him, it’s certainly one way to do it. Ayase naturally balks at this but the whole situation goes into left field when a local “entrepreneur” named Yoshizumi arrives in the hotel lobby demanding his stolen master tape back from Kanoh. It’s an amusing series of events as you have a tough guy like Yoshizumi establishing his territory and street cred with Kanoh who is simply completely confident in his position and authority over everyone he sees. The difference in their approach says quite a lot about the two of them.

Across the two episodes and for about forty-five minutes, it’s something of a battle of wills as Kanoh deals with Yoshizumi and his benefactor as they try to put Kanoh in his place. Some of it is fairly predictable in how it plays out because of what we saw in the first volume, but the fun is in watching it happen, knowing that Kanoh will go the distance to make his point, consequences be damned. And that, naturally, along the way Ayase will realize that he really does have the hots for Kanoh and only wants to be touched by him. To balance this out though, a portion of the second episode is devoted to fantasy video sequences as imagined by Gion that involve everyone. Some of them are amusing, such as the army of chibi Ayase’s roaming around, but there are also historical bits as well such as a Taisho era boys love situation involving the cast in proper clothes of the time. It’s all designed to really hit on the fantasies of the fans and they do a really good job with it.

In Summary:
No Money isn’t exactly a deep show nor is it one that has a whole lot of plot. It is in its own way a rather typical boys-love show that plays at the more serious yaoi aspect but never really gets there. It doesn’t have any blatantly explicit scenes, but that’s not what the fans of the genre are looking for. It’s all about the mood, the feelings and the atmosphere of it all as you have a dominant male and a submissive male being thrown together. In that regard, No Money is good stuff, especially since Ayase is a perfect sub while Kanoh plays the dom role very well. No Money is a very solid looking production through and through and you can see they put the money into the show. As a straight male, it doesn’t do much for me but I can certainly appreciate it and how it all comes together. As a straight male that watches a lot of hentai, it feels weak without a lot of payoff. For boys-love fans though, this is definitely worth checking out since it’s probably one of the best releases out there on all counts.

Features
Japanese 2.0 Language, English Subtitles, Omake Episodes

Content Grade: B
Audio Grade: B
Video Grade: A-
Packaging Grade: B
Menu Grade: B
Extras Grade: B-

Released By: Kitty Media
Release Date: June 10th, 2008
MSRP: $29.99
Running Time: 60 Minutes
Video Encoding: 480i/p MPEG-2
Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1

Review Equipment:
Sony KDL70R550A 70″ LED 1080P HDTV, Sony PlayStation3 Blu-ray player via HDMI set to 1080p, Onkyo TX-SR605 Receiver and Panasonic SB-TP20S Multi-Channel Speaker System With 100-Watt Subwoofer.

Riding the rails continues to be dangerous for a number of young women in this short two episode series.

What They Say
When horny men and beautiful women cram themselves into the train for their early morning commute, all that body-to-body contact begins to take a sexual toll on the passengers. The men’s casual groping quickly leads to all-out molestation. Shocked, the women are resistant at first. But there’s no escape from a moving train. So it’s not long before these reluctant ladies give in to their own perverted passions and go with the flow. Soon the whole train is alive with sexual energy as it drives and thrusts toward its dripping-wet destination.

The Review:
Audio:
Pervs on a Train manages a bilingual presentation for its release as we get both an English and Japanese stereo mix encoded at 192kbps. The show isn’t one that really has that much of a workout to it as it’s a pretty center channel based mix that doesn’t utilize anything in the way of depth or directionality, which certainly isn’t a surprise. With little music to the show, there’s only some basic train background noise at times beyond the dialogue and sex sounds themselves so the mix suits it well enough. Dialogue is clean and clear throughout and we had no problems with dropouts or distortions during regular playback.

Video:
Originally released in 2007, the transfer for this two episode OVA series is presented in its full frame aspect ratio. With a shortened episode runtime, it wasn’t a surprise to see that the show has some very basic production values to it that are serviceable and little else. The resulting transfer is one that is decent but unexceptional. Colors are bold and vibrant and generally maintain a solid feel though there are backgrounds those showcases a bit of noise at times, generally within buildings and the like. The only other issue is a fairly standard one in that there’s some aliasing going on during the various pans and zooms that occur. Beyond that it’s a decent looking transfer of unexceptional material.

Packaging:
Kitty Media has completely gotten the cover art right for this release as it uses the image of the blonde girl getting fondled in front of the window of the train which we see from the outside. What makes it work so well is that besides the artwork being pretty good looking, they did up the logo in a graffiti style that just sells it completely. The color across the entire thing is great and it has a very appealing look to it, which sadly isn’t mirrored in the content. The back cover is done rather well too as it uses rail maps for its background and then merges some character artwork with it to build up the theme. A group of shots from the show are spread across it as well and the summary deals with all the basics of the premise, which is far more wordy than it needs to be. Toss in the production credits – which actually include the original OVA names – and the technical grid and you’ve got a really that’s packaged much better than the actual content.

Menu:
The menu design for the release takes the key elements from the front cover and simply rearranges them, which isn’t a bad thing. The cover art is very appealing and it all looks more vibrant and alive here in this form. The layout is very easy to navigate and submenus load quickly for what little you need to use them. With nothing on the disc outside of some trailers, it’s just language setup and scene selection should you need to visit them. Language setup was a requirement for us though as the disc did not read our players’ language presets properly and defaulted to English with sign/song subtitles.

Extras:
None. And I really wanted a visual representation of where all these trains went so I could get into it more.

Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
Originally released in 2007 as Pleasure Commute and Free Zone, Pervs on a Train is a surprisingly short little show in which each episode is barely over eighteen minutes in length. And with adult material, it’s all about the length. Pervs on a Train simply comes up short but in more ways than one. With two very brief shows centered around a rather tried and true concept, there isn’t anything here that really stands out and entices. It could survive if the animation and sex scenes were of better quality but even that’s fallen by the wayside into mediocrity at best.

In Pleasure Commute, we’re introduced to a rail riding pervert of a guy who has a narrator talking about the skill, beauty and importance of Perverts that are on trains. This particular gentleman moves about the train easily and has his way with women in the crowded cars, getting his hands on them over their clothes but also removing a good deal of them in order to get them off. His luck is rather good considering how far he takes it but his luck doesn’t last forever as he meets a woman who calls him on his poor skill and tells him to get better. Rather than that being the plot though, the Pervert heads off to another woman, a cute green-haired girl in a Chinese dress, and proceeds to take advantage of her. She even convinces him to stay with her on the train to Shizuoka so that they can go all the way, which is really the only decent scene for the episode.

In Free Zone, the show revolves around something a bit different as we’re introduced to a Professor named Shiori who has been brought to a website by another student which showcases one of her students being sexually tortured. Shiori wants to find out what’s going on with this girl named Marina and tries to tease it out of her at the school. She doesn’t get far though as Marina goes into something of a hypnotic state when her cel phone goes off and she proceeds to go to the train station and board one of the cars with a group of unsavory men. Shiori follows all of this to figure out what’s going on and discovers that it’s turning into a big sex scene that will make its way to the adult site. Of course, Shiori’s intention to help only leads to her being taken advantage on the train as well in a full on sex scene that leaves little to the imagination.

The main problem with both stories, especially in comparison to some other train shows we’ve seen before, is that it’s done in a way that’s damn near impossible to suspend disbelief. The first episode is bad enough with this as the Pervert has the women popping out of their tops or their skits hiked up high. The length full on sex scene isn’t so bad since it’s later in the day and the car is mostly empty, but the other scenes just make it far too hard to suspend disbelief over. The second episode is similar in that there is quite a lot of audacity in taking over an entire car in the middle of the day and having a very explicit sexual encounter there with the women stripped bare and taken several different ways. While it is just porn, there are some expectations that I have about it, and I’ve been spoiled by some better shows in the past that deal with this particular genre.

When it comes to the character designs, the show really is pretty basic and you can almost say that they phoned it in. The first episode deals with rather straightforward designs where you have well-endowed women in tight clothes riding the train that stand out and attract attention, whether it’s the blonde in the halter top or the woman in the business suit. Toss in the girl in the very short Chinese dress and it’s almost like pandering in a bad way. The second episode runs with the school motif by using the sailor uniforms and involving a professor but there isn’t anything that really stands out with them. The designs are the kind that you would imagine being used as a launching point for ideas, not the end point which is what we get here.

In Summary:
I didn’t have high hopes for this series just based on the runtime and it containing two very different shows, but Pervs on a Train was more disappointing than I expected it to be. With weak animation and “plots” that had me rolling my eyes even quicker than usual, it simply didn’t do its intended job of being enjoyable. A lot of what these episodes felt like was a high school student project by people who haven’t actually had much sex or know what it takes to make something erotic. It’s all pretty amateurish overall and certainly not a show that merited the full pricing that it got from Kitty. It’s even more surprising that they went through the effort to dub it. While Pervs on a Train isn’t drop dead awful, it’s the kind of show where striving to be mediocre would be an effort.

Features
Japanese 2.0 Language, English 2.0 Language, English Subtitles

Content Grade: D
Audio Grade: B+
Video Grade: B
Packaging Grade: A-
Menu Grade: B
Extras Grade: N/A

Released By: Kitty Media
Release Date: April 14th, 2008
MSRP: $29.98
Running Time: 40 Minutes
Video Encoding: 480i/p MPEG-2
Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1

Review Equipment
Sony KDS-R70XBR2 70″ LCoS 1080P HDTV, Sony PlayStation3 Blu-ray player via HDMI set to 1080p, Onkyo TX-SR605 Receiver and Panasonic SB-TP20S Multi-Channel Speaker System With 100-Watt Subwoofer.

When a teacher loses his sister due to a group of students who abused her, he concocts a plan for revenge that involves dehumanizing his class.

What They Say
Professor Ohse always seemed a bit strange, but no one guessed he was a deranged sadist. Building a homemade bomb, he now holds the entire campus hostage. As the police and spectators watch helplessly outside the school gates, the students are forced to enact the professor’s twisted desires for terror, torture, and degradation. And while nothing seems to be able to defuse the explosive situation, hope comes in the shape of a brave faculty member.

The Review:
Audio:
The bilingual presentation for this release mirrors what the Anime 18 label put out years ago with a decent sounding pair of stereo tracks encoded at 192kbps. There’s nothing but dialogue here for the most part and a couple of explosions basically fill the forward soundstage but they don’t overwhelm it, which should be expected of a show of this vintage and genre. Both language tracks are well presented but there’s nothing really noteworthy about them beyond the fact that they get the job done. Both tracks are clean and clear throughout and we had no problems with dropouts or distortions during regular playback.

Video:
Originally released in 1998, the transfer for this two part OVA series is presented in its original aspect ratio of 1.33:1. Or at least, so says the packaging as it looks like Kitty Media has miss flagged the video here as it comes across as 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen instead. This happened with a couple of episodes of Beast King Golion from Media Blasters and it appears to have hit the same way here. The transfer beyond this obviously big flaw is fairly decent with lots of strong colors that are well maintained. A few backgrounds showcase some noise at times, such as the green hallways or some of the darker scenes, and there’s some cross coloration to be found as well. But it’s hard to discern how much is from the source and what’s caused by the show being flagged improperly. Anamorphic hentai from 1998 wasn’t something I expected to see…

Packaging:
With a title like Professor Pain, it’s obvious that you have to go for something rather direct for the cover artwork. The front cover has a very edged look for the logo while the artwork has a pair of the girls done up with bindings and stripped, one of them hanging on a cross. With a dark and ominous background, it works pretty well to let you know exactly what you’re in for. The back cover works this over as well with chains serving as borders to the artwork and layout with a number of shots from the show that look nasty. The summary covers the very basic plot of the show well enough while the remainder is given over the production credits and technical grid. The technical grid is accurate in listing that this show should be 1.33:1 (but isn’t) but they also omit the audio tracks and a subtitle track. The audio section is actually empty! And the slates subtitle track isn’t listed at all. Kitty Media is usually one of the best for their technical grids, but this one fails in so many ways it’s very surprising.

Menu:
The menu design utilizes the same artwork as the cover but spread out a little bit more and looking a bit more vibrant. The colors are definitely stronger here and it has a very evil feel to it with the instrumental music that loops. Submenu navigation is very simple though it looks bad since it’s done at an angle and the selection piece is a far too garish colored lightning bolt. Access times are nice and fast and language navigation is simple though busier than it needs to be. The disc didn’t read our players’ language presets and defaulted to English language with sign/song subtitles.

Extras:
None.

Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
Originally released by Anime 18 from Central Park Media back in 2003, Kitty Media has acquired this two part OVA to give it a new life. It’s easy to understand why as it’s a completed product and they just had to put it through a quick new encode, toss some basic credits at the end and run it through their subtitle font. The downside is that the bad side of the original is here as the school is again referred to as a university and any spelling mistakes from the original make it through as well. Even worse though is that the content is not improved in the slightest as this is still a disturbing and ugly show on a number of levels.

Professor Pain is a story that takes things to one level of extreme, the kind of show where there’s pretty much nothing consensual going on here. The OVA opens quickly with the local “college” literally exploding, an event we see just after there’s something of a catfight in one of the classes due to one of the girls breasts being way to perky. Once those explosions hit though, everyone stops what they’re doing and begins to panic. They then think they’re in the clear when their teacher shows up, but he’s not quite his normal self as he informs them that in his case is another bomb and that he’s ready to set them off.

As we learn, he’s reached his limits in how the students are behaving and he’s going to teach them a real world lesson. After getting some less than willing but motivated male students to serve as his assistants, he starts by informing them that they’re going to learn some interesting lessons. The first is to take one of the female students and start with basic anatomy lessons, which then turn into a “how girls pee” lesson. And then how they engage in oral activities.

And then they go on to deal with other students, either publicly humiliating them, such as tying one up in ropes and swinging her outside the window or having a general class orgy begin. Of course, with all the explosions the question does come to mind, where’s the police? Well, they and the news media are outside trying to figure out what to do, since they were tipped off by the professor, to begin with and given instructions. So to further humiliate the students, much of what’s done is broadcast on both the TV and the internet, untouched and without mosaics.

As the episodes continue, there’s plenty of moments like this as well as the blossoming of a romance between two characters. We do learn of the reasons behind the professors’ mad plan, which serves to provide an excuse of sorts for what he’s doing. It’s all quite silly when you get right down to it. With these kinds of situations having no appeal to us, it wasn’t quite a pain to get through but it certainly didn’t achieve its goal of titillating us..

In Summary:
Professor Pain wasn’t a show I was eager to revisit, but I’ve had varying levels of success in revisiting some shows recently with new editions that I wanted to give it the benefit of the doubt. It’s still a pretty disturbing show with its share of violence and humiliation that’s done in a way that simply isn’t appealing. When characters are sent into near comas based on what happens to them and are being blown up left and right, there’s not much that most people can find gratifying in there. It doesn’t work as a humor piece either since it tries to take itself seriously and doesn’t play it for laughs. This is one of those shows that’s aimed at a very specific subgenre that hasn’t appealed to me for a long time and even now, some eleven years after its original release, still feels pretty creepy.

Features
Japanese 2.0 Language, English 2.0 Language, English Subtitles

Content Grade: D-
Audio Grade: B+
Video Grade: D
Packaging Grade: B
Menu Grade: B-
Extras Grade: N/A

Released By: Kitty Media
Release Date: December 30th, 2008
MSRP: $24.99
Running Time: 30 Minutes
Video Encoding: 480i/p MPEG-2
Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1

Review Equipment:
Sony KDL70R550A 70″ LED 1080P HDTV, Sony PlayStation3 Blu-ray player via HDMI set to 1080p, Onkyo TX-SR605 Receiver and Panasonic SB-TP20S Multi-Channel Speaker System With 100-Watt Subwoofer.

In order to reclaim honor for their family, Matagoro must find five female ninjas and bring them to ecstasy so that they can locate the real hidden treasure.

What They Say:
Samurai XXX: Feudal Japan was a land beset with warfare and strife. Families were torn asunder and siblings were divided by conflict and chaos. Matagoro Yoshimura has been hired by the feudal lords to seek out a treasure of incredible wealth – but there’s a catch… the only way to find this cache is by gathering the pieces of the map that have been hidden on the backs of female ninja scattered throughout the land.

The only time these hidden maps will reveal themselves is when the ninja carrying it is in the throes of passion. Is Yoshimura “up” to the task of putting together the puzzle pieces and finding the treasure?

The Review:
Audio:
The audio presentation for this release brings us the original language of Japanese in stereo as well as the English language dub, both of which are encoded at 192kbps. The stereo mix on it is pretty much as expected with a hentai release which means it’s a pretty full sounding mix that’s center channel based. Dialogue comes across well and the music makes use of the stereo channels but mostly we get a simple and clean mix that’s problem free. Dialogue is clean and clear throughout and we had no problems with dropouts or distortions during regular playback.

Video:
Originally released in 2003, the transfer for this two OVA episode series is presented in its original full frame aspect ratio. The transfer itself looks quite good other than a slight bit of aliasing here and there and some slight cross coloration in a few scenes but nothing that really stands out, mostly due to all the suppression built into both the monitor and player. The colors in the show look good through and maintain a solid feel but a couple of scenes, generally the sex scenes it seems that take place indoors, tend to look a bit softer than the scenes around it.

Packaging:
Using some very good looking detailed artwork of a pair of the ninjas from the show, the front cover does a cute job of mimicking the Samurai X logo and looking pretty lusty in general. The designs look good and it definitely could be a crossover title if there wasn’t, well, actual sex inside. The back cover has another shot of really detailed artwork of one of the girls that just looks great but as you can tell by the screenshots next to it, the show itself isn’t quite so good looking. A decent summary is mixed between the two layers of images and the bottom is the usual array of production and technical information. The insert provided has another nice illustration piece with the chapter listings next to her while the reverse side is just boxart advertisements.

Menu:
Going with a simple menu as most hentai releases do, it’s a static image of the one of ninjas that Matagoro faces during the course of the show and pretty much a use of some of the artwork from the cover though with a bit brighter color it. A brief bit of instrumental music plays along to it and the menu is very simple and easy to navigate. The disc did correctly read our players’ language presets and the access times are nice and fast with quick loading menus.

Extras:
None.

Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
Feudal era anime series, in general, do pretty well and have a fair number of basics to them that transcend each of the series. When it comes to the hentai versions, they usually go by much the same but they’re a bit, er, looser with what they have to go by. While most regular series try to play by the times and dress their characters up appropriately, the hentai series tend to have their female ninjas dressing in rather loud and lavish outfits that aren’t all that functional. Easy to remove, of course. Functional, not so much.

Samurai XXX takes place during this feudal era and plays out just like the PC game it’s probably based on. Even more so than a lot of other game to hentai conversions, this one just screams it. You can practically envision the dialogue bubbles coming up whenever these characters speak and the exact same words showing up in text there. We’re introduced to young Matagoro, a samurai whose not all that good at being a samurai (but seems to have been able to kill one or two of them as he then goes to sleep with their wives to console them as we see at the start). The family line isn’t all that respected within the lands that they’re part of but all of that is about to change.

With the return of a spy who does shortly after imparting his knowledge, the Takigawa territory contains a treasure within it that could help fund the lord here that would help end the war that they’re involved with very quickly. The problem is that the spy died without really being able to properly verify his story, particularly since it’s riddled with some strange ideas. The map to the treasure was found, but in order to hide it even better so that his lord could have it, the spy had it burned into the backs of five young women. But it only appears on their backs when they climax. Such tales don’t impress those in the lords’ court, but Matagoro’s father has heard of such methods before and decides to send his well endowed but shoddy son off to find it, even though the first warrior he meets would probably kill him just by looking at him.

So as it goes, Matagoro and his massive flesh sword go off into the Takigawa territory to find each of these women. He’s also got a secondary goal of finding his long lost sister who was stolen in broad daylight by ninjas over ten years ago. Well, she’s not really his sister as they’re not blood relatives, which means you can see where that’s going to go once he finds her. As he travels, he ends up coming across each of the women and through various non-lethal methods, is able to take them down and then go down on them in one fell swoop. Some are fairly innocent, such as the woman who has never been with a man, some are weird such as the woman with flowers instead of pubic hair, but overall they’re fairly uninteresting in nature and their performances are weak and unappealing.

A lot of that comes down to the poor animation in this. A lot of the character animation looks very flat and like it’s really on top of the backgrounds. And some of the background movements are so funny that it’s amazing they had the gall to even do it. But when it comes to the characters, the real culprit is that the character designs for the women in general just aren’t appealing on almost any level. And when you have an uninteresting character like Matagoro whose fleshy friend is just silly looking at times, well, ok, more silly looking than it is in reality and in other hentai shows, you find yourself rolling your eyes more than anything else.

In Summary:
While a lot of hentai series are plenty predictable, this one projects so hard that it’s ridiculous. Between that and the uninteresting character designs, the overly simplistic storyline and the bland sex scenes, Samurai XXX just doesn’t cut it with me. There’s a lot of good hentai out there and a lot of really awful hentai out there, but it’s the below average stuff that hurts the worst since the really awful stuff tends to at least be funny. This is just an hour of attempted mediocrity and coasting on its source material.

Features:
Japanese 2.0 Language, English 2.0 Language, English Subtitles

Content Grade: C
Audio Grade: B+
Video Grade: B
Packaging Grade: B
Menu Grade: B-
Extras Grade: N/A

Released By: Kitty Media
Release Date: June 15th, 2004
MSRP: $29.95
Running Time: 60 Minutes
Video Encoding: 480i/p MPEG-2
Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1

Review Equipment:
Sony KDL70R550A 70″ LED 1080P HDTV, Sony PlayStation3 Blu-ray player via HDMI set to 1080p, Onkyo TX-SR605 Receiver and Panasonic SB-TP20S Multi-Channel Speaker System With 100-Watt Subwoofer.

The folks at SoftCel Pictures have scheduled another release from a series they talked about when they resurfaced previously with Sex Hypnotist Zero. Known as Saimin Jutsu Zero in its original release, the two OVAs came out in 2013 from Milky Animation. Softcel Pictures has scheduled a September 12th, 2017 release for it on Blu-ray only with the original Japanese language track and English subtitles. It’s priced at a low $19.98 before any retailer discounts for it.

Plot concept:  If you’re a pretty girl and have to go to the school infirmary, you’d better watch out for Dr. Murakoshi Shinta. If that lecherous excuse for a physician is in charge, you might get a very thorough physical “examination” instead of just an aspirin or a bandage! Even if you don’t remember anything strange happening, you’re still not safe. While Murakoshi may not be a very good doctor, he IS an excellent hypnotist with a knack for putting the female student body under his spell. It’ll be up to his various patients to start comparing “Doctor Notes” to see if they can figure out why they’ve all been feeling so strange lately… and why they all feel so oddly compelled to keep making return visits to SEX HYPNOTIST ZERO!

A pair of stories surrounding the loves and lives of a few men manages to top most of what’s come out before for yaoi stories in anime form.

What They Say:
Seiji Yamada is a young Shonen manga artist who is a big fan of fellow artist Sono Hanasaki. When the two meet it turns out that Sono is a fan in turn, and it’s a match made in heaven for the two young men…almost. Ueno is an innocent pet-sitter who is hired to take care of what turns out to be a young man on a leash. This encounter leads to a relationship much more serious than either of them had anticipated.

The Review:
Audio:
The audio presentation here is kept simple as we get the original Japanese language track in stereo encoded at 192kbps. The release, being aimed at such a small demographic, is done without an English language adaptation though plenty of dub studios have said that they’re more than game to tackle material like this. The Japanese language track is pretty much problem free here with it being a very simple stereo mix that’s center channel based for its dialogue but a bit wider when it comes to the music and effects portion of the track. Dialogue is clean and clear throughout and we had no issues with dropouts or distortions during regular playback.

Video:
Originally released to video at the end of 2004, the transfer for this OVA is presented in its original full frame aspect ratio. While it’s not a high-end glossy OVA release it’s one that captures the look and feel of the author’s original manga work and looks good by the materials used here. The transfer is clean and clear with no visible problems such as aliasing or cross coloration. The colors are a bit soft in general as it looks intentional but they maintain a good solid feel throughout whether it’s a light color or one of the few darker moments. With just the one episode here, there isn’t a lot of competition for space so this just looks really good overall.

Packaging:
The cover artwork for this release looks to use the original author’s illustrations as it has the characters from the first story, wrapped up in some warm clothing, snuggling up together with a fairly soft and indistinct background. The designs look appealing and it’ll certainly work on the target audience. The back cover goes for a bit lighter colors in the layout with more pinks and rose shades as it provides some non-explicit but very teasing pictures from the two episodes. The summary covers the basics and the listing of the discs features and technical information is well laid out and easy to find. No insert is included with this release.

Menu:
The menu avoids using artwork not only from the cover but in general and uses the background design from the cover with the shows logo above the larger than normal text for the selections. With no language selection here there is less than usual but having extras gives it a bit more so that the text for the selections isn’t overwhelming. Access times are nice and fast and with the languages being what they are, our presets were pretty much moot.

Extras:
Unlike most adult releases there are actually a couple of extras here. One is a series of storyboards and another is a gallery of the character designs.

Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
Back in 2003, Ashika Sakura started a new manga series called Sensitive Pornograph which was scooped up to become an OVA that arrived about a year later. The OVA takes two separate stories and gives each of them about fifteen minutes to run, in which they actually get a surprising amount done overall. What’s different about this show compared to just about every other boys love show brought over so far is that it is explicit.

The opening story is one between a very feminine looking man named Sono and another man named Seiji. Both of them are manga artists, Sono an established author of older women’s manga while Seiji is a rookie upstart type that’s making some waves for himself. It starts off with them in bed waking up together and taking care of that morning issue before it goes back to show how the two of them met, got drunk and ended up realizing just how attracted to each other they are. It goes into some of the ways that they have to deal with their relationship and work but for the most part it allows for a couple of explicit sex scenes wrapped up in a relaxed and problem free kind of romance without some of the usual kinds of things we see in these, like yakuza relations or just being freaked out by the entire concept.

The second episode is a bit more up front about things as we meet Ueno, a young college man who makes a bit of extra money by working as a pet sitter on-call. Instead of heading out with friends for the afternoon, he takes on a job of watching a rabbit for someone who will be out of town until the next day. He’s given instructions on how to get into the apartment which work flawlessly but he can’t seem to find the bunny. He’s horrified at the thought that the bunny may be in the closet where he hears something but he’s simply shocked when he opens it up and there’s a very effeminate young man with lilac hair that’s bound, gagged and handcuffed in there. He brings him out but the guy says little overall and just starts to seduce Ueno as he goes on about how it’s something that his master is making him do. What surprises him though is that Ueno ends up getting into it and makes sure that the slave enjoys what’s happening for him as well.

Visually, the show is nicely done with attractive character designs that have that certain appeal that most yaoi oriented series do. It’s got the mix of the effeminate and the more regular kind of guy being involved and the animation level itself is decent. It’s not a high-end production but it captures the essence of what the manga was getting across and that almost dreamlike quality that a lot of the scenes are trying to promote. The scenes do get surprisingly explicit though which is something that’s been more obscured in the past and done from less obvious camera angles so it makes some headway in that department as well.

In Summary:
Sensitive Pornograph is definitely a winner for those that are interested in this genre. Though the stories are short they don’t feel as dragged out as some previous releases in other series have. They provide for a decent enough story to be covered within the timeframe and both of them are different enough that you don’t feel like you’re getting the same thing with each of them. With good looking character designs and animation plus the new level of explicitness, this is one that yaoi fans need to check out and hope to see more of.

Features
Japanese 2.0 Language, English Subtitles, Storyboards, Character Design Gallery

Content Grade: B-
Audio Grade: B
Video Grade: B+
Packaging Grade: B+
Menu Grade: C+
Extras Grade: B

Released By: Kitty Media
Release Date: September 27th, 2005
MSRP: $24.98
Running Time: 30 Minutes
Video Encoding: 480i/p MPEG-2
Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1

Review Equipment:
Sony KDL70R550A 70″ LED 1080P HDTV, Sony PlayStation3 Blu-ray player via HDMI set to 1080p, Onkyo TX-SR605 Receiver and Panasonic SB-TP20S Multi-Channel Speaker System With 100-Watt Subwoofer.