Konohana Kitan starts off well, with four instances of bathing in just the first two episodes.
There is some bad news. There’s no overt censorship to telegraph future greatness, little to no obvious signs of future redraws, no random nip slips… the possibility of Lerche dropping the ball here feels very real.
With that said, you can look up the fanservice reviews on this site for Lerche’s last nude service manga adaptation, Monster Musume, and see a very similar trend of inconspicuous TV airing scenes that turned into nude scenes on blu-ray.
As such, some imagination may be required on these fanservice breakdowns.
Episode 1
The fox tails are going to be annoying in this series aren’t they?
There’s no evidence of squished pixels here that would suggest a zoom-in, but this still feels like a very tight shot (one of many to come). There’s opportunity to be had here on BD with only a modest zoom out, if so desired.
Some long distance potential. It almost feels like they have a dampening effect around her chest and face, but it’s probably just a weird style technique.
Some zoom out potential.
Some redraw potential.
It’s hard to get excited about long distance shots like this. But with that said, even this shot shows how clear the water is even on the TV version.
Some obvious potential here. Though the wavy water effect could be annoying.
Some zoom out would be golden.
Convenient foreground object.
Yet another shot that is just tight enough.
That damn tail…
All in all, not a bad first onsen scene, and technically the second bathing scene already given the towel bath shown at the very start. But the first episode isn’t done. There was another onsen scene to come:
More zooms needed.
Some potential.
Much, much more potential.
Foreground object!
More shots that are suspiciously tight.
Something to keep in mind. It’s photography 101 to leave at least a little room above the head. Notice how a lot of these conveniently tight shots do not have headroom? The consistent lack of headroom might suggest that these shots are zoomed.
Episode 2
Redraw potential.
Not much standing in the way here.
Pretty…
Another shot that feels almost uncomfortably tight.
Oh, the things I would do to that… tail. /sigh
Overall thoughts:
Having done this review, I regret not getting the manga compilation on the site prior to this post. If you could see for yourself the dozens of nipple sightings from the manga, and couple that with Lerche’s previous history with this type of material, you’d understand why I’m speculating so heavily here.
And while I bring up Monster Musume as one reason for optimism, in fairness I should also mention a few key differences. Lerche had a nip slip moment in the very first episode of Monster Musume, and they also had the uncensored broadcast available at special showings. And the Monster Musume manga, while also being slice of life themed, was also more overtly ecchi.
I still think Konohana Kitan series will have nipples on blu-ray, but I would say my faith was shaken at least a little by the first two episodes. I was really hoping to see some shots that more or less winked at the camera for future changes, and I didn’t really see anything quite that obvious. Hopefully we see some nipple potential that is more overt going forward.
It’s worth nothing that the first nipple sighting in the original manga (Konohanatei Kitan) didn’t happen until around the seventh or eighth chapter. So it’s entirely possible that these first four scenes were all meant to be non-nude, with the nude scenes coming later in the series.
At any rate, it will be fun to find out. We haven’t had a good speculative series for nudity since Bikini Warriors. Playing detective is kind of fun.
Oh and lest I forget, the art and animation for this series is very impressive. I don’t think it’s quite as pretty as To Love-Ru Darkness (2012), but it’s pretty much in the same zip code. Hats off to Lerche for such great quality, especially in the current era of tight budget anime.
