Despite being a very strong anime season overall, there isn’t a lot going on ecchi-wise this Spring. DxD Hero should do more than enough to make up for that, and hopefully Cutie Honey comes through as well.
Here are some Spring 2018 shows ecchi fans should be aware of:
LadySpo
Source material eroticism: None
This TV original shortform anime is being billed as a sci-fi comedy where girls from various “sports” backgrounds team up as space bounty hunters. I think. It’s pretty confusing.
Obviously, there’s no telling if this show will be ecchi or not, but the character designs, and quite frankly the premise, at least hint at some potential for trashiness. And that’s a good thing.
High School DxD Hero
Source material eroticism: Well established
The DxD franchise remains an incredibly rare specimen: an utterly fapable anime with a mainstream following.
After a much needed production reboot the series is back and doing its best to help us forget about how badly the previous season left things.
While I personally feel the previous character designs were better (that is, sexier), it also seemed like the series was just about out of gas the last time we saw it. DxD needed a shakeup to feel fresh again, and I think these changes will probably accomplish that, at least visually.
Thankfully, the voice-acting crew was kept completely as far as I can tell. It’s going to take some getting used to hearing those same voices with such different appearances, but then again, I could hardly imagine anyone else playing Issei, Rias, or Akeno. And of course best girl, Koneko!
As far as content goes, we don’t know exactly how much nudity this series will have, but the trailer teased nude scenes (and even had a partial nip slip). The AT-X airing has a parental lock, meaning we don’t even have to wait for blu-ray to see how Passione’s team has done with the most important scenes.
I don’t know if hype is the right word, maybe intrigued? Passione certainly knows that this series has a lot to live up to, and it will be interesting to see what they are capable of.
Full Metal Panic! Invisible Victory
Source material eroticism: Up for interpretation
Wow, has it really been 16 years already? It seems even the anime industry isn’t immune to nostalgia.
The first season aired just four months after 9/11, and in a subtle way I think reflected the mood of the time. Dark, intense, but also patriotic and pro-military. And it was funner than it probably meant to be. It dated very quickly as attitudes about these kinds of things took a sharp turn not long after, but there’s good reason this series has a place in many fans’ hearts, especially anime fans in their 30s.
There was some fanservice in season one, or at least there were a lot of sexy girls, but it wasn’t the main focus of the series or anything like that.
The second season was a total left turn, abandoning the serious themes in favor of slapstick humor. It was also way sexier than the previous season, frequently pushing the limits of how sexy non-nude service could be.
The third season was pretty decent, but probably tried a little too hard to be serious. Weirdly, season three had the only nude scenes in the series (and as far as I know the only nude scenes ever done by Kyoani) despite the overall fanservice level being much lower than season two.
So as you can see, this series has been all over the place fanservice wise. I’m just guessing, but my hunch is that season four plays out the most like season one. There will be some sexy parts, but nothing that has pervs counting down the days for blu-ray (would love to be wrong).
Tachibanakan Triangle
Creators in Pack & Studio Lings
Source material eroticism: Partial nipple sightings
Sometimes referred to as “Tachibana-kan to Lie Angle,” this series is a 5 minute short based on the yuri harem ecchi manga of the same name.
Ihavenoname already started covering this series. As noted in his post for episode one, the manga has partial nipple sightings, and the TV anime at least appeared at one point to be censoring a partial nipple sighting by covering it with a cherry in the foreground. And the official twitter for this anime has gone out of its way to tell us that this cherry will be gone on blu-ray.
It could just be bullshit, but my hunch is that it’s probably legit. Not that this show will be all that much ecchi wise, but we’ll probably get a few partial nipple sightings since that would be consistent with the manga.
Amai Choubatsu: Watashi wa Kanshu Senyou Pet
Source material eroticism: Hentai (I’m assuming)
I haven’t been able to confirm the salaciousness of the source material yet, but given that this series follows the exact same five minute TV hentai formula we’ve seen many consecutive seasons now, it’s probably a safe assumption.
This particular offering has kind of a Fifty Shades vibe to it, with a bit of NTR mixed in.
Cutie Honey Universe
Source material eroticism: Well established
Speaking of nostalgia, here we have yet another anime celebrating the 50th anniversary of Go Nagai’s manga career.
Of all the original manga/anime demigods, Go Nagai did the least to conceal his pervy ways. This was particularly the case with Cutie Honey, a character created just as an excuse to show as many uncensored changing scenes as possible.
The anime adaptations haven’t always been faithful to this intent though. The first TV series only had a few (super sneaky) nipple sightings during its original 70’s run. The second TV series in the 90’s, Cutie Honey Flash, was even sneakier. It literally had just one frame that showed a nipple.
The Cutie Honey OVAs of the 90’s and 00’s (New Cutey Honey and Re: Cutie Honey) got the important details right, I guess feeling that releasing on OVA gave them more content freedom.
So how will the first Cutie Honey TV series in the era of blu-ray changes handle this content? AT-X does not list a parental lock, unfortunately. Devilman Crybaby didn’t hold back on Go Nagai’s trademark perversion in the slightest, but there’s no telling if the producers of Cutie Honey will have a similar philosophy. The PV revealed blank boobs on a couple of transformations.
I loved the 90’s OVA version. Even if it didn’t polish up Go Nagai’s character designs as much as it could have, it still showed how sexy a Cutie Honey anime could be.
I’m bracing for disappointment, but there is vast potential any time Cutie Honey gets an anime. It’d be a shame to dedicate an anime to Go Nagai and NOT show everything. Hopefully they get it right the same way Netflix did with Devilman Crybaby.
Other notes on the 2018 Spring season:
Between the end of the Spring 2018 season and the Summer 2018 season we’ll get to enjoy three notable ecchi OVA releases.
Yuuna and the Haunted Hot Springs on July 4th
Yuuna will of course be a big deal as it has a chance to be a sort of spiritual successor to To Love-Ru in terms of ecchi content + art. There will also be yet another OVA just after the series on October 4th.
Queen’s Blade Unlimited on July 13th
Queen’s Blade Unlimited will kick off an undetermined number of OVA releases starting in July. No release date for the second OVA has been announced yet, which hints that Hobby Japan is playing this Queen’s Blade reboot by ear. Hopefully it does well.
Bikini Warriors OVA II on July 27th
Bikini Warriors’ first “OVA” project was actually a director’s cut of 6 of the original 12 episodes to add nudity, while also adding on two additional bonus episodes that didn’t hold back. This second “OVA” project is essentially finishing what the first OVA started, now adding director’s cuts for the remaining original six episodes, and tacking on yet another two uncensored bonus episodes. Adding in the bonus episode that came bundled with Cleric (?) last year, that will bring the series up to 17 total episodes, all with at least some nudity. For a show that started off 100% non-nude, it’s rather impressive how good of an ecchi series Bikini Warriors has become.
