Someone once said… the word “Hero” is made from “H” and “Ero.”
After being announced last Fall the most anticipated ecchi anime of 2020 is finally here. There’s a lot to be excited about, lets get into it:
So here we get the first censored scene in the show. What’s really interesting is that while this scene exists in the manga, the wardrobe malfunction and resulting exposure does NOT happen in the manga. Right off the bat we’re (potentially) getting some anime original titties. Liberties are being taken!
It’s also worth noting that the light beams which censor are not in frame sync with the rest of the animation, suggesting they were added after the fact as a form of “overlay” censorship. This kind of censorship is where the original material is drawn nude, but a second overlaying image layer is later added which blocks the naughty bits. For example, if you’ve watched the censored High School DxD TV broadcasts you’ve seen how the nipples were blocked by flying red D’s that were clearly added as an overlay. To Love-Ru infamously used steam and light as overlays to censor, etc.
As I said before, I’m a huge fan of this method, because it means that de-censoring is as easy as disabling a layer. The easier (cost effective) a show is to de-censor, the more likely it is to actually get properly de-censored later. It’s probably the best indicator of a show having nipples on BD that you can find.
So hopefully that actually happens here and we don’t have another Val x Love disaster, though in fairness Val x Love did not use overlay censorship. Anyway, on with the review:
Blasting the contrast/levels here doesn’t reveal a nipple, but it does reveal an opaque white wall in that area. It seems they are hiding something.
The overlay censorship was very obvious here.
I might add a redgif here later, but those titties bounce around for a good 4-5 seconds.
It’s hard to tell for sure, but if you go frame by frame on this part there are a few frames where outer edges of areola appear faintly visible from behind the stars. Nothing definitive, but a subtle and round-shaped skin “pinkening” sometimes appears to be there.
The box might be removed on BD. It is on a separate layer from Kirara’s ass.
End Credits
Overall Thoughts:
I went into this episode with high expectations and a cautiously optimistic mindset. My expectations were exceeded and my optimism increased significantly.
The production values are very high, roughly on par with the phenomenal Maken-Ki Two! OVA and better than any anime ecchi anime since then. Virtually nothing looks ugly or cheap, other than a tendency to overuse glossy lighting.
The character designs actually feel upgraded from the manga, which isn’t something you see a lot in ecchi anime productions. These new designs have a very clean attractive quality to them that reminded me of both Maken-Ki! and the Fate/stay night related anime franchises. As it turns out, the director of this series also directed two seasons of Fate/kaleid liner Prisma☆Illya. You can definitely see the influence on the character design here.
Not only do the faces look better, but in my opinion the bodies do as well. We’ll have to see how the nipples turn out later (I’m a little afraid they’ll lack definition) but the curves on these girls look very pleasing as they are effortlessly drawn, whereas in the manga (as much as it is worth praising) there is a lot of clunkily drawn body shapes. In particular, the manga version can’t draw an ass to save its life. Maihime’s ass in the ED credits is better than just about any ass found in the manga version.
And most importantly- the censorship style being so clearly overlayed as opposed to being “baked in” puts my fears of this show being another Val x Love mostly to rest. I’m now genuinely curious about the “less censored” version of this episode which airs in about a week. We’ll hopefully know a lot more about this show’s potential then.
As far as the story goes, probably the most apt comparison would be Kenzen Robo Daimidaler. Both center around arousal as a super power, both put emphasis on a developing romantic pairings instead of developing an anything-goes harem, and both have weird non-human villains that attempt to double as comedic relief. Over-the-top seiyuu extraordinaire Rikiya Koyama even serves as the series narrator for both series. I’m not saying the story is amazing, but so far it’s being delivered smoothly and the showrunners did a good job of getting me to care about the two main characters.
The anime released alongside the 10th volume of the manga and the 7th volume of the color version. The first episode was so impressive that it actually made me appreciate the manga version more too. It’s fun seeing where things in the anime will be going next. The first episode of the anime also provided a few clues about what we’ll get from the totality of the TV show.
Most anime tend to cover about two chapters per episode, which works out to being four or five volumes in a twelve episode format, assuming normal episode length. However, some series cover more ground. For example, Triage X covered an insane nine volumes of content in just ten episodes. This was because nearly all the nudity in the manga occurs in the first nine volumes and they wanted to make sure they got to all of it that they could.
The ending credits of HxEros reveal the four main girls all in their powered up forms, which we don’t see in the manga until the end of volume five. There isn’t a good “ending spot” in the story until volume six though, so I’m guessing that’s what we’ll end up with- six volumes getting covered- which works out to one volume per two episodes.
There’s actually a LOT that happens in those six volumes, almost all of it fanservice. The service scenes in this series tend to be short but there are so many of them. There might be a hundred unique nude scenes in the first six volumes. At least.
I’m not sure if an anime could handle an almost ten nude scenes per episode pace, some of those scenes probably won’t make it. But a lot of them will. The fact that the very first episode gave us a nude scene that wasn’t even in the manga seems to indicate that this series is looking to maximize these chances though. Here’s hoping.
