Until just now, 2019 was looking the leanest year for ecchi since the millenium. That was until the Fall season showed up. There might be more good ecchi this season than the rest of 2019 combined.
I put each of the notable shows this season into tiers below:
- Tier 1 represents series that probably won’t have much fanservice, but will have pretty girls and maybe some sexy outfits.
- Tier 2 is for series that are slightly more wildcard in nature, where nudity is highly unlikely but feels remotely plausible.
- Tier 3 is for series that had nudity in the source material, but for whatever reason I can’t guarantee it in the anime. Unfortunately in recent years we’ve had a rash of nude manga that got non-nude anime, so this is the cautiously optimistic expectations tier.
- Tier 4 is for series where nudity in the anime can already be fully guaranteed.
Tier 1
Ore wo Suki nano wa Omae dake ka yo – October 3rd
Z/X: Code Reunion – October 8th
Assassins Pride – October 10th
Tenka Hyakken: Meiji-kan e Youkoso! – October 13th
Tier 2
Kono Yuusha ga Ore Tueee Kuse ni Shinchou Sugiru
White Fox
Source material: Light Novel
Source material eroticism: Sexy girls in sexy outfits
Service level expectation: Tejina Sempai. Very sexy, some jiggle and bounce, etc. But a normie comedy vibe makes nudity feel unlikely.
This show looks like a lot of fun. The girls are sexy and even the preview goes out of the way to show some boob physics. The premise is one of a high-effort humor style of Isekai / RPG style comedy, but that can work in anime if the rest of the pieces are clicking. You’ll hate yourself for laughing but you might laugh anyway.
Will it have nudity? I’m guessing probably not. There’s famously no nudity in the vast majority of light novels, and nudity in the manga adaptations isn’t always predicative either. Currently there’s just one volume of the adaptation out right now and it does not seem to have nudity as far as I can tell.
White Fox isn’t against doing nudity, or even shameless fanservice, but they tend to stick to the source pretty tightly. So unless the source material is more erotic than I’m aware of, this is probably more of a fun watch than a fap watch.
Kono Yuusha ga Ore Tueee Kuse ni Shinchou Sugiru already aired its first episode.
Azur Lane
Bibury Animation Studios
Source material: Video Game
Source material eroticism: Sexy girls in sexy outfits
Service level expectation: Kancolle
The game looks fun, and the anime looks gorgeous. Yet this would seem to be yet another shining example of a very popular series that drives guys in droves to the hentai / doujin sections of the internet to get their fix when the source material entices but essentially can’t deliver. You poor bastards.
While Kancolle seems like a very obvious comparison both as an anime and in terms of fanservice, a few things have changed in recent years to the point where a video game adaptation going for nudity no longer seems completely crazy.
The odds are extremely long here, but it might be worth watching anyway for the eye candy.
Azur Lane begins airing on October 3rd.
Sword Art Online: Alicization – War of Underworld
A-1 Pictures
Source Material: Novel, Light Novel
Source material eroticism: Sexy girls
Service level expectation: Pretty mild, though…
A-1 Pictures delivered one of the most unexpected nipple sighting ever when the Sword Art Online movie hit theaters last year. I think it was probably just done on a lark, a complete fluke that will never happen again. But seeing as how the response from the fanbase was largely positive to that decision, could it be that A-1 is turning a new leaf here?
Probably not, but it might be worth following this series just to find out.
Sword Art Online: Alicization – War of Underworld begins airing on October 13th.
Tier 3
Choujin Koukousei-tachi wa Isekai demo Yoyuu de Ikinuku you desu! (aka Choyoyu!)
Project No.9
Source material: Light Novel
Source material eroticism: Multiple onsen nude scenes in manga adaptation, though with typically with low detail nipples
Service level expectation: If all goes well – it could be at Renkin San-kyuu Magical Pokaan service levels
I was actually compiling this manga, on ebook no less, before someone else on this site beat me to the punch on a manga compilation. If the manga were the sole source here, I’d be pretty confident that this would be an anime to be excited about. But since the manga is adapted from a light novel (which doesn’t have nudity), we can’t say for sure if the anime will keep the nudity in the various onsen scenes throughout the series.
Project No.9 has a long history of producing shows that are right on the edge of being worthy of nudity and then opting not to show anything, other than one very sneaky nipple sighting for like two frames in Momo Kyun Sword. So even though I like the work this company does, I’m worried that they are the perfect company to screw this one up.
If there is extensive nudity on BD, it will be a first for Project No. 9. I’m choosing to be cautiously optimistic here. Very cautious. But the upside here as an ecchi series is substantial.
Choujin Koukousei-tachi wa Isekai demo Yoyuu de Ikinuku you desu! begins airing on October 3rd.
Val × Love
Hoods Entertainment
Source: Manga
Source material eroticism: A-tier manga. Not as good as To Love-Ru but reminds me of it. Massive amounts of nudey fun
Service level expectation: Monster Musume no Nichijou
Val x Love isn’t always the prettiest manga, and the anime is not a looker if I’m going to be 100% honest. Hoods is an inner circle hall of fame company when it comes to ecchi, but they really struggled here to conceal the lack of budget with this one.
They also went the re-draw route (Monster Musume) over the censorship route (To Love-Ru), which is not a decision I favor personally as I feel it tends to discourage nude scenes as they effectively represent extra work.
It’s also why I have to put this anime in Tier 3 despite being a 99% lock for nudity. As much as I’d like to just slap a guarantee on this series, I won’t soon forget the failure that was Keijo!!!!!!!!, and there are other examples too. Hopefully there will be an announcement soon for a sneak preview DVD bundle or theatrical airing that puts our doubts to bed.
With that said, knock on wood, this series is very likely to be like Monster Musume where the nudity from the manga is faithfully brought to the anime, but with various obstructions on the TV version such as magical hair placement, screen cropping, or random foreground objects. I saw a sneak peak of the first episode a couple days ago and it seems this will be the case. Lets just hope the BD delivers. Or there will be hell to pay.
As far as this series goes, I love the manga. It’s probably one of my ten favorite ecchi manga currently running. The art style is clunky but it works, and the nudity is effective by being in that Goldilocks zone of not being too prude but not being too exploitative either. The ‘harem’ that forms around the MC feels sufficiently diverse, both in appearance, body type, and personality. Like I said, this is To Love-Ru lite at best, but even that is more than most series could pull off.
I’ll review the first episode later this week, but having seen the first episode, I am a bit disheartened by the lack of production values. It’s basically as bad looking as Seven Heavenly Virtues was. The good news was that the one likely nude scene at the end saw a noticeable uptick in the art quality, hopefully that remains true throughout the series.
The key to success for this series will be if it can manage to reach the 5th and 6th volumes of the manga during what is hopefully a 12 episode run. Those are the best for service by far.
Val × Love begins airing on October 5th.
Tier 4
XL Joushi.
Magic Bus
Source: Erotica
Source material eroticism: Erotica
Service level expectation: R-18 anime
This is the usual R-18 anime for the season. As for what the XL stands for… we can only guess.
XL Joushi. begins airing on October 7th.
Kandagawa Jet Girls
TNK
Source material: Video Game
Source material eroticism: Sexy girls in sexy outfits
Service level expectation: An even better version of Vividred Operation.
This month is the 4 year anniversary of Takaki and Kaneko teaming up for their first co-op anime project- Valkyrie Drive. Now we get their second, and possibly last such effort. It was announced earlier this year that the long awaited project would be called “Jet Girls.”
Naturally, there was a lot of excitement for this project early on before any details emerged. However, things took an unexpected turn.
For reasons that are shrouded in mystery, Takaki suddenly left Marvelous Entertainment while in this midst of this project. His work on Jet Girls continued, but it seemed plausible if not likely that Takaki was only there to fulfill his contractual obligations.
This led a lot of people to speculate, myself in included, that there may have been creative differences between the two parties. Given that Takaki is a true ecchi fanboy like any of us, this seemed to doom the Jet Girls project as being anything meaningful as an ecchi series. Or so we thought.
An early airing of the first episode showed a quick changing scene with conspicuously weak censorship. Filtered versions of that scene revealed the presence of nipples beneath a hazy black cloud. A preview for episode two had another such lightly censored changing scene. Shortly after, it was announced that the AT-X airing of the show would have a parental lock, which is a virtually guarantee for nudity.
This was exciting news as there hadn’t been a new IP for a moe/nude ecchi series since Vividred Operation aired six and a half years ago. You’d be forgiven for thinking that genre was dead and buried (granted, Jet Girls is only quasi-moe, but I’ll take it). Not only that, but the previews for the series have looked pretty, and even without the nudity there’s been a lot of high quality fanservice.
In the end, Jet Girls may end up going from a cautionary tale to being the best ecchi series of the year. This makes the Fall 2019 season not only the best of the year but one of the best since 2015.
Kandagawa Jet Girls begins airing on October 8th (AT-X).
Notable OVA
Nande Koko ni Sensei ga!? OVA
The 13th ‘unaired’ episode will come bundled with this series when it releases as an entire season for blu-ray on December 11th.
Overall Thoughts:
Three months ago I looked at the docket for the Fall season and thought it might be the worst ever. Since then, multiple series with nudity were announced for this season at the 11th hour, and Jet Girls did something most did not expect by going for nudity. The Fall season got saved in dramatic fashion, and yeah… it was needed.
As said before, 2019 was looking like one of the worst years ever for ecchi in recent decades. Now 2019 feels average. With the Olympics just around the corner, I’ll take it.
If Choyoyu! delivers on its potential then this could be a season with four shows that have present or future nudity to watch each week. It’s been a long time since you could say that about an anime season. Enjoy it while you can, these kinds of seasons don’t come around very often.
