Fall 2020 has the most ecchi relevant shows a season has had in a long time, though unfortunately none of them are likely to be compilation worthy.
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
Dungeon ni Deai wo Motomeru no wa Machigatteiru no Darou ka III
Tonikaku Kawaii
Tier 2
Iwa Kakeru! Sport Climbing Girls
BLADE
Source: Manga
I discovered this manga last year and was so excited to read it. The manga art style is pretty sexy, and the novel concept makes the ecchi stuff more interesting. Unfortunately, the service remains PG-rated through several volumes, and I would expect the anime to be the same. Nudity is incredibly unlikely here but I would certainly love to be wrong.
Iwa Kakeru! Sport Climbing Girls begins airing on October 4th.
Tier 3
Dogeza de Tanondemita
Adonero
Source: Digital Manga
This is the first anime adapting a work by the amazing artist Kazuki Funatsu (Sundome!! Milky Way, Addicted to Curry, and Yokai Girls). All of his series are heavy on nudity and Dogeza is no exception.
Unfortunately, it’s only a 5 minute episode format. But it wouldn’t shock me if there was nudity in every single episode.
Dogeza de Tanondemita begins airing on October 14th.
Strike Witches: Road to Berlin
David Production
Source: TV Original series
Loli fans rejoice! Strike Witches are finally back.
It’s amazing to think that the first season of this series aired way back when George W. Bush was still the US president. It’s hard to believe it’s been THAT long. Even the second season turned 10 years old this summer.
Since then, we’ve had some OVA’s here and there, we had a spinoff anime called Brave Witches in 2016, and a 4koma adaption in 2019. As everyone knows, the 2008 and 2010 series had tons of nudity, but the OVAs that followed had way less, and Brave Witches had like a couple scenes maybe. The 4koma adaptation had none at all, though that was expected since 4koma manga very rarely go there.
With all that said, those OVAs and spinoffs were not true sequels. Road to Berlin IS a true sequel and is basically “Strike Witches III,” which is actually what it was called early in production. A lot of us have been eagerly waiting for a third season for ten years. So why am I not more excited?
Well, it was frankly a different world for the industry back in 2008 and 2010. Studios were actually making money on just nude fanservice alone. The biggest hits in ecchi anime history mostly came into production from 2008 to 2012. But since then, the novelty has worn off and even really good nude ecchi anime can expect mediocre sales.
Over time, this series has slowly but surely moved away from pure fanservice to pure moe. I hope I’m wrong, but I expect this season to be a lot more like Brave Witches fanservice-wise than Strike Witches II.
That said, a complete fanservice shutout would surprise me. Even Azur Lane had a big nude scene in the middle of the show. So we’ll probably get some BD nudity to look forward to eventually. Honestly, even if this show is half as good for service as Strike Witches II, that’s a huge win.
Strike Witches: Road to Berlin begins airing on October 7th.
Tier 4
Otona nya Koi no Shikata ga Wakaranee!
Ether Kitten
Source: Manga
The R-18 anime for the Fall season.
Otona nya Koi no Shikata ga Wakaranee! begins airing on October 4th.
Ookami-san wa Taberaretai
Peak Hunt
Source: Manga
The other R-18 anime this season. Oddly, it began airing a few weeks ago and already finished at just three episodes that were five minutes apiece, making it one of the shortest anime series ever.
Funny enough, this series was the result of a contest where the winner submitted a manga for an anime short. There’s always a catch…
Notable OVA
Strike The Blood IV
The third volume releases on October 9th, and the fourth volume on December 23rd.
Dokyuu Hentai HxEros
The first of two manga bundled OVA releases on November 4th.
Yuragi-sou no Yuuna-san
The OVA sendoff for this anime comes bundled with the final manga volume on December 4th. It should be interesting to see who does the production- Xebec doesn’t exist any more. Hopefully they can get the Xebec talent to freelance for just one OVA so that it doesn’t feel totally different.
Overall Thoughts:
At first I thought this season was going to be a total dud, especially after I heard about Ex-Arm getting postponed to 2021 due to covid-19. But it’s actually not that bad.
There’s going to be 27 episodes of short-form R-18/ecchi anime to watch total this season, which in terms of screen time is almost half of a standard TV series worth of nudey anime.
Strike Witches is probably going to deliver at least some nudity eventually on BD, Climbing Girls is a long shot for glory but still has a chance provide some pervy fun, and Hestia fans will certainly be happy that DanMachi is back for a third season.
On top of that, we have the best season for OVA’s in quite some time- four Strike The Blood episodes as well as what are sure to be fanservice jammed OVA episodes of HxEros and Yuuna-san.
It’s funny, after we all thought for years that 2020 would be a disaster for ecchi because of the Tokyo Olympics, it ended up being the strongest year for ecchi since 2015 instead. Hopefully 2021 can be as good to us as 2020 was.
