Few nude ecchi series are this fun or well made, at least during the season’s first half when it more closely followed the manga. The fanservice was lighter than I would have liked it to be, though any nudity from a company like Artland is a pleasant surprise.
__________________
Download Links
Torrent. Seeders needed! Please seed for as long as possible when finished.
__________________
Series Information
Production Company: Artland
Vintage: Spring 2010
Nipple sightings from other Artland produced anime:
Gall Force: The Revolution, Legend of the Galactic Heroes, Megazone 23, Aoki Honoo
Other notable / recently relevant mainstream anime from Artland:
Gunslinger Girl II, Katekyo Hitman Reborn!, Mushi-Shi, Senran Kagura
_____________
Notable Seiyuu:
Aoi Yuki as Korone
Aoi Yuki is also well known for her roles as:
Yoko Hikasa as Junko Hattori
Yoko Hikasa is also well known for her roles as:
Shizuka Itou as Fujiko Etou
Shizuka Itou is also well known for her roles as:
Aki Toyosaki as Kena Soga
Aki Toyosaki is also well known for her roles as:
Haruka Tomatsu as Eiko Teruya
Haruka Tomatsu is also well known for her roles as:
Also featuring:
Jouji Nakata as Peterhausen
_____________
Thoughts on the anime
If the anime industry were a basketball team, Artland would be its star point guard. Though heavily involved with several noteworthy animes at fairly high levels of assistance, they only occasionally helm projects of their own, and when they have, they have often been noteworthy.
Artland has been around a long time, dating back to ages past when having nipples in movies and OVAs was just par for the course as anime was considered an adult genre, contrasted with today where seemingly most anime fans are still in grade school. In terms of TV nudity, Artland had seemingly acted as though such a series was beneath them, until this show came along.
Artland is well known for their consistent quality in regards to art, character design, production values and storyboarding, and all of those strengths are evident in their first and only nude ecchi effort.
They also did themselves a solid by landing a ridiculously loaded seiyuu cast, including a breakout performance by Aoi Yuki just as her star was about to rise.
In many ways, the fanservice “structure” of this series reminded me of Vividred Operation, which was also made by a prestigious anime company (A-1 Pictures) that was reluctantly popping the “nipples on TV” cherry for the first time.
A-1 would have probably preferred to do Vividred Operation non-nude, but the threat of fan backlash (including sales backlash) from Strike Witches fans likely compelled them to include nipples. Watching that anime, the resistance to show nudity was palpable, it often felt forced and was usually very brief. Regardless, the nipple count in Vividred was still much lower than that of Strike Witches, and I think to compensate for that they upped the “ass shot” count through the roof.
I think something similar happened here. Not including nipples would have been a betrayal of the Daimaou manga, and in 2010 nudity in ecchi was very much on the upswing, so Artland pretty much had a “what the hell” moment and decided to go for nudity. But not without hesitation, nipple sightings rarely lasted more than a couple seconds, and on numerous occasions could be missed if you blinked at the wrong time. Artland deserves a lot of credit for going the extra mile by giving us fanservice specials on BD, but even those were built around brief nudity.
To compensate for this, we got a ton of ass shots, including a massive dose of bare butts. If there is a TV series out there with more bare butts than Daimaou, I have yet to see it, and there aren’t a ton of ecchi series I have yet to see. It’s worth noting that many of those bare butt moments did not exist in the manga. For example, Kena’s “invisible form” has her in a leaf bikini in the manga. In the anime, she’s just bare ass naked all the time.
It’s worth noting that the source manga wasn’t especially enamored with lower body curves. This was definitely a preference of Artland’s staff.
As far as the anime itself, it was pretty fun and had a relatively high amount of mainstream success and received mostly good reviews, not something you often see in blatant ecchi.
_____________
Thoughts on the fanservice video
I hope you like butts. Ass shots dominate the non-nude section.
Due to the consistently brief nature of the frontal nudity, I had to use a very high number of pauses and slow-mos. My favorite part was probably where a topless Junko chases after our Demon Lord hero with intent to kill. Her boobs bounce quite nicely and it made for a gifable moment that was a video highlight.
_____________
Favorite Character
Eiko Teruya had my favorite personality (sexually aggressive), Fujiko Etou was the one I wanted to see naked the worst, Korone was good fun and Kena was the most likeable. Any of these characters would be a good pick, but I think my vote would go to Junko.
For one thing, I favor her because she (in my opinion) looks the best naked out of all the girls, and she also had the most exposure over the course of the anime. But mostly, it’s because I am a sucker for tsundere characters and Yoko Hikasa is always so damn good in everything she does, especially ecchi. She isn’t revelation here like she was as Hana in Seikon no Qwaser, nor is she as composed as Rias from DxD, but she gives an impressive dynamic performance suitable for the difficult to play tsundere archetype and helps drive the comedy aspect of the anime.
