Bang
This episode turned out better than I could have ever hoped for. Thankfully, there isn’t much to write about, with the exception of some post-episode thoughts on the series as a whole and the prospects for a season 2.
The world’s shortest and most abridged shopping sequence just took place. It’s a bit more involved in the manga, but this is the exact pace they’d need to take to get to the sex scene.
Another heavily abridged sequence – this time the labyrinth gets the cut. Michio wants to show off for Sherry, but she seems more interested in Roxanne, to his disappointment.
Sherry once again has some questions on the nature of Michio’s abilities, in particular his ability to cast magic without incantations. She gets little more than some blunt answers and a request to simply accept things how they are, however.
Michio reaches over to serve Sherry before Roxanne, but Roxanne’s face clouds over, indicating to Michio that the order in which his slaves are served is very important to her. He gets the hint and serves Roxanne first.
The job unique to humans in this world is known as “Sex Maniac.” This helps Michio in the future, as with it he is able to last many rounds with all of his girls, every night.
And from this point on, there isn’t much to say. As I say for almost all the ecchi moments and sex scenes, there’s no helping male instinct here. He sees naked women in a bath, gives them a rubdown, and relaxes with both girls in his arms. You’d be lying if you said you wouldn’t do the same.
For whatever reason, they decided to make Sherry’s nipples inverted in the anime, whereas you can see in the manga that this is not the case. My guess is that this was done to give some variety to Sherry. This could explain her behavior as well, when it comes time for her to get slammed.
Roxanne is once again angered that her status as the first slave is being compromised. Michio manages to ease Roxanne’s anger though. The order of service for his slaves is of great importance to Roxanne. Kissing Sherry first here was a grave mistake he only barely managed to correct.
They expanded Roxanne’s scene here. The above frame is the only “on-screen” sex you see in this chapter with her. I do feel that the time given to Roxanne should have been given to Sherry instead, and not just because I prefer Sherry. But, what’s done is done.
Sherry seems to behave a bit differently in the anime. In the anime, you can see Sherry spreads her legs of her own accord. Some images below, you’ll see that it is Michio that spreads them open. I think this was to give some variety to the way the girls behave towards Michio, as even though it would make the most sense for a girl that’s about to have her first time with a person she’d just met and was bought by in the same day, having Sherry react in the same shy and understandably nervous manner would probably bore most.
It may seem awkward for me to mention this so bluntly, but the above two pictures are of Sherry being penetrated for the first time. Obviously, the angles are much different. They certainly took liberties with Sherry’s first scene as you will see below.
Of all places to change the anime up, it turns out that doing it for the sex scenes has some good potential. I did feel that some of these scenes could use some expanding, and while it’s nice to see it being done, I do feel that Roxanne’s presence here detracted from what could have been an even greater presence for Sherry.
Unfortunately, several of the above images are static only. Only to return to fully animated pounding following this. I should add here that Roxanne joining in is also an anime change. Again, probably to spice things up.
I could have (and wanted to) make a stitch of the above, but many of the frames were blurred. There is only so much my stitching software can compensate for. In this case, it would simply be too blurry to enjoy.
Sherry has a post coitus talk with Roxanne. She seemed to notice that Michio was a bit wild, but Roxanne thinks he was just excited that a new girl was present. Roxanne also manages to ease some of Sherry’s anxiety, and they mutually look forward to living together.
Michio’s unlocked his human racial job. And with it, declares that he will use it to grow his harem. Following this, we have a very interesting credits scene of Michio acquiring his other three girls. Interesting, in that they even went out of their way to provide visual context into how he gets them. It will be literal years before we see some of this in the manga.
I did not cut off Miria’s head here by negligence. The frame after this, she moves her head, so this is the best that can be done. Miria herself is about as flat as Roxanne when it comes to personality. She likes fish, and isn’t able to speak with anyone but Roxanne very well.
Vesta’s personality shines here. She is the only one of Michio’s girls that aggressively approaches him in bed for her first time – all other girls were as nervous as Roxanne for their first.
Rutina’s pride as an elf noble is briefly demonstrated here, with the haughty look on her face, as is the breakdown of her pompous demeanor, at least in bed. Initially disgusted with Michio, she comes to realize the serendipity of her situation – she truly was fortunate to have been given to Michio of all people.
The harem begs Michio to be his next. Unable to decide, he declares he’ll do all of them at once.
And this is the last frame of the series. I didn’t notice until just now that Vesta has absolutely massive areola’s in this frame.
With the 12th and final episode of this anime broadcasted, I have a few thoughts to share. Whatever you think of the series as a whole, I will maintain that it is not for everyone – it very clearly has demonstrated its potential to turn people away. If you think it’s too slow or that the service is not good enough, that’s fine. I will also maintain that its potential is expressed in the way it was presented, even in its pacing. I am a fan of the slow pacing because delayed gratification is a rare thing to see in media these days, even moreso in the ecchi space. I will not argue that it was at least disingenuous to use the word harem in the title (at least for the anime), but given how closely they were following the manga, and the lovely pitfall that is copyright law, they didn’t have much of a choice. You may say that they could have skipped much of this content to get to the harem, but you would then run into the issue of people reading the source and being annoyed at the manga pacing. No matter what, you’re doing something wrong in someone’s eyes, and the greatest mistake to make is to attempt to please everyone.
As for the prospects of a season 2, in my opinion, it is very doubtful there will be one. I had once believed that they’d use Sherry as a bait for a second season, but this episode clearly proved me wrong. With the end of this episode, we’ve just cleared Chapter 44. At the moment, the manga is at Chapter 64, with 65 coming in a few days unless I missed a delay post on the manga artist’s twitter. Miria is coming soon enough, but there is still a bit to go before she’s even seen. You may say that the Light Novel and Web Novel exist to provide context and input to any episodes from the anime that extend past the current manga chapter, but the anime, with a few exceptions, adapted from the manga almost panel-to-panel. I don’t think it’s this simple though – there is plenty more to do than just take information from the text sources. There is a lot of storyboarding, concept art, visualizing environments etc. that must be done before any episode planning is to take place. Around the time Miria shows up, the world and story begins to expand, which means more money spent on voice actors, as well as more money spent on the aforementioned art. I suppose there is the possibility that in a year’s time, with another 12 chapters done, the production begins and the rest could be feasibly storyboarded, however roughly, by the manga artist. But, with the way the anime ended with the harem scene, it brings along the feel of finality, that the last scene was made to entice people to reading the additional material. It would definitely feel awkward if they get to Miria a second time. I simply feel that Kadokawa has achieved their goal here in advertising this series. Of course, I was wrong in many of my predictions for this series anime, so I could be wrong again.
Regardless, this episode is not the end for this series. There are still two BD specials to be released, and I will obviously be covering those. I’ll see you in a few weeks time for Futoku no Guild.
