The main characters almost have sex in the first episode??? Color ecchi fans surprised…
Anime
The Winter 2017 anime with the best ecchi so far turns out to be a serious drama of unrequited love with high production values called Kuzu no Honkai (Scum`s Wish).
Plot synopsis from AniDB:
17-year-old Awaya Mugi and Yasuraoka Hanabi appear to be the ideal couple. They are both pretty popular, and they seem to suit each other well. However, outsiders don’t know of the secret they share. Both Mugi and Hanabi have hopeless crushes on someone else, and they are only dating each other to soothe their loneliness. Mugi is in love with Minagawa Akane, a young teacher who used to be his home tutor. Hanabi is also in love with a teacher, Kanai Narumi, a young man who has been a family friend since she was little. In each other, they find a place where they can grieve for the ones they cannot have, and they share a loneliness-driven physical intimacy. Will things stay like this for them forever?
drama, manga, psychological, romance, school, seinen, unrequited love
Key Visual
Nice artwork.
Characters
Hover over images for character names and descriptions. All character info is from MAL.
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- Yasuraoka, Hanabi – A freshman when she met Mugi, now 17 years old high school girl. Hanabi has been in love with her childhood friend Narumi, affectionately calls him “Onii-chan”.
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- Awaya, Mugi – Another high school student who is in love with the music teacher Akane.
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- Ebato, Sanae – Hanabi’s only girl friend who is in love with her. Sanae hates men due to an accident during her freshman year.
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- Kanai, Narumi – Hanabi’s older childhood friend who becomes her homeroom teacher in high school.
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- Minagawa, Akane – The music teacher and former tutor that Mugi is in love with.
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- Kamomebata, Noriko – Mugi’s childhood friend who has been in love with him after learning the form of “prince” and “princess” and has been trying to act and look like one ever since. She’s also went to the same elementary school as Hanabi. Hates her name and prefer to be called “Moka”
Episode 01
A setup episode so good that you almost don’t realize that it is setting up the rest of the show….
From the OP. Looks like kissing is going to be a thing in this anime.
Also from the OP. Doesn’t look like panchira is going to be a thing in this show. That’s a shame.
And again, from the OP. Yuri might be a thing in this anime…
Tears so early in the episode? Not a good sign…
Missed opportunity for panchira…
The music teacher is a real looker. And she knows it too…
Do they look like boyfriend and girlfriend to you???
Well now, are the main characters going to have sex in the first episode???
Use dat tongue mc-kun…
Mc-kun can’t be too beta if his hand knows where to go…
Add one more anime to the list for french kissing. Still pretty rare overall…
Thoughts
There is a whole lot of seinen going on…
It’s a love polygon. Of unrequited love. Every which direction. Every which way…
The main characters almost having sex in the very first episode was a nice surprise for ecchi fans…
But the big problem with that love scene is that she was crying…
Production values are high. Nicely so. Nice artwork, writing and direction. Nothing comes across as too generic, especially the characters. Multi-layered. Complex. With both positive and negative emotions. Some nice dialogue too. (Which is not included since I am using Leopard Raws for my reviews.)
Horny teenagers. Full of hormones. Who don’t like themselves very much. And pine for a love that they can never have. Yet are intelligent and thoughtful. Even if they can’t control how they feel and act.
Avoid Wikipedia if you want to avoid spoilers (and some pretty bad Engrish). Even the character descriptions have major spoilers.
Definitely not an anime for everyone. Especially if you don’t like angst and drama with your ecchi. But if you’re an ecchi fan and you want to see see a little more “action” than most anime shows this season, you might want to check Kuzu no Honkai out.
