More nudity than the ova but something still bugs me.
The movie version has finally aired in theaters in japan today. As luck would have it crunchyroll seems to be showing it online as well which has resulted in not needing to wait for a cam rip. The good news is that there is more nudity than the ova that came out in june. The bad news though is everything else. To start the movie is censored still with lightbeams and shadows during certain parts including those that were uncensored in the ova. This doesn’t seem to be an issue exclusive to crunchyroll’s version either since from what I could tell based on twitter comments from those in japan the theater version has the same censorship which makes sense since for some asinine reason they decided to have the movie rated pg12 in japan instead of r15 like all other movies with this kind of content settle for.
Also as expected the sex is removed as well killing one of the main appeals of the series. They even censored the censorship that the ova did to censor one of the sex scenes. Seriously. Anyway I’m not going to go into detail over every little part in the movie like I might usually do since the post will be too long because of it being a movie. Plus can’t really care as much after the movie pussied out so instead I will just focus on the service parts to screencap and such. Will save you from having to watch it for the good parts.
We get some stuff that the ova skipped such as the beginning. However if you have read the manga you will notice something is missing here. I discussed this when I covered the ova but here is where they could had made things right but not only did they not but they removed what they did with the ova. During this point we should had gotten the first sex scene shown as a flashback to when Chitose catches Mirei fucking a teacher in a classroom in exchange for good grades. Mirei also notices that Chitose was watching. This is used to establish the hate both of them have for each other which is a somewhat important plot point.
In the ova they changed this by having the ova open with an anime original scene of the main girl Mutsumi being bullied by Mirei and her friends and forcing Mutsumi to strip in order to get her bag back till Chitose shows up and saves her thus establishing the hate the two have for each other that way. This movie adaption not only skips that sex scene still but they don’t even include that ova original scene which they used to replace the sex scene. So they removed the sex scene and replaced it with something else and then removed that something else so we have nothing at all. Censoring censorship. Not off to a good start. Here is what was removed if you are wondering..
I somewhat wonder if this was censored here and the camera is supposed to be lower on BD maybe.
After the girl getting killed while trying to pee scene is when we finally reach where the ova began when it released 7 months ago. If you want to see that stuff and the media I created for it you can look at my original post on it here since I’m not going to repeat it all here and am just going to skip right to where the ova ended. However I will show one screen just to give you an idea of the censorship here. While the ova was uncensored the same is not true here with the nude scenes having this shadow hue surrounding the whole scene making it hard to see. When the scene pans you only see a small part of it at a time as the whole thing is dark like what you would see in a game when you are moving your flashlight across something in a dark room. This shadowy flashlight type effect we will see a lot more from here on out as well.
We now reach the part right where the ova ended and the movie continues on. After escaping the forest and getting to the beach they have to get in the water to wash off any ticks that might be on them. The movie skips Mutsumi’s explanation and other stuff before they get in and just skip right into the baths. And here is where we get the most nudity and also the biggest fail of the movie at the same time.
To start this whole scene has a lot of the shadow effect on it which we can assume will be removed on BD. However the big issue is japan fearing consensual sex as per the requirement for working in the anime industry and removed the sex scene here as well. So apparently showing a girl fingering another girl’s pussy and asshole is okay but consensual sex between two consenting people is wrong and has to be removed. The lesbian stuff wasn’t even 100 percent consenting either which is probably why it was left in. Ayumi is reluctant to it at first as Mami forces her into it all for the purpose of convincing her to protect her. Shit this is almost the same thing that Mirei does next with Atushi to convince him to help her but she doesn’t force it onto him and he just takes the free pussy offered up. In other words non completely consensual lesbian sex is fine but straight full consenting sex is not this is japan logic. The scene with Mirei and Atushi is completely removed with the scene cutting away right before they fuck. Instead it switches to focus on the other guy’s hand having bugs crawling in his skin during this part.
We do hear moaning in the background during this as well which could mean one glimmer of hope but I would not be surprised if they just straight out changed it to that instead. Maybe and this is a really big maybe the BD will add the sex scene back in here and they simply censored it for theaters. But if that was the case why was it removed entirely instead of simply being shown heavily censored or at least give some hint it was still there to potentially be expanded on in the BD. If they had shown something even if just one single static frame with a huge amount of shadows or censorship to it I would at least be somewhat hopeful but instead they show nothing at all. They had no issue showing the lesbian fingering censored so why was this not done here as well. Considering the other sex scene was removed as well and shows no hints at all of being put back in and even going so far to remove what replaced that sex scene in the first place I find it a struggle to even get hopeful here. To make matters worse the director of this is the guy who did yosuga no sora. How in the fuck could you betray us like that? Pray for BD changes but expect nothing just to be safe. Here is what we missed out on being animated..
How I feel about this adaption and the staff.
So not only was there a major change here compared to the manga but we get even more bullshit that only japan could produce. After they get back inside having locked the other’s out both of them head to Chitose who is still on the table. Here Mirei tells Atsushi to put his dick in Chitose’s mouth to shut her up as he takes off his pants as Mirei herself gets ready to rape Chitose as well. In the manga this was Mirei only doing anything. Atsushi was too busy upset over what just happened and wasn’t involved and yet here they decided to make him a rapist as well. Not only does this hurt his character but remember what was removed earlier and why this is even more bullshit? So you remove a consenting sex scene but add more to an attempted rape that wasn’t there in the original.
As for the other major change here they completely rewrote the entire scene. In the manga right as Mirei is about to do stuff to Chitose a giant crab shows up and stops her as her and Atsushi have to fight it. The crab also rips a large amount of Mirei’s clothes off resulting in her wearing much less from that point on but here since the crab never appears we don’t get that. Eventually the others get inside and kill the crab and save everyone and tie Mirei and Arsushi up. However in the movie instead of the crab appearing they just have the others find a way in and knock both Atsushi and Mirei out and tie them up having saved Chitose.
And with that the movie ends as they are getting ready to leave the facility and escape. There is an after credits scene which shows the other group at their base whom the main characters will eventually join up with next. Probably was put in to serve as a cliffhanger for them to make a sequel. We end on about the halfway point of volume 2 out of 6. So they do have way more content to use on a sequel if they make one assuming anyone even wants it.
So we got more nudity but everything else from sexual content to even the violence was toned down. Why even bother making this a movie when you are one going to tone it down in the first place and two censor it still despite being toned down. Where is the logic? Did they do this to get a pg12 rating? Why? For what purpose? The manga is clearly the equivalent of an R rated horror movie in manga form and yet you decide to adapt it into something not. Christ if japan had things their way we would probably see them make a pg rated friday the 13th movie if they could. Seriously even the blood and death in this thing was censored why in the fuck was this not rated r15 and shown uncensored other then to force BD sales. R rated movies here in the US are rated r15 in japan for the most part so that is what should had been done here. Did they really think 12 year olds were eager to go and see a movie like this. The made in abyss movie got it’s rating changed to r15 recently so it seriously seems like they deliberately censored and toned this movie down just to get a lower rating. Sacrificing artistic vision all for a lower rating how nice.
The biggest bullshit though was removing the sex scenes. Not only are sex scenes pretty much a requirement for any horror movie but it was probably the main appeal that separated this from your standard ecchi in the first place making it stand out. We got nudity and women groping each other yeah but so what? Plenty of anime have nudity and yuri groping but you know what they rarely have? On screen sex. The fact that encountering a shiny pokemon has a higher chance of happening than seeing an on screen sex scene in anime is what made this series having sex scenes appealing as it put it on a different level and made you think “maybe we will get the rare occurrence of that which anime steers away from in this adaption”. And yet we get the same bullshit that we get regularly of removing sex from source material when adapted.
I myself was pretty certain we had nothing to worry about way back when I did the news post about the adaption getting announced because of the staff involved. The director not only did the aki sora ovas which was best instance of actual softcore porn in anime form we ever got. But he also is the guy that directed yosuga no sora which I still 10 years later applaud for having the balls that all other anime lack. We got on screen sex multiple times in that. Finally an anime that was trying to be adult and acknowledge the fact that people have sex instead of just holding hands like other shows. The director had balls of steel and yet we get nothing like that here. We already saw last season stuff like val love removing most of it’s good content and not restoring it on BD and then there was jet girls which despite being directed by kaneko was massively weak. I think I mentioned this once before as well but back in 2017 I was going to do posts on king’s game since the manga had nudity and on screen sex in it and since it was being animated by an actual literal hentai studio I assumed all would be fine and yet the nudity was removed and sex changed to implied despite being done by a studio who makes porn. And then we have something like this with sex in it’s source directed by someone that previously did what very few were willing to do in regards to sexual content and yet chickened out here as well. Can you really trust anyone in this industry anymore?
For another comparison the heaven’s feel 2 movie was only rated pg12 like this was and yet it still showed straight sex despite that. Sure it was really tame sex compared to say what we see in R rated movies but you could still clearly see that it was a male and female fucking. So in other words there isn’t some bizarre japanese ratings board thing where straight sex can’t be shown at all but lesbian sex can in pg12 movies to justify the removal here. Something anything could had been done to at least hint at potential changes on BD but they did none which is really killing my optimism. The only potential tiny hope I can find is the fact that we heard moaning in the background so they at least recorded something like that but was that only done to imply and not show it so they could still keep that story element while simultaneously chickening out? Also during the very last frame pan it seems to sort of freeze for a second or two at the last frame before cutting away but that could in reality just be incompetence who knows. The only real thing giving me hope the BD could be better is the director’s history but even then we can’t be fully confident in stuff like that anymore.
Yosuga no sora had movement added to it’s sex scenes on BD so this director has shown to be someone willing to have redraws put in. However it still doesn’t change the fact that yns at least still showed those sex scenes in ways that implied what was happening rather than cut away completely like what happened here so even then I can’t be fully optimistic about the director’s history being relevant here when it comes to BDs. A release date for the BD has yet to be announced so no way of knowing when to expect that yet. Hopefully we get an announcement for it and it brings up maybe extra runtime and decensorship. Until then this is all we have to go on with no evidence of any major changes other than presumably the lightbeams and shadows being removed from some of the nude and violent parts. I really really hope my rant here is made obsolete months or whenever from now when we do get that BD. Maybe they will surprise us and will add both of those sex scenes back in that they took out and we can all praise it for having balls just like yosuga no sora did and praise the director for still being based. But so far it’s hard to get hopeful from what we saw so far but all we can do now is pray just like we have done for so many other anime in the past that the BDs will deliver only to end up disappointed in the end when they don’t. Maybe will can delude ourselves enough to think maybe this time maybe finally the cycle of disappointment will be broke (and then it doesn’t and we go back to the endless cycle of hoping on BDs only to get nothing and tell ourselves “next time will be different”.
As for the future of the series it probably will depend on ticket sales and BD sales if they continue on with the rest as hinted at the after credits scene. This movie was funded due to them having a version of kickstarter done to get the money to make the ova longer which is what we got here as 75 minutes. Based on how far they covered of 2 and a half volumes with there being 6 total for this first series I suspect they might be intending on doing this as a trilogy by having 3 movies in total. It’s really dumb to had not made this a full 12 episode series instead especially since they are still censoring and toning down the movie anyway. 75 minutes is around the length of 3 standard anime episodes. And seeing as how they cover a 3rd of the manga in that short amount of time due to rushing and skipping stuff they easily could had made this into a 12 episode series and actually finished the whole thing. Now people might end up being left on a cliffhanger if the movies never complete unless they read the manga. I guess no company cared to fund this to make it a full series thus the need for crowd funding instead. When the BD finally comes out whenever that is I will probably do a follow up post to go over any changes (and probably bitch more about them toning it down if they don’t fix that) so expect that whenever that happens. On the bright side at least monster girl reviewers is later today so hopefully that will heal the pain of this.
Just watch if they ever do make a sequel and we don’t get those sex scenes added back in they will probably keep the rape stuff fully intact. I will shit all over the movie in that case. Seriously why the fuck is this industry so scared to show people having consensual sex. Manga has no problem with it and yet anime avoids sex like it is the most taboo thing in the world. You would think a country facing a major birthrate issue would want to encourage sex not further convince people it doesn’t exist. I need to cut this rant short as I need to get this post done quick so I can work on monster girl show later.
