This season isn’t exactly loaded, but a handful of super-natural themed ecchi anime will (eventually) deliver.
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
Food Wars: 5th plate
Plunderer (2nd cour)
Tier 3
Gleipnir
Pine Jam
Source: Manga
Source material eroticism: Moderate amount of Nudity
Service level expectation: hopefully the same
This is based on a manga by Sun Takeda, who’s no stranger to nudity in his works. Of his five projects to date, there’s nudity in at least four of them (and the one non-nude series I’ve only been able to read one volume of so far). While most of his works focus on story over “plot,” he’s definitely not afraid to properly show naked women.
Gleipnir isn’t quite as fappy as some of his other works (Haru to Natsu, Sekainohate de Aimashou), but there’s quite a bit of nudity. Nipples appear in six out of the eight current volumes.
While a perfect comparison for this manga isn’t easy to come by, I think it’s somewhat in the same vein as Mirai Nikki. There is a heavily convoluted plot driven story involving supernatural powers, unconventional romance, some disturbing violence, and an eagerness to integrate bare breasted scenery into the major scenes in the story. The last bit is less for boner reasons and more for “making everything feel weird” reasons. And it’s effective at both.
Will the anime stay fully true to the manga and deliver? It feels like a 50/50 chance. On the one hand, Pine Jam has never done a nudey anime before in their brief production history, and that usually doesn’t bode well. But on the other, several scenes from the manga just won’t work without nudity. Perhaps they will censor it even on BD or give us Barbie-doll faux-nudity, but I don’t think they can escape doing at least a half dozen ‘nude’ scenes barring a dramatic re-write.
Gleipnir began airing on April 5th.
Tier 4
Ore no Yubi de Midarero.: Heitengo Futarikiri no Salon de… (aka OreYubi)
Magic Bus
Source: Erotica
Source material eroticism: Erotica
Service level expectation: R-18 anime
This is the usual R-18 anime for the season. The story is basically about a hairdresser who falls in love with a coworker who just can’t seem keep his fingers out of her pussy after work closes for the night.
OreYubi began airing on April 6th.
Tsugu Tsugumomo
Zero-G
Source material: Manga
Source material eroticism: Tons of Nudity
Service level expectation: Hopefully the same, though probably not done as well
When the first season aired, and seemingly bombed, I lamented that it was such as shame that we’d never get a second season because the manga doesn’t really take off ecchi-wise until the first few volumes are out of the way.
Luckily, we somehow got a 2nd season anyway. I don’t know if it was in some contract for two cours all along or what, but we’re getting it, and the production values are surprisingly as good as the first season despite poor sales.
If you haven’t read the manga, I think it’s safe to say that it is one of the ten or so best ecchi manga currently running. There’s a ton of nudity, and the artist is quite keen to get graphic with his depictions, particularly in the special editions and most especially on his pixiv, where you can find beautifully drawn, fully uncensored X-rated images of his characters. We’re talking stuff that would have to be pixelated if published in Japan. Except it’s not. It’s amazing.
In my opinion, the character design style isn’t always super sexy, but the detail and intensity of the art makes up for it with realistically drawn bodies and the aforementioned explicit intentions.
The anime can’t live up to the explicitness of the manga. But what it can do is deliver a truckload of nude scenes. And that’s good enough.
Tsugu Tsugumomo began airing on April 5th.
Notable OVA
Strike The Blood IV
This series has never been god-tier for service, but it rewards patient viewers with small doses of nudity every now and then, including about 2 seconds worth in the first episode of season IV.
Overall Thoughts:
While it’s a good season for nudity, it’s strangely terrible for non-nude ecchi shows. Normally you’d have several non-nude ecchi series per nude one in a given season, but this time all the non-nude ecchi shows pretty much disappeared.
I don’t know if it had to do with the anticipated 2020 Olympics (which were recently postponed). But it’s worth noting that the most ecchi season of 2020 is almost certainly going to be the Summer season, which would have been airing while the Olympics were going on prior to coronavirus becoming what it has become. Hopefully that means the Olympics were never having the impact some had feared, because if it were then waiting an extra year for the Olympics to go away would just really suck.
Anyway, my expectation is that Tsugumomo 2 will absolutely be compilation worthy. Gleipnir has an outside shot, and Strike the Blood IV will at least get into some kind of multi-season compilation at some point. I’ll take it.
Side note: I saw this ecchi season preview on youtube and thought it was pretty well done. Props.
