This season is headlined by three shows which borrow from familiar formulas.
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
Maou Gakuin no Futekigousha
Uzaki-chan wa Asobitai!
Tier 3
Monster Musume no Oisha-san
ARVO Animation
Source: Light Novel
Source material eroticism: Very slight amount of nudity in manga version
Service level expectation: probably non-nude ecchi
There have been many manga and anime inspired by 2015’s instant classic Monster Musume no iru Nichijou, but few have borrowed as heavily as Oisha-san has. The main girl is a lamia, the next in line a centaur. After that a harpy and mermaid and stitched together undead girl and a monoeye. Is this series even trying to hide the degree to which it copies Nichijou? Not really. And that’s just fine by me.
There is one very important area where the two differ though. Oisha-san is originally from a light novel, a format notorious for discouraging nipple sightings. There is a manga spinoff currently with two volumes and interestingly enough has nipples on the very first page, but unfortunately there is only one other partial nipple sighting in the two available volumes. Keep in mind too that the manga is technically not the original source material (the novel is).
Usually when the source material only has a very minor amount of nudity it tends to be dismissed entirely in the anime. But you never know, sometimes shows take liberties, including one that comes later on in this preview.
Monster Musume no Oisha-san begins airing on July 12th.
Dokyuu Hentai HxEros
Project No.9
Source: Manga
Source material eroticism: Tons of nudity
Service level expectation: hopefully the same but there is some uncertainty
After To Love-Ru Darkness ended its run a couple years back, a huge void was left at publisher Shonen Jump. How do you replace arguably the GOAT of all harem ecchi series? You can’t, but to their credit they effectively tried to replace it with three excellent ecchi franchises: Yuragi-sou no Yuuna-san, Dokyuu Hentai HxEros, and World’s End Harem. All of them featured outstanding art, cute girls, tons of nudity and even colored pages. And all of them will receive an anime.
We’ve already gotten a Yuuna-san anime, a solid effort though sadly it was Xebec’s swan song. A World’s End Harem anime has been announced for 2021. And starting in a few days, we get Dokyuu Hentai HxEros in anime form.
The production is being handled by Project No.9, a company that basically specializes in non-nude ecchi shows and moe shit. Based on that I really should hate them, but their art style and soft touch to their work has always left good vibes despite their penchant for blue-balling viewers.
Technically they have done nipples before- as they co-produced the Angelic White Magical Girls OVA in 2012 and let slip like 2 frames worth of a partial nipple sighting in Momo Kyun Sword. But generally though, this is company known for teasing viewers and not delivering.
For that reason, I’ve always wondered what their work might look like if they had an obvious nude-ecchi series to work with. Well, now they have one. The latest trailer is interesting:
For those who don’t know, Dokyuu Hentai HxEros is censored in magazines but uncensored in the tankobon releases. This in and of itself isn’t that rare, many other top shelf ecchi series do this- including To Love-Ru. However what makes Dokyuu Hentai HxEros unique is that it actually incorporates the censorship into the plot itself. The world is under attack from an evil force that literally censors sexual content, and the heroes battle in effect to destroy that censorship (some have pointed out that this anime being licensed in the US and Canada by Funimation is a profound irony given their recent censorship controversies in the genre).
So logically, you would expect the TV version to be censored and the BD version not to be. Unfortunately, given Project No.9’s past history, there is unfortunately a real possibility that they’ll pull a Val x Love here. If there is such a thing as “cautiously pessimistic,” that’s how I feel about this show until we see actual confirmation of BD nudity.
With that said, one element of the broadcast that has me slightly optimistic is that it will air with multiple versions. There will be the regular broadcast, followed 6 days later by a “less-censored” broadcast version. It’s interesting that they frame it in such a way. How many ecchi series would advertise as “less censored” on BD? It’s probably never happened. Therefore this framing would seem to imply that both TV versions are at least somewhat censored in relation to the BD. But who knows really. All I can tell you is that if this series isn’t uncensored on BD it would be as big a travesty as Val x Love. Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.
Dokyuu Hentai HxEros begins airing on July 4th.
Tier 4
Peter Grill to Kenja no Jikan
Wolfs Bane
Source: Manga
Source material eroticism: Non-nude
Service level expectation: Massive amounts of sex and nudity
After Ishuzoku Reviewers shocked everyone by both taking liberties with the source material and becoming a huge hit in the process, everyone was probably wondering if other anime would try to copy their success at some point. It looks like Peter Grill might be the first to do so.
The manga for which this series is based has 6 volumes currently out, and despite an extremely lewd premise involving the characters constantly having sex, there hasn’t yet been a nipple sighting.
However, we can confirm that the anime will show nipples unlike the manga. This is based on a parental lock at AT-X and also a briefly leaked PV on Vimeo of all places that was fully uncensored.
The revved up lewdness, low-production values and the shortened run time (15 min episodes) will probably makes this series feel less ecchi and more hentai, but at the very least we’ll have something to look forward to each week.
Peter Grill to Kenja no Jikan began airing on July 11th.
Notable OVA
Strike The Blood IV
The next OVA in this series releases on July 29th.
Tenchi Muyou! Ryououki (season 5) OVA III
Tenchi Muyo hasn’t delivered nudity in a long time, but I figured it was worth mentioning here just in case. Two previous OVAs released earlier this year. The third installment releases on August 28th.
Overall Thoughts:
In a best case scenario, there could be three “compilation worthy” series from this season, and that doesn’t happen all that often. Monster Musume is probably a long shot, but Peter Grill is a lock and HxEros has insane potential if Project No.9 can avoid pulling an Avex.
It may not look like a lot, but this is almost certainly the strongest season for ecchi going back at least a couple years.
