This week has potentially the most nudity yet for the series, but it comes with some concerns.
Itsuyo seems to be more thicc in the anime. Love it.
They did her “inner image” nude pose completely different in the anime. I guess they kind of had to since they seem to be going the redraw route.
They are going to have to completely redraw this scene to make it work. Hopefully they will…
I almost missed this one. MC-kun gets hit from behind by Natsuki as a result of her being soundly defeated by her sister in battle. It happens so quickly and jarringly in the anime that I completely forgot this happened. The part where Natsuki’s breast is exposed and the reaction of her and our MC is completely absent in the anime, though the rest of that scene was kept in.
And here again, is another nude scene that looks nothing like it did in the manga. To make this true to the manga, it would have to be completely redrawn on BD.
And yet here is another nude scene “missing” in the anime. Natsuki’s clothes are torn away by her demonic imposter classmates, exposing her. This is followed by a bit of a rapey boob play scene. There is no hint of this scene at all in the anime. In fact at the end of this scene in the anime there is no damage to Natsuki’s clothes at all, which may unfortunately suggest a re-write. If they stay true to the manga on BD, they are once again going to have to redo an entire scene to make it work.
Keep in mind that similar sexually violent scenes have made it into ecchi anime before- there’s a particular scene in Valkyrie Drive that leaps to mind. Hopefully it is added on BD, but there’s no guarantee.
Overall thoughts:
Usually when a nudey anime goes the redraw route, they set themselves up so that they only have to make very small redraw changes on BD. Some hair cover stops covering, a foreground object disappears. Something like that.
After this episode, however, it can no longer be said that this series will have simple redraws. Entire sequences with nudity are missing, while other scenes would have to be redone from scratch to be consistent with the nudity in the manga. These aren’t minor BD changes. We’re talking major changes.
So the question becomes, will we be getting these major changes or not? Because if we don’t, that means this anime is probably going to go down as a non-nude disaster for ecchi fans.
But if we do, it means we’ll be getting the first ecchi series with major BD changes and expanded scenes since Shinmai Maou no Testament, arguably the best ecchi series of the past five years.
I honestly have no idea which outcome we’ll get, which is both exciting and worrisome.
I do tend to lean more towards the optimist side though for a few reasons. The first is that a borderline hentai manga like Val x Love would make zero sense as a non-nude anime. The second is that the editing and flow of the TV series so far has been noticeably odd and choppy. It really does feel like scenes are missing at times. The first season of Shinmai had some odd moments like that too on the TV broadcast that left you wondering if a part was missing, and sure enough it was.
The thing is though, Shinmai in effect ‘leaked’ to us that there would be nudity on BD with intentionally careless censorship and a social media campaign that pretty much spelled things out for us. There have been no such assurances like that as of yet from Val x Love, and I’d be lying if it didn’t have me just a little concerned. I guess we’ll see.
