This episode has the most nudity potential of any Val x Love episode so far. Will it deliver though?
A few minutes into the episode we get quite possibly the lewdest scene from the manga so far, where our two main characters do a naked version of a dry hump for an entire chapter. Or as Natsuki puts it “Val Love: embrace without a stitch of clothing on and kiss deeply for five minutes!”
Okay… so here’s how this scene plays out in the manga. Note that basically none of the nude scenes below are depicted in the scenes above.
If (if, if, if) this scene is going to be faithfully adapted with additional material on BD, then we are talking about MAJOR additions. Several minutes worth just for this scene alone.
In what is the most positive sign of episode six, we see some classic screen cropping in the scene above. Screen cropping in a situation like this almost always means that it’s concealing BD nudity.
And here are some parts not shown in this scene (you might recognize them from last week):
This is once again within the realm of future BD changes ala Monster Musume. In theory.
So I know this will shock you, but once again the nudey parts of this sequence from the manga are nowhere to be found in the anime. Though I suppose it is possible we might see them pop up in next week’s episode as a lot of this series hasn’t been done in strict chronological order. Anyway, the omitted parts:
Overall thoughts:
Normally when I review shows based on nude manga, I like to compare and contrast how the scenes look in the anime vs the manga. Early on this this series I was mostly able to do that, but in recent episodes, and especially here, the Venn diagram overlap between those two things is virtually non-existent. The nude shots from the manga aren’t even making it into the anime any more, not even in a censored state.
This is worrying since we have yet to see any concrete verification of nudity for BD yet, or any promotions that would make such a thing seem guaranteed. At this point we are relying on Val x Love to be maybe the biggest redraw and expanded scenes ecchi anime of all time, while simultaneously never hearing Hoods advertise (conventions), promote (twitter), or profit (theater showings) this work to us.
In episode six, the amount of extra materials they’d have to put in to cover all the stuff they skipped could elongate the episode by at least five minutes. Even high budget shows like DxD New would usually cap it at around a couple minutes per episode.
It’s no fun being a pessimist but I’ll admit that being an optimist is getting tougher and tougher with this show, even as Azur Lane’s sixth episode reminds us that anything is possible.
With that said, there is one thing I have noticed that has given me a sliver of optimism.
Typically, the television run time of an anime episode is around 24 minutes. But not all 24 minutes is actual anime. Some of it is padding in the form of OP, ED, next episode trailer, sponsor announcement, etc.
I looked at a few random ecchi shows that have aired over the last couple years for comparison, and what I found is that Val x Love tends to have about 30 to 60 extra seconds of ‘padding’ to reach that 24 minute goal each week than most other anime do. That doesn’t guarantee that we’re in a “deleted scenes” situation, but I would consider it a positive indicator.
I honestly can’t remember ever waiting for a first blu-ray of an ecchi show to come out and not knowing if I’m feeling excitement or dread. It sucks that we’ll still have to wait almost six weeks to find out.
Though for the record, I am still 90% certain this series will have nipples on BD. There’s been some conspicuous indicators such as screen cropping that Keijo!! didn’t have. My only real worry is that we won’t get as much nudity as we should have gotten. Hopefully, those worries prove to be unfounded.
