This marks the 5th anniversary of my first season preview post, and in that time a clear trend has emerged: studios don’t like releasing ecchi series in Winter time.
Here are the taglines of the five previous winter season previews: “Winter 2018: Virtuous Angels and Violent Furries”, “Winter 2017: Fanservice Hibernation”, “Winter 2016: Service Seems Scarce”, “Winter 2015: Harems Abound”, “Winter 2014: A Dud for Nude Anime?”
Of those past five winter seasons, only 2015’s winter season had a strong ecchi lineup (the legendary Shinmai Maou no Testament as well as the flawed but service-heavy Isuca and (if it counts), Ikkitousen: Extravaganza Epoch). It’s fitting that the one strong winter season happened in 2015, maybe the strongest year ever for ecchi from start to finish.
2014 also had the borderline god-tier series Maken-Ki Two, which on its own probably saves the season. But since 2015, there’s only been one winter anime to be compilation worthy if even just barely, and that was the shortform spinoff series Seven Heavenly Virtues.
So yeah, brutally bad winter seasons are nothing new for ecchi fans. If just one series (Domestic na Kanojo) faithfully adapts the manga, it would make this the best winter season since 2015. If it doesn’t, it could end up being the worst season, period, in well over a decade.
Anyway, here is what the 2019 Winter season lineup has to offer for ecchi fans:
Tate no Yuusha no Nariagari
Source material eroticism: Sexy Outfits
Service level expectation: Virtually none
The manga has a very slightly fanservicey feel to it, but the anime seems to be playing the material in a much more serious, shonen friendly way, and a lot of the female character designs have been made more cute than sexy. Getting meaningful fanservice from this show would be a surprise, but in a season this bad, it’s worth mentioning just in case.
Tate no Yuusha no Nariagari aired its first episode on January 9th.
Tensei Shitara Slime Datta Ken
Source material eroticism: Sexy Outfits, Sexy Poses
Service level expectation: Toaru Majutsu no Index
The manga is pretty dang sexy, and though it refrains from showing nipples, it gives off the kind of vibe that a nipple showing ecchi manga would have. Unfortunately, with a decent number of nipple-free volumes out now and the anime already on the air, I’m not expecting nipple sightings to appear in time for the anime to adapt them, if they ever appear at all.
All the same, the manga is full of fanservicey stupid fun, and the anime will probably have some fun as well.
Tensei Shitara Slime Datta Ken aired its first episode on January 8th.
Fairy Tail Final Series
Source material eroticism: Some sexy character designs, censored nudity
Service level expectation: Well established
An uber-shonen series like this would never show nipples, but out of respect it is worth giving token mention here as Fairy Tail has shown as much skin as it possibly could have given the genre and expectations.
Fairy Tail Final Series aired its first episode on January 6th.
Date A Live III
Source material eroticism: Sexy outfits and near-nudity
Service level expectation: Well Established
The first season was animated by AIC Plus+, which eventually folded and reformed into Production IMS, who then produced season two, before folding yet again. It’s not often a series can survive two previous production studios going under, but that’s exactly what Date A Live has done here, this time under the production umbrella of JC Staff.
While season one teased potential, season two made it pretty clear that this series wasn’t going anywhere interesting. Season three probably won’t either.
Date A Live III begins airing on January 11th.
Go-toubun no Hanayome
Source material eroticism: Sexy outfits and poses
Service level expectation: Nourin
The manga this is based on is one of the more disappointing ecchi-harem efforts I’ve encountered. The story is basically a harem setup based around Quintuplet girls, who really don’t look all that identical, other than each having very high sex appeal. It could have been a lot of fun, but unfortunately the manga only teases and never delivers, wasting some excellent art and sexy designs.
The anime will no doubt be the same, but it might still be worth watching for very casual fanservice purposes.
Go-toubun no Hanayome airs its first episode on January 11th.
Manaria Friends
Source material eroticism: Unknown
Service level expectation: Unknown
Manaria Friends comes from the Rage of Bahamut card game series, which had previously produced a couple of relatively well received anime adaptations (Genesis and Virgin Soul). It appears though that Manaria Friends has no meaningful connection to those previous anime, and will be its own thing.
Amazingly, this anime was originally scheduled for an April 2016 release. That has to be some kind of production hell.
While there isn’t anything that definitively points at this being a strong ecchi show, the character designs are noticeably sexier than in previous productions and the official twitter has made it a point to tease stills from a scene where the dragon girl undresses.
Manaria Friends airs its first episode on January 20th.
Mahou Shoujo Tokushusen Asuka
Source material eroticism: Very sexy, but non-nude (so far)
Service level expectation: Killing Bites
The Mahou Shoujo Tokushusen Asuka manga is close to as sexy as you can get without showing nipples, and given the violent and mature themes present, it feels like a solid bet that nipples will eventually find their way into the source material eventually.
This is pretty much exactly the kind of manga that LIDEN FILMS tends to go after (they also did Killing Bites and Berserk 2016 among others). They love doing hyper violent, mature manga with overt forms of sexuality on display.
Unfortunately, with so little source material available, it’s hard to know just how sexy this series will get in anime form. We probably won’t get much if anything, but the possibility of something interesting makes it worth following in a weak season.
Mahou Shoujo Tokushusen Asuka begins airing on January 12th.
CIRCLET PRINCESS
Source material eroticism: Unknown
Service level expectation: Unknown
Normally with game adaptations you don’t expect much if any service, although with Senran Kagura and Valkyrie Drive that paradigm does show signs of shifting. CIRCLET PRINCESS is also animated by Silver Link, one of the more fanservice friendly major studios.
The first episode featured a pointless shower scene, and though it was kept PG-rated, the fact that they are willing to have pointless fanservice is a good sign. And already there’s no shortage of quality butt-shots, even the key-visual (above) has one.
CIRCLET PRINCESS began airing on January 8th.
Domestic na Kanojo
Source material eroticism: Massive amounts of sex and nudity
Service level expectation: (A poor man’s) Yosuga no Sora
When I first heard the news of Domestic na Kanojo getting an anime, I was surprised. Even ecchi series tend to draw the line at penetration and sex, and those that don’t observe that line rarely get TV anime. Of course, there are quasi-TV hentai series like what we’ve seen the last two years, but Domestic na Kanojo isn’t some trashy hentai. It’s a trashy romance drama for sure, with tons of sex, but it’s not hentai.
Domestic na Kanojo has a female author and takes a female perspective to sexuality, which tends to be more serious and focused than the pervy male takes on the same subjects. If anything, the story will seem way too serious, and I’d be lying if I said the story won’t piss at least a few people off.
But with all that said, the manga is 100% compilation worthy, with tons of sex and even some pointless nudity at times. The anime is being done by Diomedéa, a company that has tended to avoid drawing nipples as much as possible. Two of their previous projects: Fuuka and Kodomo no Jikan were willing to show nipples, but they showed them way less than the original source material did.
There’s no denying though that Diomedéa tends to do excellent animation work, and what we’ve seen of Domestic na Kanojo so far looks great.
As far as nudity goes, if it were true to the source material, it would probably have close to a dozen sex scenes this season, but knowing how this studio works, they will likely tame it way down. The series does not have a parental lock on AT-X, which means that any nudity will either be censored or BD exclusive.
On the positive side, a March release of the manga will come bundled with a DVD showing several “unaired scenes” from the anime. While that’s not a guarantee of nudity, that does sound fairly promising, especially since the regular readers of the manga are accustomed to uncensored content.
Domestic na Kanojo began airing today.
Notable OVA
Ikkitousen: Western Wolves
Already off to an incredible start, a second episode will air uncensored in early February, and the third in early March. The blu-ray with all three episodes will release on February 27th.
Strike the Blood III
Volume two releases on March 27th. (Volume three releases on May 29th, the fourth on July 24th, and the final volume on September 25th.)
My Sister, My Writer BD specials
The BDs supposedly come with specials. We’ll see the first of these in March.
Overall Thoughts:
Ikkitousen has already ensured that this season won’t be completely nipple free (if it counts, which to me it does), and Domestic na Kanojo will likely second the motion eventually, albeit with less explicit content than it should. After that, expectations are very low.
There can sometimes be big surprises that come out of nowhere, but the way it looks at the outset, it seems 2019 will continue a trend of Winter seasons being weak for ecchi.
