R-15 Episode 1: Drinking to forget bad times

After the end of Kore Wa Zombie Desu?, I’ve found myself being bored as there was an obvious lack of perverted harem anime in Spring 2011. In this summer, Studio AIC offers us R-15. Seiyus for this show include 4 cast members of Kore Wa and several newbies making their debut. Some TV channels in Japan cancelled their broadcast of this show “due to various circumstances”. Will this show really be able to lead in the harem department? Let’s see…

Thai’s Play-by-Play:

Takuto Akutagawa is a genius porn novel writer.  Sadly for him, his popularity with the girls is pretty much close to ZERO. He is obviously labeled as a freak. Our main protagonist goes to Hirameki Gakuen, a high school that only accepts geniuses. You can find an idol genius, a clarinet genius, a programming genius or a photograph genius. Can we really consider a talented gardener, a young announcer and a popular idol to be geniuses? How can you be a genius idol? You only have to be “super kawaii moe desu” and be able to sing well enough (+ some connections) to make it far. Talent is one thing, but genius is on another scale. Am I a genius if I excel at being lazy?

This anime also offers a yaoi or trap moment with Takuto and his only friend Ritsu. When our main protagonist start deriving a sentence into “I like you” for no good reason, Ritsu automatically sees it as a confession and starts blushing. The reason why I say it could be a trap moment is because I suspect Ritsu to be secretly a girl. Seriously, the kid’s gender just seems ambiguous to me, lol. On a funny note, I couldn’t even say his seiyu, Madoka Murakami, was a guy or a girl until I saw his middle name was John, haha. Actually, even now, I’m still not sure.

Basically, in this episode, Takuto is asked by his newspaper club leader, a female bondage sadist, to interview the girl he likes, Fukune Narukara. As Takuto and a tsundere photograph girl tries to find Fukune, we kinda get this tour to the school moment showing all or some of the important female characters and their supposedly genius abilities. Of course, our porn novelist needs to phantasm about those girls. Oh yeah, he gets hit by a missile…

When Takuto finally finds her, she is seen sleeping on a bench. This is where I’m banging my head on my desk. His hands starts writing a G-rated porn story or maybe even a poem in the wood. What kind of genius is he if he can’t control his writing ability? Yet again, the anime continues to confuse talent with genius. The segment follows with the photograph girl becoming very disappointed in him for not trying to rape Fukune or not writing porn.

There is only one picture that can explain my thoughts in this scene.

Oh, gotta love Star Trek. BTW, another missile is coming at him. Way to go, the writers of this show are already in lack of a joke to use, so they’re re-using the same thing. However, instead running away, Takuto runs towards Fukune and tries to cover her which pretty much attracts the rocket towards her too. This guy is unbelievably dumb for a genius. He can write but he can’t think. The girl wakes up and sees him all over her with his nose bleeding causing a misunderstanding and more hatred. I don’t think Picard’s Facepalm or his Double Facepalm with Riker will be able to describe what I feel right now.

Quick Impression:

After watching the episode, I got up from my chair and delivered the biggest fury of punches in my punching bag IPPO-Style at 2 A.M. in the morning which caused terrible complaints.

Even if I were to close my brain, this cluster-fuck mess just seems too horrible, even for a senseless fan service anime. Girls in this show seem to lack variety in personality. The Tsundere Count-Meter reached 3 so far. I DEMAND A YANDERE!! It’s too generic! Even if you’re just watching strictly for the fan service (and I did), the censorship just ruins everything. There’s really no point in blurring the bras and panties, because it wouldn’t be fan service. R-15 would be decent in the OVA format, but, as a TV series with the restrictions, there’s really no potential of improvement.

Up until the aforemententioned lapse in logic by the Takuto (facepalm of note!) I was really enjoying the show, but yeah its a pretty big stumbling block. But fear not they totally make up for it with an awesome moment of passion when Takuto turns it on and goes into uber-focus mode (eat your heart out Bakuman) and churns out a… novella? Huh, what now where’s the pr0n!?

But yeah, the jokes are a tad bit generic but nonetheless still funny, my only real complaint is that whoever did the censoring on this show is a special kind of retard, in most cases they probably were’nt necessary and they clearly didn’t try to hide it. Hell flying birds would have been more discreet.

OH! And where are my chanllenges? I was promised challenges!

Verdict (Do I Blog This?):

HELL NO! The concept was initially good, but it doesn’t look like Studio AIC knows what to do with it though. I doubt I’ll be able to suffer 10 or 11 more episodes. I might do The IDOLM@STER, but it’s scheduled for 25 episodes. Or I can always take dibs on Nurarihyon no Mago: Sennen Makyou or Itsuka Tenma no Kuro Usagi.

If it weren’t for the appauling censoring, which takes alot of the momentum out of the show, I may have blogged this. I still like the concept though, so will probably marathon it when the BD’s come out.