Saturday, July 9, 2011

First Impressions: R-15

Plot Synopsis: (from MAL)Akutagawa Taketo is a teenage porn novel writer. He enters Hirameki Gakuen, which accepts only geniuses with outstanding talent. He leads his classmates with his porn skills to win the interclass competition.

Before viewing: Oh man...I am not looking forward to this one. Just look at that synopsis. Porn skills? Really? What school would possibly allow someone in their school on the basis alone of being a porn writer? Nobody considers writing porn a work of genius! What kind of school is this anyways? And how is writing porn going to help his class win the interclass competition? And what does the title mean anyways? I'm expecting that none of these questions will be answered adequately.

After viewing:Well...yeah. It's exactly what you'd think it would be. And yes, none of my questions were answered in this episode. It's utterly ludicrous that this character is so infamous as a porn writer that he ended up in a school for "geniuses", (which is really just a school for people that have some talent in a field, how talented is hard to say), even though he writes under a pen name. How does everyone know already?

The main character Taketo is a very deluded one. He's a little smug about the fact that he writes porn novels, scoffing at people who are offended by them and considers himself to be a true visionary, an avante-garde writer for writing about "taboo" topics. He's hardly the first person to write pornography, and the exerts from his porn novels the series randomly throws in shows that he's not a very creative person; his scenarios are so generic, they're hardly worth being made into a porno, let alone ending up in history books and winning literary awards as he imagines himself doing. In other words, there is no reason for him to be at this school, because he's can't be considered a "porn genius".

There are several characters introduced, some with only a screencard telling us some information about them before disappearing immediately. The only characters besides the main one that gets any screentime are a photographer named Raika, Ritsu, a gay math genius, Fukune, a shy clarinet player that the opening makes clear is the love interest, and The Newspaper Chief, AKA Walking Cleavage Dominatrix character. There are way too many characters to keep track of, and not enough screentime for anyone to really get to know any of them. Taketo's homoerotic relationship with his gay friend is pretty cute though, and Ritsu quickly comes to his defense if he's being insulted. In fact, with Taketo getting flustered when Ritsu's face is really close to his, and his out of nowhere "I like you", I'm pretty convinced that Taketo is bisexual. I also find interesting that the only girl in the series Taketo doesn't sexualize is the girl he actually likes.

The biggest problem with the series is that it should be an actual porno. It's constant censorship of sex scenes ends up with the screen being almost completely covered with the censor. The series is halfway between being a fanservice series and an actual porno, and as a result, it's not really a series for anyone. If you're looking for something erotic, this series will just frustrate you because it's so censored. Otherwise, it has way too pornographic scenes to appeal to anyone else.

A ridiculous premise, with a main character with no reason to be in this school, and too much censorship to make this series appeal to the kind of people that like this type of show, makes this series a bit of a dud.

No comments:

Post a Comment