As I pointed out recently, the current batch of anime series might be the most perverted anime season ever, with several shows that seem 100% devoted to either outright fanservice — panty shots and other visually pleasing sexy situations — or a more subtle “situational” kind of approach to presenting sexual storylines that might be more appealing to fans in the end. One show I started watching because of the sexy GIFs I’ve seen on Twitter and Tumblr was HenSuki, aka Would You Love a Perverted Girl, As Long As She’s Cute? While I assumed it was the usual ecchi anime trash with a predictable story, I’m happy to report HenSuki easily surpassed my (low?) expectations, managing to surprise me with a better-than-expected story. (Mild spoilers ahead.)
HenSuki is the story of Keiki, a Japanese high school boy who receives a love letter from a mystery girl…along with a pair of panties. But which of the girls in the club has confessed their love to him? The other girls in the club are
- Sayuki-senpai, a ditzy third-year-student who’s president of the calligraphy club. Naturally, she’s a masochist and wants the main character to use her as his personal pet.
- Yuika, a quarter-Caucasian first-year-student who works with Keiki in the library. She turns out to be a super sadist, wanting to make Keiki into her sex slave.
- Classmate Mao, who seems to have feelings for Keiki…but we eventually learn she’s really a fujoshi — a “rotten girl” who loves hardcore boy’s love manga — and wants Keiki to date his male friend Shoma, even drawing doujinshi about the two of them together. She won’t allow Keiki to date any girl because she requires him to fulfill her BL fantasies.
In Japanese, there are these four-kanji character compound words which are on one level hard to master (because they’re composed of difficult kanji), but which I found enjoyable because they were so different from anything found in English. You already know some of these phrases because they’re the titles of famous anime, like 天上天下 tenjo-tenge, a Buddhist term meaning “between heaven and earth,” or 一騎当千 ikki-tousen, literally meaning “a knight so strong he can defeat 1000 other knights,” or 天地無用 tenchi-muyou, which is what you print on a box to indicate “this end up.” One of the themes of the HenSuki anime can be expressed in another four-character kanji compound word, 優秀不断 yuju-fudan, which is a wishy-washy person who’s totally unable to make a choice. While this concept lives at the core of every wimpy-MC-who-can’t-make-up-his-mind-about-love anime of the past 30 years, it’s somewhat elevated in this series because the movie Keiki takes Yuika to is called The Most Indecisive King in the World, which is a reference to Keiki himself.
What ecchi anime trash are you watching this season? Are you going to check out HenSuki? Tell us on Twitter!
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