Our lead character is dumber than a monkey. Literally. The protagonists of harem shows like this are always idiots, so I guess it’s kind of refreshing to be upfront about it. In this episode, he took the bus going in the wrong direction, only to be corrected by his little brother. Then a monkey stole his brother’s hat, and he chased it into the forest. He watched the monkey jump on rocks to cross the river. Then, he concluded there was no way across the river, so he waded through it and fell. Then he climbed a tree chasing after the monkey, and the monkey tricked him to jump out of the tree and fall. Then he realized he was lost. He found a ditzy girl to show him the way back, who had a brilliant idea: he could cross the river by jumping on rocks. He manages to fail at this and falls on top of her. I’m sure his idiocy continued, but at this point I started to lose interest.
Anyway, this show has nothing in it that hasn’t been beaten to death a million times. Why do they feel the need to pump out so much of this crap?
In this episode we’re introduced to Okabe’s surprisingly large harem as the mystery deepens. Okabe remembers more things that the rest of the world has forgotten, and a banana teleports from the microwave. The biggest mystery though is why our main character is so popular.
I had very low expectations for a show which centered around a succubus building a harem to drink certain juices, but this wasn’t actually all that bad. Well, once they got out of the bath at least.
You can’t help but feel a bit sorry for even Minko though after seeing the adults in this series. That assistant chef especially— bullying Minko and asking if Iroha has any friends. It’s obvious that the person without any friends would be him. Clearly, Iroha’s grandmother has her issues as well. But still, compared to Minko’s mother, her grandmother actually looks good. I realized Iroha’s mother was irresponsible in the first episode, but it still seemed like she and her daughter were a close family. It still does seem like they are close, in their own way, but not exactly as the happy family I had imagined. And don’t let me get started on that author…
So far this show has been great for piling on the rage. In my opinion the best shows are the ones that give the viewer an emotional attachment, whatever emotion that happens to be. We can only hope that the rage will continue to build up and explode spectacularly. Iroha’s explosion against Minko and Nako was a bit corny but still very satisfying, especially seeing Minko finally give in. It seems like Iroha will win those two over soon, and hopefully we won’t move into a happy idyllic inn life but rather continue with the anger from the adult side. And no, I don’t feel guilty for wishing that they’ll be miserable for the sake of my entertainment value.
So first, Hen Zemi. I’m actually enjoying this, although most of the humor is of the “I can’t believe they did that” variety. This show stretches the boundaries of socially acceptable behavior to the limit, and just when you think they can’t go any further, jumps fifty miles downstream. And then does it again and again and again. Really, don’t watch this without knowing what you’re getting into. However, the TV show does seem a bit toned down from the OVA (which was also enjoyable). Hen Zemi does have a strong cast of characters, none of whom I could describe as boring, and the humor is pretty good if you can bear to watch it.
Azazel-san also goes far past the boundaries of decency, but the humor here didn’t really work for me and I ended up just finding it gross. It was more slapstick humor as opposed to the dialog-based comedy of Hen Zemi. I also felt that it didn’t build up the inappropriateness as well and went more for the shock value. But I guess it’s really just that I didn’t find the jokes funny. What the demon did to the woman and his summoning gift— how are those supposed to be funny? They’re just disgusting. I could probably say the exact same thing about Hen Zemi though, so I’m really not sure what makes one work for me and the other fail…