(Adapted from my MAL review)
A lot of bad things have been happening in the world this year, but at least we have anime to distract ourselves. As always, the beginning of 2020 brought us a plethora of new anime to watch this year, but very few of those anime have gathered as much attention as Ishuzoku Reviewers; from getting cancelled by Funimation and even some Japanese TV networks to the vote brigading on MAL, all that has happened surrounding it is bound to turn heads. I admit that it was Funimation’s cancellation of the simuldub that finally convinced me to give it a go, but it had caught my attention long before then; not only did an anime about reviewing seem like an interesting concept (although I didn’t actually know at the time exactly WHAT - or rather, WHO - the main characters were reviewing), but there was just something about it that told me that it wasn’t just another ecchi anime. Thus, I watched it all the way to the end, and I have to ask myself some questions.
Was it really worth it? Was Ishuzoku Reviewers, known in English as Interspecies Reviewers, worth all of the attention it got this year?
Ishuzoku Reviewers takes place in a fantasy world full of humanoid races with different abilities. Some girls of these different races are known as “succu-girls” - girls with succubus blood in them - and work as prostitutes in various different brothels depending on their race. (Don’t look at me like that! That’s basically what they are!) Two adventurers, a human named Stunk and an elf named Zel, enjoy visiting these so-called “succu-girl joints”, but their individual opinions on each species can vary. Together with Crimvael - a hermaphrodite angel with a broken halo - and a few others who join them from time to time, these adventurers travel to different succu-girl joints and review their experiences for the reading pleasure of others.
If you’re looking for a fantasy adventure series with some fanservice here and there....well, you’re not going to find it in the way you expect. It really doesn’t have much of a story to it; each episode mainly follows the formula of the main characters going to a succu-girl joint and seeing what they have to offer in terms of service and.... “service”. The fact that these succu-girls are such a wide variety of species allows the anime to get creative with exactly how these joints work, and this is for the better or for the worse. One of the better examples, in my opinion, is the Magic Metropolis; although the girls there are merely decoys of an archmage, the customers actually get to spend time with them and form something like a bond with them, and I really appreciated that. However, one of the worst examples - if not the absolute worst - was the egg-laying joint; it treated bird-like succu-girls laying eggs like a fetish, and I was so disgusted by it that I almost tossed whatever opinion I had about the series up until that point into the trash and dropped it there.
There may be a plethora of ways the succu-girl joints work in this anime, but what about the succu-girls themselves? They each get minimal development in their respective episodes, if any at all, and after their episode, we barely get to see any of them again, if we see them at all. Given the overall premise of Ishuzoku Reviewers and exactly how many species would need to be covered in 12 episodes, this shouldn’t be a major problem; however, it just felt to me like tossing someone aside after just having sex with them just to go for someone else, with a cycle like this continuing until the 12 episodes are up, and while it really is just a personal problem, it took me a while to get comfortable with the feeling. (I honestly can’t believe I got comfortable with it at all.) What about the characters who review them, however? Well, at the very least, I appreciate that they’re honest about their sexual desires. Out of the main characters, I think I’d say Crimvael - a.k.a. Crim - is my favorite; not counting....certain aspects....he’s the one I relate to the most. Other than the succu-girls and the ones who review them, there are a plethora of supporting and background characters, with each of them either being somewhat charming or really freaking annoying.
The animation is nice and colorful, and the character designs are good....for the most part. While the attributes for each species make sense for their species, some of those attributes just look disproportionate; I think I may have had flashbacks to Eiken, seeing the watermelons on the minotaurs! Two things that are consistently good, though, are the voice acting and music. Each of the characters’ voices fit their characters, and the voice actors themselves did a great job with the acting part. As for the music....well, if the ending theme, “Hanabira Ondo”, sung by the voice actors of Stunk (Junji Majima), Zel (Yuusuke Kobayashi), and Crim (Miyu Tomita), is catchy (which it is), the opening theme, “Ikouze Paradise”, also sung by the voice actors of Stunk, Zel, and Crim, is a freaking EARWORM; I don’t think it has left my head for the entire time that I’ve been watching it.
Overall, did I enjoy Ishuzoku Reviewers? To an extent, I would say so. Would I recommend it? Not really; you’d have to be comfortable with some really kinky stuff to find enjoyment in everything it has to offer. Ultimately, whether you watch it or not is your choice, and even if your opinion is different from others’, you have got to respect those opinions; the same goes for the many other anime there are out there, including those that are borderline hentai or even straight out hentai.
A lot of bad things have been happening in the world this year, but at least we have anime to distract ourselves. As always, the beginning of 2020 brought us a plethora of new anime to watch this year, but very few of those anime have gathered as much attention as Ishuzoku Reviewers; from getting cancelled by Funimation and even some Japanese TV networks to the vote brigading on MAL, all that has happened surrounding it is bound to turn heads. I admit that it was Funimation’s cancellation of the simuldub that finally convinced me to give it a go, but it had caught my attention long before then; not only did an anime about reviewing seem like an interesting concept (although I didn’t actually know at the time exactly WHAT - or rather, WHO - the main characters were reviewing), but there was just something about it that told me that it wasn’t just another ecchi anime. Thus, I watched it all the way to the end, and I have to ask myself some questions.
Was it really worth it? Was Ishuzoku Reviewers, known in English as Interspecies Reviewers, worth all of the attention it got this year?
Ishuzoku Reviewers takes place in a fantasy world full of humanoid races with different abilities. Some girls of these different races are known as “succu-girls” - girls with succubus blood in them - and work as prostitutes in various different brothels depending on their race. (Don’t look at me like that! That’s basically what they are!) Two adventurers, a human named Stunk and an elf named Zel, enjoy visiting these so-called “succu-girl joints”, but their individual opinions on each species can vary. Together with Crimvael - a hermaphrodite angel with a broken halo - and a few others who join them from time to time, these adventurers travel to different succu-girl joints and review their experiences for the reading pleasure of others.
If you’re looking for a fantasy adventure series with some fanservice here and there....well, you’re not going to find it in the way you expect. It really doesn’t have much of a story to it; each episode mainly follows the formula of the main characters going to a succu-girl joint and seeing what they have to offer in terms of service and.... “service”. The fact that these succu-girls are such a wide variety of species allows the anime to get creative with exactly how these joints work, and this is for the better or for the worse. One of the better examples, in my opinion, is the Magic Metropolis; although the girls there are merely decoys of an archmage, the customers actually get to spend time with them and form something like a bond with them, and I really appreciated that. However, one of the worst examples - if not the absolute worst - was the egg-laying joint; it treated bird-like succu-girls laying eggs like a fetish, and I was so disgusted by it that I almost tossed whatever opinion I had about the series up until that point into the trash and dropped it there.
There may be a plethora of ways the succu-girl joints work in this anime, but what about the succu-girls themselves? They each get minimal development in their respective episodes, if any at all, and after their episode, we barely get to see any of them again, if we see them at all. Given the overall premise of Ishuzoku Reviewers and exactly how many species would need to be covered in 12 episodes, this shouldn’t be a major problem; however, it just felt to me like tossing someone aside after just having sex with them just to go for someone else, with a cycle like this continuing until the 12 episodes are up, and while it really is just a personal problem, it took me a while to get comfortable with the feeling. (I honestly can’t believe I got comfortable with it at all.) What about the characters who review them, however? Well, at the very least, I appreciate that they’re honest about their sexual desires. Out of the main characters, I think I’d say Crimvael - a.k.a. Crim - is my favorite; not counting....certain aspects....he’s the one I relate to the most. Other than the succu-girls and the ones who review them, there are a plethora of supporting and background characters, with each of them either being somewhat charming or really freaking annoying.
The animation is nice and colorful, and the character designs are good....for the most part. While the attributes for each species make sense for their species, some of those attributes just look disproportionate; I think I may have had flashbacks to Eiken, seeing the watermelons on the minotaurs! Two things that are consistently good, though, are the voice acting and music. Each of the characters’ voices fit their characters, and the voice actors themselves did a great job with the acting part. As for the music....well, if the ending theme, “Hanabira Ondo”, sung by the voice actors of Stunk (Junji Majima), Zel (Yuusuke Kobayashi), and Crim (Miyu Tomita), is catchy (which it is), the opening theme, “Ikouze Paradise”, also sung by the voice actors of Stunk, Zel, and Crim, is a freaking EARWORM; I don’t think it has left my head for the entire time that I’ve been watching it.
Overall, did I enjoy Ishuzoku Reviewers? To an extent, I would say so. Would I recommend it? Not really; you’d have to be comfortable with some really kinky stuff to find enjoyment in everything it has to offer. Ultimately, whether you watch it or not is your choice, and even if your opinion is different from others’, you have got to respect those opinions; the same goes for the many other anime there are out there, including those that are borderline hentai or even straight out hentai.
Comments
Post a Comment