Date: March 9

Title: A Panty Thief's Adventure In The City

When I read the title of this series I was given a notion of what I was in for, and in true pulpy anime trash fashion it's exactly what I got. A Panty Thief's Adventure is a short series, a curious seven episodes long as opposed to the usual twelve or thirteen. In it, series protagonist Hanna Ishibe moves into the city to attend a university. The first thing you'll notice if you're anything like me is pretty much the series' main Thing: the protagonist is a girl. That's right, we can be underwear-nabbing perverts too! 

The thing likely to catch your attention second is that the cinematography is exceptionally bland ninety percent of the time, only to shatter the mold with bizarre inventiveness-if not sense- in order to accomodate the audience's assumed desire to leer at panties. Every female character between the ages of eighteen and thirty- that is to say, almost all of them- wears short skirts at almost all times, obligatory beach episode notwithstanding, and the cameraman really wants you to KNOW. The camera will peer up from behind a girl's heels, stare at strategically placed mirrors, and more to get as good a look at these young women's crotches as possible. The plot, meanwhile, follows our "hero" as she makes friends at university, daydreams about her teachers, and, well. Feeds the elephant in the room, so to say, by stealing panties. 

I lost count by episode four, mind you, the series treats these thefts as a much quicker breezier deal than I think they would be, like, logistically speaking. The main character seemingly can't meet someone without wanting to snatch the fabric from their snatch. The supporting cast get pulled into increasingly arbitrary shenanigans to enable her, up to and including the founder of the hypnosis club (a thing which totally exists) being a lesbian almost as eager to see bare pussy as our lead is to steal it. The two actually have some cute chemistry, honestly, outside of their half an episode spat when she's introduced. If it were just these two pervs sitting around being weird, the show would almost be a good screwball romantic comedy. 

As it stands though, the show is a meandering disaster. Hanna's thirst is treated as a joke even when it manifests as much creepier behavior, and when I tell you that lovingly caressing a stranger's butt is the starting point…it only escalates from there. The ED also has a "gag" where it shows her room with all of the panties Hanna has stolen that episode added to it, hanging from desks or chairs or in a pile on her desk. It's more attention to detail than I expected- comments suggest that the number and designs of these panties match the ones stolen over the series exactly. 

All in all, this series is for a very specific audience. A cynical mind would say that the hero's only a lesbian to appeal to men, either because they're into that or to lessen the creep factor of all this stuff being done by a guy. I'm not sure I agree though. Underneath the um…obvious, Hanna has a sort of genuine quality to her. It almost feels like she's two different characters, either a rambunctious and inexperienced but caring lesbian or a thoughtless selfish gremlin who drools over every girl in sight, depending on the scene. In any case, I wouldn't really recommend. I give A Panty Thief's Adventure in the Big City a three and a half out of ten. 

Date: March 16

Title: My Big Sister's Enviable Boingers

Before I posted my last review I had this moment of, like…lucidity, if you will, that something like this would happen. I would attract the weirdos, or that video would overperform, and I might be pigeonholed into examining ecchi under a knife. In any case, I don't think capitalizing on a single influx of readers will hurt, so I regret to inform you that I'm selling out and this week I'm reviewing My Big Sister's Enviable Boingers. 

So um. First off: this story has what many would call predictably an…incest, thing. Surprisingly it's not that prevalent, which is good because otherwise I don't think I could make it through but uh. Content warning for that, if it means you might need to click off. 

Anyway! My Big Sister's Enviable Boingers is about a twenty year old girl who lives in an apartment with her twenty four year old older sister, the two having been forced to live on their own after…something happened. In the show's twelve episode run it's never quite made clear what that "something" actually was. Maybe if this shlock swings a season two somehow, it'll get a chance to elaborate. The sisters mostly get along well, but the younger of the two harbors a secret: she envies her big sister's breasts. And not in like, a normal "someone else is hotter and more popular than me" kind of way either, it's…baaad. Comically bad, in my opinion.

I guarantee that out of the…maybe a dozen or so members of my fanbase who occupy the center of the "knew me before Panty Thief's Adventure" and "had heard of this anime before" venn diagram, they had heard of or encountered gifs of the dream sequences. And I'll be clear: they're very weird and uncomfortable. The younger sister's breast envy manifests in dreams as her sister's boobs having the power to change people's minds in an instant. She wants that power and hates her sister for having it, yet every time she tries to say something they catch her eye. When that happens, she speedruns a demented version of the stages of grief, going from "Why don't I have them" to "I wish I could take your place" to "at least I can hatefuck you" to "I'm yours, now and forever, and basking in your smile is all I could ever want." If I made it sound hot, like maybe without the incest angle that might be a sexy sorta erotic thriller beat, do yourself a favor please.

Don't watch this show. It's not as fun as I made it sound. 

Unless you're drunk or something and wanna take the piss out of some premium grade trash, the dream scenes are a huge letdown. It's all so fast and sudden and Weird that it comes off as comedy? And I guess this could be funny, in a fucked up sorta way, but this show really hasn't earned the right to be pointing at itself that way? Yeah, show, we KNOW this is fucked! No, you don't get to laugh about it, you brought it up! 

Outside of the dream sequences it's kinda standard. The older sister is, deceptively, the actual protagonist. The story revolves around her getting into various shenanigans supporting the apartment they live in, and you really start to feel bad for her. She's just a girl in the wrong place at the wrong time, and honestly the show does a staggeringly decent job making you want to see her stabilize their living conditions and be happy. She gets a really poignant moment in episode nine where she sings her little sister to sleep after something really upsetting happens, and I was genuinely about to cry until it smash cut to an off putting fanservice scene where the other girl dreams of her older sister going to the beach. 

I wanted to say for most of the show's run that you could tell a man wrote it, but that scene made me question myself. Maybe there were multiple writers, and one of them was an older sister herself, or felt when she was younger that she needed one. The setup is empathetic and caring, but with the bizarre baggage of what the show actually is…you know? If you simply must hate-watch this, you might want to skip episode nine. The tears will catch you.

Date: March 30

Title: Pantyshots From Heaven

Holy shit. Why the hell did those two reviews do numbers!? I tried going back last week but you guys are apparently either really thirsty or deep in the irony well. I guess I'm the ecchi reviewer now, goddamnit. This week's offering is a comparatively normaller one, except for its name being saturated in a kind of energy you shouldn't be surprised to see when it's name of both an anime and of pornography. It's called Pantyshots from Heaven. 

So. What the FUCK does that mean? The premise is a little bit out there, but I promise hearing me describe it WILL make you smile a little bit (ironically or not doesn't really matter). Ahem! Here goes!

Our story centers Atri, an angel. Her job is to look over humanity and make sure…it's never made clear what, because our Atri is a bit of a ditz and genuinely has no idea what the heck is going on around her, ever. She sucks at hiding from humans, but she has a sort of angelic charm about her that helps cover mishaps. With a smile and a flutter she can convince humans through sheer force of likability to forget they saw her as a favor. What's interesting about that is, like…every time she meets a new human you get this Bar Heck-esque shot of her framed in what looks like makeup oil to show she's pretty, and by god is she. I always felt kinda peppy and floaty on each of those shots, they're GORGEOUS. Your eyes naturally gravitate to her wings, her delicate skin, her nails, her lips, her goooorgeous tits, and I swear this character's smile is the most beautiful thing ever rendered. 

Anyway, the show is pretty formulaic. Atri gets a task, you don't know what because she was playing with a fluffy animal or something, she goes down to earth and fails spectacularly, and her androgynous supervisor has to come clean everything up. In most shows the concept of the hero constantly fucking things up and getting away scott-free (where's that phrase come from anyway?) based on her looks would be irritating, but like…I get it? I remember episodes one and two being annoying but I rewatched them after finishing the show and that thought felt positively alien. She's just soooo infectiously likable that any doubts you have about her get kinda muddied and washed away every time the camera graces you with a closeup of her face.

And GOD, later the show introduces her love interest (a human girl named Terra) with this really long shot of her panties, and it felt uncomfortable until you discover Atri is nuzzling up on them cause she doesn't know what they are, and…okay I know that sounds like classic weirdo anime bullshit but please, trust me, it's SO FUCKING CUTE YOU GUYS. This is where the first half of the title kicks in. 

From this point on the show starts cramming a pantyshot into every scene that involves Terra. She's one of Those kinds of anime girls- always leaning over way too far or falling over in suggestive ways. The camera fixates on her panties, and they're so lovingly drawn you can't help but drool a little and maybe zone out. There's a….hypnotic quality to one such scene, where she and Atri try to one-up each other's skirt lifting, and the scene has this beautiful infectious rhythm that really snares your attention. It's impossible to look away and you'd be forgiven for rewinding it once or twice to see it unfold again. I apparently lost ten minutes or so in such a state until I got a phone call.

As for the series' artistic merits, nothing really happens and none of the characters grow or change, but if you need some smiles for your soul I cannot recommend this show enough. Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go mea culpa for a few hours until I feel clean again.