This season’s way too pornographic and barely classified as an anime has come and gone, and World’s End Harem was a travesty by every definition of that word. Let’s talk about how bad the show was in this review!

World’s End Harem Overview

World’s End Harem or Shuumatsu No Harem in original Japanese is an Ecchi, Sci-fi, and Harem anime developed by Studio Gokumi of Tsuredure Children fame, alongside AXsiZ, which is known for shows like Seiren. The anime is based on a manga of the same name written by Kotaro Shono and LINK.

The series is directed by Nobuta Yuu, who has previously been involved with the productions of Bokura No and High School Fleet. The show was originally going to premiere in the Fall 2021 season of anime but was postponed to Winter 2022 due to some behind-the-scenes issues. You can go back and read our review of the show’s final episode, which you can find right here. You can also find our episodic reviews of the show here if you want to rewatch the series or watch it for the first time.

– Shuumatsu No Harem Review does not contain spoilers –

World’s End Harem Review- The Plot

“The Man-Killer Virus: a lethal disease that has eradicated 99.9% of the world’s male population. Mizuhara Reito has been in cryogenic sleep for the past five years, leaving behind Tachibana Elisa, the girl of his dreams. When Reito awakens from the deep freeze, he emerges into a sex-crazed new world where he himself is the planet’s most precious resource. Reito and four other male studs are given lives of luxury and one simple mission: repopulate the world by impregnating as many women as possible! All Reito wants, however, is to find his beloved Elisa who went missing three years ago. Can Reito resist temptation and find his one true love?”

Let’s get one thing straight before we begin, this is a porn plot. There is no getting around the fact that there exist hentai and porn series that have better plots than this atrocity. That works for some people and more power to them. However, the only thing that differentiates it from literally every other hentai show that came before or alongside it was that World’s End Harem wanted to be more than just sex scenes but failed miserably while trying not very hard. At least Hentais are true to themselves and know what they want to be.

The plot is divided between two characters, Reito and Doi, and the two halves don’t really interact with each other apart from the final episode. It begins with the promised plot point of Reito refusing to have sex with anyone other than the love of his life and him trying to learn more about the conspiracies that led to the state of the world. This half was decent at the start and showcased some promise that could have gone somewhere if this show was written by someone more competent. Alas, it wasn’t, and it fizzled out by the end.

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The second plot point involves Doi being corrupted by his handler into a total control freak and sex maniac who wants nothing but to have sex with anyone he lays his eyes upon. Unless you haven’t figured out already, Doi was World’ End Harem‘s outlet for putting in as much sex and debauchery as they wanted while still hiding behind the veil of being “more than just a wish-fulfilment show” by putting in Reito’s scenes every once in a while. Doi dominates the screen time, despite not being the show’s main character. That should tell you what you need to know about the show’s priorities.

Also, the show’s “nuanced and well-written plot” does not exist. It was as basic a conspiracy plot as they can get, and they can get extremely basic. The show operated on the assumption that people cared enough about it to readily wait for a World’s End Harem season 2 and thus didn’t have a conclusion or arrive at a good point to stop. It just stopped one day with not much interest and called it a season, and it was full of so many plotholes that I wouldn’t be surprised to find an entire rat colony living in the show’s script. There were some positive things, but the negatives hugely outnumbered them.

Shuumatsu no Harem Review- The Characters

The show features a huge variety of female characters, which isn’t surprising given all but 5 men have perished in the show’s plot. What is surprising, however, is that the author chose to write about so many female characters, given that they so clearly hate the entire female sex. Women are either there as sex objects or ruthless power-hungry maniacs who wouldn’t hesitate a second to destroy an entire subsection of the world to be the one ruling it. The show tries to introduce some women other than the two types mentioned here, but they are given so little screen time that their existence doesn’t matter.

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Reito, the main character, doesn’t develop from the show’s start to the end. However, that’s because World’s End Harem doesn’t give him any time to. The show prefers to focus its entire attention on Doi, someone who is interesting at the start but becomes unwatchable by the end due to how World’s End Harem treats him. His arc of revenge was interesting, if a little uncomfortable, but everything that came after felt like time wasted that could have been used to develop Reito.

There are some partially developed female characters, including some of Reito’s companions, but you can imagine how much development they got, considering how little Reito did. Doi and Reito’s handlers play an important role in the series, and they are the only ones that are even close to being complete characters, despite still lying on one of either “Bitch or Bimbo” spectrum. There is plenty that could be explored if the series had more time, but I’m still glad it didn’t.

World’s End Harem Review- Animation and Music

The animation in World’s End Harem was perfectly fine and acceptable for what it was, a slightly higher budget hentai. The animation looked iffy whenever the characters started moving, but at least the sex scenes looked fine, which was the entire point of the show. The character designs were pretty generic and unimpressive as well, which was a downside to what the show was trying to accomplish. The music followed suit by being highly forgettable and plain as well, except the opening, which was good at points.

However, that all changed with the airing of the final episode. It seems like the showrunners officially gave up on the show by that point because that episode was practically a slideshow. People didn’t have movable mouths; the episode was mostly just a slideshow featuring stills instead of animation, and the rare times there was animation, it was just repeated frames or something directly lifted from the previous episodes. It was a sorry sight caused by budget mismanagement and other lovely issues constantly troubling the anime industry.

Verdict

World’s End Harem was too hentai to be a proper anime and too anime to be a proper hentai. It tried to be good at two things but failed miserably in both, and you’d be better off doing anything else with your time besides watching this.