J.C. Staff are a prolific company who have worked on some acclaimed
titles - the TV series Revolutionary Girl
Utena (1997) and Azumanga Daioh
(2002) spring to mind - but they are still a company who worked over the
years, leading to an eclectic catalogue which includes legitimately
curiosities, ones you may have never heard of and others that you will scratch
your head about. The straight to video work is a great example of this. You can have Cat Soup (2001), a highly regarded and surreal avant-garde
animation based on the work of manga author Nekojiru.
You can however also have Garzey's Wing
(1996-7), a notorious Yoshiyuki
Tomino work, and they are a company who have put their hands into a curious
number of tangents. Probably one of the most infamous, least in the USA because
Media Blasters released this two
episode work and the manga, is Seiji
Matsuyama's Eiken. Eiken, if you just look at the
screenshots, will lead to many running far from it as far as possible. Hell,
the still images may even cause problems for those who maintain free blogging
sites, unless you have the warning page for sensitive content up. Eiken, with fair warning for someone expecting this to be a review just viewing it as a gross perversion of anime sex comedy tropes may be mortified that this review, dare I say, may even become pretentious. Not to defend the anime at all, but from someone who viewed it only in mind to a morbid fascination, and left finding it a sexual nightmare tale masquerading in cute clothes with a lot to unpick. Even in terms
of Matsuyama's accidental
contributions as a manga author in real life Japanese politics, Eiken is a perfect example, whether a good anime, a bad anime, or an infamous one, you could write so much about even if entirely personal opinion, and it is all worth having written down.
This all also stems into the
past. Let us not kid ourselves, even if the later sentence will sound crass,
but anime and manga over the decades has had an obsession with the female bust, and this leads to the term "bakunyu",
literally "exploding breasts" and means "enormous breasts", when you take the fixation found in many cultures for heterosexual males to its most extreme level.
Eiken is infamous, even when larger
busted characters have become commonplace within anime and manga, for being the
one title to bring bakunyu to Shonen manga as, yes, this was targeted to
adolescent boys in Weekly Shōnen Champion.
The story is complicated knowing that its most notorious creative decision, the
bust size of a lot of its female cast, was not from the get-go, but a decision
made with the editor (with the author's interest) to redraw the characters from
volume four in the manga tankōbon onwards, which is also notably where, in the
US releases, Media Blasters'
publications had to switch from an age rating of 16 plus to 18 plus1.
Even if I advise caution against anyone watching this without warning, I came to this anime fully aware of what I was getting into, and finding rather than feeling dirty, as I will warn most will, the anime adaptation fascinated for what it inadvertedly became. The entire thing by pure accident comes as an adolescent male sexual neurosis onscreen even if that is clearly not the intention of the production at all, all with a perverse air to it that is more interesting to have witnessed for myself than the shock many would have with this title.
It is not a parody, as it was
clearly made as a tale with sex appeal if one with a kink or two few have, and
as we will get into later, Seiji
Matsuyama created a manga much more controversial, with wide scale effect
on Japanese censorship, which is likely to be less defendable and place a more
damning eye on this title too with hindsight. Coming to this, Eiken has all the tropes of other anime
and manga which can be questionable and clichéd, the high school romance a common story line which can be done well and has questionable aspects to challenge, including the obsession with having so many and the idea one's high school life in a fantastical form is more worthy of anime over the worlds of adults. The difference is that this is anime high school if
filtered through an adolescent hormonal nightmare. Our lead Densuke Mifune is
so bland, like so many male protagonists in these in terms of his meek inability, that he is immediately set upon by the notorious Eiken club and its leader Kirika
Misono on his first day at Zashono
Academy, a place which is literally located on a blatant Freudian landmass.
It is not redeemable as an anime, but the stereotypical clichés over these two episodes are
here and they find themselves being more scrutinised due to how tasteless this
show gets, exaggerating them to an extreme whilst still disguising itself as cutesy.
The clichés are found in other shows - cute love interest Chiharu Shinonome,
who is shy and Densuke crushes on, the school competition that could bring them
closer, the former student who studied in the USA who is a threat as another
romantic interest, and Densuke's own unfortunate curse to stumble into every clichéd
moment of anime sex comedy at the worse moments. The differences beyond its lewdness could almost have been notable changes that the show never actually winked at, in that the most notorious part of the show, the breast sizes of several key female characters, could have just been shown onscreen and everything about the plot could have played out without ever raising the character designs as the anime actually does constantly, forcing one to register it and react with how even a crass choice undercuts everything. This anime is not subtle in the slightest so instead with Chiharu,
the bakunyu change forces her to become distorted, the change turning these
characters into hyper exaggerations that for a viewer may be a step into the
off-putting. And some of the characters are younger and more ridiculously
proportion, which makes this even moe perverse let alone more dubious in
general before those aesthetic touches.
If it was not obvious this was a
bizarre product beamed from a specific series of circumstances, the alternative world version of this, which was more focused on being a twisted little parody, would have been inspired if off-putting for someone. Even in this dubious form it is in reality, I cannot help but view it like a two episode nightmare from another television show, censored for television censorship, where our lead dreams all of this in a state of delirium, representing
all of his sexual anxieties and hang-ups as a teen boy, before he wakes up and
encounters these characters with sensible proportions and with less lewdness
onscreen. In another context, this would have still be uncomfortable viewing,
but could have been a really twisted satire less on these tropes but on teen
hormonal anxieties. This is more so considering how many anime sex comedies already
have the curious "reward-punishment" trope that I find more and more curious to witness. Far from embarrassment, when I get older as an anime fan, watching work with fan service content, a lot of it is now, if not defendable as good sex comedy, becoming more psychologically compelling to unpick for how they represent sexual hang-ups and relationships. Whether the lead
deserves it or by pure accident, any encounter with the opposite sex in terms
of something lewd or sexual usually involves a male lead being humiliated
and/or beaten up afterwards, something which has come off as more an anxiety of
sex in general the more I see it in these stories, whether they are defendable or
not.
Even the obsession with breasts,
exaggerated here to an incredible extreme and an obsession for many men,
filters through this anxious accidental tone; the idea that, whether any
psychological or sociological reasons this part of the female anatomy is an
obsession for many heterosexual men erotically, a large part of this likely as
much due to an integral part of adolescence being how we all go through significant physical change. When one goes through
puberty, male or female, your body physically changes and these changes, even
if you suddenly become taller or stay short, become the aspect which others
take in as they themselves physically and emotionally change, sometime they exaggerate in how they perceive you; this is including
those who become attracted to you, and what they may take into consideration,
as they themselves suddenly feel attraction to the opposite sex unless they go
through the discovery of being gay or bisexual. All of this is amateur
observation, so heckling in the comments is acceptable, but it is apt that, if
this was a parody, Densuke's nightmare distorts the most prominent
features of the girl he has a crush on. These are her
shyness, with the Japanese vocal performance from Miwa Oshiro, a model whose only voice
acting role is this show, exaggerates through the timidness in her high
voice, and her figure, which if this was a sensible show, and not a fetish work, would be through the mind's eye of how one teen boy views her through this over-the-top physicality as the other female characters with similar proportions. Considering the hair styles
of the female cast, regardless of figures, is just as exaggerated with how
large they are, it befits this distortion. Someone like the leader of the
Eiken club Kirika Misono and others are even more exaggerated in their
proportions, and even with those which are not, their seemingly sexual openness, whilst not subtle and well done, could have been in a satire his fears of girls he is attracted to but are absolutely more aware of themselves physically and in desires then he and most of the males in the school ever can. The
crass phallic food jokes do not help among many moments in this show, particularly with Kirika's obsession with things like
bananas and not eating them conventionally, sight gags that you the viewer
will hope no one comes into the room (with the whole work) when you are
watching this; even those though would make sense if this was an actual satire if still
crass. That being Densuke a case of someone with a sudden desire for the
opposite sex but is terrified of them as confident, hypersexual figures in his
view of them.
This is all death of the author
logic, but I am coming to this title with its legacy being hyped, that I had
heard for years this was to be approached with caution, a title you would
scratch your eyes out in immediate contact of. Instead I watched Eiken only to find myself admitting I
was not affected by it at all, even with some of the worse jokes that appear
between the two twenty plus minute episodes, even finding a sick sense of
humour to this with distance for how unintentionally un-erotic it is. My tastes for readers is also one that, appreciating the best of art, is also being someone with the taste for the weird, even a cinematic trash panda who can try to wonder what formed work that is never going to win many people. Again, let sanity come and point out this is all a viewpoint
to a work proudly, and brazenly, perverse on purpose, but still I find one of
the stranger moments in this anime was not sexual at all, that among the duo of
female commentators on the sports events, both classmates, one of them decides
to hold her finger to her top lip like a moustache and talk in a faux deep male
voice to sound like an expert, which is stranger than anything else that is lewd and sexually symbolic. Far more disturbing
for me is that the male student returning from the States is a predator,
someone claiming to be Chiharu's knight in shining armour but emotionally
twisting her, and forcing her to be intimate with him in the sports games in a
non-consensual way as a team. That content is more problematic over the years in anime, making his punishment (even with the cheap joke
at bald people) actually justifiable.
This is all in mind that, even if
you manage to get through episode one, episode two is going to be more
off-putting for some. The first has a yoghurt water slide as a challenge, which
is sexual innuendo giving up subtlety, but the later has a chocolate
waterslide, which is unfortunate in what it looks like instead, and one off
jokes, including involving eels, which will cause even those who got through
that first episode to give up the anime broken. Yet it still feels like the
sexual nightmare of Densuke, causing me to wonder why Seiji Matsuyama for his manga made most of the humour, if accurate to the manga in the adaptation, a male lead who is the butt of these jokes. There are moments when Densuke has some very kinky fantasies of his own about Chiharu, but they truly feel adolescent and are constantly undercut by how at a disadvantage he is in every situation, like a guy whose learnt of these in a dirty mag but would be in the deep end in an actual relationship with another human being. This is probably the one thing in this entire anime arguably close to real life even if I do not want to give Eiken credit for being smart. Even jokes that it has which are eyebrow raising,
such as Chiharu's younger sister being openly flirtatious with him, are a)
jokes we need to critique in other anime for having too, and b) itself another
of the moments this show accidentally feels like one poor boy's hormones being
his own enemy. The entire "gag" (with air quotes) of Densuke being forced to wear a woman's swimming one piece (with ponytails) for the chocolate water slide challenge is loaded in itself, and would be still the same even if Seiji Matsuyama was to have admitted, if from the manga, he never considered anything more to it beyond thinking it a "gag" to casually include for one chapter.
A weird amount of sexual anxiety
comes into anime even when it is playing to questionable tropes of girls being
seen undressed or nude in changing rooms for a joke and titillation, not forgetting hot springs episodes or when by pure accident a slip of clothing in a pratfall transpires. There is likely afterwards to be the scene of the guy being physically injured in the transgression, or in
this case Densuke constantly at the end of humiliation and belief from others
he is a pervert. The Japanese voice performance, unlike the one from Bryce Papenbrook in the English dub, is
a female voice actress Akeno Watanabe who plays him uncomfortable
young in how high pitch he is, like a middle scholar including in his short
height, but it adds to the sick joke of the poor lad trying to wrap his head
around this world of hyper-figured women even taller than him let alone with a few wrapping him around their fingers. Suffering at the
cruel hands of the writers (and manga author Seiji Matsuyama) falling back on the dated tropes of sex comedy,
that this still feels like a conventional comedy barring its lewd details adds
to this adds to this twisted nature. With its early 2000s look of bright colours, its nineties mah-jong videogame music score, and how cute it is all
meant to be, the idea this is all meant to be like a regular anime comedy is weirder than any of the perversity onscreen. There is even a bear creature no one raises questions about being
in the Eiken club with everyone else just to toy with any viewer who can tolerate how extreme it is, finding a new way to baffle.
Considering the stuff I have sat
through where I have found more disturbing content in more inappropriate
places, I find Eiken just perverse. Anime with uncomfortable levels of non-consensual eroticism like VS Knight Lamune & 40 Fresh
(1997), a straight to video work which presents itself as a sexy action
show only to be nasty in misogynistic ways in tonal whiplashes, make Eiken a lesser of two evils, more curious to prod as an oddity. It is tasteless
and one I understand the reactions to, that it is gross and deserves the most
negative reviews; the only things are that I have suffered through worse, and
that this is a weird artefact too loaded with psychosexual aspects and
unintentional weirdness that are compelling. It is not pleasant to watch
the anime, but it was compelling in its own way. If someone like Guy Maddin made a story like this in
live action, imagining now the perversity and surrealism of the Canadian
filmmaker of Careful (1992) adapting
this story, Eiken would be a film
that would put people off, but it would one damn curious trip, considering that
a film like Cowards Bend the Knees
(2003), one of Guy Maddin's more
transgressive films dealing with sexual kink, was a film about male sexual
neurosis if by way of ice hockey. The fact
this has no actual nudity either adds to its tone too. It is tame in what you do not see, but has
content kinkier here than in actual animated porn, which will make people feel very
filthy for watching this but adds to this perverse feverish idea even if
entirely from this viewer's perspective. There is a lot of anime and manga
which is entirely with this tone, meant to titillate with having sexy
schoolgirls with ridiculous proportions and near undress, which has its own
moral and gender issues rightly to unpack, but also usually come with a need to
punish its male characters as if to punish the male viewers. It is fascinating to watch what is held as
one of the most notorious straight to video anime for many people and, rather than
take it as it is, imagine what Sigmund
Freud would have thought of it. Even if Freud's
ideas on sex and women were always dubious, just to see him trying to figure it
all would have been something I wished happened.
The one sobering point though,
and this is something I have been wary to reach, is that the history after this
for Seiji Matsuyama would let to him
get into legitimate controversy with another of his works, a title called Oku-sama wa Shōgakusei (My Wife Is an
Elementary Student), which, yes, does raise alarm bells as a premise even if
a gag comedy. This controversy over this manga and others in 2011 was connected
to a revised bill to amend the Youth
Healthy Development Ordinance2, one that not only restricted those
manga3 but was marked with concerns, under its new revised
guideline, to restrict the sales of materials that were considered "to be
excessively disrupting of social order"3. Bill 156 as the final
revision became, through failures and revisions beforehand, was controversial,
and whilst the material it targeted includes work which for many is difficult
to defend, including manga that involve sexual relationships with minors, unfortunately
one of the men who helped this revision finally get passed in 2010 was then-Tokyo governor Shintarō Ishihara. Ishihara, until the end of his tenure in
office in 2012, is an incredibly problematic figure, a former novelist whose
beliefs have been slammed as racist4a, misogynistic4b,
and pertinent to Bill 156, included openly homophobic comments from 2000 that
homosexuality was abnormal4c. The problem with Bill 156 at the time
was a conundrum; that the materials it targeted would be incredibly difficult
for many to defend, such as work in the lolicon and shotacon genre, minority
genres of manga yet ones that challenge what freedom in manga as art is, but
that it could have been abused for censoring LGBTQ voices under the auspices of
protecting children, alongside those promoting views on controversial subjects done with intelligence and grace. Especially as difficult work for many, even those who
believed in the freedom of art, could be pointed to as evidence to justify the
censorship, the bill could have had great lasting damage, and considering it
was Seiji Matsuyama's Oku-sama wa Shōgakusei that was shown
on television by Tokyo Vice Governor Naoki
Inose as corrupting and needing to be restricted5, part of a
campaign leading to the birth of this bill, Matsuyama
got his fingers burnt by this and it does reflect back on Eiken. Whilst it is its own perverse little thing, least in this
short anime adaptation, the tone of Eiken
if accurate to the manga does show a lewdness, including that it was sold
for teenage boys, could have gotten more confrontational if he was allowed to push the envelope. It was a different title of Matsuyama's which got him in hot water, but he could have raised controversy from certain groups even from Eiken if remotely like the anime.
Eiken itself managed to return, least the anime adaptation, when Media Blasters came back from a long
hibernation in 2020. Media Blasters,
who were founded in 1997, are fascinating as the little independent distributor
in the United States who has never refused to give up the ghost, and despite a
long period of absence, founder John
Sirabella has kept the company afloat, coming back with a vengeance in
2020. The manga arm of the company is gone, but Eiken got a Blu Ray re-release that year6a and would be
made available to watch on Crunchyroll
for streaming by the end of 20206b. I would not be surprised ,
whilst Media Blasters sells actual
porn anime and lewd ecchi anime, that Eiken's
re-release comes with the knowledge of its notoriety after the passing time. Eiken is the title which, after its
first release and its manga being published in English in the US, could be seen
as the ultimate infamous title to dare to watch for some, the one too weird or
perverse for others to see, and in my case the notorious title I spied with the
aforementioned morbid curiosity. It is to be approached with caution, and if
this had been a full television series of just thirteen episodes, my comments from these two episodes may have lead instead to me becoming a husk of a demoralised anime viewer after my initial cockiness. Considering the manga had eighteen volumes, even my perverse interest in the title may not want to know where it went with this premise beyond these sixty minutes, and knowing full well this is loaded with innuendo, sometimes something shorter is less painful over something significantly longer in terms of watching anime. As I have found, short anime, even those considered the worst, do not have that much power for me because they do not take too longer to sit through. At sixty minutes, Eiken is the kind of show John Sirabella's Media Blasters could re-release and take advantage of even negative legacy, and honestly, I admire them for taking advantage of this even if other people may not, probably regretting watching this even if they ignored warnings like mine in this review.
======
1) Who Was Responsible For This Anime?, an insanely (and applaudably)
detailed and intelligent YouTube documentary on Eiken from Hazel
("@hhhazel"). The video here and the channel here.
2) Full Tokyo Assembly Passes Youth Ordinance Bill,
written by Egan Loo and published by
Anime News Network on 15th December
2010.
3) Akamatsu's J-Comi Site Posts Adult Manga Restricted
by Tokyo Law, written by Egan Loo
and published by Anime News Network
on 3rd October 2011.
4a) Alternative
Report to the First and Second Periodic Report of JAPA on the International
Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination. Section "3. Control of expression,
incitement and violence related to racial discrimination", under "(2) Absence of provisions regulating
and punishing discriminatory expression by public officials", under "C. Position of the JFBA". Written
by the Japan Federation of Bar
Associations (JFBA) in January 19,
2001 and published online by Nichibenren.
4b) Committee
on Elimination of Discrimination Against Women, The Third Consideration of
Japanese Governmental Report: Proposal of List of Issues for Pre-sessional
Working Group, written by the Japan
Civil Liberties Union and published on 27th January 2003, archived on 23 November
2012.
4c) FEATURE:
Ishihara's homophobic remarks raise ire of gays, written for Japan Policy & Politics and
published April 3rd 2000. Archived on the Free
Library.com
5) 4,000
Protest Takashi Murakami's Versailles Exhibit, written by Egan Loo and published on Anime News Network on 30th August 2010.
6a) Media
Blasters to Release Eiken, Jungle de Ikou!, Jubei-Chan 2 Anime on Blu-ray Disc,
written by Crystalyn Hodgkins, and
published by Anime News Network on
21st February 2020.
6b) Crunchyroll
Adds Eiken Anime to Catalog, written by Rafael Antonio Pineda and published by Anime News Network on 25th September 2020.
