Gekka Bijin

Gekka Bijin (Maison Plaisir) manages to pull off something amazing. To put seemingly impossible themes together and do it well: Comedy/parody with BDSM. Not that they made BDSM funny, but rather there are BDSM parts to the story as well as comedic parodies without the dark aspects of rape, coerced sex, and sex slavery often associated with BDSM genres. Think "Love Hina" but with a BDSM theme. The whole approach is light-hearted, humorous, and pretty ingenious I think. But just because it's funny doesn't mean they don't take their bondage seriously. In fact Gakka Bijin is all about shibari mastery ( the art of Japanesebondage). STORY 8 The story centers around Seiichi, a high school graduate who failed his college entrance exam twice and has moved in a dormitory to study in order to pass his next exam. He moves in with, not surprisingly, a cast of female characters and begins to discover some secrets about the dormitory and its tenants. Sound familiar? (ah hem... Love Hina) Unfortunately Gekka Bijin isn't a harem per say. Rather, it is a love story with some intruding characters based on shibari. Because of this, Seiichi works really hard on becoming a shibari master with the help of some hilarious side characters. CHARACTER 9 Seiichi is not your avaerage lame half-assed male protagonist who can't make up his decision on which girls he want's to get with, nor is he a neurotic masochist with a chip on his shoulder that likes to abuse women. He approaches BDSM as a hobby, an art to be mastered, and also a way of... helping people?! Yes, it may come as a surprise, but people are actually helped by resolving issues through Seiichi's BDSM. LOL, now do you understand the awesomeness of Gekka Bijin? Miyuki, the landlady, is beautiful, polite, warm, gentle, and seemingly refined wife-material that any college reject would fall for. However, she's a widow with a secret taboo passion she once shared with her late husband. Now, with her husband gone, there's a void with in her. Well, needless to say, Seiichi helps her fill that void and saves her from darkness with his BDSM skills. There is Seiichi's step-mother whom he shared a past relationship with and his little step-sister who is infatuated with her "onii-chan". There are tensions between step-mother and daughter and, once again, Seiichi saves the day through his awesome bondage skills. "My hero!" Then there's Kasumi, the "cucumber-loving" school girl with glasses, who has the good fortune of living in the next room to Seiichi. She is constantly disturbed from her studies by the moans and groans coming from next door. Although sex-wise, involves only the above mentioned, there are a cast of interesting and often hilarious side characters that help Seiichi on his path to shibari mastery. ART/ANIMATION/SOUND 8 The characters are nicely designed and good looking with a late 90's feel to it. The art is good and the animations are smooth. I would say, sightly above average over all. There are not much repeating frames. The voice cast is right on when is comes to portraying the feel of the characters. There are no off beat sound FX. The overall production value seems to be on the high end like with a regular 26 episode anime of the same era. OVERALL ENJOYMENT 9 For you perverts, there is a variety of play: piss/scat/enema, incest (non-blood related), loli, yuri, dildo play, and a lot of bondage. Although it is uncensored, which is a plus, I wished the sex scenes were a little longer. I found it to be short and sporadic (but hot) through out the 2 episode series. For that, the fap value of this hentai is not really all that high, which is a disappointment to some. But what sets it a part is it's unique plot and approach to what is usually a darker topic and actually made me laugh (in a good way). There are no bad feelings or open ended conclusions, and wraps up quite nicely where everyone is happy and content.