Otome Chibaku Yuugi

You've seen it before, and you'll see it again. Otome Chibaku Yuugi is yet another blackmail hentai, and really, that's about all there is to it. It attempts to do something special by trying to actually provide a decent, justifiable motivation behind the blackmail and rape, but it collapses under the weight of its own ambitions. Or maybe under the weight of its massive libido. Or maybe under the weight of being hentai. I don't know, and I'm finding that I don't particularly care. OCY follows our bitter hero, Higuchi Kaoru, as he exacts revenge against his childhood friend, Nanao, forraping him. Yes, you heard me right. (Although of course it's not considered rape by anyone, because men are too manly to be raped, right? Also, for the record, since I'm already abusing these parentheses, any forced sexual activity can legitimately count as rape.) Anyways, yes, his childhood friend, with the aid of her student council cronies, rapes him. Furthermore, when they are discovered by their teacher, Nanao claims HE was raping HER. And because there is actually a very legit reason to believe a girl when she claims to have been raped, Kaoru gets punished for the crime of which HE was the victim. This is a great set-up, at least in theory. If nothing else, it would certainly justify a revenge plot. Unfortunately, to get a sense for that justification, I had to read into the plot. In the world of OCY (and most hentai, I'm sure), attempted rape is punishable at most by...suspension from school. He was not registered as a sex offender or locked up in jail. As far as I'm aware, this is what would happen in real life (at least in the U.S.A.) and would be legitimate grounds to be royally pissed off. No matter what he would try to do in life, he would forever be haunted by that mark on his record. He would always be known to the public as just a rapist. His life would be ruined. In THAT case, there MIGHT be a SENSE in which he is justified in becoming that which he was accused of being, that which he will always be known as. After all, why not at least get the sick satisfaction of the crime of which you have been convicted? Practically none of that analysis is actually in OCY. I made most of it up as the missing link between the premise and the contents. It's sad to see something with potential trip and fall flat on its face, but I'm not going to credit this show for being well-thought-out when it clearly wasn't. I'm not saying OCY is BAD; with a little more thought, it could have been a gripping psychological tale of blame, guilt, and revenge, perhaps even a sort of treatise on living with the consequences of one's actions or on the social position of those convicted of crimes. It's NOT, but it could have been. That's gotta count for something, right? Failure to live up to potential and to connect the dots are not the only problems OCY has in the story department. There's a little problem with proper motivation. As mentioned, Nanao and Kaoru are apparently childhood friends (we learn this out of the blue in episode two, as if it had suddenly been decided by the writers). Well, if you're familiar with anime, "childhood friend" = "unrequited love". If you're not familiar with anime, there are better things you should be watching, even among hentai. My point is, Nanao likes Kaoru. I have absolutely no idea why she decided it was a cool idea to rape him and then pin the crime on him. If she were shown to be mentally unstable, then perhaps, but she is portrayed as rational, if arrogant and egocentric, and even as sympathetic towards the end. I don't know if this is due to poor writing or if it's meant as subtle hint that no one deserves to be raped. Wait, I think I do know, and it's not the latter. Anyways, I guess I've sorta started talking about the characters. Really, the cast is almost entirely comprised of naive, will-less people (Mayu, Mitsuki) and complete jackasses (Nanao, Misao, Kaoru, Takano). I.E., there's nothing special here, although Kaoru is kind of fun to watch. It is as if he was modeled in part after Light Yagami or Lelouch, as he seems to give off this "All according to plan" mastermindedness, while taking a somewhat sick pleasure in watching the chaos unfold (check out those evil grins: they're priceless). Granted, he's not especially intelligent, but having any functional plan whatsoever in a hentai title is well above par. It's not a plan that would work so well in real life, but the same could be said for Light or Lelouch. I should make sure to remind you that I am not saying OCY is as good as Death Note or Code Geass. Don't be silly. The only way OCY could possibly be as good as those titles is if it added explicit sexual content! Which it does. In spades. Otome Chibaku Yuugi is typical of modern hentai, in that the focus is sex, there's a lot of sex, and the sex is really explicit. This is not a bad thing. I almost feel like it's not worth mentioning the animation quality, since it's really just what you should expect from recent productions. That said, it's still pretty good. I personally like the art style, although the females' particular designs are not my favorite cup of tea. Kaoru, though, is something of a looker, and it's always better (again, in my opinion) when the male is attractive, even if it's rape. Yes, this OVA is a rape OVA. If you didn't catch that, I don't think you've been paying enough attention. Kaoru systematically blackmails and rapes each of the female student council members, using each one in succession to help secure a hold over the next in line for revenge. Interestingly (and by which I mean I'm not surprised), Kaoru doesn't bother to take revenge on the male council members who were peripherally involved in his rape. Well, Kaoru is as straight as f(x)=3x+2 within a Cartesian coordinate system, not to mention totally obsessed with rape in particular, so OF COURSE there's nothing he can do to get back at them. Either that, or he doesn't know their names, since they are NAMELESS EXTRAS...who work in the student council with him. Did I mention Kaoru was in (and allowed to be in) the student council both before AND after the incident? Yeah, I don't get it either. In any case, back to the sex. In terms of level of explicitness, Otome Chibaku Yuugi is not at the top of the list. Bodily fluids are relatively minimal, and the camera angles range from very revealing to more conservative shots. There is a large skew in positioning towards, uh, rear entry, mostly of the, uh, bent-over-an-object variety. This tends to stagnate. That said, OCY does have a fair variety of sexual activities: oral (female-on-male, male-on-female, and female-on-female), anal, vaginal, masturbation (though not much), footjob (okay, this one is more disturbing than erotic), minor bondage, toys, enemas...and I think that's about it. It also features a somewhat diverse cast: a shy, blue-pig-tailed, big-breasted, glasses girl; a spunky, short-green-haired, small-breasted girl; an uptight and arrogant (ojousama-esque), long-light-brown-haired, arrogant, proportionally-well-balanced girl; and a teacher archetype. Okay, nothing really unusual about that. Anyways, OCY does not feature any orgies or boobjobs, so...yeah. Furthermore, OCY features precisely NO CONSENSUAL SEX. Kaoru makes a point of keeping things fairly unpleasant, too, while still asserting his position in a master-slave relationship. Your mileage may vary. Voice acting is pretty competent, although it's not like anyone is going to win any awards. Admittedly, I lack the ability to give any useful comments on the voice acting. Of note were Kaoru's Lelouch-like smugness and Nanao's, uh, screams for mercy. She gets pretty upset as he breaks her. The background music is mostly negligible. I think it involved typical synth-strings and piano, along with occasional solo-pads to set an eerie tone. OCY is pretty dark, so I guess it works, but, again, this won't be winning any awards. Overall, Otome Chibaku Yuugi isn't bad; it's just not particularly good. Admittedly, the premise is good enough to drive the plot, even with all the holes. Higuchi Kaoru, despite his abhorrent mission, is still a moderately compelling lead, and OCY somehow seems capable of getting its audience to actually root for him. Maybe it's because Nanao and Misao are almost as malicious, and that their irredeemable actions are what drove Kaoru to be the way that he is; as much as it makes me feel like a terrible person, I felt a sense of satisfaction as he broke those two girls. Kaoru does make it clear to them that he is only being as merciless as they were, and that does provide a nice sense of circularity to the scenario. However, Kaoru also fails to transcend his bitterness and one-dimensional rage, even when the opportunity arises. There are several points at which he could have chosen to just be the better man, so to speak. When he finds out that Mayu has been abused by the other council members, he could have realized that she was coerced into taking part in his rape, forgiven her, and then put an end to the abuse. He does the latter (probably), but it's only by coincidence. Kaoru has no remorse; everything is for the sake of his revenge. His teacher, Mitsuki, is also not to blame, but he doesn't spare her either. When Nanao begs for forgiveness, when he learns she liked him (even considering the irony of the revelation), he does not even hesitate. He doesn't wonder why she did what she did (considering that she liked him), and he has no regret in him whatsoever. The way I see it, he should have had two competing desires: that for revenge, driven by hatred and spite, and that for forgiveness, driven by empathy and regret. It's not that the former wins out; it's that he completely lacks the latter. This makes him unsympathetic, which is something he sort of was at the beginning. Overall, Otome Chibaku Yuugi was all right, but it isn't anything particularly great. Watch it for a hentai/far-less-intelligent version of Lelouch and for, uh, rape scenes that aren't particularly painful by merit of being a sort of comeuppance. If you're not really interested in those, or if none of the content is personal fetish material, then this probably isn't worth watching, unless you really can't find anything better.