The Spring 2025 Anime Preview Guide

Yandere Dark Elf: She Chased Me All the Way From Another World!

Hinata Sunohara thought defeating the evil overlord and returning to high school in Japan marked the end of his otherworldly adventures. But when Mariabell, his first and most fervent ally from the magical realm, follows him home, his daily life takes a fantastical turn. Just a month after his return, Mariabell, a dark elf with a passionate and slightly obsessive love, declares they're meant to be together forever. Now, Hinata must navigate the halls of high school while living with a magically jealous girlfriend who takes "school crush" to a whole new level.

Yandere Dark Elf: She Chased Me All the Way From Another World! is based on a manga by Nakanosora. The anime series is streaming on HIDIVE on Sundays.

Y'all, please just watch some porn. Yandere Dark Elf is the second series I've suffered through this season that basically amounts to softcore, and while Please Put Them On, Takamine wasn't good, at least it had the decency to have a concept that's funny to explain to people. With the right crowd, it could even be fun to hoot and holler at. Yandere Dark Elf is much more straightforward in its concept. In fact, I don't even feel the need to explain the plot. It's all just there in the title. If I'm going to talk about jack-off material, I'd prefer for it to at least be high-concept.

Instead, I have to find a way to discuss fetishes that I find extremely discomfiting in a way that isn't inadvertently kink-shaming. Like, I get that shotacon aimed at male audiences isn't really pedophilic in nature because the viewer is meant to identify with the child, but that doesn't make me feel more okay about watching a busty adult woman mount a boy who looks like he's ten years old! It may be interesting to dissect from a scholarly cultural studies perspective, but when I'm in my mode as a simple reviewer, all I can say is, “I do not like this and in fact find it extremely icky.” It's like you gave a whole show to Shota and Lucoa from Kobayashi's Dragon Maid.

It's not even good animated porn, either. The production is weirdly low-energy. Sure, Mariabelle's boobs bounce, but they look more like someone gently shifting two shapes around instead of a case of hyperactive jiggle physics. The title calls her “yandere,” but she just gives a speech about how she'll protect Hinata at all costs and then spends the rest of the episode cooing at him and jumping around naked. This is accompanied by positively soporific background music more suited to putting a room full of toddlers down for a nap than a playful ecchi comedy.

It's all just so boring. There's no crazy moments like I'm the Evil Lord of an Intergalactic Empire!'s custom genitals or Takamine pulling her pants down in the middle of class to show off her glossy red buttcheeks. Yandere Dark Elf is crap as a show, and not much better as porn.

Richard Eisenbeis
Rating:

So, are you a person who watched Record of Lodoss War during puberty and have had a thing for Pirotess (and dark elves with long ears in general) ever since? Do you like your women a bit on the obsessive side when it comes to the object of their affection? Do you like giant, naked anime boobies constantly appearing on your screen? And do you like relatively pure love stories with a lot of sexual humor? Well, congratulations, this show is for you. If you don't like all of those things in that specific combination, well, that's the sticking point.

On the most basic level, this is one of those “what happens after the Hero beats the Demon Lord” stories. In this case, our isekai'd high school hero returns to his normal life on Earth. His dark elf would-be lover follows him, and reverse-isekai hijinks (and a lot of nudity) ensue.

While this anime isn't going to be winning any awards, it's difficult for me to be too hard on it. It knows what it is and is proud of it—i.e., a pervy show for people with a dark elf/yandere fetish. The comedy, while predictable, got a laugh or two out of me, and Mariabelle's innocent-yet-highly-insecure personality was generally endearing. Even our protagonist Hinata has at least some personality—he seems like he's more than a bland audience proxy.

Am I going to watch this one week to week? No. As I said, this is one of those shows where you're likely all-in or all-out. I am, however, glad it exists. I'm sure there is an audience for this very specific combination of fetishes, and I'm glad they're getting pandered to at least once.

James Beckett
Rating:

…okay, really, everyone? Do we actually need a preview for this? Anyone will tell you that I'm far from a prude, and I am more than happy for people to enjoy whatever smut they like in the privacy of their own home. Get as freaky as you want, toss in any kinks you desire. As long as nobody in the real world is being physically or emotionally harmed, then I genuinely don't care how you spend your free time. The question is, do you really need any of us to tell you whether or not a show like Yandere Dark Elf is going to make for a good investment into your own personal Spank Bank Savings Account?

Again, I'm not necessarily criticizing Yandere Dark Elf for being softcore pornography about a voluptuous elf from another world who aggressively and proudly wants to molest a tiny boy. They're all just lines on a (digital) piece of paper, and I'm not judging anyone who's down to pick up what this show is putting down. All I'm saying is that, given that folks have billions of gigabytes of porn to choose from across the vast corners of the World Wide Web, this isn't the smut that I would personally seek out for my own “research and review,” as it were. The flagrant age gap, the out-of-whack proportions, the fact that the audience is clearly meant to get off on the non-consensual aspect of Mariabelle and Hinata's whole…dynamic. Those aren't the kinks for me, you know? As for the cheap animation and complete lack of any meaningful story, well, let's not pretend like that's why anyone is here. The parts of Maribelle that we're meant to focus on are drawn just fine, I suppose, which is really all that matters.

Here, I'm going to try and be genuinely helpful. I went and counted up every single second that Mariabelle spends shoving her massive gazongas into the face of the child she has imprinted on: 4 minutes, and 24 seconds. This entire episode is exactly 11 minutes long if you don't count the credits, which means you're looking at a clean 40% of the runtime that is devoted to nothing but aggressively non-consensual Elf-on-Shota action. That statistic alone should tell you whether Yandere Elf is worth your hard-earned time and the money spent on the HIDIVE subscription or whether it is an anime you wish to steer very clear of. No judgment from me either way.

Oh, wait, there's one other factor to consider: All of the nipples and naughty bits are censored for both the elf and the tiny boy. Do with that information what you will.