World's End Harem

Episode 5

Last week, I praised World’s End Harem for the amusingly clownish clumsiness of its writing, and this week's episode helpfully opens with a textbook example of what I was talking about. Following up on the cliffhanger, the bigwigs do indeed fire Mira. Oh no! However, because she's the female lead in a piece of quasi-pornography, they can't actually kick her off the show, so they allow her to stick around just in case Reito decides he wants to bang her. In other words, despite the dramatic buildup, absolutely nothing changes and there are no consequences for anybody. It's amateurish writing at best, but that pointless convolution—that itch that spurs WEH to jump through all these hoops to justify its own existence as a dramatic work—is the spice that keeps me coming back for seconds.

Given all the time we've spent on Doi these past few episodes, we've had nary a minute to get to know Reito's attendants better, or at all. The big one is boozy, and the small one can fight. That's all we've got. Nonetheless, WEH dauntlessly soldiers onward and almost doubles the size of Reito's erotic entourage with two new bundles of commodified personality traits. The absentminded scientist Maria is here to expose herself to the protagonist and use her expertise to push the viral conspiracy plot forward—and occasionally she can do both at the same time! The other addition, ex-cop Rea, contributes nothing to the story besides a perpetual scowl in Reito's direction. However, he certainly deserves it, and furthermore, it was about time the show decided to pander to the masochists in the audience.

A hot springs episode, like last week's poolside one, was an inevitability, and it's surely only a matter of time until we get a beach episode too. After all, is a harem anime really a harem anime if it doesn't exhaust each and every opportunity for exposed titties? I think not. And I have to give World’s End Harem some credit here: there's almost an elegance to the way its conceit effortlessly lends itself to the usual silly tropes. Conventions like gender-segregated onsen mean nothing in a world bereft of men for the past half-decade, so of course Reito winds up bathing with the girls. However, I say "almost" lest we forget that we have yet to meet a single woman who doesn't want a wombful of Reito's wiener juice. I also must award extra credit to my girl Akane for cutting through the bullshit, grabbing his hand, and slapping it onto her armpits and thighs. More than any other character in this trash heap, she understands this is neither the time nor the place for subtlety.

Actually, there might be one other character who can give Akane a run for her money, and she and her ten-gallon red-blooded all-American tatas sashay straight into the spa's sauna. Foreign exchange student Chloe (definitely NOT a cover story) corners Reito and performs various centerfold poses while he impresses on her his willpower in the form of not getting a boner. It's the funniest scene in the episode. She's opening her robe and arching her back like a sex sphinx, and meanwhile, Reito's saying stuff like “wow nihongo jouzu” through gritted teeth as you can practically see the veins popping out of his forehead. Her one-two punch of, “I love Japan. Would you like to have sex with me?”, with absolutely zero pause or segue in between those thoughts, is just plain hilarious. I don't know whose side she's on, but she better stick around for a long time.

Before I move on, let me vamp on that idea for just a bit longer. World’s End Harem is a very stupid show. In describing it that way, I'm trusting you understand why it's stupid (either through reading my prior reviews or through assessing it on your own), and I'm also trusting you understand that stupid things can have merit. To that point, in these situations, I love characters like Akane and Chloe, because they're the only people who act like they're “in” on the proverbial joke. Porn is fundamentally unrealistic and thus very silly, and it's always better to embrace that than deny it. And that's what Akane and Chloe do: They just want to have some shameless fun, and if it comes at the expense of a blank-eyed potato-faced protagonist, all the better. And they should do that, because shows like this should be fun. In fact, it's more important that they be fun than that they be anything else.

Okay, digression aside, I should briefly touch upon this week's plot. Though the runtime allocation may fool you, Reito and the gang aren't primarily on retreat to trick him into doing a mating press on the entire cast. They're there to meet the first Japanese MK Virus victim's widow, an ornery old woman who has little affection for how the government has treated either her and her husband's remains. If WEH were at all interested in being compelling, there are a number of angles it could have approached her story from (generational, political, etc.), but because this is weaksauce pseudo-porn, she's there just so Reito can again give his blowhard excuse for staying celibate. And she buys it, because she's in contact with Elisa on the sly, which is also probably what leads to her attempted assassination by a mysterious shadowy figure. Alas. The only new nugget of conspiratorial information that shows any promise is the hint that Elisa and Mira interacted before Reito woke up. Since it looks like Mira was floating in some kind of weird bacta tank in that flashback, I'm going to bet my cards on her being a clone of Elisa. And honestly, that's wishful thinking more than anything else. I want it to be true so badly. It's the perfect dumb lategame twist.

Taken as a piece of heavily censored softcore entertainment, this was another pretty good episode of World’s End Harem. The schadenfreude, at the very least, has never been better. I loved watching Reito get chewed out by an old woman for his refusal to eat out any of his companions, and that's on top of Akane's alcohol-infused advances and Chloe's concatenation of cringe Japanophilic pick up lines. You might think I'm being unnecessarily harsh on our protagonist, but if Reito wants any sympathy from me, the least he could do is develop a personality. Absent that, World’s End Harem is, for me, an exercise in girls trolling the most nebbish man alive by airing out their areolae.

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World’s End Harem is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.

Steve can be found on Twitter if you want to read his World’s End Harem livetweets. Otherwise, catch him chatting about trash and treasure alike on This Week in Anime.