This Week in Anime
Is SUPER HXEROES Sexiness a Bug or a Feature?
by Monique Thomas & Nicholas Dupree,
It's finally time for the Battle of Nicks as Nicholas "Nick" Dupree and Monique "Nicky" Thomas discuss this season's other unabashed sex comedy SUPER HXEROES: "H"EROES SAVE THE WORLD (caps necessary). The show follows one (1) guy and his entourage of lady friends as they use their sexual powers to fight humanoid bugs called Kiseishuu that threaten to sap all the sexy time energy out of the populous!
This series is currently streaming on FUNimationNOW!
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by the participants in this chatlog are not the views of Anime News Network.
Spoiler Warning for discussion of the series ahead.
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Nick
Nicky, it's finally time. Everyone's been clamoring for it, and this week we're at last covering the good-vs-evil superpowered girls show of the season, fighting their enemies with the power of Love and certain...kirakira
Wait, I'm getting a message from our boss...the hell's a Precure?
Nicky, it's finally time. Everyone's been clamoring for it, and this week we're at last covering the good-vs-evil superpowered girls show of the season, fighting their enemies with the power of Love and certain...kirakira
Wait, I'm getting a message from our boss...the hell's a Precure?
Nicky
Beats me, Nick. Right now there's only room for one team of super heroes, or rather, Super HxEros.
Beats me, Nick. Right now there's only room for one team of super heroes, or rather, Super HxEros.
Sorry folks, Crunchyroll got them Pretty Cures out too late for this week, so instead we're hitting up the horny Super Sentai parody show. Or as I like to call it, Power Rangers In Heat.
HxEros is about a Saitama-based super team who collect the power of horny in order to fight the evil bug aliens who want to de-hornify the human race and therefore make them go extinct, I guess.
Like all the best anime premises out there, I'm pretty certain this entire show/manga came about because the creator realized one day that "Sentai" and "Hentai" rhyme. Which means it's the spiritual successor to To-Love-Ru in multiple ways! But yeah, there's not a whole lot of meat to the actual plot of this show, because it's basically 1 huge excuse for...well "plot" to happen.
Some episodes have a solid bit of Monsters-of-the-Week going on but it's really an excuse and set up for the characters to really...um...shine.
Did we mention that anytime the HxEros use their powers that leaves them in the buff?
Did we mention that anytime the HxEros use their powers that leaves them in the buff?
And for once that includes the guy! Like I won't at all call this show "equal opportunity" with its fanservice, but it at least doesn't break its rules to avoid stripping Retto.
They still don't give him nipples though, so I must again condemn this show to the cowards bin.
They still don't give him nipples though, so I must again condemn this show to the cowards bin.
After 7 episodes, I would've expected for them to have received their cool costumes already. So I was a bit surprised to see our cast be naked for so long, as impractical as it is. Anyways, with nothing else of the premise left to bare, let's introduce our team.
First we have Retto, the Red Ranger and somehow the only teen boy in the whole show capable of harnessing Weaponized Horny, which strains my belief more than any libido-sucking alien bugs.
NGL kind of disappointed there was no other male member (*pun not intended) of the horny squad to flaunt. Ensuring Retto gets his own personal harem team and no chance of male homosexuality.
The show sort of throws a bone that way with the team's Zordon being uh, this dude:
Yeah, he's also Retto's uncle.
The fact that nobody ever mentions or even notices Uncle Jou's outfit is probably the best gag in the whole show. That and the deadpan casual reveal he also wears that getup to sleep:
Likewise, all the "Censorship Aliens" are female, but I'm complaining less cuz I think they're neat.
The irony of the Invasion of the Kinkshamers being somebody's fetish is also a pretty funny gag. Really the best parts of this show are the ones that don't draw attention to themselves.
After Retto, we have our first HxEro-ine, Hoshino Kirara. See, back in the day, Kirara and Enjo used to be bff-sies but then something happened and Kirara ended up growing cold as they entered high school.
You might think that "something" is just the maelstrom of adolescence, but in fact it's because she got kinkshamed as a 5th grader after her desire to hold hands was so powerful it made one of the bugs explode.
Retto is fine and all, as a horny protagonist, he's actually pretty noble, but that nobility mostly stems from his desire to reconnect with Hoshino in a way that's been effectively robbed of him by trauma. But the REAL emotional focus is about Kirara dealing with her internalized shame about her real self, whomst she locked in a penis-shaped sarcophagus after all that.
It's certainly a more in-depth take than I expected from a show like this! I don't know that I'd say its exploration is uh, effective, but the idea of unpacking ingrained shame towards sexuality and unlearning repression of what are perfectly typical feelings is a pretty strong idea to wrap around what could have been a typical tsundere.
It helps that all of our protagonists are inexperienced teenagers just trying to figure this all out. Why Teenagers and not adults? Hormones.
Frankly I think that's shortsightedness from Uncle Jou. The horniest motherfuckers I've met are people who have had years of post-adolescence to hone their fetishes into unbreakable blades of perversion. Somewhere out there is a team of 30-somethings who could obliterate the no-nut-aliens in a single episode.
I mean, you'd have an easier time to harvest H-energy with some people more experienced and less ashamed of themselves, but watching the team fumble to be in control of their own emotions and bodies is also part of the fun.
True, this whole premise is kind of dependent on the cast slowly figuring out their own sexuality. Some of them tiptoe towards their boundaries to figure things out slowly, and others jump into the deep end with total abandon. See: Momoka.
Oh yeah, there's something else we forgot to mention. Not only are they a team, they're also roommates.
How they convinced anyone's parents besides Enjo's is beyond me.
How they convinced anyone's parents besides Enjo's is beyond me.
Hey if you're trying to train teens to harness arousal, putting them in a dorm with 1 bathroom is probably the fastest way to do it! Though Momoka's Soy milk bath adventure is one of those things you never want an actual roommate to pull. Imagine the smell.
Not as bad as the time Rem from Re:Zero decided to turn the bathtub into Mayonnaise, I'll say.
I'm just saying, 6 people have to share 1 hot water heater. Be considerate before you be horny.
Anyways, while Kirara is here still trying to overcome her feelings about herself and harness her true horny potential, the rest of the girls are here to help her figure things out, in more ways than one.
Each of the other girls basically represent a different fetish-y approach to sexuality, to mixed results. First there's Pink Ranger, Momoka, who aside from the requisite terrible flat chest jokes is the most uh...expressive with her libido, shall we say.
As a character, I actually really like Momoka's loudness and charisma. Her willingness to sexually harass others though is Pretty bad though.
Yeah and that's where I think HxEros' gestures at being sex positive fanservice falls flat. For all it talks about Kirara overcoming her shame, it sure does like to indulge in characters being groped and sexualized against their will. Which I guess brings us to White Ranger, Shirayuki:
Shirayuki is another one where it's like "I like her as a character, but I hate her gimmick" comes into play again. Especially when her gimmick includes animals...
For once I'm glad for the censorship light rays so I can't see whatever the hell is going on here.
Shirayuki's whole deal is that being bound and embarrassed is what revs her engine - thus the dog ears on her Supersuit - but like a lot of shows it conveniently ignores the part of that fetish that requires trust and consent with whoever's doing the dominating. Now maybe it's too much to ask a show about punching aliens who want to deflate prostates to bother with actually navigating the paperwork of a D/S kink, but hey, Nana & Kaoru managed it!
The good news about Shirayuki is that she does have a pretty good lesbian prince girlfriend.
It's also not the only genuine lesbian relationship in the show, so as much as there is a lack of any male homosexuality, it's not entirely heterosexual.
It's also not the only genuine lesbian relationship in the show, so as much as there is a lack of any male homosexuality, it's not entirely heterosexual.
Oh yeah, one of Kirara's non-HxEro friends is dating an older girl. It's another one of those kind of understated things where the show's at its best. There's not even a freak out when they realize her "hot date" is a girl. Everyone just blinks for a second and is like, yeah that tracks.
To be fair, she's a real beauty.
Kirara, internally:
Then there's our last character, Sora. Like her name implies, she's a bit of an airhead. Lackadaisically stumbling into Shirou--I mean, Retto's room all the time, unhooking Kirara's bra, living in her own little world.
Ah yes, the mangaka's self-insert character.
And by that I mean she literally inserts herself into her own porn comics.
And by that I mean she literally inserts herself into her own porn comics.
Seeing the sparkles in manga-form is even more hilarious TBH.
They certainly work better than the show's non-intentional censoring. I genuinely can't figure out what's going on in this one.
It looks like someone took an airbrush in Photoshop and just went wild and unabandoned. Though, after having to do the Coolmic's shorts a few weeks back, I welcome this kind of poor attempts at censorship than getting paywalled with a buzzer in my ears. There's more visible jack-off material in this than what I ever saw out of those.
Anyway, Sora's whole thing could actually be interesting if the show ever goes with it. Instead of wanting to do-the-do herself, she's more comfortable exploring fantasies through her art, which is a pretty interesting angle to take on the subject. Granted so far it's mostly been an excuse to be self-aware, but you could imagine a version of this show that fleshes that idea out.
Yeah, there's interesting tidbits of character arcs in here but we haven't really seen any of them come into fruition yet, most of the segments only last like, half the episode, and then it's off to the next monster. But I don't mind, cuz I can't bear to bring my doofy-loving heart to hate the monsters.
Well good news! The team also adopts one of the monsters. Bad news! She's a child catgirl whose spit makes people cum.
Chacha is cute, but she also tics like nine different fetishes that all make me VERY uncomfortable, and again, takes the show into non-consensual territories. Though, it's also because of Chacha that Hoshino is able to come to accept herself.
I'm also a little hesitant with how the show relates sex w/ reproduction, the desire for sex as a desire for life, and the jokes about the declining birthrate.
I'm also a little hesitant with how the show relates sex w/ reproduction, the desire for sex as a desire for life, and the jokes about the declining birthrate.
Oh there's a whole field of landmines this show's just waiting to step on with its premise. It trips a lot of the same problems that SHIMONETA did where its attempts to destigmatize sex end up equating personal boundaries with prudishness. It's kind of an inherent problem in the way the material chooses to explore sex not through, y'know, actual sex, but through ecchi and fanservice tropes because somehow tentacle bondage is considered less obscene than consensual fucking.
Then there's the second problem, this time, it's with the shows emotional core. I think the overall romance between Hoshino and Retto growing up from childhood friends and first loves into young adults is sweet. But it's a little difficult to appreciate when the way the show frames Kirara's younger self makes me feel like someone is gonna knock down my door and arrest me.
Oh god I was hoping we could NOT talk about the age-regression episode.
Even after overcoming some of her shame, Kirara is still framed as having some sort of psychological split from herself now as herself as a carefree child, which means her younger self was more honest about those things, but man is it very difficult when that translates to "my elementary school self was more willing to fuck".
Girl, talk to a therapist. This shouldn't be what your mental image of your libido looks like.
and then there's the part where the team gets trapped in a dream so Enjou can imagine Kirara as three different ages that would get any adult in jail, the past, present, and potential Kirara. Though, instead of seeing them as separate people, he's determined that he loves all of them.
While it's tender to see how wholehearted he is to one person. ONE OF THEM IS SNOT-NOSED!!
While it's tender to see how wholehearted he is to one person. ONE OF THEM IS SNOT-NOSED!!
As a concept it's fairly sweet. Retto loves her for who she is, regardless of how she has and might continue to change! But it's presented with him sharing a boat with at least 2 naked preteens. It's a real creepy moment that actually made me thankful to move on and get to...whatever the fuck the rest of episode 7 was.
Yes, after adopting an alien, the team encounters the competing HxEros Tokyo branch that is NOT too happy about the Saitama branch having an enemy as their new pet.
And so the new girl challenges Retto to a game of Fuck Chicken where the first one to make the other cum unleash their H-energy gets custody of the bug-cat-girl. Because if nothing else this show knows how to throw out galaxy brain spank material.
Retto almost loses until his illegal-dog-cat-bug-alien thing bites him and gives him horny rabies, unleashing his BEAST MODE.
But he only needs to do that because, and I'm serious, the girl he's fighting has a condition where her entire body is an erogenous zone and so uses her Horny Power Watch at full power at all times and this makes her almost totally insensitive to touch.
Why not just??? Remove the watch??? Oh yeah, it's in her eyeball.
Somehow, in the sea of absurd nonsense that is this show's worldbuilding, Shiko the Walking Clitoris is what finally broke me. On the one hand I can't take anything this show tries to do seriously anymore, but at the same time that means I no longer care about its failures. I'm just along for whatever stupid ass (emphasis on ASS) ride this show has left for me.
The show is definitely at it's best when it's a straight up stupid horny superhero show than when it tries to just be porn or political commentary. Besides, though you wouldn't expect a horny show to look that good. The action is actually quite solid at times and there's some really well animated or cool looking moments.
It's certainly nicer looking than the last Horny Trash Show I saw through! Though you can tell they assigned all the perverts to episode 7.
Hey, save the feet for the OnlyFans. That's premium content.
There's certainly worse trash you could be digging through, and in a season this sparse if you want to just laugh at how far 1 series can take a really dumb premise, might as well give this one a shot.
I should also mention that The OP is also quite fun, I've really missed BURNOUT SYNDROMES since all my shōnen anime are on break right now, though I didn't really expect them to turn out for this show.
Oh that OP is perfect. The show itself is inconsistent about the whole Sentai parody thing, but the opening is a pitch perfect recreation of that style of opener. If you told me this was the new intro to Kiramager I'd believe you.
Anyways, as many problems that I have about the show, I do like the characters and how it deals with the emotional conflicts of sexuality, and also how dumb most of the hero stuff is.
In some ways it reminds me of How NOT To Summon A Demon Lord - it wears what it is on its sleeve, and if you can go along with it the whole production is solid enough that you won't feel like your time's been wasted. If nothing else I'll watch this before Monster Girl Doctor or Peter Grill.
Monster Girls: Not Even Once.
Monster Girls: Not Even Once.
Anyways, in lieu of other horny trash, Super HxEros gets a pass.
but exclude the dog, PLEASE!!
but exclude the dog, PLEASE!!
While we're at it, keep the cats out too.
Me:
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