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Mar 21 2010

Categories: anime
Tagged: seikon no qwaser

13 Comments »

This post sucks.

It’s not rare to find some self-censorship in anime. Usually, the broadcast edition fogs or covers up breasts or gratuitous panty shots… my guess is to drive DVD sales. However, Seikon no Qwaser is a bit different. It’s streamed unedited… why? Why not use the nudity to drive DVD sales? Maybe because Seikon is a different show depending on the version you watch… and maybe because it’s trying to drive Blu-Ray sales.

(Note: it’s not working. People want quality in their Blu-Ray… as evident by Bakemonogatari dominating sales. But a fanservice Bakemonogatari soma episode? Mmm…)

The whole gist of Seikon and why I gave it the unprecedented dual ranking is that “soma” is just an euphemism the story uses for “breast milk.” Seikon is just like any typical shounen action series, but the powering up mechanism that the hero uses is breast milk. He is as addicted to breast milk as Shana is addicted to melonpan. And, of course, they’re not showing this on broadcast TV, so all the soma sucking scenes are replaced with other scenes… and because there’s a quite a bit of soma sucking, watching the broadcast version without prior knowledge of this anime becomes a confusing experience.

For instance, in episode four’s broadcast version, when Sasha goes to suck some soma, he summons the nun chick (Teresa) and then goes off to fight. In the unedited version, Teresa tries to take off the new bra that she just brought, can’t, and then gets yelled at by Sasha for wearing said bra. Then he proceeds to spend thirty seconds sucking soma… and then the fight scene. At some point, the producers just gotta say, “You know what, screw it. We’re cutting too much. We might as well go the opposite way and make this an h-series.”

(Also confusing, the alchemy battles this show uses… note to the writers: changing the form of a material is not alchemy. You must change material A to material B. For examples on proper alchemy fighting techniques, please watch Fullmetal Alchemist. And please don’t focus too much on Winry’s soma.)

(The OP and ED are also changed… the OP I understand, as the unedited version features nakkid Mafuyu while the broadcast one features shirtless Sasha. The ED was confusingly changed… the unedited one features the girls stripping and some more “detail” on the bathtub scenes, but really nothing worse than what was broadcast for Durarara!!. Mmm… Celty shower scene…)

(I just disappointed a lot of people looking for nakkid Seitokai no Ichizon Mafuyu…)

(Also, the ED, Passionate Squall, is Engrish heaven. I listened to it like twenty times, and I still could not figure out the Engrish parts. Get by my life my lost my love…)

There are other things that get cut too, like plenty of allusions to sex acts, including a scene with a chair that would make Code Geass‘ Table-chan blush as well as an s&m scene that would interest Railgun‘s Kuroko. Let’s just say that the odds of seeing Seikon on Cartoon Network is about as good as seeing Fish Police back on network TV.

For the most part, I can’t stand the male lead of this series, Sasha, because they try to make him a dark anti-hero… only it’s really hard to take him seriously as a dark anti-hero when all he can think and talk about are breasts. I want my dark anti-heroes to be dark, sad, and brooding… not act like one of my drunk buddies at a bar. But Sasha is, bar none, anime’s greatest breast connoisseur. He is the Anthony Bourdain of soma. Whenever he is introduced to a new female character, he immediately sizes her up. He praises characters capable of high tier soma generation, and he openly belittles those who cannot. He is a jackass for the ages (which qualifies him to write an anime blog).

Rounding out the cast is, well, a bunch of clueless haremettes who, at one time or another, get their soma sucked. After all, that’s what Seikon is all about. The twist is that not just Sasha can suck soma to gain special powers (apparently, different girls provide different grades of soma, which allows uses of different powers), but the girls can also suck either others soma for powers as well. This leads to Aya Hirano’s greatest role… come on, there’s no way she’s topping a s&m crazed loli DFC Russian lesbian, unless she repeats the role 15,532 times.

Most of the plot to Seikon is brain-dead, but no more so than an episode of Ladies vs. Butlers. A typical plot that has been repeated quite a few times already is that the girls (or a girl) gets kidnapped, gets stripped and tickled on videotape (what?), and gets saved by Sasha (or Aya Hirano) crashing the party and sucking some soma. It’s literally fetish kidnapper of the week.

(I don’t get this whole “Hey, let’s kidnap some girls and make some money making some fetish videos of it that we can upload” plot point. Besides Seikon, this seems to happen a lot in GTO… I think at least twice in the original and once in 14 Days. How dumb are these criminals? Making a video and uploading it is a quick way to get caught… I’m surprised they don’t have a Twitter feed. I’m sure there are better criminal ways to make money than this.)

I can’t recommend this show since I’m positive it kills brain cells faster than watching The Marriage Ref, but, if you’re like me and don’t have a lot of brain cells left, this might not be a bad watch (and surely not any worse than Ookamikakushi. Besides the soma sucking antics, Sasha’s Simon Cowell-esque rip jobs are entertaining, and I’m always interested to see how far they can push this series without going into h territory.
Do live again again I’m all…