Anime Review: Shimoneta (Lights, Camera, Action!)

Shimoneta: Boring World Where the Concept of Dirty Jokes Doesn't Exist (UK Rating: 18)

*Trigger Warning: This is a very adult orientated sexual comedy and is filled with explicit material*

Right from inserting the disc, it's easy to work out what type of show this is going to be as a single trailer precedes the home menu. A trailer for Prison School. While this isn't on the same level as Prison School when it comes to the visuals on-screen, it certainly is when it comes to the language and the implied situations. The series sees Tanukichi Okuma head to the grandest and most perversion free school in all of Japan, Tokioka Academy. He has been inspired to go there ever since he was little when his outcast perverted father's actions led him to be quite a pariah, but there was one girl who still was friendly with him. That girl is now the head of Tokioka Academy's student council, a girl called  Anna Nishikinomiya.

On Okuma's first day, he tries to intervene between a woman and a train molester but ends up being chased by the Public Morality (PM) Decency Squad. He's about to be arrested when notorious freedom fighting pervert Blue Snow arrives. She stands high above them wearing just a towel and screaming dirty words at the top of her lungs - "BIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIG PENIS!" among other random obscenities, before throwing lewd photos into the crowd to distract them and let Okuma escape. Okuma makes it to the school and finds himself quickly placed close to the girl he dreamed of as he is recruited into the student council. Anna heads up the council but it also has a huge gorilla-looking guy called Gouriki and another straight-laced bespectacled gal in Ayame Kojou. Ayame is the Clark Kent of Blue Snow, though, and she works to recruit Okuma into her new terrorist organisation, SOX.

The full name for this series is "A Boring World Where the Concept of Dirty Jokes Doesn't Exist," a funny situation considering the whole show is just made up of dirty jokes, innuendo, puns, and ludicrous situations. One of the major plot points in the show, for instance, is based around the transformation of Anna. At the beginning she is the ideal face of this new virtuous and wholesome society but, after a few episodes, she begins to change and eventually becomes a ravenous pervert who is desperate to devour poor Okuma, absolutely molesting him on a regular basis.

She certainly isn't the only oddball in the cast, either, as there are plenty of baffling weirdos here; for example, genius Hyouka Fuwa - she's trying to figure out where babies come from and how men and women can "meld bodies." She gets pulled into the works of SOX on a regular basis, making sex toys, or stumbling onto the truth of human sexuality. She becomes especially obsessed with the works of the next character, doujinshi between Okuma and Gouriki with a focus on their… bananas. These are the works of Otome Saotome, a highly skilled, award-winning that also has a crush on Anna and is enlisted into SOX as their artist, producing dirty pictures of every possible perversion to spread lasciviousness through the masses.

There is both an English and Japanese dub with this release and, honestly, it's worth watching both. There are slight differences in the translations of the dub and subs, and the unique gags are funny in both, not to mention the voice actors of both do a fantastic job with their comedic delivery.

8/10

Great - Silver Award

Shimoneta is absolutely bloody hilarious. It's like Porky's meets 1984 meets Hentai Kamen - so many of these series have to rely on excessive fan-service and while there are plenty of pervy moments, the absurdity of them and the ridiculousness of the dialogue make them enjoyable. This will, of course, divide an audience for those out there that don't appreciate this sort of humour, but for those that do: buy this sick filth!