Lingeries

Someone photocopying their ass will never not be a funny gag. A shame this anime isn't a comedy.

Hailing from the unpredictable badlands of 2003, Lingeries (sometimes labelled Office Lingerie or Lingeries Office) is a 3-episode hentai OVA about a man working an office job for a company that makes women's underwear. As can be expected, there isn't too much story to go over - this is very much a porn-over-plot production - but I'll cover it just the same, if only because it ties into a few porn-related thoughts I want to briefly ruminate on.

The story centers around a man (Nakanishi) being hired as a project director assigned to oversee the R&D division of the company. It's been requested by his new boss that he also try to break up the company's internal factions, which are suspected of some kind of money laundering or stock manipulation scam. Otherwise, his entire job consists of signing papers, approving projects, and screwing employees.

Hard to believe these two got away with this, considering how loud you know that shitty office chair is.

The company itself - Best Beauty Body Inc (surprisingly not a translation liberty) - prides itself on being described as "80% staffed by women", a number which would be impressive if it didn't apply exclusively to people below the C-level. All the company heads are old men, because of course they are. In addition to designing, prototyping, advertising, and selling their wares, the female employees are also mandated to privately model them and perform various sexual favors for the staff as well, which proves to be very lucrative as a side hustle for interested outside parties. Nakanishi catches on quickly and looks for his opportunity to take advantage of the atmosphere.

Digging for some data on where the corruption stems from, he begins approaching the female members of each division and coming on to them in various ways. Whether it involves rescuing an employee from a "live product demo" for a potential client by walking in on them mid-blowjob, using company money to pay for one employee's family medical bills, or edging the boss's ex-girlfriend, Nakanishi uses his nice-guy charm and domineering sexual presence to tease information out of each division until he has enough evidence to show "the board". He knows it will inevitably cost him his job to do so, but seeing as he was hired by a temp agency anyway, he doesn't seem too concerned about it.

If the sexbots of the future don't have adjustable nipple knobs then what is even the fucking point?

And that's really all there is to say. There is no drama or intrigue to the story, the bulk of the screentime is strictly focused on women getting fucked by men in business suits, and typically in a very vanilla way. The sex is all very straight and forward, exclusively focused on heterosexual PIV and anal, with a handful of fun office-related gags here and there. Judging by the DVD cover art, I had expected more scenes of the girls photocopying their asses or getting creative with desk supplies, but alas, there are no kinky stapler antics, just classic old porn staples.

Normally I advocate always watching hentai dubbed in English for a funnier (if slightly less sexy) experience, but unfortunately I wasn't able to watch this one dubbed at the time. Frankly though, considering how godawful the subtitles were, I'm not sure that would have made the experience any better. In an attempt to spice up the plain-jane sex scenes, the subs tried to add a lot of macho 90s hardcore dialogue, and were either timed poorly or added entire lines of dialogue in between characters actually saying anything. Call me boring if you must, but I don't think a line saying "Fuck me hard! More! Rip me in half, baby!" during a voiceover of nothing but soft moans adds anything particularly enticing to the scene in question.

One thing I can always appreciate about even the most vanilla of hentai is the unusual camera angles they so masterfully provide us with.

If anything, I actually found this one mostly frustrating to watch, if only because Nakanishi reminds me of too many "nice guys" who turned out to be serious creeps, especially coming off the heels of several articles I've read recently about people I used to think were cool. The entire gimmick of this anime revolves around Nakanishi playing the role of gentleman to his 80%-female staff by making kind gestures, supporting their endeavors, or approving their product lines, and as a result, being rewarded with sex. Or - more accurately - the women allowing him to sexually harass them because they "secretly like it".

It's a trope all too common in hentai that I can never quite wrap my head around. So often, and especially in this production, the (male) main character will make a pass at his woman of choice, and as the fondling gets underway she'll clearly say things like "No! Stop! You can't!" while making no effort to stop it from happening, and this is considered sexy from both sides. I totally understand this sort of thing in a BDSM context, where "consensual non-consent" is something agreed upon by both parties ahead of time in the interest of playing out a particular fantasy, but this trope is ubiquitous in most hentai productions, BDSM and vanilla alike. It's not particularly sexy to me to hear a woman unsarcastically say "No! Stop!" while someone continues having their way with her.

If this were a lingerie ad instead of a sexual harassment scene, it would be an empowering fantasy. Well, at least for me.

When Nakanishi makes a pass at a woman working a late shift by getting up in her space, snatching the computer mouse out of her hand and rubbing it in circles on her breast, part of me wants to laugh because that's the type of comedic sexual behavior I generally love to see, but another part of me cringes because that type of harassment is legitimately something that happens all too often in the real world. I can appreciate exploring this sort of thing in a safe and contained fictional setting (a topic I touched on in my review for Gushing Over Magical Girls), but I think maybe I just picked a bad time to watch this one, as it hits on real-world subject matter that's really gotten under my skin in recent years. This might be worth checking out if you've got a daddy businessman sort of kink, but it sadly just didn't do much for me.

Anyway, other than devious nice guy syndrome, there's not much else to report for this one. There's a fun scene involving a remote vibrator during a live product demo, but everything else is steeped in 90s hardcore culture, which only elicits a disappointed shoulder shrug from me. That said, it is kind of satisfying to see the story play out from the women's perspective, a story about getting their prototype for seamless bras and panties designed, approved, created, and released to the public. Then again, they try to give the credit to Nakanishi for his bold contribution of signing a check to approve funding for it, so maybe not.

Something about the visual of a man in a business suit passively enjoying a blowjob while he simply stands there doing absolutely nothing just dries me up, probably because of how I feel about men in business suits in general.

For more hentai of a similar stature, I strongly recommend Weather Report Girl, as it has some similar office-type humor and exhibitionism scenes, not to mention a cast of far more charming characters. If you want something a little less porny (but still a little horny), there's a currently-airing anime series by the admittedly-goofy name of I Have A Crush At Work - sometimes also known as Can You Keep A Secret? - about a couple trying to hide their budding relationship at their shared workplace. So far it seems mostly tongue-in-cheek and rooted in cutesy rom-com antics, but it definitely seems to have the potential to get spicy later on. Worth checking out, anyway.

Welp, onward to the next one!

As they say, sometimes the pen is mightier than the penis.