Sekirei

I'll be honest here, I don't know exactly what to make of this anime.

It's hilarious to me that I'm reviewing this almost immediately after writing up a review for four seasons' worth of Ikki Tousen, a review in which I literally name-drop Sekirei as a spiritual successor to that show. And while I still stand by that comparison, I need to point out how different these two titles are, and why I'm having such a difficult time putting into words how I feel about it.

Evergreen reminder here: with every anime I review, I haven't read the manga and I don't intend to read the manga. I am acutely aware that the anime does not adapt the whole manga and that season 2 ends on an incomplete note, but I'm only here to judge the anime for what it is as an anime. I'll live without experiencing the rest of the plot.

After all, the story was definitely what drove me to watch this anime in the first place, right? Yeah, definitely.

The story of Sekirei follows typical nobody everyman Minato - a guy who graduated high school but can't seem to pass a single college entrance exam - and the bizarre circumstances that, in typical harem anime fashion, drop a cute girl from heaven in an unusual costume right on top of him. Taking her home to help clear her head and get her bearings, we learn that her name is Musubi, and she feels a strange sort of connection to Minato. After some silly semi-sexual shenanigans ensue, Minato gets evicted by his landlord for being a college boy and daring to let a girl exist in his apartment. He and Musubi end up moving into a sort of boarding house along with a few other mysterious hotties, and must do his best not to get into Situations that would make the new landlady follow suit and kick them all out.

Minato is the kind of guy who is more worried about being seen enjoying the presence of a bare boob in his face than he is excited to actually have a bare boob in his face, which honestly says a lot about this anime.

The reveal is that Musubi (and pretty much all of the other boarders) are all otherworldly super-beings known as Sekirei, part of a collection of 108 supposedly scattered throughout the city. Each Sekirei is in search of their "Ashikabi", a person with whom they feel a deep bond, and who can awaken their dormant superpowers through true love's kiss. There is no limit to the number of Sekirei who can bond to a single Ashikabi, so you can pretty easily see where this is going. Whether it's because Minato is such a nice guy or because he was "chosen" for this role, he spends most of the anime accumulating waifus to protect and serve him in the coming fights.

And that's the chaser. All 108 Sekirei have been forcibly entered into a citywide "game" by some mysterious entity named Minaka who issues proclamations and challenges via mass text messages and emails. The game is, naturally, a battle royale designed to test the skills of each Sekirei and their Ashikabi. While Minaka's commands seem generally arbitrary and whimsically villainous, each order is designed to push the Sekirei into hunting each other down and fighting to the "death" - in their case, an incantation spoken upon defeat that removes their powers and causes them to cease functioning.

By that measure, Sekirei's entire story is basically just the campaign mode of an arcade-style fighting game.

The bulk of the story revolves around Minato increasing the size of his polygamous cicrcle as he and his so-called wives encounter random opponents, and gaining a sort of reputation as some reclusive and undefeatable entity. We later learn that this whole game has been a project in the works for a very long time, spearheaded by a megacorporation under Minaka, who discovered the Sekirei in what appears to be a space capsule fallen to earth. However, since the anime cuts off roughly two-thirds of the way through the source material, the full extent of the story remains untold. Seeing as season 2 of the anime ended in about 2010, there's little hope for any further adaptation at this point.

The important thing is that by the end of the anime, Minato has at least six Sekirei in tow, and they ALL want to be his one true wife.

I can HEAR you typing up that comment about how I REALLY need to read the manga instead.

As I mentioned at the start, I'm really not sure what to make of this anime. On the whole I guess I enjoyed it for what it was, but it felt like the show never really gelled into anything specific. You can see its influences worn on its sleeve, but - incomplete story aside - Sekirei just has too many irons in too many fires. Juggling a story about a heavenly harem, a battle tournament, and the backstory of the mysterious and absolutely goofy villain - not to mention trying to follow up Ikki Tousen and its outrageous fanservice - spreads the show a bit too thin. Mind you, this sort of shotgun-blast genre mish-mash approach doesn't usually bother me, but Sekirei feels like it doesn't give itself enough time to really carve out its own identity, making it forgettable at best.

NOTE: "Forgettable" doesn't mean "not enjoyable"!

I was also a bit confused because over the years I had occasionally seen this series lauded as "one of the better" boobie anime to check out, but having now watched it myself, I didn't really pick up on why people think that. I skimmed a few reviews while looking for info about the manga and noticed several that mentioned Sekirei's "more mature" plot - as if any bog standard harem anime doesn't already have a good plot by default - and saw praises sung about the main character not being a pervert for a change. Truthfully, Minato isn't much different from the Keiichis or Yukinaris of the harem anime scene. In fact, he seems even more generic compared to those two, who at least had other quirks and personalities to them. Minato feels like a mostly blank slate for viewers to project themselves onto, so if there was a "mature" plot to this series, I must have missed it.

And again, that's not to say I hated the story. I'm just befuddled by the notion that Sekirei is somehow "better" than any other horny fight club anime, since it pretty much stays par for the course on all fronts.

Boobs: the ultimate comfort pillow for when you're feeling down.

Here's the thing. I think ultimately the reason Sekirei has such vocal supporters who insist it's worth watching has less to do with the actual content of the anime (or manga) itself, and more to do with how people perceive fanservice. Most of the reviews I read opened up with a hand-wringing and almost apologetic statement about the (I'm only going to use this word once because it's a dumb word) "ecchi" content, which colors their whole view of the show. It's often embarrassing for people to admit they watch titty anime, much less one they really enjoyed, so if they can even get to a point where they're reviewing it or recommending it, they often hype up the parts of it that don't focus on tits and ass, to encourage the idea that it's "one of the good ones" for people who might be averse to such things.

If you can't appreciate the emotional tonality of this scene about confronting an abusive asshole because the camera is full of ass for a second, that's a fault on YOUR part, not the anime's.

I touched on this same topic in my Grenadier review, but I'll reiterate it here. The stigma of shame and embarrassment that comes with watching jiggle anime is something that's been manufactured by the conservative and puritan attitudes that dominate our culture - both in America and abroad - and doesn't need to exist. Our bodies are our bodies, and even if we'd prefer them to be in a different shape or whatever, we have no reason to be ashamed of them, or to consider them obscene in any way.

Watching a cartoon make exaggerated and comical motions out of the otherwise natural way breasts bounce and jiggle doesn't make you a bad person, and isn't something you should feel ashamed of. In all honesty most of these shows are actually pretty fun if you just let them be what they are. Now, I'm not touting these shows as peak cinema, or saying you have to enjoy them if you simply don't, I'm just saying that if you enjoy shows like Sekirei, you don't have to enjoy it *in spite of* it being a fanservice-fest. You've gotta learn to embrace what you like about the shows you like regardless of how those aspects are perceived by others!

One ass-pect of Sekirei I really appreciated is that it's one of the rare and precious few anime that actually puts a little fat on its characters' asses.

Anyway, back to my thoughts on the series. I'm generally not too big on the whole master/servant dynamic - knight/royalty is a different story - so I wasn't particularly into this harem setup. Doubly so when you consider that one of Minato's Sekirei is an adorable child who calls him big brother. I know the whole "little sister" thing is a very common trope in anime, but as someone who grew up with a little sister, it just does not jive with me. Kusano was still a good character, just a very off-putting one for me.

Otherwise, the whole main cast were great. The foundation of any good harem setup is having a variety of characters who bounce off each other well, and there's plenty of that on display here. Water-elemental Tsukiumi in particular stood out as a favorite, especially given Lydia Mackay's aggressive Shakespearean dialogue in the dub (reminding me of a very specific character she voiced from a game that virtually nobody played but I fucking adored). Matsu was great too, equal parts the mischievous pervert and the goofy comedic relief who knows more than she likes to let on.

Honestly, if I had an ass like that, I too would go around sticking it out in front of people like this, just to get a rise out of them.

Special mention also goes to Homura, the fire Sekirei. Depicted and referred to as a man the whole way through, Homura's body slowly undergoes a physical transformation toward a more feminine form as he connects with his Ashikabi, who again, just happens to be Minato. His existing collection of wives are all shocked at the idea of Minato being possibly bisexual (hell, he's a bit shocked himself), but ultimately accept it in the name of their friendship with Homura. Minato eventually throws his inhibitions aside and kisses him during a dramatic scene where Homura attempts to go down in a literal blaze of glory, only to be saved by true love's kiss unlocking a more powerful control over his fire abilities. The anime leaves plenty of room for plausible deniability in the face of homophobes by explaining that Homura has a special body that "takes whichever form his Ashikabi most desires", but everyone still refers to him as "him", so it's nice to see at least some basic level of queerness and gender nonconformity accepted and explored here.

There's room enough on the queer spectrum to relate to Homura whether you're dysphoric, closeted, questioning, coming to terms, or just confused. Excellent character through and through.

So yeah, on a sliding scale, Sekirei falls pretty much dead center on all fronts. I think it could have been much better if it wasn't so concerned with respectability and simply embraced either its camp or its story a little harder, but it was still enjoyable nonetheless. If you're insterested in the story, the manga will satisfy far more than the anime will, but the anime does at least have some cool fight scenes, plenty of jiggle and bounce, and a voice cast who were clearly having a good time. I personally wouldn't call it "one of the better" fanservice anime out there, but I've definitely seen worse.

Obvious recommendations have already been mentioned above, but I'll repeat them here. Ikki Tousen is the most obvious follow-up, since the two follow an extremely similar setup. For a more mellow harem experience, Ah! My Goddess should be your first stop, since Sekirei is essentially the same show, just with more fighting and more pantyshots. Another title I would recommend, especially if you were hoping Sekirei would push its lewdness a bit further, is Valkyrie Drive: Mermaid.

It's almost not even worth classifying this anime as "18+" since there are so many scenes where it feels like the show is AFRAID of its own fanservice.

Final thoughts: eh, it's okay. I don't regret watching this show, but I'll have forgotten about it in a year or so. Onward to the next series.