Hello there. Do you love dirty jokes? I do. Who doesn’t? I like my dirty jokes to go beyond the boundaries that many consider the tipping point of how far they can go. There is an art that can make any of these jokes work when they are done with precision and finesse. Sometimes they are done with subtlety or not subtle, both of which can be successful or a failure depending on how they are executed. Shimoneta fits the latter quite accurately. And when I say not subtle, that is taking it lightly.
Set in a dystopian Tokyo where all shamelessness, lewdness, and dirty language have been outlawed, you can already assume ahead of time that Shimoneta is a satire of political correctness. The conservative government of Japan tries to censor any part of a medium that may be considered morally indecent to the public in their own eyes. Shimoneta wants to portray how their utopia would become a reality and how it would not work based on how human biology works. In other words, humans are sexual creatures through and through, whether we all want to admit that truth or not. It can also be a satire of how sex education is important in our society, and an abstinence-only education would prove to be a flawed system.
So does Shimoneta handle this satire well and make it hilarious in the long run? In short, it makes it into an entertaining anime with some subtle level of commentary to go by with it. Take, for instance, the character Anna, voiced by the recently passed Miyu Matsuki, who would be the archetype for a person who wants to be a pure person with no perverted characteristics. But because of, an accidental kiss by the main character Tanukichi triggered a romantic spark in her brain that caused her to develop urges that she never knew before. Shimoneta gives a pretty intelligent method of showing us the intricacies of how teenagers go through hormonal phases once they bloom into full-grown sexual young adulthood. It can also be enjoyed just as a silly joke and nothing else, and Shimoneta characterizes itself as either or just one alternative outlook.
Another commentary that Shimoneta does exceptionally well is how they portray the dystopian society of conservative political correctness. It does not do it so that it is done forcefully and becomes preachy as a result. Rather it keeps that theme in the background where it doesn’t seem too apparent for the viewer to be distracted by and doesn’t overshadow the comedy. Shimoneta wants to be a wacky sex comedy through and through with some added commentary mixed in to make it unique from other anime ecchi shows. Even with a rape scene involving a woman licking a guy’s chest out of sexual gratification in a non-consensual. It still manages to be hilarious and offer an intelligent insight that invertedly challenges our notion of how we can find things of this nature funny from a different set of circumstances. At least, that is how I interpreted it.
The comedy pulls so many punches to the viewer that it can be a bit much for the squeamish. But I love it when my ecchi anime pulls no limits to what it can do to entertain or offend those who turn their nose up at shamelessness of this caliber. Simply put, Shimoneta is the most raunchy, lewd, indecent, and crazy ecchi anime I’ve ever come across, and probably you’ll ever come across. And I mean these with the utmost positive feelings that I could ever muster. Its clever ways of censoring dialogue make us decipher what the characters are saying with some obvious hints based on context, keep its tone and comedic timing on-point and humorous from beginning to end. Many of its innuendos, whether visual or audible, might be forced in some cases, but they help create a comedic atmosphere that keeps the show from being tedious and boring. Even some of the writers' jokes surprised me with how much they were willing to get away with. So much so that I think no other country except Japan would ever allow it on television.
The comedy works with the theme and atmosphere, but it also gives the characters some nice needed charm to make up for their lack of development. The characters are not the most three-dimensional. Most of them have the one characteristic that defines them as a character: wanting sweet love nectar, obsessed with drawing shameless pictures or wanting to rid themselves of the purity police controlling people’s language and sex lives. Nevertheless, I found myself slightly forgiving this negative of how much I enjoyed the chemistry between our main hero Tanukichi and the main heroine, Ayame. Heck, almost all of the characters have wonderful chemistry with one another from the hilarious interactions and clever dialogues done with great comedic timing. Another character worth mentioning is the art prodigy Otome whose bold and crazy attitude adds so much to the cast thanks to the always hilarious Satomi Arai doing her Kuroko voice from A Certain Scientific Railgun.
I found myself enjoying the creative art designs of the characters from how colorful and expressive they exhibit. There are some areas where I think the art can be a bit too bright and white-washed in some scenes. Overall, technically, Shimoneta is a nicely animated show with many comedic gags having a great sense of depth and absurdity despite being censored ironically. I would not necessarily call the music a highlight of the show, even though I enjoyed the ED with its combination of jazz-influenced horns and J-Pop vocals. The music from the show itself is not very special, and I found myself not paying much attention to it while watching.
It is hard for me to reminisce about this show without some fascination. After watching it, I found myself intrigued with the possibility of ecchi anime like Shimoneta existing more often if this ever becomes a big hit in the future. Not just in how balls to the wall it is with its subject matter and jokes, but how it can offer a witty way of implementing a theme that is synonymous with sexual aspects of real life. Ecchi, of course, is here to give us some sexual gratification to hone our skills of being lewd in real life. It feels welcoming to see an anime like Shimoneta prove that it can be more than that in more ways than one.
Grade: A-
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