Papa to Kiss in the Dark

Papa to Kiss in the Dark is infamous for its gay incestuous content; but is it really that bad?

The short answer is yes and no. The longer answer is yes, but in a different way than you'd expect. Certainly, if you're not into incest, don't watch this OVA. But also, actually, I wouldn't recommend this OVA if you are into incest!

Papa to Kiss in the Dark is a 2-episode adaptation of a four? volume light novel series about Mira Munakata, a 15-year-old high school freshman, and his illicit relationship with his handsome celebrity/actor father, Kyousuke Munakata. I can't really say much more about the light novel aspect of this series, because it's literally never been translated into English, officially or otherwise, at least not that I could find online. As such, I can only judge the OVA for what it is as a stand-alone piece of media.

From a technical standpoint, it's... fine. It's got a good voice acting cast, the animation and art style are inoffensive. The overly shiny faces made me somewhat nostalgic for this kind of cheap-looking, digipaint animation.

The writing, however... dear lord.

The most offensive thing about this anime is wasting its lead CVs on the most unsatisfying melodrama I've ever watched.

I can't fault the anime's production team too much. 2, 25-minute episodes is NOT a lot of time to tell your story. It basically functions as a teaser/advertisement for the light novels, which obviously almost no one in the English speaking world has actually read! But the pacing is absolutely, horrendously, awful.

Here is a list of things that happen in episode 1:
Mira starts school. We are introduced to his papa, and to his classmates. Later, Mira is upset because he thinks his papa might be cheating on him. At the end of the episode, for some reason, he goes to city hall with his best friend to do paperwork and finds out he might be adopted? Oh no! What does this mean for his relationship!

The first episode's pacing is okay overall; we learn about the central problem in Mira and Kyousuke's relationship, and get introduced to relevant characters. Its main flaw is it wastes significant time on characters who are utterly irrelevant to the 'arc' of the story. Unfortunately, the problems just snowball from there.

Here is a list of things that happen in episode 2:
Mira inexplicably has sex? I think? with his childhood friend who comforts him over maybe not being related to his father, and also makes a kind of incestuous pass at him by telling him he wishes they could be brothers. Then, out of nowhere, Kyousuke is injured and we are told very loudly by his friend? Director? Manager? that actually he's a very serious and good person, so maybe Mira shouldn't be doubting him. We also get to see more properly the woman that Mira thinks Kyousuke is cheating on him with, and it turns out actually she's Mira's real mother and yes Mira is still adopted but Kyousuke is actually his uncle so it's okay because they still have a blood connection and that makes Mira happy!

For an anime called "Papa to Kiss in the Dark" there sure isn't a whole lot of... Papa. Things happen that are related to him, but pretty much all he does is show up for brief moments of fanservice then disappear again to work. It's really hard to care about any of these emotional revelations when we have 0 reason to care about the central relationship, especially when all problems relating to it seem to be completely and utterly resolved by the end of the OVA.

Is Papa to Kiss in the Dark the worst anime of all time? Not really. Is it unimaginably horrific in its depiction of incest? ...also not really. Beyond the knee-jerk reaction to the incestuous (and underage) content, it's extremely tame in its depictions of sex, and most of the characters don't even really seem to care about the incest taboo, and it's treated as more of a gag than anything.

Papa to Kiss isn't bad because it's a weird scary dadson incest anime; it's bad because its drama is poorly done, its pacing is shit, and it wastes some interesting concepts that could have made for some real drama.