Zashono Academy is the kind of school that usually remains a part of a Japanese student for their entire life, since it covers every grade from preschool to university. A massive academic institution, it’s extraordinarily unusual for a student to transfer INTO it from another school, but that’s exactly what Densuke Mifune has chosen to do, enrolling in the prestigious institution for High school. On his first day, he bumps into a beautiful classmate named Chiharu Shinonome, landing on top of her in a compromising position, and to top it all off, two random boys just trick him into spying on her and a bunch of other girls half naked in the nurse’s office. Due to his unintentional transgressions, Densuke gets forcibly drafted into the Eiken club, where he will have to lead his team to victory in the school sports festival to earn money to buy Chiharu a nice birthday present to make up with her and win her away from another guy.

If it sounds like I skipped a bunch of plot details at the end of that synopsis, nope, no I did not.

Eiken was produced by JC Staff, who... To be fair... Have always kind of been hit or miss with their anime productions, although at least as far as I can remember off the top of my head, Eiken is probably the worst looking title I’ve seen from them. Credit where credit is due, though, a bad JC Staff product is usually the result of a bad JC Staff director, and it’s probably not a coincidence tht the director of this anime, Kiyotaka Ohata, has only ever had two primary directing credits to his name. There’s Eiken, and there’s Sister Princess, a title that I’m suddenly regretting adding to my watch list for my upcoming vacation. Aside from these two titles, the majority of his resume lists him as a storyboard artist and occasional episode director.

To be perfectly honest about Eiken’s visuals, though, it is kind of a mixed bag. On the one hand, the animation isn’t terrible. It’s cheap and inconsistent, and it abuses cost cutting techniques like keyframes and animation loops like they’re going out of style, but there is no shortage of fluid movement on screen, even if the vast majority of the budget went into fanservice shots, especially breast animation. Sure, the way boobs are animated in this OVA is grossly unrealistic and exaggerated, but this is animation we’re talking about, and the anime medium has a long and exhaustive history of breasts being squeezed like silly putty, bouncing like actual balloons and moving as fluidly as the goop inside of a lava lamp, so you can’t really get mad at Eiken for this, and they do put a ton of effort into this juvenile non-fuckery.

More impressive, though, is the attention to detail, as not only did they put an extra bit of effort into things most viewers might not notice or appreciate... The spinning of a ceiling fan, the steam rising off of a cooking meal, etcetera... But they also never forget to show how these giant mammaries interact with the environment around them, which is a relatively nice touch. On the other hand, though, there is almost no attention paid to consistency in their sizes, as each girl’s boobs are whatever size the fanservice at the time needs them to be, and some characters... Take the poor nameless Teacher, for example... Go from pettan to boing-boing pretty much from appearance to appearance. The character designs are also incredibly bland and generic, and the background animations, such as movement from nameless extras, seems to get cheaper and stiffer over time.

There are some shots that weirdly do seem to have some effort put into them, such as with establishing shots of the school setting itself, and with the introduction of a romantic rival character halfway through, that almost feel like Ohata was trying to either channel or openly parody the visual style that Ikuhara used in the Revolutionary Girl Utena movie, but these shots occur so infrequently that I can’t decide whether it was intentional or not. Aside from this, the editing is probably the worst part of the visuals, as it’s way too quick with its cut, and often makes it unnecessarily difficult to follow the story from shot to shot... You know, whatever story this OVA even has inbetween all of the crammed in fetish content. Hell, because of how poorly edited it is, I would honestly be surprised how anybody who even liked these fetishes could ‘enjoy’ this anime, as they would need a pause button ready to even focus on them.

The English dub is also gastly, which is strange, because there are some really prominent names in this cast. The most famous name is probably Stephanie Sheh, working under the alias of Becky Chiang... Yeah, that’s right, she was apparently so ashamed of having this on her resume that she didn’t even use her usual alias of Jennifer Sekiguchi. Anyway, she plays Chiharu, and while the character didn’t give her much to work with, she still pulls off the best performance in the dub. Mona Marshall plays a few characters, and this is not her best work. Grant George, who has a resume longer than my completed list, sounds weirdly like a robotic AI voice as the rival Kurosawa. Rebecca Forstadt very distractingly uses the same voice she used for Sugar in A Little Snow Fairy Sugar to play a giant titted loli character, and a very young Bryce Papenbrook... Yes, Eren Yeager himself, unrecognizable at only around 17 or 18 years old... Plays the wimpy and pubescent sounding lead. The acting isn’t always bad, but given how little effort went into grammar oversight in the script, matching the lip flaps and consistency in the pronunciations(they pronounce the title of the show in like three different ways, and the name Densuke is NEVER pronounced correctly) it’s obvious the director didn’t really give a shit. And yet, I’d still recommend the dub, because compared to the sub, at least it’s funny-bad.

What is the point of reviewing Eiken? That’s a good fucking question. Eiken is one of the most infamously terrible anime ever made. If you haven’t seen it, then you’ve definitely heard of it, either by watching someone review it, or by watching someone react to it, or just hearing its name and maybe even a few key gifs thrown around in whatever anime social space you choose to spend your time in. People who haven’t seen a single frame of it are probably at least passingly familiar with it just through its reputation alone, so what is there to even say about it that hasn’t been said before? The plot is bare bones, basically just a skeleton that was put in place to barely support a constant string of ecchi sequences that are frankly too overbearing and repulsive to possibly be considered sexy. The narrative is incoherent, the characters are one-dimensional at the best of times, their motivations make no sense, and there’s little to no rhyme or reason for anything that happens in either episode.

None of this would be an issue if this were a hentai, but no, it doesn’t even live up to that standard. Not only is there no sex in the entire OVA, with pretty much every fetishy sequence opting for food innuendoes rather than anything more substantial, but there isn’t even any nudity outside of a couple of distant butt shots. Yeah, that "93% nudity" tag is a gross exaggeration to say the least. Even softcore porn would at least let you see uncensored bare breasts, and I’m sorry, maybe I’m alone in this, but I don’t care what size a pair of anime titties are if I’m not allowed to actually see them. On the surface, I can’t imagine what anyone would actually get out of this two episode parade of shameless noodles, yogurt and chocolate banana food porn... But then something occurred to me. I was thinking about this OVA at work a few days ago, because I have a brainless job that lets my mind wander while my body works on autopilot, and I started to wonder if, just maybe, Eiken is one of those rare pieces of media that’s actually terrible on purpose.

Now, would this matter if it was true? Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn’t. On the one hand, bad is bad, and if you’re going to put something out that’s bad on purpose, then the only thing you’ve really accomplished is wasting everyone’s time. On the other hand, is being successfully terrible not still being successful? When a director makes a movie specifically because she wants an Oscar, and she wins an Oscar, that’s something you’d celebrate. So when a director puts out a movie that’s specifically intended to win a Razzie, and it happens, isn’t that equally novel? A good example of this is the 2001 film Freddy Got Fingered, which was directed by and starred Tom Green, whose full intentions were to win big at the Razzies(he won five, which he accepted in person) while ruthlessly parodying the ‘down on his luck misunderstood loser’ style of comedy that was really popular at the time. Now, this might surprise you, but I actually really like Freddy Got Fingered, because as a direct result of its unorthodox intentions, it’s actually a really creative and imaginative movie, full of genuine energy and confidence, terrible as it may be.

So, can we say the same thing about Eiken? Well, in some ways, it does kind of remind me of Tom Green’s magnum opus. I even used a quote from Roger Ebert's review of Tom Green's magnum opus for the tagline of this review. While the writing itself is severely lacking, there was some clear inspiration and effort that went into the bizarre fetishy scenes. There are three slow-motion scenes set to comically inappropriate music that do feel inspired. You can’t call it lacking in creativity when the climax involves four characters riding banana-boats down a chocolate waterslide, someone was definitely having fun at work that day. There are, however, two problems with applying this perspective to Eiken. First of all, as shit as Freddy Got Fingered was, the plot was at least coherent enough to support all of Green’ insane ideas and attempts to push the boundaries of bad taste, while the plot of Eiken is almost non-existent. The second problem is a matter of intention. There is documented proof of what Tom Green was intending with his movie, and you can’t really say that with Eiken.

What drives the final nail in this coffin is the original manga of Eiken. Yes, this title started out as a manga. I’m not going to pretend I’ve read the whole thing, I kinda skimmed the first few volumes, and while there is a resemblance between the source material and its adaptation, the two are very different animals. For one thing, the manga has a lot more context in it, for why some of the more confusing elements of the anime are the way they are. For one very small example, Densuke wasn’t just forced into the Eiken club out of nowhere, the story opens at a time when all of the school clubs are out recruiting members. Densuke is forced to join Eiken because he accidentally groped Chiharu, which is accurate, but more importantly, he officially joins because the club president forces him to sign his name while he’s incapacitated. There are several elements from the OVA that I didn’t see in the first few chapters, I don’t know whether they were made up for the anime or cherry-picked from later chapters, but this does largely solve the mystery of both how and why Eiken is the way it is.

The material from the manga was condensed down into a two episode OVA. I don’t know whether this decision was made by JC Staff or Kiyotaka Ohata, but they reduced the story and dialogue down to its barest essentials in order to accommodate the cavalcade of over-the-top fetish-bait and sex-free porn that we all know and love today. Why did they do this? Well, despite my previous musings, I don’t think they were consciously trying to troll the anime-viewing public with a deliberate piece of anti-comedy trash. I’ve seen adaptations that were handled like this before, and most of the time, the reason behind it is because the true intent of the material was to create and release a cheap advertisement for the original manga. And the funny thing is, I think they failed at this, because while Eiken anime has gone on to live in infamy, the manga is practically unheard of.

Well, I say that now, but just wait until a bunch of hardcore Eiken manga fans start downvoting this review into oblivion and insisting that they’re still holding on tooth and nail to the hope that they’ll one day get the faithful adaptation they deserve.

Eiken and its original manga are available from Media Blasters.

This isn’t the first time I went into an anime review thinking I was going to find some new way to appreciate something that I previously believed to be irredeemable, only to wind up thinking less of it than I did in the first place. It happens, albeit not very often. I figured there was a chance that it might have some degree of depth, substance or value underneath that veneer of shit, because if I could find some beauty in School Days, then anything is possible. Alas, Eiken is just as awful and worthless as you’ve no doubt heard it is. Even as an ecchi, I can’t imagine Eiken doing it for anyone... I can picture an audience for Master of Martial Hearts and even Green Green. But Eiken? This OVA is the epitome of the word worthless. To borrow a quote from Roger Ebert, Eiken doesn't scrape the bottom of the barrel. Eiken isn't the bottom of the barrel. Eiken isn't below the bottom of the barrel. Eiken doesn't deserve to be mentioned in the same sentence as the word barrel.

I give Eiken a 1/10