That description sounds nice? Well, it definitely does. Too bad it's a lie.
I can confidently say that not only does Shimoneta fit none of those criteria, it's even worse in that it's falsely sex positive and might be one of the least coherent world I've came across, even among wacky comedies.
To understand how the show fails even at its most basic level, let's quickly summarize the setting: the story is set in a dystopic Japan where censorship laws reached a point where "lewd" materials are all to be destroyed and "dirty" words aren't allowed, all this monitored thanks to high-tech devices called "PMs" (able to detect when a dirty word is used or when a hand does something obscene, more on that later) which the entire population is forced to wear and enforced by special forces called the Decency Squad. In such a world, our protagonists are part of SOX, an "ero-terrorist" organization that tries to educate the students and advocate a right to sexuality while escaping the Decency Squad.
Now let's see what's the issue here… This world even being possible in the first place is kinda silly, but it's also a comedy, so let's not dwell on how impossible it'd be to actually reach the current state the show is in, especially the part about PMs being worn by everyone willingly or how Japan seems to monitor the Internet perfectly. There are already way more problems when taking things as they are.
First off, we see examples of things deemed as "lewd" being destroyed in the reoccurring explanation scene. Porn magazines are burnt, scantily clad figurines are destroyed, and… a pool gets blown up? Wait, is swimming considered lewd? I mean, I get that swimsuits can be lewd, and I can see how one could reach the conclusion that swimming involves either clothes becoming wet or being naked with others, but it feels like a stretch. Either way, the point is to show how extreme the censorship laws are by showing that even a pool is seen as something to be destroyed.
Now back in the present of the show… where public bathing is still a thing (as shown in ep 12)…? How is it deemed different from swimming here? People aren't just in a swimsuit, they're outright naked with each other! But wait, there's another thing that's even more ridiculous… in a show where most perverts we see are strongly associated with underwear and talk about how lewd they are… the school uniforms still have the female student wear short skirts… in a country that's absolutely familiar with things such as panty shots and the obsession some people have for bare legs and panties… How am I supposed to take those laws seriously when they overlook something so obvious?
Now one could say the laws drawing a line in weird ways is just part of the show, that we do see a member of the Decency Squad who's easily convinced when told something is lewd or not later in the story (Oboro Tsukimigusa). Not that I think it's a good defense, but an argument could be made for it. Something harder to explain are the consequences of those laws and how they somehow defy biology.
One of SOX's missions at some point is to teach the boys about masturbation. Never mind the fact that girls don't seem to deserve to learn about it (the MC gets called a pervert for suggesting it), it's also dumb as bricks. We literally see guys getting horny looking at magazines and being like "i don't know what to do!!". Repressed young Christians that got flailed in some monastery for even considering having lustful thoughts in the 12th century figured it out, but some modern teenage boys literally looking at porn and hearing jokes about dicks several times a week somehow never thought of touching themselves, or even realized it felt good? The laws are about knowledge, not losing senses and bodily reactions.
Yet again, one could say that they can't because of their PMs, which'd react to the movement, leading to two other points.
1) The PMs only send a signal to the Decency Squad if they detect something, they can't prevent movements and the clueless boys have no reason to know what would trigger the PMs in a situation where they clearly don't know what masturbation is.
2) PMs are bullshit and never actually work. A whole point is made about Ayame needing a super special phone app to be allowed to say dirty jokes and do obscene gestures, with her having a time limit of 4 min/day (which might as well not exist) and pulling out the phone whenever she's making a joke. Similarly, Otome can't draw hentai with her hands because the PMs would recognize it from the hand movement, so she's forced to do it with the pen in her mouth.
Now I guess they're all idiots, because we see characters including Otome, do and say lewd things without the PMs ever triggering. Whether it's a rub-rub gesture or proclaiming how much they love having panties on their face, the PMs never react and just act as holographic smartphones. The show can't even manage to remember the limitations it set up for itself.
But it gets worse, because we're also shown a new bill that's trying to replace the current PMs with a new model in the form of underwears that act as chastity belts. These are dumb in every conceivable ways. We see a lot of students clueless about genitals, so why bring attention to it for those students? Similarly, do you know that there's more to sexual stimulation than what's between your legs? The kids may not, but the adults clearly do, especially those present before the laws existed. It also removes the whole purpose of having PMs tied to the wrist, which was to monitor hand movement. Now what, they'll guess your drawings based on the way you move your hips? Either way, the bill fails, so at least we don't have to see all the ways the anime would have made them worse than their predecessors.
As far as the setting itself goes, nothing makes sense and it contradicts itself all the time, even on things that aren't up to one's interpretation. What about the rest? The actual story, characters, humor and what the work has to say about sexuality and censorship. Well… It sometimes manages to be slightly interesting, but never does anything with it.
I guess the highlights of the anime would be when they sometimes point out things like how completely removing any frame of reference from students means they don't know how to properly process and express things such as love and lust (done through a throwaway line or two) or when SOX decides to make homemade sextoys, which was pretty interesting to see.
That said, it'll usually drop the ball hard, which you can see from the beginning of episode 1. The very first scene after the intro recap is a student being falsely accused of groping someone in the train, with the woman who lied doing it to extort money, and instantly switching the accusation to the protagonist when he denies her claim and prevents her from incriminating an innocent guy.
It's simply bad taste. In a country known for its issues with sexual aggression in public transport and a society more than willing to deny the victim's claim, you really chose this as one of your introductory scenes? I mean yeah, there are people who'd have no qualms exploiting the system for their financial gain, but here it's used as the establishing scene for how cartoonishly evil this world is. A scene like that could work if you first acknowledged that the actual cases seems to have diminished thanks to the laws, but that it doesn't solve everything (or that by making everyone more ignorant of sex, it also endangers victims by making them less aware of what's being done to them, which is why sex education is important in the first place, in addition to cases like the one depicted).
To also tackle the elephant in the room when it comes to this kind of subject, let's talk about Anna, the "pure" girl turned into a yandere nymphomaniac after an accidental kiss. She's the one meant to show how the current society makes it so young people don't know how to process their emotions, mistake love and lust or that they have no concept of consent. If there's one thing that's remembered about her, it's her obsession with "love juice" and multiple attempts to sexually assault the MC. Turns out people remember this because it's the only thing this character ever does. The concept itself isn't bad, but there's no real variation to the formula and it gets old very, very fast with the pitiful buildup each repeat have. Some people like to pretend her behavior is deeper than it actually is because "the MC is clearly uncomfortable" in those scenes, but the way it's portrayed is clearly meant to be more of a sexy fantasy rather than further the ideas Ayame talked about when referring to her (the LN narration for this scene also goes in that direction, spending more time describing Anna's body from the MC's own pov). Doesn't help that Otome found it super hot and inspiring, so she's pushing to see more of it in future scenes.
That said, I don't think Anna's the worst offender when it comes to this show, only the most well-known. The worst thing Shimoneta has to offer is how falsely sex-positive it is.
Now this kind of claim definitely has its counter-examples here and there. SOX does try to educate the students during the show by trying to teach them what is used for sex or by showing them sexual content directly, and they even have appreciation for the craft that goes into making sextoys. Those are undoubtedly the best part of the show in that regard. However those are also mere nuggets of good compared to what the series as a whole says and shows.
I think the big speech Ayame gives near the end of the anime is a pretty good way to explain it: to her, lewd stuff and dirty jokes are evil and wrong, which is precisely what makes them funny or appealing. Except… that's the least sex-positive message you could make. Besides explaining why a lot of the jokes are just endless repetition with no particular set up (since the work thinks the very nature of dirty jokes makes them funny rather than actually needing to put any effort in them), it also reflects quite heavily on how sexuality as a whole is treated.
Simply put, because sexual things are deemed inherently wrong/evil, every character with a awakening to their sexuality or interest in sexual content will be shown as having few morals (often being criminals even by real life standards) or just being weird for the sake of it. I can't stress enough that this alone wouldn't be bad, you can totally have interesting characters like that or a message in favor of "weirdness" depending on how you pull it. But Shimoneta chose to pretend it was some story about people against censorship, in which case showing that sexuality "corrupts" people into being criminals without giving a counter-example of it being actually healthy or beneficial might be the worst case example in its defense.
There's also one particular running gag (?) that highlights how there's no actual sex-positivity at play here. During the show we see a lot of wild characters: SOX members who wear panties on their head while mostly naked, Anna who goes on love/lust rampages while cumming everywhere, Ichinose/White Peak who has panties all over his body and specifically only uses unwashed used ones he leaves on himself for days/weeks. Despite all of that, only a single thing makes a character impulsively get a gag reflex or vomit at the mere sight of it… Goriki wearing girl's underwear. Now I'm not saying all the characters have to just be ok with that, they could very much show disgust or feel awkward in front of it, but that's really where you draw the line? The stinky panties man is simply a bit icky, but this is what makes everyone throw up, including some legendary ero-terrorist? It simply makes no sense within the context of the show and in relation to what it's supposed to be saying if you genuinely believe it to be in favor of free sexuality and against the scorn of moral guardians, censorship and the likes.
And the most ironic of it all? The anime actually uses censorship for Ichinose/White Peak's dick nd Fuwa's crotch area (though it's more just seeing her legs from the side) in the form of the dumb big circle you can sometimes see being used even in the uncensored version. Now you could actually use that censorship and call it out or mock it, but no, it's just there like any other show and nothing's ever done with it. I'm obviously not saying that it could just show genitals no problem (though it's still covered in-verse to begin with), but at least do something interesting with it. It's some of the most terrible way to do censorship when a lot of other anime actually have fun playing with workarounds and calling them out, especially when it's already oddly conservative about showing the characters' body and the ending actually does it better with that one part where you see 3 characters with their bits hidden by colors. It's not only wasted potential, but a self-admitted cowardice that makes what I was promised seem like a lie meant to draw people in.
Overall, in spite of the very synopsis or what the show may want you to believe, it has not only some dumb censorship, but is also ashamed of sex in its own way. It isn't transgressive or clever, instead just being the equivalent of people who call themselves "men of culture" and act all sarcastic to justify consuming works with sexual content.
I could talk about so many other little things, like how some characters somehow manages to stay in underwear/nearly naked no problem in public spaces and the others don't even acknowledge it that much or the few anime-specific bad choices (like Fuwa constantly showing up near the MC's crotch -which isn't in the LN- or how the opening uses scenes from the episode which sometimes spoil what should be a twist rather than using scenes from the previous one) , but it'd probably be retreading a lot of the same ground I just went over earlier.
To give a quick mention to the OP/ED: I like both songs and listen to them from time to time. The pero-pero-perorrist part is a bit of bad taste, especially after the Anna episode, but I really don't care enough to complain about it when compared to everything I've just covered.
All in all, I wouldn't suggest Shimoneta to anyone interested in sex comedies nor works about censorship, and wouldn't recommend it period. It's just not worth it.
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