As far as ecchi anime go, Iketeru Futari was pretty darn bad. I’m not even sure where to begin. Let’s go with the description found on Wikipedia and work our way from there, shall we?
“16-year old Keisuke Saji loves to fantasize about young beautiful women. He hopes to land the object of his affection, Koizumi Akira. However, Koizumi hates Saji (as well as all men) to the point of assault. While most guys take Koizumi's cold shoulder as a hint, Saji pursues head-on without having rejection faze him.”
The description of some horndog harassing an asexual/lesbian girl didn’t give me much confidence in the show going in. The actual show is paradoxically better, yet worse than this description would lead you to believe. In good news, at least from what I could gather, Koizumi doesn’t actually hate men. This isn’t a story of “the right guy” mounting a war of attrition in an attempt to change a violent girl’s sexuality. Instead, Koizumi proves so confusing that I still don’t have a read on her, and Saji’s so unlikable that Koizumi striking him was 100% justified.
Episodes of Iketeru are ~six minutes long. As stated before, the show is ecchi — shamelessly so. Practically every other episode begins with a sexual fantasy, there are detailed panty-shots galore, and plenty of bare breasts. If you like fanservice, then boy...you’re probably better off somewhere else. The anime also tries to have a bonafide story, and at only six minutes an episode, you can see where the problem lies. Given how much of the runtime comprises of Saji being a lecher and dumb jokes, attempts to be serious are laughable and jarring.
The anime focuses on Koizumi, Rei Ayame’s slightly more emotive, dimensionally displaced twin sister. Her only notable traits are that she’s diminutive in size, mysterious, and cagey. Why is she mysterious? Who knows? Who cares? The anime didn’t give me any answers, so I just rolled my eyes whenever her mysteriousness was brought up. It doesn’t help that said mysteriousness is stated, never shown.
While Koizumi is boring, Saji is downright insufferable. He can barely function because if he’s not groping someone or staring at their panties, he’s having a sexual fantasy that he conflates with reality. The anime tried to push a romance, but it’s unbelievable thanks to the fact that Saji will get his rocks off to any woman.
There are a few other recurring characters, but they might as well be cardboard boxes. There’s a love triangle with Saji’s childhood friend that ultimately goes nowhere, in case you wanted your time to be even more wasted.
Character relations don’t make any sense. In the first episode, Koizumi has a fun night with Saji. Okay, fine. The problem is that the next day and for the rest of the series, she goes on hating him. If the anime was going to have Koizumi dislike Saji, it should have did away with their date at the beginning of the series. Koizumi’s feeling toward Saji flip flop so often that I was just left confused.
The anime also tries to be comedic, but none of the jokes landed for me. The comedy amounts to Saji screaming (which I found obnoxious), Koizumi and other women beating the living crap out of Saji (which was justified, but not funny), and Saji making goofy faces (which still weren’t goofy enough to garner a laugh).
Despite sex-appeal being this show’s biggest strength, it’s not even that good. The cel-shaded art automatically places this as an older anime, but the nostalgia stops there, because the art is pretty average, and at times just plain bad. The character designs aren’t too striking, which is practically a cardinal sin when making erotic animation. The only thing that would help is accented features, and for the most part, proportions are fairly plain in Iketeru Futari. Sure, there are times when the show is sexy, but those moments are few and far between.
The last episode is a perfect example of the show’s faults. It’s a dramatic episode, but we don’t really know why the characters make the decisions that they do. It ultimately ends with character relationships back to square one, with nothing resolved. I guess I prefer that than the show trying to pretend it had dignity all this time.
Iketeru Futari is a comedy that’s not funny, a romance that’s anything but romantic, and an ecchi that’s seldom sexy. It flounders in nearly every aspect. To add insult to injury, it’s just plain gross. The short runtime doesn’t make it more enjoyable; it makes it more bearable.
5/10
F+