OVA Impressions: Hen Zemi

I’ve been thinking lately about how to cover OVAs lately, especially after Kyou, Koi wo Hajimemasu, Tono to Issho, Kaichu and Darker than Black’s OVA. None of my review systems really seem fit for it, because especially with one-shot OVAs (that in a lot of cases don’t turn out to be one-shot at all), I’m basically just reviewing episodes. In a lot of cases I’m not sure whether to put them under “reviews”, “quick first impressions”, or to just write an episode post about the episode in question.

That’s why I decided to add them into a new feature: OVA impressions. Under this category I’ll cover all of the OVA episodes that come out throughout the year (and it also seems like a good place to put reviews of movies like Halo Legends and Genius Party). When enough entries have been written I’ll create some sort of index that lists all of the episodes I reviewed with their rating, and in the meantime I’ll think of something on how to include some of my older OVA posts.

Now that that’s out of the way: Hen Zeni. Oh boy. In this year, after Chuu Bra, Ladies Versus Butler, Seikon no Qwaser, KissXSis and Mitsudomoe, I didn’t possibly expect a series that would push the boundaries of taste any more further. I was wrong; the depths that this series reaches into are unbelievable. This series chronicles the lives of a bunch of university students… and it’s just wrong on so many levels. The length at which some of these characters go with their fanservice jokes is just unbelievable. One guy in particular… do yourself a favour and don’t watch this OVA right before eating. Seriously, you will lose your appetite.

Xebec… these guys baffle me. They’ve showed by now that they can deliver their share of excellent series, and yet they continue to dabble in these tasteless fanservice shows lately. The thing is however that this episode was quite well directed. The way in which the creators play with emotions (no matter how disturbing) throughout this was actually quite well done. The animation was quite excellent in certain scenes. The creators really managed to keep your interest here.

Anyway, as for the rating, I’m experimenting a bit with how to correctly rate these OVAs, since my regular rating system for series doesn’t really work with most of them (especially rating a one-shot OVA for its setting is just pointless). Here is how I’d rate this episode:

Combined Rating: ****
(Yeah, I’m really using the ratings I use on regular episodes on purpose, right now I’m really trying to figure out what kind of rating system would work best on OVAs). The combined rating is nothing more than the rating of these three categories added on top of each other. In the next weeks I’ll try to think of a better system here…)