Shimoneta Review

Imagine a world where sexual thoughts, feelings, actions and words were banned by the Government… And people accepted it! This is the world of Shimoneta: A Boring World Where The Concept of Dirty Jokes Doesn’t Exist, a Japan where you can’t say shit, fuck, pussy, or any other “dirty words” without being arrested and thrown in jail. It’s here with Shimoneta shines in it’s ability to both shock you with it’s actions and language yet also keep you laughing as the characters, a bunch of High School students, relearn what a world of sexual arousal is.

Title: Shimoneta: A Boring World Where The Concept of Dirty Jokes Doesn’t Exist
Genre: Comedy, Ecchi, School
Series Details: 12 episodes
Release Date: 08/02/2017 (Australia)
Languages: English, Japanese
Subtitles: English subtitles
Number of Discs: 2
Runtime: 300 mins (23mins per episode)
Aspect Ratio: 16:9 Widescreen Full Height Anamorphic
Distributor: Madman Entertainment (DVD/BluRay)
Special Features: Episode Commentaries, Moms Watch SHIMONETA, Promotional Videos, Web Previews, Textless Songs
Rating: MA15+ Strong sexual themes, references and innuendo, sexualised imagery and coarse language
Review Parameters: BluRay Release, English Language, no subtitles.

With the introduction of strict new morality laws, Japan has become a nation cleansed of all that is obscene and impure. By monitoring citizens using special devices worn around their necks, authorities have taken extreme measures to ensure that society remains chaste.

In this world of sexual suppression, Tanukichi Okuma—son of an infamous terrorist who opposed the chastity laws—has just entered high school, offering his help to the student council in order to get close to president Anna Nishikinomiya, his childhood friend and crush. Little does he know that the vice president Ayame Kajou has a secret identity: Blue Snow, a masked criminal dedicated to spreading lewd material amongst the sheltered public—and Tanukichi has caught the girl’s interest due to his father’s notoriety.

Soon, Tanukichi is dragged into joining her organization called SOX, where he is forced to spread obscene propaganda, helping to launch an assault against the government’s oppressive rule. With their school set as the first point of attack, Tanukichi will have to do the unthinkable when he realizes that their primary target is the person he admires most.

Characters

• Tanukichi Okuma – Voiced by: Yūsuke Kobayashi (Japanese) / Josh Grelle (English): The protagonist of Shimoneta. His past is haunted by the reputation of his father, a well known “sexual terrorist” which has caused him to be ostricised by most of the schools he has attended in his life, thus not having many friends if any at all. In the beginning he does have a crush on Anna, the Student Council President, however this changes once Anna goess through her own sexual awakening. He’s a bit of a shy guy for the most part but is the only one who is able to understand Ayame and her sexually charged way of speaking.
• Ayame Kajou / Blue Snow – Voiced by: Shizuka Ishigami (Japanese) / Jamie Marchi (English): The current “sexual terrorist” of Japan. As Blue Snow, Ayame is loud and very voiceful in all things sexual. Having a catch phrase of “cock and balls” in the English dub, she doesn’t hold back from saying or doing anything sexual around her fellow SOX members. As Ayame, she is very proper as she is the Vice President of the Student Council and helps Anna keep law and order in the school while doing her own plans in the background. She’s able to avoid detection for her dirty ways through a special coded phone her father built.
• Otome Saotome – Voiced by: Satomi Arai (Japanese) / Brittney Karbowski (English): A young girl who likes to draw lewd manga as a hobby. She tends to go crazy when she finds something sexual going on around her as it fuels her desire to draw. Outside of this she is an angry ball of energy. Probably the character with the least development in the show.
• Kosuri Onigashira – Voiced by: Yui Horie (Japanese) / Lara Woodhull (English): A girl from a wealthy and influential family that uses her position, along with a lot of tricks she has learnt from Romance and Shoujo manga to trick people into doing exactly what she wants. She tends to jump back and forth between wanting to help her fellow SOX members to wanting to do everything herself and even changes alliances during Shimoneta. A bit of a self absorbed bitch really.
• Hyouka Fuwa – Voiced by: Saori Gotō (Japanese) / Mikaela Krantz (English): A very anti-social girl with a scientific mind. She is obsessed with finding out the “secrets to how babies are made” and will often harrass Tanukichi for information given his past. She will often put herself into some very sexual positions when approching him about the topic. She is also a fan of the BL manga that makes it’s way around the school as well as having an obsession with flies and the way they fuck, thinking it could have the same technique as humans.
• Anna Nishikinomiya – Voiced by: Miyu Matsuki (Japanese) / Monica Rial (English): Naive, clueless and innocent. These are the words one would use when seeing Anna in the first half of Shimoneta. She had no idea about lewd materials at all, sometimes seeing something that others would see as lewd as just a work of art. After an accidental kiss between herself and Tanukichi, she goes through a sexual awakening, which is confusing for her and leads to her becoming sex obsessed for Tanukichi with some pretty scary results.
• Raiki Gouriki – Voiced by: Kenta Miyake (Japanese) / David Wald (English): A big Gorilla of a guy who secretly has a crush on Anna, thus he tries to be by her side as much as possible during Student Council meetings. He is very opposed to having Tanukichi on the Council as he sees him not only as a rival, but a lewd guy like his father before him. Secretly he likes to wear women’s underwear, being revealed to always be in a panties and bra combo later in the series.

From a technical standpoint, Shimoneta is one of the most balanced anime’s I got in my review package. It keeps things simple with use of medium-level line work that can be manipulated easily from a standing scene to something more action packed. However the show does keep some censorship coverings from the TV version where it comes to the male genitalia while it pretty much allows anything of the female form as free game (except raw vaginal shots, those remain censored), which just doesn’t seem right in a show about fighting censorship. As for the animation itself, there is no drop in quality at all, and everything is well colored and shadowed constantly through the whole series.

Another thing that you’ll need to keep an ear out for is the language. As you can see in the screenshot above, the language is a little… “blue”. The words cock, pussy, fuck and others are thrown around with liberal abandon, especially in the English track where it seems worse than anything I’ve heard… And I’m Australian where we use the words fuck and cunt freely and with multiple meanings. This is a long way from the old “7 words you can’t say on TV” bit from George Carlin that’s for sure. Be warned not to have the little ones or any uptight adults around when you’re watching this, even with subtitles you aren’t safe.

In terms of special features, Shimoneta gets the usual treatment: Textless Songs, Episode Commentaries & Previews from when the show was about to air in Japan. All uncensored thankfully. The real gem in all this is “Mom’s watch Shimoneta” where the people at FUNimation host a Mom’s React rip off where a bunch of Mom’s from a few different age ranges sit down and watch an episode of Shimoneta in all it’s glory (The infamous cookies episode). The reactions and statements coming from these Moms is very funny and well worth the watch.

Let’s face it, you’ve got to be a sick fuck in order to not only understand Shimoneta’s comedy, but to enjoy it too; and that’s where it’s brilliance is at.  Shimoneta is educational to some degree as these degenerates do things like making a subsitute for a vagina, a vibrating egg, and other sexual objects. The use of flys to censor the act of sex itself was a brilliant touch. Hyouka is a great character, serving as the “Q” to the group, providing them technology to fuel their plans, but also her obsession with finding out how babies are made all while putting herself in the same situations that would lead to the art of conception without knowing it, a true stroke of genius from the writers. Kosuri is another good character mainly because of how cunning she is for someone who is meant to be a young High School Junior. Her arc in Shimoneta in the later parts is some of the best back and forth alliance switching and manipulation I’ve seen in a long time. That’s not to say that the other members of the cast aren’t well written and worth watching, because they are. However it’s nice to see an anime that takes it’s second and third tier characters and fleshes them out more than just being pawns.

What is Shimnoeta’s biggest positive is also it’s biggest negative: The comedy. Seeing as Shimoneta is a very VERY sexualised show, it does cross the line from time to time to the point where even I was feeling uncomfortable and even skipped a specific scene before I threw up (Let’s just say don’t eat the cookies from the Student Council President). So if you can’t handle some very sick shit, I’d say it might be worth reading episode recaps on Wikipedia to see which episode might be worth skipping through. The other issue I have with Shimoneta is the addition of another group dedicated to perversion right near the end of the anime, it seems like the writers pulled the main story up a few episodes short and needed something else to fill in the time. I’m not sure if this is a manga release issue or just a timing issue, but either way it just didn’t work for me as a viewer.

Just like Prison School, I have a hard time recommending Shimoneta to anyone who doesn’t have an open mind as as I’ve mentioned so many times the content is extremely sexually charged. However that’s the crux of the plot and the comedy it produces, which is worth a watch. As our own society seems to be headed down the path of sexual repression once again, watching Shimoneta is like a warning of what is to come if this generation of Liberal Collage Students become in control of society at all levels. Anime like Shimoneta might not be everyone’s cup of tea, but to those of us who can handle the sick shit that borders on porn at times, Shimoneta is well worth the watch.

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