Netsuzou TRap -NTR- Review

Going into Netsuzou TRap -NTR-, I knew that this was going to be filler. Not shying away from trying something out of the ordinary, I decided to see what a netorare yuri anime was all about. With the episodes only being nine minutes long, I felt that I didn’t really have to commit much time to the series each and every week so if it ended up being terrible, at least I could take solace in knowing that I didn’t waste much time on the show. However, I saw it through to the end and was it as bad as the description made it sound?

Let’s go!

The Story

The story of Netsuzou TRap -NTR- is about two teenage couples in high school: Hotaru / Fujiwara and Yuma / Takeda; however, after the opening scene in episode one, you wouldn’t think that Hotaru and Yuma had boyfriends because they were blatantly making out with each other in the school bathroom! The show tries to put a deeper meaning behind the yuri acts; however, it really wasn’t anything all too special. Overall, the story was mainly about Yuma’s journey to realizing how she truly felt about Hotaru.

That’s pretty much it. I can’t really spend more than a paragraph talking about the story because that’s all there really was to it. The other bits and pieces are, more or less, about the characters themselves.

The Characters

Hotaru Mizushina

Hotaru is Yuma’s best first and is the one who, primarily, instigates all of Yuma’s yuri encounters with her. She always claims that her kisses are nothing more than jokes, but it’s painfully obvious that the whole joke thing is a lie. Although the show never outright states it, Hotaru seems to be acting out this way as a deterrence from her abusive relationship with Fujiwara. Later on in the show, you realize that Hortaru only agreed to make a pact with Fujiwara to satisfy each other’s needs and when Hotaru isn’t in the mood to have sex, Fujiwara takes out his aggression on her. Hotaru only accepts the abuse because she feels that she’s at fault for breaking their pact. Despite the fact that Hotaru claims that she loves Fujiwara, their relationship was never built off of love. Hell, you probably can’t even call that a relationship.

Yuma Okazaki

Hotaru’s best friend who is dating Takeda. Yuma is your average teenage girl with no real special or redeeming qualities about her. Her relationship with Takeda hits a snag when she begins to wonder about Hotaru. This causes Takeda to notice that the two of them are growing more and more distant and so, they decide to put their relationship on hold. Outside of her conflicting thoughts about Hotaru, Yuma is about as basic as they get for a character. Her only real development stems from her slow and gradual realization that she’s in love with Hotaru. What even makes her relationship worse is the fact that she actually went to Takeda for advice on how to deal with Hotaru… without actually mentioning Hotaru by name. It was one of the biggest friendzone moments I’ve seen in quite some time. Poor Takeda.

Fujiwara

He is the abusive boyfriend of Hotaru. He claims that he hates women, but loves to have sex. He has dated other women before, but he typically moves on after a short while. After witnessing his latest breakup, Hotaru approaches him and enters a pact where the two of them would satisfy each other’s desires. Whenever Hotaru doesn’t put out, Fujiwara gets quite aggressive. He even discovered the yuri relationship between Hotaru and Yuma and tried to blackmail Yuma with photos he took on his phone, but it was thwarted by Hotaru. This gives you an idea of the kind of person that Fujiwara is and aside from the generic abusive boyfriend role, the show gives you just enough of a reason to dislike him.

Takeda

Boring generic dude who gets friendzoned hard. That’s all you get for a description because that’s all there is to Takeda. He’s that meaningless as a character. Moving on.

Art, Animation, and Sound

Creators in Pack was the studio behind Netsuzou TRap -NTR- and they did pretty okay for themselves as far as visuals and animation go. Everything was detailed and the characters all stood out with the exception of Takeda. There were some instances where some of the generic filler characters looked almost like Takeda and it actually confused me at times. It’s bad enough that Takeda barely stood out as a character, let alone his design made him look like he belonged in the background. The animation was pretty smooth throughout and nothing seemed poorly animated.

The soundtrack was pretty forgettable; however, the opening and ending themes were actually pretty well done. “Blue Bud Blue” by Haruka Toujou was a nice upbeat rock song. The thing that puzzled me was why the opening song went for the full 1:30 while the ending song lasted all but 0:30. I understand that leaves only seven minutes for the actual show, but it seems rather odd. The show did use multiple ending themes, but I never really caught their names, but some of them sounded pretty good… for what you got to hear of them before they abruptly ended.

Overall Thoughts

Netsuzou TRap -NTR- is an okay at best netorare show. If you’re not familiar with the term, netorare shows are shows that deal with adultery, aka cheating on your partner. In this case, it was Hotaru cheating on Fujiwara with Yuma who, in turn, cheated on her boyfriend Takeda. While the characters gave a valiant effort to try and save this show from being absolute trash, it didn’t do enough to make it good. The only blessing about this show is the length of the episodes. Since there is little time investment (a little under four hours for all twelve episodes total), does it really matter if the show is bad? It’s something you can get in, watch and get out of rather quickly so there really isn’t any harm in watching the show. There definitely is a lot worse out there.

Generic would be the best word to describe this.

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Until next time,

Ja ne