AKA: アキバ系彼女 (Akiba Kei Kanojo)

Genre: Hentai romance

Length: OAV, 2 episodes, 30 minutes each

Distributor: R1 DVD from JapanX

Content Rating: NC-17 (explicit sex)

Related Series: N/A

Also Recommended: Koihime, Wet Summer Days

Notes: Based on the visual novel by G.J? (yes, the question mark is in the name of the publisher).

Rating:

Akiba Girls

Synopsis

Shindou Nikita (yes, his name's Nikita! Вы говорите по русски?) has a deep dark secret that he's been hiding from his adopted sisters.

No, he's not Russian, and he's not actually a female assassin, either. No, he's an otaku who enjoys hentai games, which theoretically should mean he is a fairly scary guy who doesn't have a snowball's chance in a Tokyo summer of getting laid, except that this is a hentai title, so he's not only going to get to screw female versions of himself, but also his adopted sisters, too!

Oops, that was a spoiler, wasn't it.

Review

Akiba Girls could have been a quirky, tongue-in-cheek look at the hentai industry. After all, one female character leads into a sex scene with the actual premise that she needs practice for her next job as, yes, a hentai voice actress. If that isn't self-referential, I don't know what is.

Sadly, apart from that particular set of lines, Akiba Girls is otherwise a dull, unoriginal show with mediocre sex scenes that often highlight just what I find to be wrong about hentai anime in general.

For starters, most of the girls are saddled with breasts that do not match their body types. This is one of the things that annoys me the most in American pornography, and the transition to Japanese cartoons has not changed this for me. I guess it's because I am married and therefore always have to concern myself with issues such as proper back support. Or maybe it's because I'm just a guy who really likes boobs. Either way, fake boobs irk me, and the boobs on the Akiba Girls are as fake as they get.

The same could be said for the plot. We are expected to believe that Nikita (who's pretty good-looking for an utter geek) is supposed to go from unpopular to sex machine overnight. Uh huh, sure. It's pretty silly to begin with, but when his adopted sisters start professing their undying love lust for him, that's when things get utterly ridiculous.

Since I already commented on the fake-looking breasts, I should be fair and criticize the rest of the animation, which is really rather lousy and doesn't work well with the standard hentai-game art style being used here. We also have another hentai cliche I really don't understand -- the fire-hose penis. Now, it is scientifically proven that the average ejaculation only measures about two or so tablespoons -- not much on the grand scheme of things, but certainly more than enough to do what is intended. In hentai anime, this figure magically rises to gallons, and Nikita apparently can get spray on a girl's face during an internal release. This guy is a one-man bukkake team, and it isn't arousing so much as headshakingly stupid.

I never liked bukkake anyway, but that's another peeve for another time.

Plus there's the whole "adopted sister" angle, which is just a goofy, poorly executed, and overdone ripoff of the whole Marmalade Boy idea.

While the sex is consensual and there aren't any naughty tentacles or magic rope tricks, Akiba Girls is kinda like combining the tired cliches of mainstream Japanese porn with the fake boobs of mainstream American porn.

I guess if you're desperate for animated sex and don't like the darker stuff, this might work for you, but there is a plethora of better titles out there.

It's not quite the bottom of the barrel, but finding better hentai than this isn't hard. — Carlos/Giancarla Ross

Recommended Audience: ADULTS ONLY. Explicit sex.