Considering the manga creator’s health right now, a less than positive review of this anime adaptation is probably something you don’t want to read. So before I upset anyone expecting nothing but noteworthy praise, please skip this article if you can’t handle artistic criticism and personal opinion, because this one is going to sting a little.
First of all, I am aware that Monster Musume is a slice of life manga and anime series, which means that the focus is based on everyday life with Monster Girls or rather; what it would be like to live with a harem of Monster Girls. Monster Musume is a harem anime and we’ll get that right into the open before I continue to say anything else about it. Problem is, this light-hearted approach to a topic that is dealt with so well in Monster Girl Quest Complete and other such H-Games is a bit lacking for me. Yes, I know that Monster Girls in this fashion are supposed to be erotic, but the anime suffered from a bit too much fanservice to the point where it came off silly. The series started off with a Lamia, then introduced another type of Monster Girl every episode until the main character was completely inundated with them – a centaur girl, a mermaid girl, a slime girl, a harpy girl, a spider girl and right near the end, there was even a Dullahan girl introduced. Explaining the circumstances behind that occurrence would only serve to spoil one of the only interesting plots that the anime had, so I won’t ruin it for you.
Although the anime mainly focuses on the lightweight aspects of this phenomena, there are a few chances where things could have gotten a bit deeper in terms of the plot. For instance, a group of Monster Girls act as a sort of task force to eliminate non-human threats (and believe me, the name of said task force was so silly that I don’t even want to speak it here) and are introduced when a group of Orcs attempt to take hostages at a manga shop because they complained that there weren’t enough orc based hentai mangas. It is worth noting that the color of the orcs and the way that they were dressed resembled an ethnic “thug” stereotype, which I shockingly noticed from the beginning. It makes me wonder as to whether or not that was geared to minorities that didn’t feel proper representation in media as of late. It was just kind of a bizarre circumstance that I would not have expected in this kind of anime. Regardless of that, this task force introduces the zombie girl, cyclops girl and a mimic girl, even though the slime girl is also able to mimic to some extent. And yes, we do see some action scenes during this later episode, which I feel is well-warranted. There’s even a scene where the centaur girl is dressed in full battle armor, which looks quite awesome, I’d have to say. So it isn’t as if the anime was the complete equivalent of a sitcom. There was also a moral regarding pollution in one of the later episodes, where a very powerful dryad girl nearly becomes an enemy, if not for the “fuck you to death with my tentacles” idea. The anime also features an ending theme that is quite hard rock and mostly focuses around the task force, which would have been more interesting to focus on instead of the main character and his little harem, which bored me well after the third episode. This anime became a literal chore to get through and if it had been any longer, I’m not so sure that I could have made it. I’m in my thirties now, it takes more than large anime boobs to get my attention.
To be honest, I just don’t like what this was and if Japan has any other ideas regarding Monster Girls that aren’t glorified hentai posing as slice of life situations, I am more than willing to check them out. Fanservice is always going to creep up when you’re working with Monster Girls as a prime topic, but to throw eighty percent of the plot towards strict fanservice is a bit asinine and Monster Girls deserve much better than this, in my humble opinion. For an anime that tries multiple times to capture it’s fans with a seemingly deep plot point that ultimately amounts to nothing, I was a bit disappointed with the whole thing. I imagine that it must be intriguing to live with Monster Girls, but the JRPG fan in me wants a bit more. Again, even a spin-off based on the task-force would be nice, because at least there were action scenes. Niche Gamer didn’t get it when I asked why there was an absence of fighting in the anime for the most part, but in my many years of scouring both Japanese and western RPGs, this whole thing just feels like a big joke to me. Again, if there’s anyone out there in Japan that wants to do a serious Monster Girl series, I would definitely be open to checking it out; but this just isn’t my cup of coffee.
(12 Episodes)
