AKA: 魔装学園H×H (Maso Gakuen Haiburiddo Hato)

Genre: Ecchi/Harem/Mecha Action

Length: Television series, 12 episodes, 23 minutes each

Distributor: Currently available streaming on crunchyroll.

Content Rating: MA-17 (Fanservice, dumb sexual content.)

Related Series: 2-episode OVA to be released in 2016

Also Recommended: Bring lots of disinfectant, if you go here.

Notes: Based on light novel by Masamune Kuji; manga by Riku Ayakawa, published by Kadokawa Shoten. WARNING: This show is truly awful, and not just because it's sexual exploitation of the crassest sort. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!

Rating:

Hybrid x Heart Magias Academy Ataraxia

Synopsis

Large-breasted interdimensional invaders from a place called "Batlantis" have driven humanity onto artificial islands. On the artificial island of Atraxia, an equally large-breasted defensive group, called the Amaterasu, fights back. Both the bodies and the "Heart Hybrid Gear" mecha suits of the Amaterasu ladies (that term only applies loosely to some of them, as we'll see) are powered by "heart hybrid cores", which can only be recharged by our male lead, Kizuna Hida. How? Better to give you the direct quote: "By sharing love and pleasure with Kizuna Hida, the lost energy of a Heart Hybrid gear can be dramatically restored." In other words, our poor hero Kizuna Hida is being forced, VERY much against his will, to feel up these girls and have sex with them. Being a stud-boy to a harem of mega-chested girls in mecha suits? What audience is THIS one aimed at?

Review

OK, I wasn't even sure if this...THING...should be reviewed in this non-hentai section of the site, but it's actually being shown, with heavy (albeit somewhat odd) optical censorship on Crunchyroll. And if we COULD see it in all its uncensored glory, I think this would probably be "only" softcore.

Why am I bothering to do this show at all? Partly as an illustration of the heights (actually the DEPTHS) that modern creators and producers of otaku culture will sometimes go to appeal to fanboy wish-fulfillment fantasies. But also because the show is SO awful that it induces a kind of trainwreck fascination similar to the one that Ed Wood's films have, at least until it becomes so patently offensive that even a bad-film fan can't take it. But I followed this to the natural limits of humanity, and beyond. It's NOT erotic in the slightest. Back when I did Charger Girl Ju-Den Chan I wondered if shows like this were just basically more a "put-on" or attempt to be "arch" than anything else. I'll let you be the judge if this is INTENTIONALLY horrible or not. I think I'll do this one as a short summary of events accompanied by some of the show's actual dialogue. I couldn't make stuff like this up. And if I COULD, I should be shot:

-Our hero Kizuna arrives on Atraxia, brought there by his older sister Reiri; he's the only male who seems to matter (Re Infinite Stratos here, and though there ARE other males in Atraxia, they don't seem to actually DO anything except to later serve as an audience for Kizuna's recorded sex sessions with the girls, which Kizuna presents to them as his "science project". He's SUCH a charmer.) The first girl Kizuna meets is Aine Chidorigafuchi, who initially takes the attitude of a dominatrix toward him, in a singularly embarrassing line of dialogue I won't quote. Kizuna thinks to himself in verse: "She's hot as hell, but her personality's not so swell." She shortly goes into battle in her "heart hybrid gear", which is VERY interesting combat dress, in the sense that it has strange priorities for protection- there's armor on her legs, but her chest is very nearly bare (and VERY protruding), and since soldiers are trained to aim for the chest area first, she's doomed, for she'd make an obvious target from five miles away.

-It is soon discovered that when Kizuna fondles one of the girls, she can regain her strength even after a ferocious fight, and if she actually climaxes, she can "power up" even more and receive an "Immoral Weapon" out of it. (Remember, I'm not making ANY of this up, and if this hasn't been rethought as a cross between an arcade game and a porn game, I'm going to claim the copyright...it's all for $$$ you know...) Soon Kizuna's sister is instructing ALL the girls to have sex with Kizuna, and even providing instructions to her brother ("First, fondle Aine's breasts...). Soon a transportable recharging station is built, called the "Love Room", where Kizuna, on a giant round bed and under a disco ball, can help the girls "recharge." (I don't think disco balls are standard in Love Hotels, but there's something hilarious about the closing credits of this show, when the disco ball spins in a frenzy. I don't know WHY I thought it was funny; maybe because it's so absurd.)

Did I say the censorship was odd? The nipples are covered with emblems that are used like pasties, but the fondling is censored in the strangest way: we have a freeze-frame of Kizuna touching the body part, while around the edges we can see his hands moving. Apparently it's the MOTION that is obscene, not the still view. I don't understand, but OK.

The villains, as noted at the beginning, say they are "Batlantis", which we can tell is an evil place because there seem to be no men there AT ALL, and so THEIR huge-breasted women can only engage in lesbian sex, and who'd want to look at that? (Answer: exactly the same folks who want to see Kizuna getting it on with the heroines.) Kizuna's and Reiri's mom seems to be working for the enemies, for some reason. Perhaps she wanted to get away from men. Considering what her son's like, can't blame her.

Of COURSE, Aine isn't the only girl available to Kizuna. We also have Yurishia Faradole, a sleepy-eyed blonde. She's a very good sport, too: when Reiri suggests the girls try threesomes with Kizuna ("You'll be able to achieve a much more powerful Immoral Weapon via the Connective Hybrid"), Yurishia pipes up, "That sounds like fun!" Yurishia has the biggest chest of all, and if Aine could be taken out at a range of five miles, I'd say Yurishia would be an easy target at ten. Great girl to take to parties, though, I'm sure.

Somewhat more modest (or at least feigning it) is Hayuru Himegawa, who's on the "Magias Academy's" Disciplinary Council. (They HAVE one? It seems to have been inactive for a LONG time.) Befitting her role as the token faux-prude, her breasts are smaller than the others (though still quite large of course), and of the three girls hers are the only ones that are actually covered. Her outfit vaguely resembles a nurse's uniform (well, maybe it's just the headpiece.)

Then there's Sylvia Silkcut, and here we are running into the legal limits of the show's continued attempts to one-up itself. Sylvia becomes one of the Amaterasu by having a "heart hybrid core" installed in herself by Kizuna personally ("It's all right if it's you", she says, in one of the most untrue instances of those words ever being uttered), and this is ALL WRONG ON MULTIPLE LEVELS BECAUSE SYLVIA IS CLEARLY A MINOR!!!!!!!! I really didn't want to think of the "installation" (the thing is about the size and shape of a large hand grenade), and it wasn't just that he's doing SOMETHING unspeakable to the body of a CHILD, but you have to remember how Kizuna "recharges" the girls as well... I wasn't particularly eager to see how THAT worked out, and the show itself (thank God for at least small decency) defers consideration of that issue as well. Personally I would have found it much more fitting, indeed amusing, for that "Heart Hybrid Core" to have been inserted in one of KIZUNA'S orifices, and I don't mean his mouth, but maybe I'm just mean.

The enemy's mecha, both manned (OK, "womanned") and unmanned, are done in pretty derivative 3DCG. The Batlantis folks claim that the people of Earth (who they call Lemurians) actually stole all the technology from THEM. So is this whole war over copyrights? Just take us to court; we'll pit our big-breasted lawyers against yours any day.

A few other random puzzles/gripes, before I wash my hands of this (with generous quantities of bleach):

-What's the deal with Shikina, Reiri's assistant? She lets a computer speak for her whenever she's communicating with anyone, except when she's talking with Reiri alone, when she uses her own voice. Why the difference?

-The girl with the apparent Tourette's Syndrome was interesting. I noted that they pulled her from the field and put her behind a desk. But really, isn't swearing considered more socially acceptable for a soldier in the field than for an office worker?

-Poor Aine. She came across as having a dominant personality in the beginning, but it turns out she was a poser; in fact, in the show's climax (pun intended) it turns out that she's turned on by being publicly humiliated. Omirashi fetish also makes an unwelcome appearance (re Charger Girl Ju-Den Chan, again.)

I'm feeling really soiled now, so I'll stop. I might have forgiven some of this if Kizuna had done ALL his lines in verse, though...

We really need to consider a zero-star rating for such abominations. — Allen Moody

Recommended Audience: Have you been paying attention? Only for those who are chronologically adults.