Anime Roulette #2: Minna Agechau

Let me tell you a story.

Once upon a time, in a magical, far away world called the early 90s, there was an anime company called Central Park Media. At AnimeCon 91, CPM announced one of their earliest licenses, a 1987 sex comedy OVA called Minna Agechau. This was going to be released in a special edition that included a pair of panties, because why not.

Unfortunately, two evil empires called The San Jose Mercury News and the Fox Network ran a hard-hitting expose on these terrible, terrible porno cartoons that would ruin children's minds forever or some bullshit. Because of all this negative publicity, Sony, the original license holder for Minna Agechau, asked (read: politely demanded) CPM to sell back the license and never release the title in America. They did, and in exchange, CPM received several titles for free from Sony, one of which was Dog Soldier. The End.

It's like Rambo! Only shittier!

The controversy was, in all honesty, fairly short-lived - even a couple years later, nobody was talking about Minna Agechau anymore. Hell, we live in a world where, thanks to insane religious people, fucking Pokemon has more controversy surrounding it than Minna Agechau ever did.

I heard this story about ten years ago, and immediately my interest was peaked. However, try as I might, I couldn't find a copy of it anywhere. Then, as is usually the case with these things, all of a sudden it just appeared on a torrent site, and I downloaded it immediately. So, for this edition of Anime Roulette, I figured I'd take a look at this show that almost made early 90s anime fandom explode like Neo Tokyo.

We begin with a radio broadcast of a poem that sounds like it should be in Chihayafuru, followed by a shot of a dirty apartment littered with porno magazines. Awesome dichotomy - already I'm interested. This den of filth belongs to Rokuro, a poor student whose favorite pastime seems to be masturbating while listening to classical music, all while making the best faces.

The appropriate reaction to Beethoven's 5th.

Now, Rokuro isn't exactly modest about his hobby of choice, so much that a group of girls in the apartment across from his spend their free time spying on him and laughing. One of the girls, Yuno, doesn't find it funny - all he wants is a girl, and it's sad that he has to spend so much time masturbating! For me, this was a red flag, which was further confirmed by what happened next: Yuno knocks on his door, and asks, very nonchalantly, "You want a maiden?"

Yes, a woman goes to the apartment of a stranger and, without the slightest hint of irony, offers to let him take her virginity right then and there. And he does. And she ends up moving in with him and becoming his girlfriend. Forget the awesome dichotomy at the beginning - this is just fucking insane.

I guess we're supposed to be amused by the ludicrous situation, but I just felt uncomfortable. This gets to the heart of the problem of the Japanese sex comedy - a lot of them are really bad. I won't mince words: Japan has some really fucked up gender and sexuality issues, and nothing makes that clearer than watching their erotic entertainment. Every guy is basically an antisocial sexual deviant, and every woman exists solely for the pleasure of the guy, whether she wants to or not. Yuno, of course, falls squarely into that stereotypical role.

Surprisingly enough, he turns it down.

Rokuro, on the other hand, doesn't at all. He loves sex, sure, but unlike, say, every hentai main character in history, he isn't a rapist, and just wants to have a normal relationship with his new girlfriend. That's basically the plot - these young lovers trying to live together in harmony, and overcome their differences, and not kill themselves by sucking on an exhaust pipe when they have disagreements.

You thought I was kidding?

The problem with all this is Yuno herself. Her logic-defying sycophantic worship of Rokuro is so foreign to our sensibilities that we never care about their relationship or sexual dysfunctions - we wonder instead about Yuno's mental health.

I must say, though, it's a bit unfair to lay all the blame on Yuno herself - every female character in the show is like this. We quickly learn that Yuno is actually the heiress of the billionaire Mamiya family, and the two lovers decide to spend a weekend at her house so Rokuro can meet her family. The Mamiyas employ a number of female maids, all of whom want to throw themselves on Rokuro without a second thought, because, you know, then they can be the concubines of a future billionaire.

Note the above scene takes place in a bathroom, so the line "make me your #2" takes on more sinister meanings. Anyway, we soon meet Yuno's mother, who is basically an older clone of Yuno herself, only more insane. When Yuno asks her for sex advice, she does what any sensible mother would do: put on Bach's Toccata and Fugue, shove a string fitted with weights into her vagina, and force her to do pussy-squats. Which she does.

My thoughts exactly, Yuno.

As if that weren't enough, Yuno's mom later sneaks into Rokuro's room and tries to have sex with him while he's asleep.

 

In spite of all this insanity, their relationship progresses nicely, until we're introduced to perhaps the only sane woman in the entire OVA - unfortunately, she happens to be the villain. This is Yuno's grandmother, who looks kind of like Yubaba from Spirited Away if she had a normal shaped head. 

 

She's not exactly keen on having Yuno being married off to some plebeian from the streets, and does all she can to break them apart. This culminates in one of the few scenes in the OVA that I found genuinely funny, when she proposes Rokuro raise a 200 million yen dowry, and Yuno, who has no idea what anything is worth, acts like it's no big deal. Eventually, of course, the two of them do manage to get together, despite that insurmountable obstacle.

I'm sure it's fairly obvious, but I didn't like this show. Granted, I didn't hate it - Rokuro is alright as a character, and there are a few scenes I enjoyed. But honestly, I don't know who this would appeal to. As sexual is it gets, it isn't porno - we never see any genitalia or full-on intercourse, so someone looking to get off would be best served elsewhere. Those expecting to laugh will, as I said before, will probably be too baffled and uncomfortable to find any comedic value.

Even the basic way the story is presented comes off awkward and unskilled. Case in point: there's a scene near the end where Yuno admits to Rokuro that she really wants to have an orgasm, because apparently she's never had one yet. The two of them make this their goal, and the most inappropriately happy music begins to play in the background.

OK, maybe not that inappropriately happy, but you get the idea. In any case, we think that this is going to be the final story arc, but it just isn't brought up again - they go back to trying to make peace with her grandmother.

The final scene is similarly mishandled - I'm not going to spoil it, but needless to say, the two of them manage to get their hands on the money they need for the dowry. How it happens could have been funny, but it comes across as rushed, almost an afterthought. Despite it being, ostensibly, one of the crazier scenes in the OVA, the story ends, as paradoxically as it may seem, completely anticlimactically. I'm going to assume this is because the director, Osamu Uemura, mostly does production work, so I'm guessing he just doesn't have the cinematographic knowledge necessary for these things.

In the end, I'm glad Minna Agechau was recalled from the US market. It's not the depraved X-Rated monstrosity that the news made it out to be, but I almost find it more offensive - it's an impressively awkward, badly directed romantic comedy masquerading as erotica. CPM did the right thing in bowing to Sony's demands. We lost Minna Agechau, but in exchange, we got Dog Soldier - I think American anime fandom came out light years ahead.