Ranked #1646

Discipline

Discipline: The Record of a Crusade is based on a game by the same team that produced Bible Black a few years back. However, the Ero-Animes were produced by different companies. Personally, I prefer Discipline over Bible Black due to the complete absence of the occult material that the Bible Black was based on. It's just not my cup of tea. Discipline is more a comedy/action/myster­y series with very heavy sexual themes, after all, it's Hentai. The characters are what one would expect from it's source, very well drawn and most sex scenes are very detailed in the 6 episodes that the OVA covers.

Being a big fan of Bible Black, I approached Discipline with both anticipation (it might be good) and caution (it might be grossly inferior, being done by a different team at the same studio or something like that). After watching it through once, I have to say I still have mixed feelings, but of a different nature.

To simplify it, Discipline is inconsistent. At some points, the animation is stellar and the characters are deep... but in others, those same characters aren't draw as well, the dialogue and story descends into absurdities, and I wonder if those parts were really from another anime but spliced in.

Although some similarity can been seen between this and Bible Black, I don't think it is an appropriate comparison. They may have a few details in common sometimes, but BB was self-consistent and high quality... this, was all over the place in terms of pacing of story, details of plot, and mood (serious/comedy).

Moreover, there is too much random sex in this anime.

Not that they are too much sex scenes, but rather, they are too random and arbitrary. There's not much opportunity to gain any appreciation or knowledge of the characters, and the tension that was build in the graphic novel is lacking here.

For that matter, the art in the graphic novel (a slightly interactive PC game) was better presented. Given that the characters there had much more depth, it seems key members from the graphic novel team were missing from the anime planning and production team.

I can only guess, but, overall, I still have to say that it has mostly good points (I did rate it 7/10 overall), so I'll describe them briefly:

Excessive Ero Content:

I never thought I'd say that an ero/hentai anime has "too much" sex, but because the sex rudely interrupts the story and feels forced much of the time, and in addition, the characters have beyond-human sexual endurance (sometimes due to "special medicine", apparently, without spoiling what little plot there is), and that means for tons of long sex scenes, orgies, and a string of encounters that seems never-ending.

Excessive Unique Plot:

I won't spoil the details, but, the plot goes from a fairly typical school setting quickly into odd, and by the end, is totally unbelievable. I'm not sure if they meant it to be funny, or believable if you stretch your imagination, but I just laughed at it... I get the impression that the writing team just went crazy and put in whatever they felt would be potentially entertaining, forcing the various parts of the plot to link together, even if they didn't fit.

Excessive Sex Scenes:

Oh, wait, I mentioned this already. But, I should mention this again, because it seems that the only thing these characters do in this anime is have sex, dream about having sex, set up organizations in order to ensure they can have much more sex, and scheme and plot to force people to have more sex.

Summary:

This is a lot of mindless sex, with an over-the-top plot which is impossible, even for an imaginary world, and can be treated as entertaining if you don't worry too much.

However, the overall quality is inconsistent, and the story was better presented in the graphic novel. So, comparisons to said novel, or other anime (esp. Bible Black, by the same studio apparently) will show this as coming up short.
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