Rance 01: Hikari wo Motomete The Animation

Rance 01 is a hentai with both good looking "plot" as well as actual plot. Hard to believe, but it actually pulls off a story about a man on a journey to rescue one girl quite well despite some very nice looking sex scenes breaking it up.

This hentai follows a man named Rance. He's a pervert who owns a female slave and dreams of having sex with many different women. Despite all of the problems he has from that first statement, he's actually not a terrible person (except to his slave, Siru, who he's a pretty big dick to... literally as well). Fortunately this hentai takes a lighthearted approach to most things with good comedy and a colorful art-style that help lighten up the mood in some of it's darker moments. Granted this hentai does have rape as well as a slightly-sexualized torture and blatantly implied death scene at the end of episode 3, so be warned that this may be comedic, but it is not a vanilla hentai.

But that's not what really matters in this. As good as the plot and comedy might be, that's not what most people are thinking about watching this for. The sex scenes are still what matters most, and they deliver extremely well. The best part about them, in my opinion, is that they get better as the episodes progress (most likely due to the success of the hentai allowing them to spend more money on the animation). It was very nice to see episode 3 be spectacular even compared to the other two episodes. Rance 01 does a great job of not repeating shots over and over. It uses quite a range of angles and plenty of motion in it's sex scenes that will keep you very interested.

My only real complaint with the sex scenes is how few there are each episode. Each episode has one sex scene between Rance and Siru (the third episode's scene is the best scene so far in my opinion) and a scene between Rance and some other girl that he happens to come across in his journey. His relationships with each of these girls are nice to watch as he usually does help them despite making a couple of them have sex unwillingly at first. But since there's only two real sex scenes per episode, the rest is filled up with some surprisingly well-animated action for a hentai and some plot. Most of the plot takes up about half of the total episode time, so if you don't care about that stuff, just skip from sex scene to sex scene.

Rance 01, is a great-looking hentai though, and just keeps getting better and better. The animation is very fluid and the characters' positions and the main character actually having a personality will keep you drawn in during the sex scenes. Still, avoid it if you hate the idea of a man having a female slave who he treats like shit or just skip to episode 3 and stop after the second sex scene. read more

Rance is the antithesis to everything a hero should be. He's a narcissist, an asshole and above all else a rapist. He hits girls, he owns a slave yet is still able to at the end of the day save the day. Though there's a variety of stories in the Rance series, everything ultimately boils down to Rance saving the day through some fight scene with ultimately a rape scene afterwards.

Story: 6/10
-------
The story is fairly simple, Rance has to find a kidnapped girl called Hikari. I highly doubt you stumbled upon this review looking for plot, but the Rance games tend to have a significant amount of plot to the games. Unfortunately, the first game didn't really have much of a story to tell.

Art: 8/10
Animation: 6/10
--------
The artwork and character designs are really nice, it's very beautiful. I tend to focus on the art more than the animation myself, so I found it great. While Pink Pineapple (the animation studio) might be well-known for animating good hentai titles, it's still ultimately a hentai adaptation and suffers from a lackluster budget and repetitive scenes. It's still far better animated than the majority of hentai however, so don't let it stop you from watching it.

Sound: 5/10
--------
My worst criticism of the show is how little of the original soundtrack they put in, especially this song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CBodpZnuiOM

Which is essentially Rance's leitmotif whenever he rapes somebody, I find each different version of the song extremely catchy. It's also a remix of East Germany's national anthem too, for some reason. Anyways, the soundtrack is pretty mediocre. Not like you're expecting Mozart or something while watching hentai, but the games have god-tier soundtracks.

Character: 10/10
----------
My name isn't Rance-sama on MAL for no reason.

Overall: 8/10
---------
I'm biased. I love the Rance series, but even looking at it somewhat objectively it's still above and beyond the average hentai title. I highly recommend anyone who enjoyed the title to check out Rance 02 or Sengoku Rance, which are translated in English and actually have a substantial plot to it putting aside the H-scenes. read more