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This will be a spoiler-free review.

This is a surprisingly decent series (if you like fantasy, romance, eechi, and nsfw manga - This is not an isekai). This series follows the "Hero's Journey" story structure, which is all about the journey, and not the destination.

It involves the main character and his slave traveling across the world together, the encounters they have along the way, and the romance that gradually begins to develop between the two of them. Despite being a master/slave dynamic, it's honestly kind of wholesome. But if that's not your cup of tea, then this series is not for you.

The world of this story ... is a bit strange, but does genuinely keep me interested and wanting to see more of it. It has fantasy races like elves and beastkin, a Medieval/Renaissance like vibe, but certain technology is right out of the modern era. They still use swords, but they got full on sniper rifles with smokeless powder cartridges (which wasn't invented until 1884). They're using ships straight out of the 1600s-1700s, yet have underwater panoramic windows for the cabins. If you can get into these sorts of technologically mixed fantasy worlds, you might really like it.

I will speak very vague here, so as to not give any spoilers. As of chapter 16.2 (or chapter 34 total), this series has primarily just been a "Follow these characters along on a fun adventure!" type story. But I can see the foreshadowing on the wall that it is working its way gradually towards a more focused plotline. I am genuinely interested to see where it goes, because the series (thus far) has always tied up its plotpoints.

Speaking of which, one of the arcs in this story genuinely surprised me. It started off as generic as generic could be. But went in a completely different direction than I was expecting. For whatever reason, I get the feeling this series is going to have a lot of those moments in the future. This series is deceptively generic - Until it isn't.

So in summary, it's a neat fantasy world story with genuine potential. It has a cute master/slave romance plotline, and has a healthy, but balanced dose of nsfw elements. That is to say, the lewdness is there, but it doesn't beat you over the head with it. The series maintains a good equilibrium between nsfw, character development, world building, and story.

To be honest, I'm about 80% sure this series is a direct parody of Isekai Meikyuu de Harem wo. I have absolutely no way of proving this theory to be true, but the dates do line up (Isekai Meikyuu light novel started Dec. 21st, 2012. The Isekai Meikyuu manga started April 26th, 2017. Isekai Elf no Dorei-chan's manga started Oct. 11th, 2017). The two series have damn near identical worlds and setups. The major difference is that the story in Isekai Elf no Dorei-chan is told from the perspective of the slaves, rather than the character who was isekai'd with OP powers.

If you are a ... fan of Isekai Meikyuu, this series is actually hilarious. Because it shows you a glimpse of what is probably going on behind the scenes in Isekai Meikyuu outside of the main character's perspective. In Isekai Meikyuu, you see the slaves praise the MC constantly like "As expected of Master!" or "Master is amazing!"
But in Isekai Elf no Dorei-chan, you see the reality behind their praise. Unbeknownst to the "main character" (who isn't really the main character, Elf-chan is) all his two slave's praise is, in reality, is lip service in order to flatter him. It's basically their job to stroke his ego, even if their master is complete cringe. They basically force themselves to throw a ticker-tape parade for him anytime he kills a slime - The weakest monster. Not only that, but it becomes a competition between the two slaves who can kiss the most ass.

Look, I love Isekai Meikyuu, but even I can see the humor in Isekai Elf no Dorei-chan. This is what I like to call a "fun series." Don't go into reading this expecting something deep. It's not trying to be something like that. It's meant to be funny, entertaining, with a hefty dose of lewdness added in. If you're prudish when it comes to the eechi or harem genre, then this is not the series for you.

Frankly I wouldn't mind a sequel series, I actually really enjoyed it. I doubt it'll ever get one, but there is legitimate room to continue it. They could totally make a side-series about the Magician's daily life with her slave, and see whether or not the "Main Character" and her actually get together. The potential is totally there.

I should note that as of August 30th, 2023, only 116 of the 135.5 chapters have been translated in English. Fortunately these chapters are really short, so it was simple enough to translate the last bit of chapters (which was only 55 pages total I think? Anyway you can just run them through Google translate, and get a rough idea of what they're saying.)

All in all, I'm glad I read this series. Telling the story from the perspective of the slaves, rather than the one who's normally the main character, is a unique and hilarious spin on the isekai harem genre.

This will be a spoiler free review.

I am a big fan of the Isekai Meikyuu series. I've read the web novel, light novel, and manga. It's probably my favorite manga being released right now, and the series has a dedicated cult following. So obviously, I was really hyped when I first heard that they were going to make an Isekai Meikyuu anime, made by Studio Passione no less - The studio who made High School DxD season 4, and the new Higurashi. A friend and I thought it was going to be a match made in Heaven.

But I think in the back of my ... mind, I knew that this wasn't going to work out. Especially when I learned it was only going to be 12 episodes. To explain, the Isekai Meikyuu manga is a *notoriously* slow paced series, with lots of little details, and tons of day to day character development - The light novel even more so. That said, that's what the fans love it for. It makes the world and the characters feel alive. The original web novel/light novel is primarily slice of life mixed with harem traits, but it's mostly tame. In the novels, everything is *implied*. The manga however is slice of life, but with a heavy emphasis on the NSFW harem aspect sprinkled throughout. In every interation thus far, the series alternates between their time in the labyrinth, daily life (making dinner, going shopping, seeing the auction broker, etc), occasional story arcs, and harem time at home. But in the case of this show, to actually be able to faithfully capture the tone of the series, the season would have needed to be at least twice as long.

So this anime got turned into a 12 episode titty-fest. A good titty-fest mind you, a damn good one, but one that didn't do justice to the characters or the world building. I knew people who just skipped ahead to the sex scenes, completely disregarding the plot. To be honest I don't blame them for it.

To Passione's credit, they treated the series with respect as best they could, while also making a bingeable seasonal series. There just wasn't enough time to jam pack all the tiny details into the show without doubling or tripling the episode count.

Besides omitting the minute details the series is appreciated for, if I had two complaints, it would be the music, and the main character himself.

The main character is a shell of his novel/manga counterpart, with only brief instances where you get to see his shrewd but intelligent mentality. In the light novel, he initially comes off as a well-educated, but selfish, paranoid, and angsty teenager. But gradually over the course of the story, you see him mature. Which according to the author's notes at the end of one of the manga chapters, is the purpose of the story. To see Michio mature after gaining someone he cares about (Roxanne). But here, he just comes off as a cookie-cutter "dumb harem protagonist" archetype. (Insert Godfather meme: "Look how they massacred my boy.")

Given the time/episode constraints the studio was given to adapt this series, I can forgive them for oversimplifying my boy Michio's personality. But the music I cannot. The music is my number one complaint - Namely the music during the sex scenes. I can only describe it as "Frantic Jazz", and it's incredibly distracting. It doesn't match the tone, setting, or time-period the characters are in (which is basically the equivalent of the Dark Ages). Jazz wouldn't start to take off until the 1920s. So why then, is it playing in a series set in the technological equivalent of the year 600?? All it does is serve to make the main character seem even more stupid and generic. It might not even stand out so bad if all the other music wasn't bombastic fantasy music, which is fine. But the series goes hard on the fact that "This is the Dark Ages. These people are so primitive, they still think the world is flat."

The animation is superb though. Honestly it halfway makes me wish Passione just went all the way, and made it into a legitimate hentai. Don't get me wrong, it's damn close to a hentai already. But since it's already diverging from the novels and manga, might as well go all out.

Anyway so in summary, if you like the manga or light novels, this won't feel like either of them. The sad fact is, this series simply wasn't written with an episodic anime format in mind. The story structure just doesn't translate well. But if you're just someone who wants to see an eechi/harem show with some top notch sex scenes, this has some pretty damn good ones.

Short version: This show is fun bad.

Long version: The entire story hinges on a singular joke: That the main character is massively overpowered, and everyone is shocked just how strong he is.

Which is a trope that has been done a million times before, but this show is so dumb it's charming. So it never really gets old. At least, not for me. If you're not the type who can enjoy a show's flaws, or small charms, you'll probably think this show is just barely passable.

The animation is obviously low budget, but you can see the heart behind this show. You can tell they ... had fun making this series, and it shows.

The King has to be my favorite character. His reactions are so over the top, that the same old joke never grows tiresome. The writing is so predictable, that it in of itself becomes a joke.

Does this series deserve a season 2? No, absolutely not. Anymore and the charm would wear off to the bad writing. But if you're the type of person who can enjoy these types of low budget "brain-off" seasonal shows, this ain't a bad one to kill some time with.

I'm honestly shocked this show has such a low rating. I finished this show for the first time right after binge watching the original Soul Eater for the first time in probably a decade. Yes, it's not a sequel, it's a prequel to Soul Eater. And yes, the main characters in this show are different - But I found them likeable nonetheless. However, Soul Eater Not! does have most of the original cast in it, playing as reoccurring side characters (Think how Boruto handles the new main cast vs. The original cast, same idea.) It's awesome how we get to see more backstory to the ... world, the original main cast, and events that were mentioned in the original that we never got to see. Hell, the pink haired girl had like one scene in the original show, but is a main character here. I feel it all blends really well, at least if you're just coming off binging the original. As a standalone show, I could see this being a slog to push through.

This might be the smartest written harem anime I have ever seen. I actually liked it so much, I started reading the manga. While a bunch of reviews just dismiss this show as a shameless male fantasy (It has "Harem" in the name dude, why did you even watch it then?) Honestly this show plays out more like a horror story if anything.

Admittedly it does initially start with too much emphasis on the harem aspect. Instead of getting the audience invested, I think the first scene actually hurts the audience's first impression by misconstruing the tone of the series. There's a lot to appreciate past ... that.

The story follows 2 main characters. Both are 1 of 5 remaining men on the planet capable of surviving the airborne virus which wiped out all men on Earth. As such, they are the only ones capable of repopulating the Earth. At first, you would think that sounds like the setup for a hentai, but the show doesn't take that approach. Instead the show subtly focuses on how much it would actually affect the mental health, and lives of those men. The world is painted as a futuristic utopia that is gradually falling apart. Infrastructure is falling apart, but you see it from the perspective of these men, who are more or less held captive by the government, and treated like breeding livestock. While they are given luxuries nobody in the ghettos can afford, it's only for the sole sake of keeping these men productive and compliant.

Both of the main characters awake from cryosleep 5 years after the disaster. The first character wants a normal life, and to just be with the woman he loves, who went missing during his time asleep. Meanwhile the world around him is constantly trying to pressure him into mating, with the weight of the entire species on his shoulders.

The second character the show follows is thrust into a fake school, meant solely for coercing him into producing offspring - A school he cannot leave. The entire situation has been fabricated by his personal assistant, Kamiya Karen. Karen is EASILY the best character in the show, and she steals the show anytime she's on screen. Karen is almost a representation for the Devil. At face value, she seems like this cute, exuberant, enthusiastic girl. But slowly you come to find out who she really is. She manipulates everything behind the scenes, and doesn't seem to care about anybody. People are tools to her, and are only useful if they can be used to advance her in her ambitions. You watch her gradually break the mind of the second main character from the sidelines, and erode his own morality. Everything is by her design. I really enjoyed her character.

So hopefully I've piqued your interest. This series has a lot more to offer than just fanservice. Go into the series imagining this to be reality, and you start feeling the sense of dread and hopelessness the show tries to convey.

So I've come to the conclusion it is physically impossible to review this movie without discussing the manga, in order to explain exactly what went wrong here. So while most, if not all my reviews are spoiler free (Apart from Ghost Hunt), this review will be spoiler heavy for both the manga and show.

Alright, so I have seen this movie twice now. Once through my first viewing of the series, and the other through my recent rewatch of the series, after I had read the manga sometime last year. So I can offer both the perspective of someone unfamiliar with the manga, and someone who ... read it.

I had read the manga purely because this movie left me with far more questions than answers, and a large amount of frustration. Despite claiming to be the finale of the series, and offering closure to your burning questions, it does none of that.

The movie literally begins with the final events leading up to the end of the series, has a few unrelated arcs from the manga in-between, and then skips back to the end without explaining how all of this came to be, or without actually showing the ending to the series. It offers no closure, just questions.

Now then, let's rewind, and see what went wrong.

The one thing I appreciate this "movie" for (which I hardly consider it a movie as it's only 50 minutes long, while the other one is I think an hour thirty) is it made me read the manga.

I now consider the manga and the anime to be two separate entities from each other. The anime is much more comedic in tone, while the manga is more tragic in its narrative (although it also has a lot of comedy). This movie was supposed to be season 3, but that statement was rescinded, and it was decided it was to be a movie.

After some time, and reading the manga, I think I understand the decision, though don't necessarily think it was the right move. You see, the anime by the end of season 2 was already far past being able to accurately follow the manga. Chaos, one of the most tragic characters of the manga series was basically turned into another one of Tomoki's "Angeloid Harem Girls" by the end of the anime. In the manga, she goes rogue after having her heart broken, and kills Hiyori and Astrea, and kidnaps Sugata and takes him to Synapse to start the events that this movie begins with. Problem is they narratively trapped themselves into a corner. Not to mention where the first movie ended was far from the actual ending of the series, which this movie starts with. They had a long way to go, and too many plotlines to fix.

So yeah, I get why they did it, but how they did it is inexcusable. What they should have done is treat the anime separately, and try to end the series in its own way, while roughly following the manga. It could have been done, they didn't need to have Chaos be the instigator for the ending events. Overall I feel this movie, while it does have some good traits, is a totally insufficient end to a great series.

Starting off, the soundtrack for this movie is way better than it has any right to be. I immediately looked up the soundtrack for this movie right after finishing it, and seriously, how does a song called "Pantsu Sushi" sound so awesome!? It sounds like it belongs in Doom or Diablo or something. I can't believe I never noticed how good it was the first time I saw this movie.

Now the first time I saw this movie, my opinion was rather sour, because 1/3rd of it is essentially recapping the whole series, followed by the actual story. Maybe because I've read the manga, but now ... that I watch it again, I really think this movie is pretty damn good.

The recapping is done in a pretty brilliant way. Instead of blandly reusing animation, and replaying the same thing over again, they chose to go a different route. Hiyori Kazane, a new character introduced in this movie, narrates the events of the first two seasons of the show, but through her perspective and experiences. It adds a lot of context to the show. Not only that, but if you actually go back to the original show, SHE'S ACTUALLY IN THE BACKGROUND!
Hiyori is adorable, and I wish she was in the series longer.

I struggled on rating this one between a 7 and an 8, but I honestly think this movie might deserve an 8. I have a personal rule for when I rate something: Anything 8 and above either has to have an artistic message to state, or at least sticks out in your mind.

Well even prior to rewatching the whole series, this was the movie I remembered most. That is to say, many of the scenes that I expected to be in the show, were actually in this movie. Which really tells me this is a good one. The story is smooth and beautiful at times, with fantastic soundtrack that ranges from silly and whimsical, to dark and foreboding.

If you're a fan of the show, and somehow never seen this one, it's a definite watch.

Whenever I rate a show, I start at 5; which in my mind, is a cookie cutter show, that is about as average as average can be. I then move up or down accordingly so as to give the show a fair chance in its own right. It's not a perfect system, as I will likely not bother watching a show 4 and below. But it allows me to review each anime on an individual, one to one basis.

I recently started rewatching Sora no Otoshimono after a brief conversation I had with a friend about it. I never grew up on Sora no Otoshimono, but ... it feels like I could have. I strangely feel a sense of nostalgia for the series.

SnO is an eechi comedy, with some honestly pretty impressively animated fight scenes sprinkled throughout. The humor of the show all stems from its ability to exaggerate situations to a rediculous degree (Such as military fighter jets being called in for a naked man in public). I can honestly say that, apart from SnO, very few shows have been able to pull off this style of humor successfully. It's pretty unique.

I think a lot of this stems from the characters. Every single one is memorable. At first I found Tomoki, the main male character insufferable. But now I think he really carries the show. He is such an intentionally deplorable, perverted character, that it's always hilarious when he inevitably gets what's coming to him everytime.

The girls are all cute/waifu-material. But I honestly think Mikako might be my second favorite character (not saying she's best girl, just second favorite overall character.) She was mostly a reoccuring side character in the manga, but takes a much more consistent role in the anime, which I'm glad they made that change. She creates outrageous situations, purely because she enjoys chaos. She is comedically sadistic, but is clearly shown to have a caring side through her actions.

If you like eechi comedies, and can get behind outrageous, perverted male humor, this show might be for you. If you get easily triggered by over-sexualization, often to self aware comedic levels, you should probably take a pass.

*Spoiler Free*
This show stands up remarkably well, and I consider it a must watch.

I've been on a Ghost in the Shell binge marathon lately, and going into this I barely remembered anything from the show apart from the main characters. In fact, now that I've binged it, I'm not even sure if I had ever seen the first season in full. I didn't realize how old this show was, it certainly doesn't feel like it was made in 2002, apart from maybe the intro which uses poorly aged CGI (but the intro song EASILY makes up for it - The whole soundtrack is bangin')

Ghost in ... the Shell can be most accurately described as: "CSI: Blade Runner - Spec Ops"

It takes place in the alternate future, where "cyberizing" your body is becoming the norm, and androids have become common place in daily life. It follows the team of Section 9, a Special Operations unit that specializes in counter-terrorism and domestic security.

The show poses a lot of deep philosophical questions regarding humanity, inter-societal structures, and "What makes someone or something alive?"

The show goes back and forth between periods of "main plot" episodes, and I guess you could call "Stand Alone" episodes (pun intended). Kind of like Naruto filler. BUT the show actually shines the brightest with those stand alone episodes, as it has the remarkable ability to fit deep, fully coherent stories within a single episode - Each one leaving you with a lot to think about afterwards.

But this ability to fit a huge amount in a short time is also the show's Achilles' Heel when it comes to the main plotline. The show moves too fast, and there is a lot to absorb. It can get confusing real quick if you aren't paying close attention.

The show can be stunningly deep and insightful when it's not trying to be, but pretentious and convoluted as Hell when it is.

I'm torn on giving this a 9 to be honest. It doesn't deserve an 8, as no other show is like it, and it leaves a strong positive impression. But the issues with going too fast, and being overly pretentious at times makes this a low 9 for me. Totally worth a watch, I rarely ever give 9s or higher, just know it's a show you gotta invest in. There's no casually watching Stand Alone Complex.