Audio: Of course I watched the Japanese version with subtitles and fell in love with how these women moan! None of this "Oh baby yeah" crap, this is sexy. And since moans are so important, you don't want to trash the audio. And they didn't, everything is heard in nicely even on my laptop (which has a slight below average sound), from the screams of passions to the every day chirping birds on a peaceful blue sky. The music changes considerably, especially at when the sex scenes reaches their most rough and crazy point. The music goes from usual fare...to pounding rocking techno music when the sex scenes are their peak. It added greatly to the mood and passion of the acts committed...however vile they were ^~.
Art: Okay to start off this review...this is a very pretty looking hentai. I mean the main male character is quite the bishounen and the girls are lovely as well. Each character (except for the faceless and not so bishie male characters thrown in for orgy scenes of nastiness) have a unique look and feel. The female characters are all gorgeous (naturally) and since they all are easily distinguishable from each other in every aspect of looks and personality, I was drawn to them. The outlines are thin and blend nicely with the colors and shadings of the characters and thus the art loses some of it's...god I need a better word...'cartoon' feel. Thus artwork is fantastic even if I ahd some problems with how the faces seem almost inhuman when performing fellatio...I mean...just kind of strange, but not at all a problem since it added to the unreal and very dark appeal to the show.
Animation: This is a biggie. This is the deal maker...or breaker. I don't watch hentai anime unless the animation is up to par. If it's not appealing, if it cheapens out form the start, then I'm out. This...this anime is the shit in animation. Every scene is SO FLUID! Even when the characters are not having sex, it all very fluid. There is something for my eyes to watch! And that's a big deal! No choppy scenes here folks, this is perfectly rich and means to me that the sex scenes, though very important, will not suck up all the animation from the rest of the show. Everything is so visual clear that even when they suddenly sped some of the sex scenes in order to show the brutal, lustful passion of the act, you do not miss a detail! It owns that much.
Sex Scenes:...God this is hardcore. I mean...hard core. This hentai OPENS with a tentacle rape scene...IN THE FIRST SECOND. We have bukkake, golden showers, orgies, one on sex, deflowering (complete with...*shudders* blood), bondage, spankings, sex toys, tentacles, worms...yes...WORMS! With a title like DARK Love...I wasn't expecting happy fluffy bunnies and just plain romantic sex. No, I knew was I was getting...and I still got surprised. Now, none of the scenes made me look away, but they did make me cringe a little, but because the characters were just...reveling in the situation, I didn't care. There is an impregnation rampaging all around the series as well and even though there are nonconsensual moments and scenes in the hentai which made me feel bad for some of the females, the sex was hot and it's obvious to me that Green Bunny (producers/creators of Dark love) cared about the sex scenes...which are very very much rampant through out the show.
Story: Which leads me to the weakest point. When watching the anime I couldn't help but get thrown into it. Everything moved a bit to fast to me. Now this is isn't too much of a problem, just slightly disorienting in my opinion, but the plot in the fist episode was very....well...kind of...invisible. And this is a problem cause the hentai tries to give to convoluted of a plot when in reality all of the first episode and most of the second episode is a stream of hardcore sex scenes, one after another after another with...maybe one or two minute break.
Now it's obvious to me that there is a hotel run by Rikka (the resident creepy albino stereotype) and Miyabi (the most sexiest femme in the whole show) in which male characters are served by the female maids (which are there to be defiled by will). The point of the hotel is to make Tetsuya (given the name Master Nowaki) give in to his inner demon...which he does. The power of the hotel of Tetsuya is so great that the woman he comes across just want to serve him and be taken by him. Okay...not bad...pretty generic right? Then why did you decide to add another plot point AT THE LAST TEN MINUTES OF THE LAST EPISODE O.O;.
Thus why the story/plot was pretty weak and kind of annoying with how everything was just shoved in the end.
Overall: I liked this show...I really liked it and took it for what it was; a gorgeously made hardcore sex filled hentai. The art was great and very appealing and the animation blew my socks off. I just wished they left the plot, or lack of there off, alone.
