Kuro no Danshou

Lovecraftian Horror gone mad.

You read that right, it’s the Necronomicon and that translates to Lovecraft, an unlikely pairing with anime but it’s not so in the early days of visual novels and manga. For many the combination of tentacles and anime seem like an easy fit so therefore it wouldn’t be too hard to imagine that Cthulhu would be added but this, however, this series doesn’t feature that, instead this is a suspenseful murder mystery, albeit with a heavy touch of horror and gore, lots and lots of gore.
As an adaptation of a cult Visual Novel, it's well balanced in terms of it's screenwriting ... to condense a ten-hour game into a two-hour series but it works really smoothly and doesn't feel rushed which is quite an achievement, with everything that transpires, large cast of characters and exotic locations. For foreign viewers it has the mood of a late 90's B-film that one would watch on cable with its focus on a lot of exploitative and sensational topics, paganism, BDSM, human experimentation, necrophilia, World War two, zombies and conspiracies.
It’s Lovecraftian references are spread throughout but furthermore taken to a much more erotic and violent degree. Since the theme of erotica was a very foreign and abstract concept for H.P Lovecraft himself, and since this is a work intended for adults. However, it doesn’t skip on trying to make certain erotic scenes uncomfortable since guro is found in this title.

Characters
A series like this is nothing without a great cast and a solid protagonist, Satoshi Suzusaki, that holds the viewers interest and gaze. With a dubious reference to Yusaku Matsuda from Tantei Monogatari, a detective series from the 70's, in a brooding, smoker, neo-noir kind of way. An attractive man with a sleek physique, beard, long hair, chic suit and enigmatic air around him, completed with a no-nonsense attitude but more in the sense that he will use his wits rather than force to obtain information. His adoptive daughter Asuka is a fashionable, elegant tsundere who works as his confidant and assistant. Clever and always helpful with a cheerful personality, drawn in way that’s very reminiscent of the 90’s style of which it is based on. Sharp lines, a pronounced black pupil, large hair, defined shadow and highlight, which is quite common among the women.
Since it has a rather large cast that would take up too much time to write but suffice to say, they’re well rounded and need to be, since this is a whodunnit.

Visuals
With its gorgeous dark colour palette that fits its theme of isolation and madness, especially the first two episodes who are centred in a closed off space. Bright colours are using sparingly and when they are used they don’t feel warm nor calming, often they’re stark and gives a sense of unease. While its backgrounds are rich and detailed. Be it snow covered mountains, gothic hallways, isolated hotels, mysterious laboratories, old mansions and the aftermaths of brutal ritualistic killings. It’s clear that a lot of effort went into making this an immersive and dark experience. It’s second half takes place in New England and while a lot of time is set during daylight It never feels safe, knowing what’s lurking in the detailed and murky forest that surrounds the small town.
Animation is nicely done. It’s a mystery so don’t expect a lot of gunfights and action, more introspection and detective work. There’s hardly any footage reuse and characters look and feel very distinct from one another. Even the American characters are not all blonde and blue eyed as one would guess. They’re drawn in a semi-realistic style with features that are not as expressive and more subdued, giving a feeling of a rich inner life.

Audio
The score is also something that does deserve a lot of praise. We hear everything from Muslim praying chants, soothing trumpets, low electronica and a sensual saxophone. Its most used instruments are trumpets, piano and synth in the more relaxed sequences. They give the series a little touch of class and don’t feel disjointed with its rather pulpy nature. While being a horror it thankfully doesn’t fixate too much on using a waterphone, but it does show up combined with suspenseful drums, eerie chants, flutes and humming keyboards.
The voice fits all the characters but especially it’s protagonist. Who feels the character steadily riveting paranoia and psychological trauma with a tense ease. Another standout is Mina, a information broker who’s voice carry with it a sense of strong confidence, allure as well as compassion.

Final verdict
It's a good series and not "just for a hentai" but for an anime, it really shows its strength in how it keeps the viewer guessing and building suspense, having lots of twists and turns, and somehow doesn't feel cliched since it has Lovecraft so anchored to its main story. As previously mentioned, it’s filled with violence, gore and twisted sexual imagery that only the director Hideki Takayama (Legend of the Overfiend) and screenwriter Saga Ryou (Night Shift Nurses) could come up with. An underrated gem of both horror and Lovecraft fiction. A real standout and somewhat of a cult classic among certain horror and exploitation fans.

It receives the highest recommendation.

With the amount of hentai out there that are filled with tentacles galore, it was only time before hentai adapted one of H.P. Lovecraft's tentacle filled stories, which leads us to Mystery of the Necronomicon.

The anime follows private detective Satoshi Suzuhara and his adoptive daughter, Asuka Kashiwagi, as they spend time at an isolated ski resort. But when a snowstorm cuts off all links to the outside, a string of gruesome murders occurs, and Satoshi becomes the main suspect. It becomes a race against time as Satoshi must find out who is behind the murders. As the plot goes on, it becomes obvious that Mystery ... of the Necronomicon takes inspiration from several different Lovecraft stories.

Up front, I'm going to say that the sex scenes are too few and far between, and are far too short, with most of the running time being taken up by the plot. I could see someone maybe getting their rocks off the one of the situations in this hentai, but the whole thing is filled with budget 90's hentai animation, so I don't know how many people are going to get their jollies off to this one.

And I'm pretty sure some of these sex scenes have been done better in some other schlocky 90's softcore porn. So I wouldn't recommend it for the porn. So if you don't mind me, I'm going to be regretfully spending the rest of the review pulling apart the plot of a cheesy hentai that doesn't need this level of criticism.

Right off the bat, if I were the main character, the one thing that I wouldn't be doing if I was the main character is going around to different people claiming that I'm a detective. Already, people aren't going to trust one another because of the murder, and I'm pretty sure people aren't going to trust me just because I claim that I'm a detective. Plus I haven't seen our main character do any even remotely like detective work outside trying to solve a case that he's one of the suspects in.

Unsurprisingly, this has all of the cliches. Premonition of future events in dreams, running into the character without knowing their the bad guy despite the fact that it was very obviously telegraphed to the audience, one of the characters creepily talking about the Necronomicon, making him look like a really obvious bad guy, or red herring. Gotta fill out the plot in your porno somehow, even if that's not what we came here for.

The hentai even brings up the main characters names, places, and dates and times as text on the screen as they appear. You have time for the most tired cliches in the book, but not enough time to introduce your characters properly. I know that porn is supposed to have low standards when it comes to the plot, but you don't include this much plot unless you want to actually write something meant to entertain people. If Stephen King can write cheesy plots and dialogue and still be considered a good writer, then you need to keep up.

Most people don't have a fetish that requires filling in ~75-80 minutes of your 90 minute porn with backstory and character motivations. Fucking is and should be the backstory and character motivation for a porn, and that's worked fantastically for decades. Although the fact that that the main character just stumbles into somehow fucking women, and even HE is surprised by the fact that he's getting laid out of nowhere, which is kind of humorous.

Plus this has some violence and gore, like one of the main characters coming across a dead body with the skin on their face ripped off. I guess if you've ever been annoyed that your horror movies had their sex scenes cut down to barely anything by the ratings board of your country, maybe I could see someone liking this, but that's an incredibly niche group of people.

Somehow this anime falls into the trope of "Well, they're not actually related, so it's technically not incest", because characters keep bringing up the fact that our main character and the girl he adopted are more like a couple than blood relations. I guess hentai can't help but shove in SOME sort of hentai trope.

The main character is voiced by the sexy voice of Dan Green, who is probably most famous for playing Yami from Yu-Gi-Oh. Looking at his list of roles, he seemed to act in a few different hentai, Mystery of the Necronomicon being one of it. I'm guessing that this isn't one of the roles that he talks about, but I still appreciate hearing his voice, even if it is in an embarresment of an anime. He's also the only one in this whole thing giving a good performance. I don't blame him from taking a role for a paycheck though. The rest of it borders on so-bad-it's-good, but none of it's really all that memorable.

The plot is pretty much that of a schlocky made-for-cable film that would have been made in the 90s to sell cable subscriptions just so you'd hope you could see maybe see one maybe half decent sex scene out of the dozens on "movies" on their service. It even has the cheesy saxophone playing over sex scenes. And one song that sounds like it came out of a NES game .Although, for some reason it plays over the climactic scene near the end of the anime, which is hilariously out of place.

So if cheesy so-bad-its-good horror/thriller with a strong Stephen King vibe (the main character even mentions Maine like Stephen King does in every single one of his novels) with a few sex scenes thrown in sounds like fun to you, then this might be worth checking out.