Kekkou Kamen

"Nobody knows my face, but everybody knows my body. I am the messenger of justice, sent by God to this school of perversion! My name is Kekko... Kekko Kamen! I hide my face but expose all else."

While this wasn't the women-empowering, albeit perverted, superhero romp I'd hoped it'd be, it was still a perverted superhero romp with lots of female characters to enjoy (and not just for their bodies), and that's good enough for me!

I'm not going into a full-blown feminist critique of this show because hell, I'm not getting paid to do it, and few would probably read it. Suffice to say, you can ... view 'Kekko Kamen' as a satire of oversexualised female superheroes set in a trashy universe, or you can see it as yet another text making a woman's body her main character trait (Kekko Kamen is identified by her body and not her face, after all), as well as exclusively sexually exploiting female characters and not male ones (equality means I get to see some men sexually exploited, too!) -- although this is because the perverted principal is "not interested in the male students", in my opinion, the biggest perverts care not for gender and relish all bodies!

So while no men are punished, we do have a male character in episode 2 who IS sexualised, and this has to be the strongest moment of the anime -- when he uses his muscular body as a weapon to weaken/distract Kekko Kamen. The whole thing is bloody hilarious, and I recommend the show based on this episode alone! I also appreciated the character Yuka Chigusa not depending on Kekko Kamen to help her friend, Mayumi Takahashi, who's the main victim of the principal's punishments. Girl power, yeah!

My reaction to this show was very similar to the enjoyment the principal gets from punishing Mayumi Takahashi -- laughing gleefully at the absurdist humour and oggling at the big tits. If you find females being sexually compromised offensive, even in a humourous context, give this a pass (and maybe give all ecchi/hentai anime a pass, too).

"The crisis at the school is over for now. However, if the sales of this video are really good, she will return! For now, goodbye, Kekko Kamen. Thank you Kekko Kamen!"

I gotta say, this is a serious improvement over Nagai's 70's work of the same name. While reusing almost every major detail and plot point from the original, the anime decides to turn it up to eleven by including overt references to Nazis, which heightens the satirization of Spartan institute, and the old Japanese hierarchy structures which are essentially nazi (fascist) in nature/origin. The addition of the S&M nazi chick is fairly great, as well as giving teachers more "character" to them, making them their own 'anime characters' in a sense. Mr Shuwarutsu has more personality than any villain in the manga, and actually provides ... a sort of combat foil to Kekkou Kamen, being his own "physically attractive" powers. In the manga, the teachers are intentionally left sort of generic, to play up the satire, but obviously the medium of anime shifted overtime to enable a change in the presentation of the villains enabling them to take them more serious despite being far more outrageous. The android girl is also a soft spot for me as a Ghost in the Shell fan, and the striking resemblance to Masamune Shirow's other work, Black Magic's android is pretty clear. Even the nudity would seemingly match Shirow. It's honestly a shame these are one off characters, but this is par for the course with Japan in the late 80s, their talent and ideas were next level. The overall story direction is a lot more focused, doing a better job of telling the narrative than the manga, with better writing, cause sadly Nagai is a fairly weak writer, I feel. The actual "sexualization" tends to be the plot, unlike in the manga.

The music also adds to the overall vision that Nagai had for this manga, and it truly heightens the experience. Especailly if you are a fan of that late 80's/early 90's anime soundtrack, this anime is peak for that sound and it's as solid as it could get when it comes to sound design. The actual Kekkou Kamen anthem that was part of the plot in the manga is just seamlessly woven in, which doesn't stunt the story by forcing it to be more comedic, enabling it to stay serious. Not just the music either, but the voice actors are fantastic, especailly principal toenail, whose character truly begins to shine in the anime. If you like early 90's anime, then you will feel intense nostalgia listening to the sound design in this anime. I haven't looked into it, but I'm sure certain voice actors are even in some other major works. I really have to compliment whoever voiced Principal Toenail cause he's incredible. (Looked it up, it's Dragonball's Narrator LOLOL)

As an aside, weird as this sounds, feels like Food Wars got a significant amount from the climax scenes of this anime. The way battles are "won" is eerily similar, and it feels more so here than in the manga. It's possible, and likely, that the manga artist for Food Wars was exposed to Kekkou, and general Go Nagai at some point, as he is a hentai artist originally.

One thing of note is the attempt to actually play up the "battles" here, and give them more tension and style. In the manga, it's just bing bang kekkou hits em hard, but here there is a sort of played up interaction between parties that makes the pay off more interesting. The comedy is far superior, but could be due to the fact this is a team of staff who made this, ones that might be more comedy inclined than Nagai. The samurai taking hundreds of pictures is absurd and fairly hilarious. They actually clearly have a strong grasp on telling stories, and if not for the crude nature of the manga, this might actually be a seriously good anime, and something I would recommend to friends. This is close to a hidden gem.