Succubus Stayed Life The Animation

Succubus Stayed Life The Animation is an OVA series by Pink Pineapple. As you can probably guess by the title, this is an adaptation of a doujin. I haven't read the source material though, so this review will only concern it's quality as an OVA, not an adaptation. Pink Pineapple is a studio I have very conflicted feelings about. On the one hand, they have produced a lot of decent hentai over the years. But on the other hand, their more recent work has been so... ehh. Anyway, let's just get started with this sucker (pun very much intended).

The ... story of this anime concerns... well... now that I think about it, I guess there really isn't a story. The main character lives with a succubus. Yup, that's pretty much it. Instead, why don't we talk about the characters? Really the only ones with any substance are the three girls. One of them, the first one introduced, is sort of the "main girl", and I found her to be pleasant enough. There is also a girl who appears in the first episode, but doesn't really do anything till the next one. And then the final girl is introduced in the second episode. Despite having very similar designs, I think their personalities were good enough that I felt like I got to know them. That being said, I would still have appreciated a few more character-building moments.

Like the creators of this anime, the artwork has a certain dualistic quality. The art style in Succubus Stayed life is the same as Pink Pineapples other work. It's certainly unique, but I find it rather unappealing. The angles are too sharp and the bodies have an almost paper-like aesthetic. That being said, I did get used to it after a bit, and some of the frames do still look good. Ultimately, I prefer Pink Pineapple's older art style, but that is a matter of personal taste.

The sound design is pretty good. All the voices are clear and emotive, and they don't clash against any of the background/environmental noise. This anime also makes use of a narrator, which I think helped add a bit of style to the voice acting.

Overall, I would say I enjoyed Succubus Stayed Life. It's certainly not the best hentai out there, but neither does it have any seriously poor qualities. 6.5/10

If you're in the mood for a bit of light fun, then you should definitely give this a try. But after you're done, I'd also recommend you check out some of Pink Pineapple's older work.

This was written at 4am, so I can't guarantee that it makes perfect sense.

So there I was, sitting there on an ordinary Saturday night, trying to find some hentai that was worth my time, when I thought I might as well mosey on over to hanime.tv where I have had luck in the past at finding decent material.

It was to my dismay to find that, on the front page of the website in the recently uploaded section, a hentai by the name of 'succubus stayed life 1' was there waiting. Now, ordinarily, I don't think twice about the title of any given series and just ... let myself get drawn in by the artwork on the cover, but this time I couldn't help but pause. In this instance it was not for my love of succubi that I paused, no, it was because I recognized that title - that strangely worded but unarguably memorable title. At first, I couldn't think of why it was familiar, maybe somewhere I knew, but didn't want to acknowledge the growing feeling of anxiety rooted deep in my stomach. My hopes that I was mistaken were soon dashed, as my shitty connection finally began loading the images on the webpage.

The reality that I was confronted with was a familiar cover, a recreation of the cover image of my favorite doujinshi sitting under the label 'succubus stayed life 1'

It took a long moment before I found the resolve to look further into the adaptation. Pink Pineapple. I reminded myself that they had created some decent stuff in the last 5 years, choosing to ignore the more recent history of butchered doujin adaptations. And so, I tried to go in with an open mind, hoping that maybe the staff found themselves while adapting this and recaptured their former glory as a studio. This wishful thinking didn't last long, however, as the beginning frame of the adaptation was displayed across my screen. The laziest, most generic background I've ever seen stared right back at me. But who cares about the backgrounds right? It's the other stuff that matters. A few more overly long and painfully plain establishing shots later we are greeted by the main character eating toast, accompanied by terrible audio mixing and some of the worse voice acting hentai has to offer. A few red flags for sure, but that doesn't mean that this can't be enjoyable right? Then the next shot appeared, the main heroin from the first entry of the series was facing me, although not as I remembered her. I remembered a nicely drawn, cute and incredibly attractive girl with a clean design and who had nice and realistic proportions (at least by hentai standards). What I was presented with was a crudely drawn shadow of the original character. So little remained of the former design that I wouldn't have assumed they were supposed to be the same character if not for the color of the uniform and the glasses.

It is almost remarkable how the production team missed the entire appeal of the source material. The clean, accurate art. The gorgeous designs that were consistent about each panel. The subtle touches in the character's expressions that conveyed more than the words that accompanied them. The extremely minimalistic story that took a backseat to the action but was still there enough to compliment the sex in such a way that enhanced the experience for those who cared. Good adaptations don't just adapt the source material, keeping it precisely as it was while transferring it to a new medium. A good adaptation aims to capture all of the good points of the original, while adding upon it with whatever elements the new medium can offer. Truly great adaptations like K-On! or recently Kaguya-sama are created by people who understand the source material and want to see it done right. K-On! was reworked fundamentally and had so much care in fleshing out the characters and developing the setting that it became a show unarguably better than what it adapted. The staff in Kaguya-sama brought the manga panels to life through the amazing performances of the voice talent and the dedication of the other creatives working in its production. Alternatively, in this adaptation, everything uniquely great about the original has been omitted, leaving only the most basic and inconsequential elements of the story and the terribly animated sex scenes. To call it a disappointment is being far too generous to the staff that worked on this. It is hard to sit through. Even the mindless sex scenes are unwatchable due to the complete lack of continuity. She'll go from having a little drop of the white stuff on one cheek, to being spotless long enough for the main character to suck on her tongue, to having a face covered in the baby batter again in the time it takes for three cuts! It's like the people who worked on this all did their own thing, continuity be damned! The animation is full of terrible, cheap effects that are so laughable that it takes you out of the scene, the new dialogue is awfully written and poorly thought out - not to mention the dopey timing of some of the lines. They'll seriously stop in the middle of a sex scene to let the main character monologue for a couple of seconds before continuing.

Something I love about the original is the subtle storytelling, like when things get messy and need to be cleaned up before continuing - there is evidence of the clean-up scattered about the background, like a used tissue on the side of the bed after a fellatio, that type of thing. Of course, even when those exact scenes are recreated for the adaptation the additional detail isn't drawn in just to save a bit of time, like come on. Have I mentioned that they take the main heroin being a succubus and play it like she is just a whore who is pretending to be a demon so that she has an excuse to fuck her classmate? Really?

I can't bear to see this series ruined further, so I won't continue watching the adaptation past the first episode. Rather than watching these, I can absolutely recommend reading the original doujinshi which are of vastly superior quality anyway. It blows my mind how low the standards are set for hentai, this is pathetic.