Kimi ga Suki. The Animation

Oh boy, this truly was a painful experience to watch as a rare occasion where I had the source material and what can I say except … look how they massacred my boy. I’ll be the first to admit that some of Pink Pineapple’s stuff is good, however they really have gone downhill over time. What I will say is that if you are willing to read the doujins, I implore you to give them a shot before watching the hentai because most of these make up quite a great collection of vanilla doujin centered on romance with some absolutely breath-taking art. The hentai adaptation, ... unfortunately, is not nearly as emotionally gripping of an experience as the doujin sources which are able to convey this deep and layered romantic backstory in just a few panels.

(Mods will remove this review if I give even mention the site that shall not be named or six-digit numbers I will just leave the titles for you to look up):

Natsu to Jun | Summer and Innocence (Personal favorite)
Daisuki | I love you
Will You Marry Me?
Koiseyo Otome

Artist: Jorori

Story : 6

So after watching this hentai I started doubting myself that perhaps those vanilla hentai I hold in such high regard such as Aikagi and Aibeya were not as good as I thought so I went back to them and frankly they don’t hold up visually as well as I remember however I’ll get back to that later on. What does hold up for me is the story, because in just an episode they take great care in escalating the romance, they take it slow and steady despite the limited run time and this results in a more personal experience where we, the audience, are able to glimpse the emotional connection that has occured in that moment of confession and release. Initially, my thought process was that by fitting in all these different stories, the pacing was messed up which led to my negative experience. However, after revisiting the doujins I can confidently say that the runtimes were never the issue and that no matter how much time they dedicated to each short, they probably would’ve messed up the pacing all the same.

What differentiates some of the great vanilla hentai is the ability to crank up the heat at a moderate pace, it isn’t simply flicking the horny button on, they really make you feel that there are unspoken words left hung in the air for so long which builds an absolutely palpable tension which when actualized through a brazen moment of desperation releases all that was built up in pure catharsis not only for the characters but for us as well. When I watch Kimi ga Suki, they never hang on those pressure building moments so I just didn’t care as a viewer because I knew in the forefront of my mind the eventuality of their intercourse.

Now given the short runtime per episode, you could still argue that it was time pressure but for me it just wasn’t the issue. For example, in Natsu to Jun the pivotal moment is when the fireworks go off and yet the lead up to that is this very clumsily put together scene of them on the bed together yet there is no silent hum to precede the moment the fireworks exploding, no frame of beauty to capture how our MC sees the girl, no fanfare whatsoever and this frankly just ruins an iconic scene.

Art and Animation : 1

This isn’t the worst looking hentai (yeah I’m looking at you Kansen Sodom even though I argued that it was an abstract art piece) but comparatively it really opened my eyes to the shitstorm that is Pink Pineapple. Just go back through their catalogue and some they’ve done some truly legendary hentai that look like straight classics but fastforward to as recent as 2019 and you can see the cracks start to form in their hentai and now it seems that it couldn’t get any worse with how worthless this hentai looks. It's like they're not even trying in comparison to their competitors such as Bunnywalker or Mary Jane who still come out with some passable animation and artwork. Worst of all, why did they have to choose an artist that has made doujins that are in the 2nd ranking of my all-time best artwork doujin list. It really is like they took the Mona Lisa and told a child to draw it in crayon. This lack of fidelity in the drawings as well as the rigid animations just takes away any chance that it would recreate the experiences I had reading.

Characters : 5

I just don’t care about them at all. I like that no one is a cheating scumbag or an asshole but that's a pretty low bar. Each story just kinda melds together at some point and I can’t really tell one character from the other. Their interactions don’t really feel that meaningful and all that deep personality is lost is the messy facial expressions drawn. Overall - meh.

Vanilla Level : 10 (Like too much vanilla)

I mean this is a pure, unadulterated, clean as a white dress at a Sunday church grade vanilla hentai. It ain’t cut with any bullshit but this is truly entering the realm of “so vanilla it’s boring” and that really means something from a vanilla enjoyer not an NTR fan. People will say “its about the story” or “don’t just look at the graphics” but when your shit looks far, far worse than what you did 10 years ago then I just can’t support it. “It is evolving, just backwards” - Pewdiepie commenting on the state of hentai.

Enjoyment : 3

What can I say, they fucking massacred my boy. Took him out into the streets, beat him with sticks, shot him dead in an alley and left to rot as the rodents descended upon his feeble body. All I can say is that this just sucks, no one should celebrate a tragedy such as this. I understand that studios may not make much money off of hentai and that budgets shrink but maybe my complaints are just the mourning cries as the bells of death call out to hentai. This is truly a sad day.