180-byou de Kimi no Mimi wo Shiawase ni Dekiru ka?

ASMR has been around for quite sometime, but an anime version of it? Hell nah...that is until this short came along. But hold your horses, because this "tingling" feeling has some quirks to it that some will love, and some will hate.

ASMR as defined on Wikipedia:
Autonomous sensory meridian response (ASMR), sometimes auto sensory meridian response, is a tingling sensation that typically begins on the scalp and moves down the back of the neck and upper spine. A pleasant form of paresthesia, it has been compared with auditory-tactile synesthesia and may overlap with frisson.

ASMR signifies the subjective experience of "low-grade euphoria" characterized by "a combination of ... positive feelings and a distinct static-like tingling sensation on the skin". It is most commonly triggered by specific auditory or visual stimuli, and less commonly by intentional attention control.

No wonder that to get the best experience, this short ALWAYS tells you that "It's recommended to watch this show using headphones." But for all the excitement and enjoyment for experiencing what I believe is the very first dedicated ASMR anime (even for a short), it mostly just came up being literally short. The existentialism of experiencing ASMR is to literally get the "tingling" feeling from the ones whom are bringing the experience to us, and yet it couldn't even do the job properly which results in an unsatisfying attempt to salvage and excruciate other sensory details just to get the attention for all the wrong reasons.

For context, think of the dummy head as us, the audience confined within a vapor chamber (or an eargasm chamber in this case), and the girls whom are directing this experience should give us that sensory feeling of skin hairs standing up and feeling all relaxing inside. But then again, if the production side of things ain't the best, then the eargasm feeling will not be so too. For some reason, they only choose to focus on one ear (which is the left ear) as the core of the whole ASMR feel, and while it worked fine the first few times, the focus slowly shifted away from an ASMR to something that is more of a fetish that's almost close to blurring the lines of being a straight-up Hentai of sorts with more girls and questionable weeb "men of culture" shots. I mean, ASMR is all about the eargasm experience, why does it have to have a female-centric sexual fetish sequence on top of what's already serviceable enough?

You watch ASMR to get the relaxation, not to pull out your dick and fap to the cardboard cut-out girls while they deliver just that. Such a missed opportunity, but I kinda know why, because this work was supposed to be for the degenerates, and sold to the degenerates who can find more case use for this show being a dream-like fantasy of being served as fap material and less use for actual ASMR.

To round this fap-fetish-ing-ly short off, why not better than to put it in the form of the Drakeposting meme:
Can I Make Your Ears Happy in 180 Seconds? UGHH Rejected.
Can I Make You Sexually Enticed in 180 Seconds? YEPP PePe Approved.

I like ASMR. And this is an ASMR.

but is this a GOOD, ASMR? well. it's... the bare minimum

Story: 1.5/10

there is none. the stories are things like this:

oh, an ASMR mike, let's talk to it. oh an ASMR mike, let's talk to it like my baby. although there was one episode in the bar that was kind of interesting. If all the episodes were like that, It would have been much nicer.

... since it was the only episode with a male talking to you, they also couldn't do boob and panty shots all the episode, so it also had much more interesting directing.

basically one of the episodes was decent, the rest were... as low as you can go without just not being an asmr anymore.

Art: 1/10

the art and colors are boring and the show is barely animated. so no the art isn't good.

sound: 3.5/10

I will be honest, the sound quality is below an average asmr you can find on youtube. but... it's not terrible.

what is terrible is the ending song. but not the song itself, the song is basic and boring, but the problem is not that. the problem is with the song's tone. it's way too energetic for an ASMR ending. it's like oh that was relaxing.... "INSERT BOBASTIC MUSIC RIGHT AFTERWARDS"

idk who's idea was to make the ed like that, but they should be fired asap.

characters: 2/10

1 dimensional pieces of fanservice. their design is not that bad though. it's even half decent for some of them.

enjoyment: 6.5/10

despite all that, I still enjoyed it for some reason. maybe it was the horny camera angels. maybe it was the actual asmr not being that bad, or maybe it was the fact that the episodes were so short that I didn't have enough time to get bored. idk, but what ever the reason, I did enjoy it.


overall it's a low 2/10.

since there aren't any other asmr anime out there, it's kind of your only pick for this kind of show. and it's pretty damn short so.... eh... I guess it's kind of worth it? it's hard to say.

I'm an avid consumer of ASMR content, be it videos or just audio, from those silly roleplays and variety triggers all up in your ears (or the mic's rather), to unintentional videos that just happen to trigger my relaxing senses. So when I saw there was an anime supposedly focused on it, I knew exactly what it was gonna be and whaddaya know, I was proven right.

Story 1/10
Don't let the summaries fool you, there is absolutely no story. Just random characters fumbling around with and/or stumbling upon a head which, as all characters apparently know, supposedly has binaural recording devices inside where the ears are ... supposed to be. They do things to it like talking into it's ears, smear stuff on it, place it on their laps, all that while, in typical ASMR video recording fashion, they have headphones on to hear the playback and of course react to it's relaxing, or at least it should be, effect.

Art 2/10
Run of the mill, uninteresting and generic anime waifu art where an adult mother looks like the high schoolers. Animation is really nothing to write home about. Only reason I'm giving it a pity point is cause it's in focus I guess?

Sound 1/10
Ah the sound, the bread and butter of ASMR. Even if the video isn't good, or whatever the person is saying doesn't interest you, sometimes you can still come back and listen to it and appreciate it for it's relaxing effect. Too bad this anime is a complete incompetent disgrace when it comes to what makes ASMR pleasant.

You'd think the whole schtick of the ASMR theme would be to use and abuse the binaural properties of the mic, but you'd be wrong. Not only is the sound not binaural, feels like just basically two different flat tracks on each side, but the times they decide to do this are picked depending on whatever they feel like. You hear whatever triggers they decide for the episode close to your ears, but as soon as they want to focus on something else, like dialogue, they'll ditch the ASMR without a moment's notice.

For example, you have two characters doing triggers all up in your ears, but when they stop to have a conversation, even if they're not even a meter away from the mic and still on the dummy's each ear's sides, they'll just be recorded like normal. A complete waste of a chance to give us that 360° audio effect with two people in the room.
You could argue that it's because the characters turned the mic off so they could listen to each other, even though just making them taking out the headsets would solve that, but I don't think that's a good enough excuse, we're there as the dummy head, listening to them talk in the same room, why wouldn't you record it in binaural? Oh wait, cause nothing has been binaural.

Not that it would do us any favours cause the voice acting is the good ol' overly high pitched anime waifu banshee trash that no one should ever want to hear, complete with cringe as all hell moans.

One last note on the disgrace that is the audio: not even triggers and whatever else they do in the ears are done right, all throughout the episodes I've watched, the left ear is completely overstimulated while you hear very little on the right. That doesn't make up for a relaxing experience, just an annoying one. But relaxing was never their intention, and I'll talk about it around the end.

Characters 1/10
Characters? Where? All I saw was waifu cardboard cut-outs. With speakers I guess.
To compliment the shallow cash grab "story" with the niche theme, the characters are just as barebones. You have the shy girl, the more serious girl, the mother girl, the big sister girl, the twins girls... Seriously they're nothing but cardboard, just there to moan and blush and ask "is this okay?" for the viewer type they're catering for: mindless pervs.

Enjoyment -1/10
And my last point is exactly why this isn't and could never be enjoyable to me. ASMR isn't sexual, but of course since this is yet another show that feels the necessity of pushing forward that anime related infamy that gives non-weeb viewers a good reason to frown whenever someone says they watch anime, ASMR here is treated as nothing but a fetish.

Overall 1/10
I've seen somewhere before a viewer begging others not to sexualize this anime because ASMR isn't sexual, but who's at fault here really? This show is sexualizing it. I didn't come in with my head in the gutter thinking I was gonna get aroused by this. Of course as soon as I saw there was an anime made around it I knew they wouldn't be able to help themselves, but it wasn't because it was gonna be ASMR, it was because it's an ASMR anime, and they always have to make niches a fetish for a quick cash grab by being the first anime doing it. This is why the "stereo" audio is only used in specific moments, the equivalent of when in art you can tell the artist's intended fetish by what's more detailed, and funnily enough that visual aspect applies to the show too. When you have the sensitive mic is when you also have the close up shots of the cream in their hands, their mouths opening as they moan, close ups of their legs rubbing against each other as they react to the audio. You don't sexually tense up and gasp when you're relaxed, you.. relax, but that's not how you see the girls react to it.
This is but an embarrassing attempt to fetishize something for a crowd whose only contact with ASMR was on an e-girl's twitch stream.

I'm not into ASMR myself, so I don't have much experience in listening to ASMR videos, but I can tell that there was something off about this anime. It was said to be about ASMR, although almost every episode felt as if the autonomous sensory meridian response was only a fancy addition to something... well, something that didn't have much in common with the whole ASMR thing, but rather with seeing girls getting aroused while trying to practice their ASMR skills.

Even putting this element aside and focusing only on ASMR sensation, this anime has completely failed in this aspect. Viewers are advised to watch this ... anime while wearing headphones, but to be frank, the difference between using your speakers and headphones is minimal. Why? Because the sound quality is way below your average ASMR clip. What's more, while a dummy head microphone plays an important role in this show, you just can't hear it being used to its full extent. Why bother using binaural stereo microphone when you don't want, or don't know how to use it properly?

While I don't recommend this show, I can commend an attempt - even if it was a failed one - to create a unique type of anime. It was short, so I could manage to complete it without dropping it out of boredom. Oh, and I learned something from this show. Life of a Moyai doll microphone is quite comfy.

This series belongs in the category of anime that shouldn't exist. I got almost nothing from the 12, 3 1/2 minutes episodes this has. ASMR is already a questionable piece of entertainment as it has been oversexualized and also gathered a huge following of degenerates. This anime highlights this and takes it to another level. Besides the seductive whispering and implications of incest in the "plot," only the bar episode felt like it had something going for it, where the man, Aizen's voice actor of all people, made his performance. He says, "you should close your ears to sounds you don't want to hear." I'd ... do that, but I wouldn't have watched this sad excuse of a series if I did that. The selection of voice actors chosen for this is hilarious considering their previous roles that I've heard them in.

Among the voice actors moaning, whispering, and speaking seductively against their mics, Shiori Mikami (Krista from Attack on Titan), Waki Azumi (Tsukimi from The Aquatope on White Sand), Mimori Suzuko (Sawa from Jouran: The Princess of Snow and Blood), Kanae Itou (Yui from Sword Art Online), Serizawa Yuu (Kikka from Build Divide: Code Black), Show Hayami (a veteran also known as Max from Super Dimension Fortress Macross) and Koga Aoi (Komi from Komi Can't communicate) are in this. Those are only their roles I recognize that I feel like pointing out, I'm sure many people were surprised when they looked at the voice cast.

In most episodes, ASMR gear somehow appears in the girls' rooms. There's no explanation to it. They act as if it came out of nowhere and begin performing ASMR on the viewer in order to please them and to make them happy. The characters have no personality obviously, as it wasn't in the interest in the staff to build characters but to just have them do ASMR. They try to connect the characters through the episodes, but the pathetic attempt in trying to make a story felt almost nonexistent. Watching this, I felt uncomfortable and constantly checking for that 3 minute mark on the video where the ending comes in. At the end, the episodes awkwardly cut out into the ending theme as I sit wondering why I wasted my time doing this as that crash dummy head looking ASMR device spins around and laughs at me.

The art is terrible and without soul. The animation is choppy and lacks effort. Of course, the characters are constantly off model and shapeshifting.

The ASMR crowd of course loves this, though there are elements that say this failed as an ASMR on a technical level. I disliked it, but that's fine if they don't. I can't comprehend it. It sounded interesting for an ASMR anime to emerge, but I had no idea I was going to be in store for something as awkward feeling, oversexualized, and terrible as this.

"W: Wish" also known as "Double Wish" Was your typical Harem virtual Novel developed by "Princess Soft" and published to the Playstation 2 in September of 2004 this series went on to pioneer the worst genre in anime, that being the overly fetishized roleplay shorts.

"W: Wish" came bundled with an anime adaptation of the same name, Directed by Osamu Sekita
and animated by the now defunct "Trinet Entertainment" and "Picture Magic" it began airing on KIDS less than a week after the games release. "W: Wish" Went on to have a unique Spin-Off/OVA called W:Wish Omake

W:Wish Omake removes its protagonist entirely and instead asks ... the question, what if the viewer became the protagonist? it attempts to break the boundaries of escapism in its 4 episode long runtime, and is quite possibly the worst thing to ever been invented alongside paper straws. As a stand-alone OVA the characters are not given any recognizable characteristics other than fetish tropes yet was compelling enough to spark something far worse. 5 Years ago in the winter of 2017, a more well know iteration of the genre was released. Studio `Typhoon Graphics` released their latest anime short "One Room"

"One Room" is a short series comprised of 4 minute long episodes designed to have the viewer become the protagonist. The viewer is forced to self insert themselves into a world where you are constantly being flirted with by three horny heroines. and apparently the idea alone was enough to warrant "One Room" Three seasons, and a spin-off called "Room Mate" where you interact with horny boy's rather than horny girls.
The series is given far more runtime but feels identical to the far shorter ""W: Wish" One room carries no weight and is strictly marketed towards lonely otaku willing to jerk of to anything 2D that moves. "One Room" has been so successful that im starting to notice a shift in my beloved shorts format.

Finally I get to talk about "180 Byou de Kimi no Mimi wo Shiawase ni Dekiru ka?" otherwise known as "Can I Make Your Ears Happy in 180 Seconds" The show is just about as bad as it's title, So I will refer to this show as "this thing" You see this thing is an abomination, it tarnishes the reputation of multiple art forms such as, Short animation/Anime, ASMR, and erotica as a whole.

This thing markets itself to be about ASMR and the beauty behind it, except it fully sexualizes and fetishes the medium. The characters talk about the healing process in the ear via ASMR, in reality the girls and the creators want you jerking off to the sound design and still frames of cute 2D girls. While ASMR has sexual traits i feel as if this depiction is totally unsat, and is utterly vulgar. it also objectively fails at being relaxing, as the sound design is poorly mixed and they play a terrible ending that contradicts the damn show it surely will abrupt any form of enjoyment from the series.

As erotica it fails even worse, half the shots are still frames of terribly positioned close-ups the girls are purely just pin-up's and are marketed at the most cliché fetishes. its offensive to anything that has come before it, to give this thing any remote compliments.

I beg anyone reading this, do not watch any of these shows, these companies are not here to provide you a show, or a product, they are here to make money off of you and weak vulgar incel otaku, who are capable of busting nuts in under 3 minutes. I'd hate to see one of my favorite formats of animation in general be overrun by these terrible roleplay fetish anime. Go watch "Space Patrol Luluco" Instead.

I'm reviewing ASMR now, ok.
Let me get this straight, I enjoy ASMR. Not as much as ASMR lovers, but I can enjoy my ASMR.
So what caused this ASMR to have such a poor rating?
The ASMR itself in the show is very hit or miss for me. At times, it definitely gives me that feeling of enjoying ASMR, however, a lot of other times, it's just sound. A great example of when the ASMR works perfectly is the whispering, the use of left and right ears definitely enhance the experience and gives that amazing tingly feeling. What doesn't work is the ice and liquids. ... This is, of course, all personal preference, you may enjoy this, there is no possible way to critically review a show like this, but from my experience, the use of liquids and ice are just, sounds. They don't give off that amazing feeling ASMR should give. It doesn't feel relaxing or anything. They're just sounds.
Something that also works is the cotton buds, scraping the inside of the ears. Since the sound is being produced right at the entrance, as expected, it also works for ASMR.

Despite me saying there's no way to critically think about this, I lied. There are a few nitpicks I have.
1) It's not actually 180 seconds. The end starts at the 180 second mark but there's a message at the start advising to wear headphones that makes it not 180 seconds
2) Too much talking. Since this ASMR is technically an episodic series with continuity, have characters that exist is fine, and talking is also fine. However, at most they talk quite loud and sometimes over the good ASMR. This is quite irritating. Instead, they could whisper a lot more when producing the ASMR.
3) 180 seconds really isn't enough time. At a minimum this should be 5 minutes for full relaxation
4) Udoku (the mother) does not look old enough to be a mother
5) Although it's been 5 episodes, there's been a lack of variety with how they're making the ASMR. It's quite lazy and disappointing because nearly every episode, it's just sounds we've heard before

If some of these problems don't get fixed (obviously some can't), then I might have to lower the score, however I have hope that this show will be able to satisfy me in the future

All I wanted was some good ASMR alongside some nice anime visuals. Instead, I got what was, essentially, softcore hentai (bar one episode). In short, if you want ASMR, don't waste your time. It's half an hour of my life I'll never get back, and if anything, it woke me up because I was so uncomfortable at some points.

Episode 1 should've been enough of a red flag but I wanted to see if it would get better. The sweat drops, anime girl moans and thigh/booba shots. It just wasn't ASMR.

None of the episodes were relaxing, and even when they were for like, 30 ... seconds, it was ruined by either a moaning sound, weird dialogue or the outro (which, yes, is regular music, not ASMR either, shocker.)

All of the episodes felt like weirdly sexual fanservice, especially the episodes with the mum in it, it felt like somebody writing the show and a weird fetish for being treated like a baby, and just forced it into like 2/3 of the episodes, so uncomfortable to watch. Even then, I would've happily tolerated it if the ASMR was good, but it straight up wasn't.

If you insist on watching any of the episodes, episode 8 is my recommendation. It uses a guy and isn't sexualised, there's no weird anime girl moaning, just nice, relaxing talking and ear picking (though the sounds are a little too quiet to get the full effect).

Episode 7 is both the worst and best. It has little to no value as actual ASMR, but I will admit, the brother complex trope did make me chuckle a little.

The art was pretty nice though, I will give them props on that.

TL;DR - The girls are cute, but it's closer to softcore hentai; way too much moaning and thigh/booba shots, some uncomfortable tropes/fetishes are present and it's way too overdramatic. Little to no ASMR value, but if you want to burn 30 minutes, go for it.

Fyi if you've never listened to regular ASMR, and this is your only experience, I promise you actual ASMR is super relaxing (I sleep to it most nights). You do have to watch out though, even on YouTube as so much of it is over-sexualised when that's just not what ASMR is supposed to be. Some actually relaxing, normal ASMRtists i recommend instead of this show are Ephmeral Rift, GibiASMR, Taiyo ASMR, ASMR Tiny, Dong ASMR and Kurii ASMR. (Kurii does mainly anime ASMR, and ER and Gibi do some anime ASMR)

I feel weird, its way to kinky for a ASMR, like wtf why are they so T H I C C, why the camera constantly move to her thighs and boobs?
Sometime the ASMR feels nice but the voices are way too loud to blend in, making soo that everytime they speak it breaks the flow of the calm vibe, which makes it look like a big oversight that perpetuates the entire anime.

The bgm is actually nice, and it does a lot to bring a calm and chill vibe, but because of the aforementioned you can't even hear that

the art is inconsistent and the ... animation sucks complete ass.
3/10 could be better but its way too kinky.

I've had the question for a few years now, what even is ASMR? Like I understand the mechanics of it, and after sitting through this whole anime I'm acutely aware that some people are really into it. But why? Is it like a sexual thing? If you were trying to convince me otherwise this anime is doing a poor job of it. If it's just another weird sexual fetish I get it. Some people like sweat or feet, this is honestly less weird than that. But real youtube channels exist with underage girls doing ASMR for a likely all male audience, so the people who ... are into it will swear up and down that it's nothing sexual or weird going on. It's just "healing." Riiiight, and Epstein killed himself.

Then there's the weird intersect between this fetish and infantilism, which ranges anywhere from wanting a woman to treat you like a baby to actually wearing diapers and trying to un-pottytrain yourself. The fact that they dedicated 3 episodes of this show to weird baby play is pretty telling.

I guess if you're into ASMR for some reason you might like this. I get it, there's an audience for this sort of thing. It's just not for me, thanks. 4/10

The real question to be asked here is, why does this anime exist? if you can even call it an anime. Is there any plot? no. Is there anything educational about ASMR itself? no. Is the quality of the ASMR itself and the audio itself good considering its the theme of this so-called anime? for the most part no.

180 Byou de Kimi no Mimi wo Shiawase ni Dekiru ka is a very simplistic series consisting of 3-minute-long episodes where they do different flavors of ASMR. The only mystery to be solved here is how on earth such a series attracted such a roster of ... such good VAs and who at the board meetings thought this series was a good idea.

The ASMR in itself is quite underwhelming and very unimpressive most of it when you consider that is the entire theme of the show (if you can even call it that). 3 minutes feels way too short to be able to get into things when a lot of ASMR videos are at least 10-15 minutes long. As far as I can remember the only segment that I liked was the electric ear pick because you literally cannot find such a sound anywhere else, and it was the only one that was remotely good.

Honestly this was just horrible. As someone who listens to ASMR and overall loves ASMR, I was very excited to watch this anime. However, it just didn't do justice. Yes, this is ASMR but the ASMR is very mediocre and one of the main problems I have are that some episodes specifically focus on one ear (mostly being your left ear), and a big part of ASMR is feeling the sensation through both ears.

As the title says, "Can I Make Your Ears Happy in 180 Seconds?", each episode is 3 minutes. You go through the anime being a regular dummy head, a girl, and ... sometimes a baby. There are some scenes with the girls that are a bit lewd too. There isn't really a story in any of the episodes either and if the characters just happen to be with each other it doesn't make sense.

Honestly, I'd just listen to regular ASMR than try watching this anime. It only takes around 36 minutes to finish the whole series so if it's something you're just curious about listening to, go for it. I just personally wished more came out of this concept.