2.5-jigen no Ririsa

While appearing at a glance as an ecchi harem, it's pretty clear 2.5 Dimensional Seduction is a hot blooded cosplay show, using a fictional manga to tie the cast together.

Okumura is a guy who loves this character Lilliel and declares he's only into 2d girls. Lilysa is this girl he meets who also loves Lilliel, and wants to cosplay her, and gets him as her camera man. Her passion really is the driving force to the narrative as she does the cosplay making herself.

And now we have Mikari, and she loves Okumura, and while you'd think its a love triangle that's forming, it's only ... in her head, as she is being weirded tf out by these two degen otaku and getting dragged into their cosplay shenanigans. But she also has ties with the manga Okumura loves, and so it drives her too.

It's such a clever way of using genre conventions, and it's telling a unique and fun story with it. We got 2 more cast members to join, so can't wait to see how they get wrapped up in Okumura and Lilysa's bizarre adventure.

It's been very funny and entertaining, a bit of ecchi, a bit of comedy, a bit of romcom shenanigans. a bit of heart. And the show looks great. JC Staff absolutely killing it, one of the best looking shows of the season.

Ah yes, the good old story of an otaku who has no interest in 3D girls yet is surrounded by beautiful, sexy girls who want a piece of him.

Does this anime do anything different from its predecessors? Barely. Almost every trope you expect in this type of anime is present.

An MC with an overly exaggerated otaku personality where he poses every single minute, saying, "I DON'T NEED REAL GIRLS, ANIME GIRLS ARE ALL I NEED." But here's the catch—he actually has a very good reason to be this way. Being left alone by your mother at 8 is pretty bad, right? Even at school, everyone ... looks at him like he's a trash bag, so it's pretty understandable for him to act like that. Is his posing every minute and yelling "I DON'T NEED REAL GIRLS" at the top of his lungs cringy? Obviously, but hey, man, you guys are weebs, otakus, or whatever you want to call yourselves. Surely this level of cringe won't bother you. If you can handle something like Rent-a-Girlfriend, then you can certainly handle this.

The anime later introduces heroines that seem even crazier than the MC. One of the heroines is into erotic things to a level that even the MC can't match, and another heroine is a popular and cute model who looks at a chronic weeb who keeps saying how much he loves anime girls and thinks to herself, "Yeah, I love that guy."

Going in, I thought the MC would be a dense guy who keeps saying, "I don't care about 3D girls" until the very last episode. But nope, in the first episode, his entire motto and way of life shatter after he lays his eyes upon a girl doing sexy cosplay. Turns out, he still likes real girls after all, but he keeps hiding and denying it by saying, "Oh no, I don't like real girls, I won't see you with dirty eyes" (he obviously does) and "Oh no no no, I don't fall in love with 3D girls, I FALL IN LOVE WITH 2.5D girls" (there's no such thing as that).

As far as the story goes, this is pretty much the main plot: an otaku slowly realizing that he loves real girls just as much as he loves his anime girls. Sure, the anime will have its serious moments discussing his upbringing and why he shows no interest toward real girls, but that's about it. Nothing too serious or overly dramatic, besides people come to see this anime for sexy anime girls, nothing else. Which leads us to the fanservice.

The fanservice in this anime is mostly subtle and teasing rather than full-blown nudity. You won't see bare nipples or sex scenes. Rather than relying on nudity alone, they cater to using lewd moments, eargasm, and the sexy design of the heroines' outfits. And trust me, it works because the creator made the heroines' designs so FCKING HOT. They are cooking with it. Sometimes this subtle lewdness is much hotter than full-blown nudity, and this anime proves it even further.

Overall, if you are into ecchi with a light story, give this one a try.

A moment of silence for every manga fan who's heard an announcement that a beloved manga of theirs is getting an anime adaptation only to hear that J.C. Staff is the studio adapting it. A truly heart wrenching realization that it's going to be completely sullied beyond recognition.

I'm not typically one to rate things this early on and especially not to write a review on it but I feel obligated to in this case as a big fan of the source material who's watching this abomination of an adaptation. J.C. staff might be the biggest joke of a big name studio to still be ... producing anime in 2024. As if what they did to my believed OPM wasn't enough, they had to ruin another great manga.

For those unfamiliar with the source material, 2.5 dimensional seduction at it's core is pretty similar to the impression you would get reading the plot description and watching the first 3 episodes. An ecchi manga revolving around a hopeless otaku who only finds 2D girls attractive but starts to question this after seeing real life girls cosplay as his favorite characters. The key part of that missing in the anime is 'ecchi'.

The manga is true to the title of 'ecchi'. Uncensored and quite generous with the amount of fan service such as the usual panty shots, revealing clothing, changing scenes, and skimpy cosplay with the occasional full nude panels. The anime however doesn't deserve to be titled as such. Every ecchi scene is completely watered down to the point if I didn't know the source or see the tag, I would assume this was just a regular anime with very light fan service. Every revealing shot is basically completely out of frame or has convenient placement to not see so much as a slip of skin. Each scene meant to be the pinnacle of fan service in the source is watered down to a slight shot of skin and a little moan as if that makes things the same. Even the base design of Lileil's cosplay is completely censored down.

I will give credit where it's due. As far as the regular scenes go, it's a solidly produced show. But for a show tagged with 'ecchi', that alone doesn't cut it.

Being tame and vanilla is fine and I'm sure most people don't mind watching stuff like that. But chances are if you're willingly watching an ecchi anime, you're here for the goods. And I'm here to tell you, they're not here. Do yourself a favor and go read the manga for the real stuff. I've seen Cartoon Network Y-7 shows that are less vanilla than this so-called 'ecchi' anime.