Temple

From a young age, Akemitsu Akagami was taught by his father that people can never live alone. But underneath the seemingly prudent advice lies a truth that corrupts it—sons of the Akagami lineage are infamous for being heinous playboys. Determined to clear the notoriety of his family name, Akemitsu keeps his distance from girls throughout his life, only to become a victim of his bloodline's instincts, as he falls in love at first sight.

In a last-ditch effort to rid himself of these desires, Akemitsu travels to a nearby temple in hopes of receiving Buddhist training. However, chaos ensues when the girl he had fallen for greets him at the door. After the commotion settles, he discovers the temple is actually a nunnery from which his father had borrowed millions before fleeing. Now working at the nunnery to repay the outstanding debts, Akemitsu tries his best to compose himself and stay celibate while being surrounded by lovely girls of all kinds.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Aoba, Yuzuki Main

Terakawa, Aimi Japanese

Akagami, Akemitsu Main

Akasaka, Masayuki Japanese

Aoba, Tsukuyo Supporting

Serizawa, Yuu Japanese

Aoba, Kurage Supporting

Yamashita, Nanami Japanese

Kiki Supporting

Takahashi, Chiaki Japanese

Christoph, Mia Supporting

Asahina, Madoka Japanese

Baldwin, Kagura Supporting

Uesaka, Sumire Japanese

Nyagosuke Supporting

Anzai, Chika Japanese

Tendou, Asahi Supporting

Itou, Ayasa Japanese

Tendou, Hinata Supporting

Aiba, Aina Japanese

Kurosu, Nobuhiko Producer

Yonezawa, Akira Producer

Ozawa, Fumihiro Producer

Fujii, Takahiro Producer

Reviews

Sep 23, 2023

Rachiba

Recommended

Veterans who grew up with the ecchi/harem of the 2000s (or at least recently liked series from that era) will find Temple like you were watching Mahoromatic or Love Hina in your teenage years. And in a generation of fans who are more demanding every day with entertainment - expecting, I don't know, that everything is about society's problems or socio-political criticism - Temple gives a slap to those rabid fans who expect that all demographics (including ecchi) are subordinated to the same type of narrative: Always having a "purpose" that, otherwise, ruins the tranquility of those who consume it by being "uncomfortable."

The problem with ... Temple is that it doesn't bring with it anything new from what we've already watched from any ecchi/harem. Even ecchi/harem fans could expect new ideas of fanservice or comedy from this, despite the fact that series based on Buddhism are not very common to see (Besides Amaenaide Yo! or Yuuragi sou no Yuuna-san). However, Temple bets on what a veteran fan already feels more comfortable with, which is watching your typical anime full of "accidents" and contextualized perversions without the need for sex everywhere.

And no, I'm not referring to just spontaneously showing a shot of tits or legs like the popular ecchi and "ecchi" of today, there is really an effort to take advantage of the jokes and show the shamelessness about it. You have falls, accidents, absurd comedy, and even something like Twister lends itself to a hot scene. Temple doesn't need voluptuous exaggeration or a barrage of contextless or unfunny fanservice to be entertaining, it just needs to be your typical Rom-Com with funny ecchi scenes. The religious jokes make this show even a comedy for the people who already have their pass to hell.

To be honest, I have a mixed opinion of the animation. Yes, it is true that there is a lot of effort and detail when focusing on the body of the characters, from the chest, butt to the suits as extra points. However, in the rest of the occasions, where there is no fanservice but in normal scenes, the inconsistencies in the drawing are very notable, sometimes noticing that in one scene or another the propositions of the same character are different (suddenly, she had a bigger breast and in others smaller, or equal to other girls).

And a much smaller problem is the voices. For the public that is not used to having a voice different from that of a crying teenager, they will find it strange that a voice of a 30-year-old adult seeks to fit into the norm of casting voice actors.

But apart from that, Temple is a series that does not stand out for its animation or casting, but for what it offers.

There is a linear plot around the debt problems of the Mikazuki Temple and Akagami's growth to be a different person from his father, besides all its episodes are dedicated to each of the girls and to developing their personalities. In addition to having three different EDs depending on who it focuses on: "Oidemase! Mikazukidera" for the entire cast, "Itsuka wa Mangetsu no You ni" for the Aoba sisters, and "Culturegap Temptation" for Mia and Kagura, two residents from the foreign. but this does not mean that the show does not seek to take away the seriousness by adding comedy and entertainment in between. This show is fresh air from so many series that bait their audience with some fanservice for teenagers without reaching anything else, or going any further. And I don't discredit those who try them, but Temple does what a good ecchi is supposed to do and that is to highlight at every moment every facet of what makes up a person, with a touch of laughs and a theme, like Buddhism, that justifies everything that happens in each episode.

Sometimes, you need to turn off your brain, stop caring about the details, and enjoy what is presented to you in front of you.
Reviewer’s Rating: 8

Reviewer’s Rating: 8

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Sep 23, 2023

KANLen09

Mixed Feelings

A Love Hina-like ecchi, rom-com harem that's not that bad? From the illustrator of one of AniManga's most celebrated works? I highly question my doubts.

Yes, you heard me right. From the illustrator of mangaka Kenji Inoue's high-octane, no-holds-barred comedy fest that is Grand Blue (which everyone celebrated both the ongoing manga and anime, and the Summer 2018 anime is certainly one of the best literal Summer sensations of the 2010s) comes Kimitake Yoshioka branching out in September 2018 with his own series: Temple a.k.a TenPuru: No One Can Live on Loneliness, a shameless clone/carbon copy of the harem trend that has been set since famed ... mangaka Ken Akamatsu's Love Hina's release in October 1998, a full 25 years since. But true to its contemporaries, is it REALLY as bad as the majority panned it out to be?

It's clear that what mangaka Ken Akamatsu had going for was revolutionary for its time, serving as the inspiration for other series like Summer 2005's Amaenaide yo!! a.k.a Ah My Buddha!! (which is the exact same showing as Temple, only 18 years prior), Summer 2018's Yuragi-sou no Yuuna-san a.k.a Yuuna and the Haunted Hot Springs (which retains the harem but in a hot spring setting), and the more recent Summer 2021's Megami-ryou no Ryoubo-kun. a.k.a Mother of the Goddess' Dormitory (which retains the harem setting but with MC being a Shotacon in a dorm setting), and next year's upcoming Amagami-san Chi no Enmusubi a.k.a Tying the Knot with an Amagami Sister (which I hope will air next Summer for the unbroken Summer harem streak). Which, come to think of it, Ecchi and harem (anime) series REALLY LOVE the Summer season (which Grand Blue is no exception and despite Love Hina's original run ending in Summer 2000), and Temple follows the exact same tropes that have been laid out since then, thinking that it will be the new, modern, resuscitiation effort to bring the old "2000s new millenia" age of the harem genre back to life 20+ years later. In my opinion, it didn't.

For starters, I don't know what Kimitake Yoshioka was trying to aim for here, but if anything, he absolutely nailed the throwback aesthetic of the 2000s, of a MC who's at the mercy of girls being at their beck and call, someone who was first humoured and taken advantage of by the girls to be tasked to kick the MC out from the place of residence for sort, until circumstances show that he's ready to stay and be everyone's support, leading them to have an affection for the protagonist. It's no different for the MC: red-haired Akemitsu Akagami, being told from his father that "No One Can Live on Loneliness", and then proceeding to betray that promise by becoming a womaniser himself, much to his chagrin. Determined to change his ways of perversion, Akagami enrols as a monk and joins the male-only Mikazuki Temple, where, on the way, he meets a girl whom he fancies, and the girl herself coincidentally resides in the same temple that he's heading to. The irony, however, is not realising that the supposedly male-only Mikazuki Temple is more like a women-only nunnery for priestesses and that it's in a very rough and decrepit, run-down state, because Akagami's father was the sole reason that he loaned a huge amount of money off from the temple. Since Akagami has no way to pay up the 20 million yen debt, he is forced to live in the temple as a dogsbody a.k.a lowly worker, until the debt is fully repaid. What an ironic sequence of events that the son has to go through treatment this bad from all of its female residents for a supposed crime that, no thanks to the Akagami family name, leaves his name tarnished until the deed is done.

Alas, this journey of becoming a pure monk has its ups and downs. Akagami looks like a young man in his late 10s or early 20s, but why did they give the central role to the 31-year-old amateur VA Masayuki Akasaka is beyond me; there seems to be a disconnect in the vocal range, which makes Akagami sound like the usual pervertic old man...which if that's what the casting crew had in mind for him to sound like Keitaro Urashima if he's old, then yeah, probably not the wisest choice ever. That said, amongst all of the idiosyncracies that you would expect to see in a harem series, Akagami is one purely good guy who wants to write off his estranged father's wrongdoings and turn Mikazuki Temple for the better. And that I can certainly get past for a guy in a nunnery who only wants to impress the supposed head mistress of the nunnery.

That leads us to the various girls, in what seems to be the usual "5 girls cast":
- 19-year-old Yuzuki Aoba, the eldest of the three Aoba sisters, is laden with the task of becoming Mikazuki Temple's next head priestess, because the price to pay if she doesn't become one, is that the tenants residing there will be thrown out, and the temple will be closed and disbanded for good. The girl that Akagami had laid his pure-not-pervertic eyes on, she is the most mature of the tenants and does decent on her archery skills, and in my eyes, most certainly the ideal girl for the red-haired. Along with the middle sister Tsukuyo and the youngest of Kurage, the former also practices archery, just like Yuzuki, and always finds herself on the misunderstanding side of things as she endlessly teases Akagami and gets overconfident about Akagami making his moves on her, which, of course, didn't turn out to be so. Kurage, on the other hand, develops fantasies while developing herself to be the adult that Akagami can pounce on her in the future, though she always maintains the "innocent, not guilty" act.
- The other tenants of Mia Christoph and Kagura Baldwin are an interesting bunch of girls. Like in Masamune-kun no Revenge, Mia and Kagura have a master-servant relationship where the former is the master and the latter is the servant, though for the same familial reasons as Akagami, Mia's escape to Japan along with her only friend Kagura is 20/20 hindsight. In most instances, Mia is the girl whom Akagami is most attached to, be it being innocently led into sexual situations or being forced to commit to sexual relations, for which her family holds a strong no-holds-barred policy, and for which Kagura wants to exploit her to become the sex queen of her family to get rid of Akagami. This is the typical love triangle where Mia is hopelessly in love with Akagami, yet he only has eyes for Yuzuki, and all three people are trained by the nunnery's temporary caretaker, Kiki, to become priests to save Mikazuki Temple, which I thought was a nice mini redemption arc, if there ever was one.

This is newbie studio Gekkou's 2nd anime series, and the last time they did with last season's Isekai One Turn Kill Neesan a.k.a My One-Hit Kill Sister, it was alright for a fledgling new production studio's first try. With Temple, it honestly doesn't look all that different from the former, and if they are trying to just gloss it over with the production, it's once again fine and serviceable. The music aspect, with the OST being sung by the VAs of the Aoba sisters, Mia and Kagura, is also alright and nothing special.

If you asked me this question: "Do you want to be taken back to the time of fledgling 2000s harem series?", I would probably say no, because that was a time where anime only made waves from those in the know, and anime was at a stage of experimentation of what would be best localised to the world. Though in the case of Temple, I would argue that while it's nothing special as a rom-com or harem gimmick of a series, it does have heart on its sleeve, and I respect the MC Akagami for the change that is absolutely needed in the nunnery.

If you decide to watch Temple, to enjoy it, you would have to take it with a grain of salt and think of it as a low-budget Grand Blue of sorts. Take this as my only recommendation if you wish to watch this like an old weeb living in the early 2000s, but I wouldn't hedge my bets on this being a game changer.

Reviewer’s Rating: 6

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Sep 24, 2023

pixelante

Not Recommended

What a failure of a show this was. After watching Immoral Guild and KamiKatsu I was really looking forward to a bit of guilty pleasure ecchi so you shouldn't have trouble imagining how disappointed I was when we got served up whatever slop this was.

This was supposed to be ecchi, but it was so lame that a normal anime heavy on the fan service would have been more titillating. The girls looked okay but were let down by the animation (except for the stills in the ED), and their personalities were flatter than the paper they were drawn on.

As for the comedy, entire episodes would ... go by without even eliciting a wry smile from me and more often than not would only get a "heh" out of me, which on the scale of laughs is equal to a meh.

TLDR; this anime was shit and I feel like shit for putting up with this shit. I hope Gekkou goes out of business and all their employees have to find work as sanitation engineers where they belong.

Reviewer’s Rating: 1

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	Poll: Temple Episode 12 Discussion ( 1 2 ) IzanaSolos - Sep 23, 2023	55 replies	by rohan121 »» May 9, 10:53 PM
	Poll: Temple Episode 9 Discussion IzanaSolos - Sep 2, 2023	35 replies	by kirA_-_ »» Apr 13, 7:12 AM
	Poll: Temple Episode 1 Discussion ( 1 2 3 ) Meggid0 - Jul 8, 2023	113 replies	by kirA_-_ »» Apr 5, 2:13 PM
	Poll: Temple Episode 2 Discussion ( 1 2 ) AkeZZZ - Jul 15, 2023	72 replies	by BigBoyAdvance »» Apr 4, 10:06 AM
	Male mc voice does not match DekuxUraraka - Jul 16, 2023	29 replies	by Gator »» Apr 3, 8:42 AM