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No idea why this has such a low score. It is on my top 3 animes of all time. The sex isn't for the sake of sexual arousal but exposure of corruption and lust/power, so I personally don't classify it as an H anime, but it is technically. It is like A Kite in that sense. The director wanted to tell a story, shoot a movie perhaps, but this was their concept project. The ambition level is different (A Kite is a Neo Noir/Action film and this is more of a drama) but you get the core concept.

The characters were complex, the story was ... extremely well told, and the atmosphere was passing strange. It is a character study and an insight into the relationship between church and state.

From the review scores I can tell that they didn't like it, but my interpretation of that is that they didn't like what they got vs what they expected. I don't expect H films to provide compelling stories and non-preachy, stark looks at corruption, but it's complaining when you get a great film instead of a sexually compelling one. This is The Erotic Temptress ep 4 all over again.

This is a hentai unlike any other. It takes the themes you're used to seeing, like a woman who is at first unwilling, then very eager for extra marital affairs, and turns it on its head.

It also has one of the most at first confusing but ultimately thought provoking twists of any hentai I've ever seen.

Hentai gets predictable. You can predict the woman will like being r'd more than she likes what's happening in her bedroom. You can predict it will end badly for the husband. You can predict that an ugly bastard will have his way with her, laughing menacingly the entire ... time. But where it goes, and at what speed, I couldn't predict. There's more than 1 twist in this, and what you know is going to happen or can predict pales in comparison to what actually happens. I wasn't happy with it at first, but the more I thought about it, the more I saw it as pulling off something that hentai's generally don't even risk: Leaving you feeling sympathetic for the cheating wife, heart broken for the husband, and generally unclear as to who is responsible for the horrid circumstances they find themselves in.

You could argue that she's a supporting character in her own OVA. You could ding the animation for looking dated.

That aside, I liked what I saw. She's a mysterious character. We were never going to see 2 hours' worth of an over the shoulder look at her life. It was always going to be her playing off of another character.

That said, I liked where this story went. I like that the story wasn't her welcoming a stranger into her ship and into her heart within 2 minutes, or ever. She is heartbroken and it's almost like she's dead already. Her fearlessness in the ... face of death and quiet acceptance of what will likely be her death at a pivotal point shows how dark some of the chapters of her life have been, and yet I wouldn't call it dystopian. She helps when she can, she has strong morals and is willing to die for them, and she is gregarious when it is called for. I'd call this a character study from a distance.

I think she got the name Pirate Queen Emeraldas because she's presents as evil but she is clearly decent. Her morality is her guiding light, and she persistently walks towards that light. She's a good egg.