It's not a Bikini if it's armor, right?
Bikini Warriors... man was I ever wrong about this series. I was right, but so, so wrong. When I first saw the title art on the upcoming series, I had immediately and unabashedly 'bashed' this series as that odious, shameless cash grab for that all powerful ecchi market that permeates anime these days.
However, let me be the first to admit that Bikini Warriors is a much more clever anime than it EVER deserved to be.
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See, Bikini Warriors is both exactly what you'd expect from a show with women's swimwear in the name, and completely the opposite as well. As a concept, this is not new- but what it does do is bring just enough self awareness to make you not feel like you need a shower immediately after watching. It actually does have genuinely funny moments- and in a show that runs 5 minutes, start to finish, something entertaining has to happen- and it does.
Bikini Warriors' humor consists of various MMO (and video game culture in general) jokes, like the ubiquitous fetch quests for useless items, raiding and grinding dungeons for loot, only to get useless crap or something you already have, and the kicker- the Armor Dealer sells them armor that looks exactly the same as their underwear, BUT IT'S MAGIC DEFENSIVE ARMOR! Because everyone knows female characters need armor, but not on the boobs or butt.
The heroes steal from the townspoeple because... well, they're the heroes. They break in and announce themselves, and like the brainless NPCS they are, the townspeople don't even notice their homes and clay pots being ransacked, and completely don't care.
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"We're the heroes, and as such we invoke our right to confiscate items we need for our quest!"
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Of course, there's also the typical MMO dialogue garbage, that the heroines try desperately to skip through, but they need to be told for the millionth time that they "already had the key inside themselves, they just had to discover it". The untimely betrayal... the self sacrifice... and the cliffhangers. Bikini Warriors manages to weave up every fantasy story trope into one very tight string.
I discovered that Bikini Warriors wasn't just a stupid boob fest, too. Did it have it inside itself all along?
Well, the short answer is no. There's still a ton of tentacles and nudity thrown up onto the screen in every episode. If it's not a chest full of eels, then it's a giant squid monster, or a pervy questgiver. Even these are lampshaded though- parodying typical boss monsters and whatnot, but it's still gross.
Overall:
Despite being bombarded by ecchi and fanservice laden shows every season, I'm still no closer to being a fan of these kinds of shows, but I have to give Bikini Warriors credit: for a show I immediately pegged as being "probably one of the stupidest, painful to watch things ever animated", I was incredibly surprised by the inclusion of some honest-to-goodness humor. Humor that made me laugh a little in spite of how awful this could have been.
Miniature Fanservice Scale!
{Animation: 10 Bouncing Boobs out of 10}
{Sound: 7 Sexy Moans out of 10)
{Characters: 8 Hypersexualized Female Leads Divided by 4}
{Fanservice Overall: 10 Jiggling Physics Breaking Brests Divided by 5}
