“Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but division. From now on, five in one household will be divided, three against two and two against three.They will be divided, father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law.” Matthew 10:34-39
It’s been a LONG time since an anime stirred up as much controversy and division as Interspecies Reviewers. The online Left is divided. Is this a vile, misogynistic series that objectifies women or a sex-positive series that celebrates gay, transgender, and intersex characters? The online Right is divided. Funimation’s Evangelical CEO saw it as a blasphemous, degenerate series that must be kept from the eyes of children at all costs. Other members of the online Right celebrate the degeneracy as a victory for free speech and a series that sticks it to those easily offended SJWs. Funimation banned the series after dubbing just 1 episode. They refuse to stream it, or ever distribute it on DVD. Amazon picked it up, only to ban it just days later. Even several Japanese stations banned it!
Interspecies Reviewers as you’ve probably heard by now is all about the adventures of 3 travelling mercenaries and their visits to MANY brothels. There’s an elvish archer, a human swordsman who looks like Big Boss from Metal Gear Solid and an intersex angel with male and female reproductive organs. These 3 post reviews of all the whore houses they visit and earn money from people willing to pay to read their reviews. They are the Siskel and Ebert of brothels! That’s basically the entire plot!
The plot is fairly raunchy, but why is it SO controversial? The director of Interspecies Reviewers is absolutely dead set on trolling Japanese TV censors as hard as he possibly can. The line between hentai and ecchi in Japan is actually a lot thinner than you might think. It’s really kind of an honor system and this director and staff have zero intention of following the rules. An ecchi is not supposed to show female ejaculate, but Reviewers does. An ecchi is not supposed to show the outline of the labia, but Reviewers does. They try to get away with that by cooking bacon on a naked dragon girl, which clings to the shape of her labia. An ecchi is not supposed to show semen, so Reviewers visits a group of Mushroom girls that spray everything with “Mushroom milk”. It’s totally not semen! Wink wink nudge nudge.
Every episode features a different type of monster girl, which provides the opportunity to spoof various fetishes, make fun of online critics, and further piss off censors. They visit Count Dickula and his zombie harem to show necrophilia on a TV broadcast anime. They visit an “egg laying” club where it’s clearly framed like a scat porn scene, but it’s ok because they’re really just laying eggs. It only LOOKS like our heroes are watching women poop. Wink wink. The whole show is like that. It’s not concerned at all with being erotic. It’s just a giant middle finger to Japanese censors!
Despite it’s limited plot and simplistic purpose, Interspecies Reviewers remained hilarious week after week. I thought it would get old really fast, but it didn’t! It is seriously my favorite anime that I’ve seen so far for Winter 2020. I would fully recommend this series, but it may not be for everyone. The uncensored version does get fairly graphic and might make some people uncomfortable.