Temple or, TenPuru: No One Can Live On Loneliness might have been written off as another harem anime lacking substance, humour and a romance plot that will continue to blue-ball the viewer by others, but the more cultured and enlightened ones amongst us anime degenerates will stop, think and engage our brains before missing out on a manga adaption written by the same person who brought us Grand Blue.
Temple is about college student Akagami who seeks a life without worldly desires such as sex, sex and sex after being traumatised by his father leaving him at a young age so he can “become friends with women all over the world”. After a fatal collision with the love of his life on the street at night, he decides to become a Buddhist temple monk and leave his potential college playboy lifestyle behind him. Unfortunately for him, the temple has become a nunnery and filled with hot women. Also, the temple has fallen on hard times and Akagami’s deadbeat father owes the temple a lot of money so he's stuck there until he pays off the debt.
The hot nuns include Yuzuki, an airhead and the reason Akagami became a monk, her little tsundere sister Tsukuyo, Mia Christoph who’s in a similar boat to Akagami as she comes from a rich European family of perverts and her friend Kagura who likes to film her. Others don't quite fit into the harem like the youngest sister Kurage and Aunt Kiki who are there to simply be hilarious trolls.
Whilst most harem romcoms completely forget to add the com, Temple is one of the funniest harem anime I’ve seen in a while. Some moments had me bursting out laughing due to its very snappy writing and broad sense of humour. You can even explain away the lack of rom due to the unique situation they all find themselves in. I will admit that the first episode didn’t leave me with the best of impressions, but after the laughs and tits were out it becomes an incredibly fun watch.
The animation is the only real issue I have. Whilst the art isn't bad there are some very obvious and weird animation shortcuts used which become hard to ignore once you’ve noticed them.
Temple is that rare harem anime that crosses that line from being okay to being actually good. It's a simple yet thoroughly entertaining story about ridiculous people being ridiculous whilst trying to not think about stupidly horny they all are.
7/10 Good.
