Sekirei The Complete Series   Starring: Saori Hayami, Shinnosuke Tachibana, Aya Endo and Daisuke Matsubara Manga Entertainment RRP: £29.99 MANG3105 Certificate: 15 Available 15 August 2011

Minato Sahashi is a young man with little going for him. Despondent, as he has failed the school's entry exam for the second time, it looks like his life is going nowhere fast, until, expectantly, a beautiful Sekirei, Musubi, falls from the sky landing on top of him. The two bond and he moves Musubi into his apartment. Slowly he discovers that he is an Ashikabi, a special soul which will link with one or all of the 108 Sekirei in the forthcoming tournament...

Sekirei (2008) is a fan-service anime show based on the manga series written and illustrated by Sakurako Gokurakuin. The show was directed by Keizō Kusakawa and written by Takao Yoshioka. The two disc DVD set contains all of the twelve episodes from the first series as well as the OVA as an extra.

The show contains the sort of deliberate sexual imagery so beloved of fan service aficionados. The girls invariably have impossibly large breasts, which are exposed during moments of undress or when their clothes are torn off them during combat, and there are copious moments of panty flashing.

Minato is often placed in the position of the accidental pervert, by having his face accidentally pressed against crotch or breast, while all the time professing his innocence and behaving in an embarrassed fashion. Although the show falls very far from being Hentai, the title sequence makes no odds about the reason for the show's existence, with girls in a sequence of provocative poses. If you get past the title sequence, then you really have no grounds to complain about the show's content.

For this type of a show the character design by Shinpei Tomooka are strikingly strong and the overall quality of the animation remains high throughout. The script is often strong, although the concentration on the fighting and the erotic high jinks meant that the writers seem to have taken their eye off the narrative and frankly, so few pieces of information are given that the show takes on the air of a domestic comedy, rather than an on-going story of female aliens forced to fight.

The show has a very decent 1.78:1 anamorphic transfer with a choice of a decent, English 5.1, apart for the eleven minute OVA the only extras on show are the textless opening and closing sequences.

It’s not a bad show and can even manage some moments of real humour. In the scheme of anime shows, it’s not a great one, but it is one of the better fan service shows.

7

Charles Packer