Aria: The Scarlet Ammo

Bullets and blades and schoolgirl-fetishizing, oh my! In a violent world, Tokyo's Butei High School trains teens to be "Butei," i.e., freelance bodyguard/avenger/mercenaries (it's the one campus that requires every student to carry a loaded gun and a knife). Kinji is reluctantly enrolled, mainly to redeem the memory of his fallen Butei brother, but he becomes the center of an action-harem of heroines and villainesses, chiefly half-English Aria (who is adorned with demon horns and fangs, for some reason) and magic-wielding Shirayuki. The trio face assorted ancestral enemies and each other, in situations sometimes derived from films like Speed and Pulp Fiction, while jealous warrior-girls with varied (and much-discussed) bosom sizes compete for the main male. There is a mild twist in that the principle characters are descendants of famous historical figures and other anime characters, including the master thief Arsène Lupin (but any continuity with Japan's classic Lupin cartoon adventures is tenuous at best). And Kinji involuntarily lapses into a secondary personality of a super-cool 007-type during moments of extreme stress or sexual arousal (the nudity here is mostly saved for the bathhouse epilogue episode). Compiling all 13 episodes from 2011 on a dual-language set, rated TV-14, extras include episode commentaries. Optional. (C. Cassady)