OniAi: Complete Series

Jean-Luc Godard once famously said that all you need for a movie plot is a guy, a girl, and a gun. The anime corollary would only require an innocent young guy surrounded by seductive girls. Although derived from both a novel and a manga, OniAi is a reductionist sitcom with a well-worn "harem" plot, stripped (an apt choice of words) to its bare (ditto) essentials. Transfer-student Akito, a pure-hearted 16-year-old virgin, resides in a school dormitory where he is ever-besieged by libidinous young female classmates determined to sleep with him. The ultra-competitive harem includes busty, eye-patch-wearing, aggressively bisexual class president Arashi, and…Akito's very own sister, Akiko—a reader of Japanese “forbidden love” novels who thinks of little besides how to entice the boy into consensual incest/marriage. Even at his part-time job—freelancing for a publisher (some jabs at Nippon literature here)—polite Akito is amorously pursued by his curvy cougar editrix. OniAi is chockfull of double entendres, panty flashes, nipple slips, and gratuitous swimsuit shopping, although the sex remains only talk (except for the bonus mini-shorts showcasing the femme cast in softcore lesbian clinches). Presenting all 12 episodes from 2012 in a Japanese-language-only set (with English subtitles), rated TV-MA, this is not a necessary purchase. (C. Cassady)