So we get every tired isekai trope in the book thrown at us with pure apathy. All in all, I'm not sure how I feel about Harem in the Labyrinth of Another World. How else could you explain this show, which somehow combines the two absolute worst recurring trends in modern anime? That he really wants to buy a sex slave.
There is not one second of this part that attempts to tell a real story. Seriously, what is the point of airing a show like this during broadcast hours when all of the sex and nudity is going to be censored to hell and back? The point is slavery fetish porn, and the version on Crunchyroll is censored to hell and back, including, hilariously, bleeping out the words "sex slave. It's an obvious attempt to paint over the fact that everything he's doing is objectively unsympathetic, and the mealymouthed excuses only serve to make him less likable than he already was. That he sentenced a man to a life of slavery. Potatoman wakes up with a magic sword and the ability to read game menus, proceeds to kill some nameless bandits and shrug his way through a tutorial village, and then gets talked into buying a slave so the actual point of this show can presumably happen next episode. This, it is clear, is not just about hapless, horny seventeen-year-old isekai victim Michio assembling a harem in a labyrinth in another world – it's about him buying a harem in a labyrinth in another world. It turns the scene of the friendly neighborhood slave trader selling our hero on his finest dog-girl maid into a joke right out of Yu-Gi-Oh! I feel that this first episode of Harem in the Labyrinth of Another World was stuck in a bit of a no-win situation. I'll just have to watch a bit more and see. What really kills this story dead is just how badly it tries to justify and rationalize why it's totally cool for our protagonist – who the show insists is a perfectly nice guy – should buy a woman exclusively to have sex with. That we cap off the episode with him heroically vowing to earn enough money to buy his dog-girl slave of choice just puts the rotten cherry on top of the shit sundae that is this whole premise. I'm not even mad about the slavery stuff, at this point, since that's just par for the course with the genre, but Harem in Another World can't even succeed at being shameless trash. Well, actually his first questions are whether the slave can kill him or run away, which demonstrates an understanding that hey, enslavement is actually pretty awful and what he's doing to another person is indefensible.
Man, they got that second season of World's End Harem out fast! Going by its premiere, Harem in the Labyrinth of Another World is one of those perfect storms of garbage that I almost have to suspect was a prank created specifically to make me suffer, personally. Harem in the Labyrinth of Another World? High school student Michio Kaga was wandering aimlessly through life and the Internet, when he finds himself transported from a shady website to a fantasy world — reborn as a strong man who can use "cheat" powers. The second season of Fruit of Evolution already got announced, though, so I can only assume that Harem in the Labyrinth of Another World is simply another random act of psychic violence made to prove that, if there ever even was a God, He has long since abandoned us to a universe guided by chaos and apathy. His real-world morals can be completely ignored, just as one would do when playing Grand Theft Auto or Call of Duty. He uses his powers to become an adventurer, earn money, and get the right to claim girls that have idol-level beauty to form his very own harem. Basically, in this episode we see Michio grapple with the following facts: - That he is trapped with no way home. That's because otherwise, this premiere would be a total dirge to get through.
I have been informed that "nars" is the in-world currency in Harem in the Labyrinth of Another World. Michio's vibes, by the way, are absolutely rancid. Discuss this in the forum (216 posts) |. No conflicted ethics, no struggling with the idea that he has no choice but to buy a slave to survive in this world. He hears he can pay money to get his dick wet and asks, "How much? " It is startlingly ugly, with its hand-drawn characters poorly composited onto computer-modeled backgrounds worthy of a Windows 2000 screensaver and baffling directorial flourishes. I'm never gonna be into this whole slave-wife shtick that so many isekai like to dip their toes into, but I'd at least respect the story more if it admitted its hero was an amoral creep who just shrugs when he inadvertently sells one person into slavery and then is easily massaged into buying another. But if you're watching this for the mature rating and sexy bits, you may find yourself disappointed, because you really can't see anything besides some highly questionable boob "jiggling" (they move more like clappers) and, as an added bit of censorship, several of the spoken words are beeped out. That this is a real world, not a game world. I often say that the one job that a premiere has to do is make an argument for why a show should exist, and Harem in the Labyrinth of Another World fails on all counts. Unfortunately, trying to do both in a single episode leaves the former feeling a bit too rushed—especially given all the heavy lifting it has to do in explaining why Michio is able to throw out his earthy morals and get right into buying slaves. Michio has literally not a single discernable personality trait, and he apparently got reborn into a bargain-bin RPG that probably cost a dollar in some Steam sale. Either way, it's a distasteful plot element made worse by the fact that he only gets into lady-shopping when he's specifically sold Roxanne as a sex slave by a canny, yet utterly reprehensible, slave trader.
While there's nothing quite as bizarre as the digital artifacting that turned WEH into a dada-ist masterpiece, we instead get a show entirely built around our hero buying women to have sex with, where they have to bleep out the words "sex slave. " Doesn't make it good, and I won't be bothering with another second of this mess, but at least it made this delve into the labyrinth tolerable. The characters can't even say the word for the smut they're trying to peddle—and that's usually not a good sign for the quality of the smut! But that's not the main concern of this show's audience, is it? Just a single tube of lipstick costs over $30. Or buying the harem to go into the labyrinth. On the other, it had to set up the first driving goal of the anime: making enough money in five days to buy Roxanne. That he murdered a whole bunch of people. As long as he follows these rules, he is in the clear. Well, now that I've gotten my silly joke out of the way, all I have to say about Harem in the Labyrinth of Another World is that it's bad. Even if this was all that Harem in Another World was going for, it would still be the worst premiere I've seen this summer, because it doesn't even have the dignity to pretend like it has a reason to exist. The episode seems to loosely imply that this is a coping mechanism—something to help keep him sane when faced with the true gravity and implications of his situation and his actions in it. After all, it would make him far more empathetic than he appears in this episode—especially in scenes like the one where he is lusting over a virgin slave that the slave trader assures him it's okay to buy and have sex with "because she actually wants it.
But thankfully the version I watched was slathered with error screens and other equally hilarious ways to cover up tits and taints, and had the cadence of an especially spicy episode of The Jerry Springer Show. It's boring as all hell, and barely animated since all of the production values were funneled into the jiggling, cranium-sized bazongas that are now locked behind those censor bars. I can't even give it my lowest score, because that is usually reserved for shows that make me actively upset or miserable. There's just not enough here to make up for its deficiencies even if all of those deficiencies don't bother you, so if you're looking for sexy fanservice, I'd recommend Bastard!! If, however, what we got in this episode is all we ever get on that front, I think I may pass on the rest of this series. The censorship is an interesting combination of the massive amount of coverage we saw in World End Harem but done with road signs and computer error messages rather than a five- year-old with a sharpie, and I'm hard-pressed to say if it's better or worse; at least it's not as ugly, I guess? It is sure to anger anyone trying to watch this show for its sexual content, but for my money there's no better way to watch this show.
That he is truly a stranger in a strange world. This article has been modified since it was originally posted; see change history. How NOT to Summon a Demon Lord managed to have its cake and enslave it too by having Diablo's pair of D/S girlfriends get collared by pure happenstance. That's an expensive makeup brand! How was the first episode? Rating: Holy crap, a slave costs 60, 000 Nars products? Seriously, I figured it would be a good long while before we saw another show so desperate to be porn, held back by the strictures of TV broadcasting until it morphed into a surreal, hilarious car crash. Don't worry, though, he's pretty chill with that, even though it means that he's become a murderer by wiping out an entire bandit gang and got a guy sold into slavery, because…that's just how this world works? Just add its name to the baffling long list of "Anime That Desperately Wants to Be Porn But Are Too Cowardly to Commit".
Over this in a heartbeat. Michio is Yet Another Kirito Clone except that he thinks solely with his dick the moment sex comes into the equation. Michio, like another isekai protagonist this season, failed to read the pop-up on his computer, and that catapulted him into what he thought was the VR game of his dreams…but then he can't log out. Basically, Michio is able to deal with everything that happens by couching it in game terms. Yet here we are just three months later and we've got a contender that could be even funnier than its spiritual predecessor. That's the kind of amazing, unintentional art that can make for a hilarious time.
Or hell, just do away with attempts at justification and make Michio a total scumlord who enjoys it. This is just pathetic. It is 20 minutes of reading Playboy for the articles, but all the articles are 4chan posts recycling old JRPG memes. Moreover, each step is important because it forms how he comes to view the world he is stuck in and his own place in it. It's just watching this anthropomorphic department store mannequin check his stats and read info screens on his video-game menu while characters dole out meaningless exposition. If we actually get more into his psychology and how his morals from our world are clashing with his actions in this one, it could be an interesting examination of the whole "slaves are totally cool to have" thing seen in so many recent isekai anime.
He doesn't just decide to make the best of a bad situation, or to do as the Romans do. Rating: [404 Error – Not Found]. I'm not sure if that's original to the source material, but it is fairly annoying; sure we can guess what words are being used, but it makes about as much sense as how words are edited out of songs on the radio – if we all know, why bother? He doesn't feel disgust over how common slavery is in this world for a single instant, but accepts it with a shrug and, later, an erection. The writing is dull and the story is poorly paced, although it is kind of funny seeing the slave trader Alan utilize car salesman hard-sell tactics to convince Michio to invest in a sex slave. The first two-thirds of the premiere is the most paint-by-numbers "Reborn in a Video-Game" isekai imaginable. He gets to have sex!!
Multiply that by 60, 000 and it's well over a million dollars. You could easily do that here and it'd save both the show and audience a lot of time. To all of this it must be added that there's not a whole lot going on with the plot, either.