Title: Astarotte no Omocha!
Genre: Fantasy, Romance
Rating: 3.5/10
Summary: In the medieval fantasy world of Alfheimr, succubus princess Astarotte Ygvar, the first princess of the kingdom of Ygvar, has just reached the age of 10. For the coming years of a young succubus’ life, it is necessary for them to have a male harem. In order to maintain their body and preserve their beautiful appearance, they must consume a substance only found on males. This substance is a liquid called
Sauzfryma, better known as semen. The princess, however, bears a great dislike against men, and only agrees to create a harem if a human male is to join. The catch is, nobody has been able to travel between Alfheimr and the human world, Midgard, for over a millennium.
Review: Everyone once in a while you get those anime that don’t receive the credit they deserve. A diamond covered in soot would be a good description. Such beautify hidden under dark and disgusting particles, never to be seen. Well
Astarotte no Omacha! was
not one of those anime, not even close. I would find that many viewers would probably watch this thinking, “ Why am I still watching this?” and “I feel dirty…”. Only to finally end up thinking “What was the point of that?”.
Astarotte no Omacha! seems to have the sole purpose of making its audience feel like they should go to jail for loligagging (haha… puns). At no point in this anime did I feel it was worth watching and probably only stuck with it for my inability to not finish new series and my strange fandom for
Rie Kugimiya (same reason I watched
Dragon Crisis! and
Hidan no Aria). I feel bad that she gets roles in such bad anime like these. Alas, that is another rant for another day. Let’s get on with the bashi- I mean review.
Starting with the show’s second strongest field, art, I would say that things aren’t looking too bright. Not literally since the art was quite sunshiny and happy, but figuratively in the “this review isn’t going to get any nicer” sort of way. As a viewer against ecchi anime with certain exceptions this anime wasn’t looking too great from the get-go. It not only made it impossible to watch in any form of public place, the constant little girl panty (and/or no panty) shots made it so I needed to lock my door, pretend I’m not home, and then lie if anyone asks what I just watched. It would probably be deemed more acceptable to say I was watching pr0n rather than
Astarotte no Omacha!. At least then I wouldn’t go to jail for watching underage girls in very suggestive situations. Pretty much saying that the “art” is really just seeing pretty colors and panty shots. That being said, whether good or bad, you really only get panty shots of one girl, Astarotte. Doesn’t help that she was the biggest underage problem though. Overall I had nothing against the art other than it was a bit too cute for my tastes. It seems like they were trying to make the anime a strange shoujo-shounen mix by having suggestive themes for guys and cute romance for girls.
I don’t know why I’m bothering to even write a paragraph for the story because there really wasn’t one. For a romance it didn’t do so great because there weren’t any real romantic scenes. When the series first starts off you get a nice sense of what kind of guy Naoya is. An average Joe with a big heart (like every other romance anime out there). When he sees that the princess isn’t too fond of having a male boy-toy hanging around, he does his best to try and ease into her life and the lives of her servants. Of course as the series progresses everyone starts to fall for him, romantically or in respect. He does nothing particularly special other than taking care of the princess. I guess what I found weird is the relationship between him and Astarotte. Originally he is brought to the Creature Realm to become part of the young princess’s harem; a harem that the princess doesn’t actually want but needs in order to become a successful queen. What brings about such a strange relationship is the age difference. Now I wont lie to you and pretend to be some romantic by saying “Love has no age limits!”. It does. And a thirteen year age gap is definitely beyond that limit. They bring this awkward standing to light rather early in the anime as well. However, after the quick brush over explaining why Naoya has a daughter considering his age, they leave it be. The age gap was never brought up again and everything was assumed to be hunky-dory. I don’t know how they do it there in the Creature Realm, but by any Human Realm standards that’s creepy. I felt that they did a pretty good job with the beginning interactions because Naoya didn’t immediately fall for the princesses. However, for a romance it doesn’t do a great job. The entire anime I felt that Naoya was just acting like Astarotte’s father instead of one of her harem men. I’m not sure about any of you girls out there, but that definitely doesn’t seem like a love interest I’d want to get into. I can’t say that the anime did really anything right for its genre. Compared to anime such as
Nichijou,
SKET Dance, and
Fireball Charming it seems that
Astarotte no Omacha! lacked heavily in the comedy department. There was nothing new offered to the table. Almost all of it was awkward sexual moments or the bit-too-loving servant bit. I can’t recall laughing once. Finally when it all came to a close there was a final shining moment. Soon to be put out, but a shining moment nonetheless. I actually quite enjoyed the “final fling” Astarotte and Naoya had. It was a little cute, a little sweet, and a little weird… Any moments I felt were turning the anime around for the better all crashed when I realized THEY ARE THIRTEEN YEARS APART. So needless to say that any and all points of the anime that could have brought it back came crashing down because of that initial set up. To sum it all up: everything was far too predictable and I couldn’t get behind any of the touching moments because the characters weren’t relatable.
The soundtrack wasn’t bad. I liked the opening. That’s… about it.
Final statements: This anime is an avoid watch hands down. There is nothing that I find worth watching especially for someone of my age (older than 18). The looming fear of cops busting down my door and finding this “dirty stash of anime” ultimately taking me to jail didn’t help. For any and all viewers out there I strongly suggest looking elsewhere for your romance and/or comedy fix.
