Junji MajimaYusuke KobayashiKaede YuasaTakako Tanaka
Interspecies Reviewers
Episode 1 also reviewed here: Anime 1st episodes 2020: I
Also known as: Ishuzoku Reviewers
Medium: TV, series
Year: 2020
Director: Yuki Ogawa
Writer: Kazuyuki Fudeyasu
Original creator: Amahara
Actor: Carin Isobe, Hisako Kanemoto, Junji Majima, Kaede Yuasa, Kengo Kawanishi, Kenji Hamada, Kyo Yaoya, M.A.O, Makoto Koichi, Mari Hino, Miyu Tomita, Momoyo Koyama, Natsumi Takamori, Rei Matsuzaki, Reina Aoyama, Shiori Izawa, Takako Tanaka, Yoko Hikasa, Yuka Nukui, Yuri Kato, Yusuke Kobayashi
Keywords: anime, boobs, fantasy
Country: Japan
Language: Japanese
Format: 12 episodes
Url: https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/encyclopedia/anime.php?id=22612
Website category: Anime 2020
Review date: 16 September 2022
Ishuzoku Reviewers
It's about fantasy adventurers who spend all their spare time going around inter-species brothels. It's not a hentai since it doesn't have explicit sex (unless you count the infamous "mayonnaise jar" scene in ep.8), but it's full of bawdiness, nudity and a no-holds-barred attitude. (The show got dropped from Funimation, Amazon, Tokyo MX and Sun TV, because it's even steamier than the original manga.)
There's a human called Stunk, an elf called Zel, an angel called Crim and a bunch of others. Crim's a gentle, sensitive hermaphrodite, but the rest are sleazehounds.
The good news is that in the universe being portrayed, prostitution is legal and the girls all enjoy their work. The show's sex-positive and 100% consensual. The best episodes are imaginative and funny.
At its worst, though, it's kind of disasteful. Hurm. I watched it, but I don't know if I like it or not. Our heroes (except Crim) aren't people you'd choose to know, with their one-track minds and disinterest in women except as sex objects. I didn't hate them, but I'd have been happy if they'd got eaten by green slime. Similarly, this is an idealised fantasy vision of the sex industry, with no criminal involvement, coercion, unwilling participants, slavery, shame, mental issues, drug addiction, etc. Certain episodes or scenes I found a bit ewww, including:
Ep.2 = human-sized clients getting it on with tiny fairy prostitutes. There's no age issue, but I still didn't like the imagery. What's more, the episode's exploring the idea that "bigger is better" (for both men and women), so later we visit some dairy minotaurs. The lactation fetish there was off-putting too.
Ep.5 = which is, ironically, one of the show's best episodes. Cyclops girls are judged on eyeball size. There's worthwhile exploration here of perceived female worth, etc. Our heroes help girls tackle their crippling self-confidence issues and... uh, encourage them to go on being prostitutes. Erm. Really. It fits the cultural context of the show's fantasy universe, but, um.
Ep.8 = the rape fantasy brothel. In fairness, you couldn't do this idea more inoffensively. The girls are in control, it's all just acting (sometimes very badly), the jokes are funny, etc. It's a good episode. They've made it very watchable. However it's still a rape fantasy brothel and I wanted to flee and hide from the male characters' positive reactions to it.
Ep.9 = I disliked the cartoonish lesbian movie shoot. Dunno why, but that put me right off.
That said, though, this is basically a happy, bouncy show where no one gets hurt and everyone enjoys themselves. If you can take it at face value without thinking too hard, it's a laugh. Zel's favourite prostitute is Mitsue, for instance, a saggy old bag who's probably in her eighties. (Zel's an elf. He's turned on by anyone under 100 years old.) There's a fun body-positive message in the widespread reverence for Mitsue. I also liked Meidri, the bird-woman waitress at our heroes' usual inn, who's the only person in the show to think Stunk and the rest are irredeemable scumbags.
The show's strongest point is its fantasy RPG sex industry worldbuilding. It's good at thinking through scenarios you definitely won't have considered before. The gender swapping (ep.3), the full succubi (eps.4,8), the fire salamander (ep.4), the doll puppet golems (ep.6), etc. (The golems have a tank of creepy swimming vaginas. You browse the shop's shelves, choose puppet body parts and assemble them into a golem girl.) The egg-laying in ep.7 is so weird that even our heroes are freaked out. Undead and slime girl magic in ep.9. All that's pretty cool. The decoy doll industry in ep.10 is healthy and likeable, being more like a normal relationship.
The show also has some game-specific monsters. Ep.5 has Myconids (mushroom people) and ep.12 has a Treant (living trees), both from D&D. (The Treants were originally Tolkein's Ents, though, just as halflings are clearly hobbits with the serial numbers filed off.) Similarly, Ep.10's decoy dolls are from Terraria, the 2D sandbox game that was first released in 2011 for Microsoft Windows.
Would I recommend this show? Meaah. Not really, but it's passable. It's an original idea and quite imaginative. Don't think about it too hard while you're watching it.