Title: Kizuna 1 Studio: Be Beautiful Genres:: Hentai, Softcore Reviewer: W. McQuade and E. Nagy

Rating:

McQuade here. From the outset of Kizuna, we could tell that it wasn’t going to be like the vast majority of Hentai we’ve seen. Not because it was gay (or “Yaoi”) but because the warning at the beginning of the DVD said the film would contain "Scenes of violence, nudity, and mild sexual situations." Mild sexual situations? Hell, I thought Pokemon had “mild” sexual situations.

So, Kizuna (which means something like “family ties”) is the story of Ranmaru, his boyfriend Enjyoji, and Enjyoji’s half-brother Sagano. It starts with a scene of Ran defeating Sagano in a kendo match, followed by a car trying to run down Enjyoji. Ran saves him, but in the process gets badly hurt and has to quit kendo. From the intro, it seems like kendo is going to play an inappropriately large role in the series.

So we then go to college, where we meet the professor Ran works for. Ran’s boss (whose name we never wrote down – so due to his grey moustache and sunglasses, we’ll call him “Professor Stan Lee”) invites Ran to a bar. Ran doesn’t drink but goes anyway, and it turns out that in the Prof’s dictionary, “bar” means “gay brothel.” Stan Lee slips Ran a mickey, and starts taking advantage of him, but is stopped by Sagano.

Turns out Sagano loves Ran, and hates Enjyoji, and there’s a big confrontation where the two are going to fight, but Stan Lee hired some goons to get revenge on Sagano, and they end up attacking during the battle, and Enjyoji and his half-brother Sagano team up to kick the crap out of the baddies. And that’s pretty much it.

Again, we were somewhat split on the animation. It’s hand-drawn, and even though the packaging has a production date of 1994, judging from the unbelievably awful keyboard music, I’d have put this one squarely in the 80s. The colors are very soft and muted, and I found it an enjoyable watch, but the art is very sloppy and jittery at times, so someone who wasn’t raised on Mazinger-Z might not be as keen on it. The only dialogue option was Japanese with English Subtitles, so we can’t really comment on the voice acting.

The sex was, in fact, mild. It opened with a scene of Enjyoji and Ran together, and there were two more scenes of the two lovebirds. No naughty bits were shown anywhere, and the actions taking place had to be inferred from the facial expression on the recipient. (elated gasp? Blowjob. Eye-bulging wince? Getting it in the bum.) There were also two scenes, once in the bar with Stan Lee, the other on the grass with Sagano where it looks like Ran’s gonna get himself taken advantage of, but in a surprising twist for Hentai, both scenes are broken up before anything happens. But, because apparently the studio would have lost its Hentai license if there wasn’t at least one non-consensual scene, in one of the happy couple’s scenes, Ran didn’t really feel like it and Enjyoji “insisted."

Overall, we both liked this one. It was a bit overdramatic for what it was, but this first episode started what could eventually become some decent character development. The plot was interesting enough, even though the series seems like it’s going to be little more than a gay relationship study. But again, the sex was very mild, so if you’re heading into this one expecting some wild boy-on-boy action, you might want to keep looking.