Title: Pure Love Studio: Anime 18 Genres:: Hentai Reviewer: W. McQuade and E. Nagy

Rating:

What is Hentai? Yeah, that’s a somewhat obtuse way to start a DVD review, but your answer to this question may very well determine whether you get any enjoyment whatsoever out of Pure Love.

Dictionary.com (yes, really) defines Hentai as “sexually explicit animation or comics.”

And while it would certainly qualify under this definition, Pure Love doesn’t look like Hentai. Not even bad Hentai. And while ordinarily the artwork is just another category we look at when rating these things, the art in Pure Love is so off-putting that we felt the need to begin our review with it. Pure Love seems to have been animated in Flash. This alone wouldn’t be a huge problem, as in my opinion, one of the hottest animated characters ever (Erin Esurance. Shut up.) is Flash-based.

No, the problem isn’t that the animation was done in Flash, but that it was done by somebody who isn’t very good at Flash. The movement is so “click and drag,” the whole thing looks like computerized Colorforms featuring ugly, glassy-eyed characters.

If your definition of Hentai includes something about conforming to traditional anime styles while taking advantage of the medium’s ability to illustrate sex acts that would be nearly impossible in live action, then this is not for you. If your definition of Hentai is considerably broader and you don’t mind terrible animation, then read on.

Of course the plot, for those who CAN get past the terrible animation, is also terrible. Hiro loves adventure, finds a book about a secret cave, then goes to the cave where people are looking for some kind of special herb that will help the princess be free of some kind of hypnotic nymphomaniac sleepwalking thing. Add to this the predictable “sexual tension” between Hiro and his female friends, and you get a lifeless plot that makes little or no sense, has way too many characters, is nearly impossible to follow, and makes no attempt whatsoever to draw you in.

The sex, as I’m sure you can probably guess, is also terrible. Bad animation + ugly characters = bad, ugly sex.

The voice acting – amazingly enough – was pretty good, however. “Bobby Knowles” does a reasonable job as Hiro, and the whole cast seems to do the best they can with the nonsense they were given for a script. In fact, the voice acting saves this thing from getting zero stars.

Overall, we found Pure Love to be barely tolerable at best, and we would highly recommend that you avoid this one.