The temptation to be invisible is just too hard to resist.
What They Say:
Mie’s days of invisible bliss eventually came to an end after he was caught red-handing on a previous escapade. The strange medicine that made people undetectable to the naked eye was locked up securely in a safe by his co-workers. Things should have ended there, but incidents involving a perverted invisible individual are still taking place.
The suspicion naturally falls on Mie, who flatly denies responsibility for any of the naughtiness. But if he isn’t the invisible stud this time, then who is?
The Review:
Audio:
The audio presentation for this release is pretty basic though we do get the original Japanese language in stereo along with the new English dub, both of which are encoded at 384kbps. The show is fairly straightforward hentai material where it’s all dialogue based and it has a center channel kind of feeling for most of it. There’s a pretty familiar mix here where it doesn’t deal much with placement or depth but it captures the general dialogue well and handles the moaning just right too, whihc is what counts. The OVAs don’t stretch themselves much and it’s pretty basic but the dialogue is clean and clear throughout and we had no problems with dropouts or distortions during regular playback.
Video:
Originally released in 2010, the transfer for the two OVAs here are presented in their original aspect ratio of 1.78:1 and is enhanced for anamoprhic playback. The show has a pretty basic look about it which is expected as there’s not a lot of detail, the colors are pretty bright and outgoing and the look in general is what you could call standard hentai fare. The first episode gets a little dodgy briefly towards the beginning as it uses footage from the previous OVA series and that introduces some jagged lines and less than stellar looking material. But with all the new material, it’s pretty clean and clear looking with no real discernible problems to be had with it. Colors are generally solid outside of some minor noise in a few scenes and its free of problems such as cross coloration. There’s a fair bit of banding that’s visible in a lot of the flesh tone areas and a few other areas, but that’s inherent in the source itself.
Packaging:
The packaging for this release comes in a standard sized DVD case and it uses artwork that does have to work with the difficulty of one of the characters being invisible. The front cover gives us the image of the manager being accosted where we also see the shadowed look of the invisible man himself, which looks a bit odd but is really the only way it can be done easily and make sense. The logo is strewn along the top and actually has a bit of a cute look to it with the style used for it. The back cover is pretty pink and white heavy as it has a pairing of the girls along the left where they’re naked but still not showing much of anything. There’s a few other shots from the show as well which highlights the sexual nature of it easily enough. The premise is kept simple and it has the usual rundown of production credits and a solid technical grid that’s accurate. No show related inserts are included nor is there a reversible cover.
Menu:
The menu design for this release is kind of awkward and I’m not really sure what to make of it. It works with a blue sky background with a few clouds to it and it has a store sign that features the name of the series, though it avoids the “returns” part which is kind of awkward. But more awkward is the three character pieces here where it feels like a lot of cute and paste without a sense of balance or placement about them that works well. The navigation strip along the bottom keeps it very simple with the three main features and the language setup is easy to deal with. It’s a functional menu with an odd look about it but it works overall.
Extras:
None.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
Four years after the release of The Invisible Stud, Vanilla returned in 2010 with a two episode sequel series that delves back into the world of invisibility pills. It’s rather unusual for a sequel series like this to get made after so much time and what they do here doesn’t really stretch beyond what the original did, though it expands the cast a bit. The premise of the first was simple enough in that a young working man named Mie lucked into a pill container with pills that allowed him to turn invisible for a bit. Naturally, being the horny and lonely pervert that he is, he used it for dastardly deeds. He ended up getting caught by his manager at the convenience store and had his pills taken away, but it sort of worked out for Mie in the end as one of the other girls in the store has turned into a pretty regularly bed buddy for him.
This series picks up a bit later after a mild recap and essentially Mie is still the little pervert that hes’ always been, but he’s been beaten down a fair bit by others and is a little meek in some ways. He’s still leering at everyone and definitely interested in having sex with them all, and certainly imagines it. But his situation gets more tenuous when it turns out that someone else may be using the pills, or have access to other ones, and is causing trouble with them by accosting people, including those at the store since there seems to be a pattern. This puts Mie under suspicion, but he actually comes across as pretty innocent throughout a lot of this, at least as innocent as someone like him can actually be.
What we’re treated to is a shadowed invisible person who is definitely having their way with people, but it’s rather circumspect in some ways. The attacks on others is a bit simple and not really set up well, such as when the manager gets taken down while walking across an overpass and and is tripped, which sets her up for being taken completely advantage of in a fairly brutal way by the invisible person. It’s one of the main sex scenes in the first episode and it definitely paints the image of a dangerous person who is doing a lot of things that won’t earn them any understanding in the slightest. With it taking place at night in a public place, and plays out rather roughly in a number of ways, it’s certainly not a scene that really works in a positive way, but it does show the lengths that our invisible lead will go to.
Of course, while the show has its darker elements to it – elements which while dark never really feel threatening because of the simplistic nature of the animation – we also have the comical side of it as well. When there’s reveals about what’s going on, it’s done in the midst of the store with Mie as the only male there and quite a lot of women, from employees to the seeming gaggle of schoolgirls that regularly show up there. It gets pretty pervy in weird ways with how Mie approaches them after he gets his hand on the pills again from the original source, and it comes with a few quirks. While previously we got to see him just go invisible, he can use his abilities in new ways here that lets him view through other peoples clothes, first just the top layer and then the underwear. Of course, he also finds it has some bad limits and that just makes it something you have to be careful with.
In Summary:
The Invisible Stud Returns follows up the original in pretty much familiar ways and it does what I expected it to. The property is one that definitely plays to some more unusual aspects and it gets a bit dark at times, but it’s done in a way that’s hard to take seriously. There’s a very simple style of animation here but it fits with what came before. The show is one that really does have a good kernel to work with, but it’s populated with characters that don’t work well within it and go in directions that are just not all that pleasing at times. But the concept has its positives and there are fun moments to it when it gets a bit more consensual. It’s really still quite surprising that the show got made, coming four years after the original, but it proves that even odd hentai shows can get sequels when you least expect it.
Features:
Japanese 2.0 Language, English 2.0 Language, English Subtitles
Content Grade: C
Audio Grade: B+
Video Grade: C+
Packaging Grade: B-
Menu Grade: C+
Extras Grade: N/A
Released By: Kitty Media
Release Date: January 22nd, 2013
MSRP: $19.99
Running Time: 60 Minutes
Video Encoding: 480i/p MPEG-2
Aspect Ratio: 1.78:1 Anamoprhic Widescreen
Review Equipment:
Sony KDS-R70XBR2 70″ LCoS 1080P HDTV, Sony PlayStation3 Blu-ray player via HDMI set to 1080p, Onkyo TX-SR605 Receiver and Panasonic SB-TP20S Multi-Channel Speaker System With 100-Watt Subwoofer.