Stories of childhood love proposals have their humorous moments. This one is saddled with the reality of such a situation.
What They Say:
Childhood memories can be very confusing. Shin’ya’s fondest memory is of playing in the park with a special girl and promising to marry her. He had always believed that girl was his best friend Shizuku, but upon meeting his brother’s new fiance Akane, Shin’ya realizes she was actually the “special girl!” After Shin’ya discovers his brother won’t have sex with Akane, will he cross the line in order to help her experience true ecstasy?
The Review:
Audio:
The audio presentation for this release is pretty decent overall as we get it in its original stereo form with both the Japanese and English language tracks encoded at a somewhat standard 192kbps. The show isn’t exactly one that’s aggressive in any way when it comes to the audio as it’s a very simple and no frills forward soundstage affair. Dialogue doesn’t have much in the way of placement and it has a very center channel feeling to it. It is completely clean and free of problems though which makes it a good release since playback is without issue. It simply doesn’t have a lot going for it in terms of placement, directionality or depth. That’s for the show itself.
Video:
Originally released in 2006, the transfer for this OVA is presented in its original full frame aspect ratio. The two episodes were originally released on separate discs and this is just a repackaging of them together, so we get two discs. Destined For Love is one of those adult shows that’s very minimal with the animation so the transfer here does show the jerkiness a bit in how it moves about, but that’s the only real issue and it’s in the source material itself. The colors are bright and vibrant while remaining very solid throughout. The bitrate is fairly average for the most part, which isn’t a bad thing considering there’s little change in the animation itself a lot of times. When there’s more active scenes, the bitrates are quite a bit higher and that helps it to look as best as it can. Destined For Love is not a high end or even a mid range title with its animation, but the transfer does its best to represent what it is.
Packaging:
Destined For Love had me interested from the moment I saw the cover artwork, though I figured the animation wouldn’t live up to it. There’s a certain appeal to these kinds of designs and their origins that continue to interest me. The front cover has a very appealing shot of Sayumi reaching from behind and undressing Akane out of her school uniform with a beautiful background of a bedroom behind them. It has lots of warm and inviting colors to it which work well with the clean yet detailed character designs. The back cover works with a lot of the same colors with pinks and purples abound for borders and backgrounds. The summary is simple but effective and there’s a good mix of shots from the show – nothing explicit – and a large piece showing a shot of Akane realizing just what kinds of things she likes. No show related inserts are included nor is there a reversible cover.
Menu:
The menu design takes elements from both the front and back cover to provide something very appealing and almost romantic with it. The front cover artwork is used to the right side where it’s given a rounded purple border to frame it all nicely. The artwork looks even crisper and more vibrant here than the front cover itself. To the left, we get the basic menu navigation under the soft but cute logo for the series. The layout of it all is quite nice and the colors are very appealing and inviting. Submenus load quickly and it’s easy to get around and do what needs to be done. As is the case with most Critical Mass titles, this release read our players’ language presets and played accordingly.
Extras:
None.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
Destined For Love is in a way one of the kinds of adult anime that I enjoy, providing it’s done right. Unlike a lot of series that get brought over that are filled with violence, bloodshed and non-consensual encounters, Destined for Love actually utilizes the words from its title in a good, positive way. There is love to be found here, though the love itself is awkward, aimed in the wrong direction at times and used in ways that sort of boggle the mind at times. But in the end, this is a somewhat cute and fun show if not for the very basic animation attached to it.
The series primarily revolves around a young man named Shin’ya. Shin’ya is your typical nice guy in just about all regards who has a bit of awkward luck in a way. For example, the show opens with him walking up to the school rooftop only to find a couple of students up there fooling around and going all the way. Of course, Shin’ya can’t help but be excited by this and in the traditional manner, he avoids joining in and instead admires from afar. I do wonder at the mindset though of the people who create these shows as I can’t imagine most guys actually pleasuring themselves to watching others in these situations. I can see them watching it to completion, but getting half undressed and doing that? Maybe that’s just me. And this is just a tiny part of the show.
Where the show really revolves around is the home life that Shin’ya has as his brother Shogo has suddenly informed him that he’s getting married to a young woman the same age as Shin’ya named Akane. Shogo is marrying her because he made a promise to her when they were children that if she survived an illness she had, he would marry her when she was older. That time has come, rather suddenly since Shin’ya wasn’t even aware of Akane in the present, and Akane is throwing herself at Shogo with wild abandon and passion. Strangely, Shogo comes across as completely uninterested in her and as time goes on, we learn that he really has no interest in her and can’t even remember really making the promise to her in the past about it. Of course, it was a long time ago so there’s certainly the problem of a young man with a faulty memory combined with a sickly girl latching on to any little bit of hope.
It of course makes perfect sense that it’s really Shin’ya who made the promise all those years ago and Akane mistook him for Shogo instead. As Shogo and Shin’ya live with what seems to be their older brother who is married, the entire situation becomes plainly obvious to his wife Sayumi. Sayumi is also apparently the school nurse so she’s in tune with just about everything that’s going on with Shin’ya and can figure it out. Amusingly, she’s mildly flirtatious with Shin’ya and when her husband goes out of town suddenly for business, the first things she does is get tipsy with him and they end up in bed together. But she’s doing it as a teaching series of moments where she wants to make sure he knows what to do so he can properly seduce Akane and give her the romance and love that she really wants and needs from the right person.
The second part of the series, which does bring everything to a close in fine dramatic order, is pretty good fun when all is said and done. The first episode set up some predictable situations and character interactions, going with a promise from the past for marriage, and it doesn’t really deviate much from that with its concluding episode. Formulaic and predictable as it is, a show like this is a fairly good one because it has a somewhat nice and simple innocence about it that sometimes gets lost among all the hardcore scatalogically oriented shows out there with demons, serial murders and more. Whatever happened to love?
This episode kicks off with the ramifications of Shizuki catching Shin’ya and Sayumi in bed in the doctor’s office and reacting poorly to it, which is to be expected. Sayumi does play it nicely as she understands what Shizuki must be going through and tells Shin’ya to leave it to her. Of course, it doesn’t work out that way and Shin’ya catches up with her first. With Shin’ya now having sex with Sayumi and Shizuki understanding the lust in his eyes towards Akane, she does the only thing she can to try and get him back, and that’s to offer herself up. Of course, she wants him and has wanted him for a long time, so she gets exactly what she wants as Shin’ya is a healthy and loving young man. The experience seems like it’s going to change him as he pledges himself to her, but still admits that he loves Akane.
Hentai makes yet another case for open relationships…
Akane isn’t going to give up without a fight though, and she uses herself as the weapon of choice as she can’t be without Shin’ya. The two have a rather fun little tryst on the rooftop of the school, bloomers and all, that leads to her having quite a nasty fall which in turn provides for some memory loss. This puts everyone in an awkward position as promises made in the past may not apply now but feelings are still there. The small cast of characters make their own little revelations, even Shogo gets in on the deal, and Shin’ya is in the position of really having to make a choice since it’s not socially acceptable to not choose. There’s some nice little interpersonal drama that plays out here among the main three players with Shogo as a side attraction before it gets down to some good fun sex to cap it all off before a wedding. It is amusing that they close it with the wedding shot and that one key character doesn’t even show up there, which makes you want to see more of the story to see what happened.
Destined for Love has a decent enough story going for it, but it has a hard time selling it sometimes because of the animation. The cover art is obviously deceptive because the show doesn’t look like this but that’s not unusual. It is unfortunate though because I rather like the designs and style there. Within the show, the main factor that bothered me was the low cel count in the movement aspects, giving it something of a choppy or stilted sense when they move about and perform. The show has some fairly basic backgrounds to it which adds to the simplistic feel of the show, but in the end it’s the actual character animation that hurts the most. The designs themselves aren’t bad, but they aren’t terribly detailed either and they lack a certain life.
In Summary:
Enjoying hentai in both anime and manga form as I do, it’s unfortunately rare to get real world series done without the true cruelty that populates so many series with it. Destined for Love does deal in the realm of love and what the characters want, rather than a series of depraved scenes. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but it’s refreshing to get something that doesn’t involve lots of intense hardcore action. The characters are shallow, but the designs are appealing and the sex is decent. It’s a straightforward situation with no real surprises to it, but it was pleasing on the eye in general and it delves into matters of the heart at least superficially, which is more than many shows do. Destined for Love isn’t a classic, but it’s a fun way to pass some time and enjoy a bunch of fun consensual scenes.
Features:
Japanese 2.0 Language, English 2.0 Language, English Subtitles
Content Grade: B
Audio Grade: B+
Video Grade: B-
Packaging Grade: B+
Menu Grade: B
Extras Grade: N/A
Released By: Critical Mass Video
Release Date: August 5th, 2014
MSRP: $19.99
Running Time: 60 Minutes
Video Encoding: 480i/p MPEG-2
Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
Review Equipment:
Sony KDL70R550A 70″ LED 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.
