The doctor is dead, long live the doctor!
What They Say:
A shocking crime leads a detective to the Night Shift Nurses! Under interrogation, they reveal more than just outrageous true confessions. A debauched doctor instructed them to perform the most debased acts imaginable, all in the name of science. But when the erotic experiment spun out of control, his sexy subjects unleashed their most forbidden desires, with shocking consequences!
The Review:
Audio:
The audio presentation for this incarnation of Night Shift Nurses retains its original audio design which is a bilingual release that has both the Japanese and English language tracks in stereo encoded at 192kbps. Like most adult shows, it features a pretty basic sound stereo mix with little in the way of directionality across the forward soundstage. There’s a very simple full sound to its design that works well and is representative of the time it was made and the intent, but it’s not one that really wows in any way though it does serve the material well. We didn’t have any problems with dropouts or distortions during regular playback.
Video:
Originally released in 2001, the transfer for this OVA series is presented in its original full frame aspect ratio. This volume contains the sixth and seventh OVAs and is identical to what Anime 18 put out back in 2005 and Critical Mass themselves back in 2010, as it’s a repressing under a new label. This is again a frustrating looking transfer, because for a good percentage of the time, it looks great, with good looking clean animation. What causes the trouble is when the camera pans, the aliasing really kicks in and the cross coloration gets very strong. These scenes are very shifty looking and just look bad in general. Outside of there, there are many really good looking scenes that stand out strongly, particularly the ones in the exam rooms where the animation looks really fluid and the colors vibrant and solid. It’s such a mixed bag from the source materials though.
Packaging:
Similar to the previous releases, dark and voyeuristic is what the cover to the 2015 edition of Night Shift Nurses looks like. Ren looks highly appealing with this cover as she twirls around outside with her uniform lifting up high enough to see the top of her stockings and garters. What’s fascinating about this cover in its feel is that the outdoor elements, the blue and the greens, are darkened from the overall design of it and it turns it all far more menacing than it would be otherwise and that contrasts beautifully with Ren’s outfit and colors. The new logo isn’t all that appealing but it’s decently done since it doesn’t detract from the allure of the actual artwork of the lovely nurse herself. The back cover uses some familiar elements seen on previous releases with a pair of the nurses showing up along the bottom in their uniforms while a large shot of Shinjyo mostly undressed takes up a lot of space on the right. The summary is very brief overall but it’s cutely done on a small clipboard which also lists the discs extras. No show related inserts are included nor is there a reversible cover.
Menu:
The menu layout for this installment is split nicely but still pretty damn disgusting. The main background is a nice illustration shot that takes the two girls from the cover overlapping each other while the background itself is a shot of the hospital building. The left side where the menu selections are, which use a pink syringe as the selection pointer, is a strip of poop where clips from the show play with English dialogue moaning and groaning. Flakes of poop are scattered around the menu as well. The layout is simple and straightforward and quick to navigate. Our players’ presets were read and it defaulted to Japanese language fine but used the sign/song subtitle track used in the first English language block instead of the full subtitle track.
Extras:
The extras section is filled up with a number of things but the only real extra here is an art gallery. Everything else is trailers for all the various releases as well as the old standby of the anime art form itself.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
While looking back at earlier volumes in this series during this re-re-release run, I’ve been fascinated by how the first volume practically felt quaint and then the second volume had a few cringe inducing areas. Not surprisingly, hitting the third volume with the sixth and seventh episodes, this is where I really started to feel the same reactions I had the first time around as the creators continued to push their limits and the boundaries of any kind of taste. When this volume got underway, it all came back to me quick with what was going to happen to poor Ren and Naoya and I could feel my stomach churning already.
After surviving the first five episodes of the series, I’m finally reaching my limit in what I can deal with in this series. So much of what they do here is just plain disturbing and disgusting to me that it repels. And I’ve seen a lot of animated stuff like this over the years but this show just manages to creep me out like no others. I stopped and started watching this thing several times and in the end, I could not finish it.
Hirasaka’s domination of Nanase continues to be the main focal point, particularly since she’s holding out against a lot of things due to her attraction to Naoya. This only serves to annoy the bad doctor even more so he goes through the motions of abusing her even more with his experiments as well as others. There’s one scene where he starts in on practice of filling the woman up with water so that she looks pregnant and is in pain. Another has him working Nanase over with the standard instruments in order to get her to let it all out so that he can collect more of her samples. What finally tipped me over the edge into realizing I can’t stomach this anymore myself was when he finally forces Nanase and Naoya together and she’s about to explode poop from her ass, he doesn’t let it fall on Naoya but rather lets it all flow into a bowl. And then he tells Naoya that if he really loved Nanase, he’d drink and eat it all up.
Seriously, I can feel the bile in my throat just writing about it.
The series continues to maintain the same standards for character designs as the show has now run over several years and that’s a real plus to it. Even though the animation style itself is changing overall, it continues to look strongly like the earlier episodes so that it’s not a huge shift from episode to episode in what you’re getting. The characters are still appealing in their design, even after seeing everything that Nanase is put through over the years and the animation itself continues to be well done and smooth.
In Summary:
The lesson I learned back when I first saw this was to not eat a meatball sub while watching it. This time around the lesson learned is that twice is all I ever want to see most of these scenes and I’m going to have to find someone else to review this show next time around when it gets a re-release. This set of episodes for Night Shift Nurses carries on the proud tradition of the earlier ones and has everyone’s favorite twisted doctor doing more and more of his experiments in the manner that only he can do it. It was bad enough at first with just the poop and enemas, but when he started shoving big wooden blocks up her tuckus, well, that’s when I wanted nothing more to do with it. For those that are enjoying this series, you’ll love this installment and have no real complaints over it at all.
Features:
Japanese 2.0 Language, English 2.0 Language, English Subtitles
Content Grade: D-
Audio Grade: B+
Video Grade: C
Packaging Grade: A-
Menu Grade: B-
Extras Grade: C+
Released By: Critical Mass Video
Release Date: April 7th, 2015
MSRP: $14.99
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.