Now this is an episode of Law & Order that we’ll never see happen.
What They Say:
Guilty as charged, the Night Shift Nurses are thrust onto the hot seat when police uncover video evidence of their erotic experimentation. Confronted with images of themselves performing the most heinous sexual acts imaginable, the nurses tell a sordid tale of lechery, lust, and their corruption at the hands of a perverted medical mastermind.
The Review:
Audio:
The audio presentation for this release brings us the original Japanese language as well as the previously created English language mix, both of which are encoded in stereo 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 2002, the transfer for this OVA series is presented in its original full frame aspect ratio. This volume contains the eighth and ninth OVAs and is identical to what Anime 18 put out back in 2005 and Critical Mass 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 pretty decent, 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 2010 edition of Night Shift Nurses looks like. Unlike the previous volume in the series, this one is all inside with our lovely green haired subject looking shy as she’s about to be shown something she’s never seen before. The design is really attractive, the colors work and I like the darkness around the edges. 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 trio 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 looking away. 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 artwork from the cover. 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)
It’s the end of the road for the Night Shift Nurses material that Central Park Media’s Anime 18 label released that Critical Mass Video has picked up several years ago with this re-release. Episodes eight and nine are as far as the show got released by the company and episode ten hasn’t seen the light of day. And going by this volume, it’s certainly not a bad thing as I could barely stomach much of it. The show has certainly made a name for itself and it’s one of the few disturbing hentai shows that has held up for the most part over the years. While it started a bit weak, even when it was first released in Japan, it more than made up for it in subsequent episodes and this one is no exception.
This was a very hard disc to get through and it’s one that’s very easy to block out afterward, which makes reviewing it difficult. For fans of the show, that’s definitely a plus because a lot of its intent is to simply gross out or go beyond the extremes to offend and the show does just that. The police angle is worked here again as one of the nurses who is under Hirasaka’s thrall is shown videos of herself when she was first taken by him and she’s hating every minute of it. It starts her down the path of trying to remember why she tried to destroy the videos from then and why she’s become such a slave to the doctor as she’s become. It’s the kind of story that might actually make a good Law & Order episode but I can’t imagine NBC getting as graphic as all this. I mean, the amount of poop flying around here is starting to get to dangerous levels (though not to the explosive levels of Princess 69) and there are some things I just don’t want to see done with a cork.
In the end, there’s really not much different here with this pair of episodes than the last couple of volumes in the franchise. We’re treated to a lot of depravity and I remembered not to eat anything while watching it. The visuals for the show are still some of the best things, though the source material is still showing its problems both from the way it was animated during the digital change over as well as the kind of encoders that Central Park Media used which weren’t always that good. The main draw continues to be the creativity in the situations and the depravity of it and there’s no disappointment here. Just horror, pure horror, watching some of the things done to these women. Though there is some amusement in watching the detectives reacting to the screen, something that I think they could have done a lot more with.
In Summary:
With this being the end of the road for what Anime 18 had, I’m pretty divided on the final episode that hasn’t seen release. Part of me is still very much a completionist and wants to see the end of the original series. The other part of me really wants to put this whole franchise behind me again for at least another five years (and this means you other studios need to stop releasing the spinoff material too!). The focus in the franchise on the over the top material that’s mostly within the realm of reality is certainly interesting and it achieves its goals, but I still think it could have been oh so much more in the long run if it had devised a clearer story across the run. This show has earned its reputation, one that you could see glimmers of at the start of it but which are now fully realized by these episodes.
Features:
Japanese 2.0 Language, English 2.0 Language, English Subtitles, Art Gallery, Anime Artform, Trailers
Content Grade: D-
Audio Grade: B+
Video Grade: C
Packaging Grade: B+
Menu Grade: B
Extras Grade: C
Released By: Critical Mass Video
Release Date: May 5th, 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.
