Shibui’s finding himself being challenged by Hayasaka so he has to put in a new plan in order to keep up his bit of fun.
What They Say
The Squid’s ambition continues to grow and he now has his eyes on his enemy, Miss Hayakawa. It’s not going to be an easy battle for him to win, but The Squid has a thing or two up his sleeve, especially when he has his past victims to be his pawns. However, things take a different turn when someone betrays him! Who is the betrayer? Will he conquer his ultimate ambition?
The Review:
Audio:
For our primary viewing session, we listened to this show in its original language of Japanese, which is done up in stereo and encoded at 192kbps. It’s the only language track included here as once again there’s no dub for a new adult release. The track is a fairly standard stereo mix with a bit of directionality across the two channels that sounds decent if not terribly immersive. Dialogue is mostly center channel based but it comes across clean and clear and we had no problems with dropouts or distortions during regular playback.
Video:
Originally released in 2005, the transfer for this OVA is presented in its original full frame aspect ratio. Similar to several of the better-produced series out there, the source material here looks good with lots of bright vivid colors and some decent animation that doesn’t show too many shortcuts. The colors generally look good and solid though there are some areas where you can see the color gradient but it’s a bit worse when it comes to some of the red heavy backgrounds, especially during the end of the episode. The way it’s broken down almost looks like a vertical interlacing issue. A few of the mid range shots have a bit of aliasing going on around some of the characters, but this tends to stem more from the reds used as the background going up against the maroon in the characters school uniforms. Generally, this is a good looking transfer with only a few very small areas that will stand out for some.
Packaging:
Using the original Japanese artwork and laid out much better than the first couple of installments, this cover looks great with Sano and Tachibana wrapped around each other in their school uniforms while still showing plenty of skin. The back cover provides a row worth of small shots from the show along the bottom just above the technical grid. The production information covers the bulk of those involved in the show and there’s a good summary of what to expect from the episode. Sadly, there was no reversible cover with this particular release.
Menu:
Changing from the first volume as well, the menu here uses the layout of the front cover with a bluish filter thrown over it while along the bottom is a strip of headshots of various girls from the show. The menu selections are done up in nicely that’s easy to navigate and quick to load. Worth mentioning here since it’s less of an extra in my mind but a piece of navigation is that they also include the sex scenes only filter so you get just that when selected. With no languages on here besides Japanese, the player picked up the right subtitle track per our presets with ease.
Extras:
There are no real extras included but they did include the PSP/iPod version of the movie which you can find via the DVD-ROM side of playback.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
The After Class Lesson series comes to a close with this volume and it’s one of the better ones that even manages to handle a mild scatological scene in a good way. We’ve seen throughout the show so far that Shibui has managed to bring over a number of girls to his side and has taught them pleasures they never imagined. While we don’t know where he learned all of this (maybe the Internet is good for something after all) we do see that as he’s taken on newer girls, at least one of his original conquests is starting to feel jealous.
Shibui doesn’t have much time to deal with that or even really notice it all that much because he’s got bigger problems. Someone has slipped a picture of him with one of the students to Hayasaka and she’s intent on getting him thrown out. When she confronts him, he simply plays it off as a prank and something that couldn’t happen. Since she can’t do it by herself, she’s got to bring the board into it and that takes a bit of time. Having just had a really great sequence with a bunch of the girls dressed in nun habits, Shibui’s got the perfect team ready and willing to take down Hayasaka and show her the ropes. Well, not literally as no ropes are involved but we find out that she’s been saving herself for marriage.
The taking of Hayasaka is a rather good sequence but it does bring in some cringing moments. One of the things that they do is bring in that enema bottle with the creepy crawlies in it and give her that in both ends. When they do the actual flushing out sequence though, it’s almost all done off screen so you don’t actually see it, just the end result. That may be enough to tip the scales for some. Then again, this show ends on a very disturbing note anyway but that requires some imagination due to a bit of editing that was done. There is a surprisingly brief but really good scene between Shibui and Tenkawa but at its end there’s a still image that’s cropped. When seen, you can imagine easily what’s cropped and it’s surprising that it’s done since I think far more violent things have been left in over the years.
Technically, the disc is in pretty good shape and about where most of the recent releases from JapanAnime have been. Visually it’s got some great moments but some others that make me wonder, but the bulk of it is solid. That said, there’s still a couple of areas that need work but you can tell that they are being worked on. For example, when discussing Hayasaka’s impending marriage, her man is referred to as her “finance”. There’s also an misspelling in the menu where trailers are called trialers. I nitpick on the big companies for things like this, such as when ADV Films listed extras as etras for a couple of volumes so I mention it here as well. But again, compared to some of the earliest releases from JapanAnime, they’ve come a long way and it really shows.
In Summary:
In total, this turned out to be a fairly fun little series that ended stronger than it started, something that I find a rarity in adult shows. Usually once you unwrap the idea it doesn’t have far to go beyond more of the same or moving into something different. While it isn’t all that different from a number of other bad teacher kind of shows that I’ve seen over the years, it felt a bit more focused in what it wanted to do and it really had fun in messing with the girls while not going horrendously overboard in the perversity. Add in that the designs are very attractive and the uniforms are really well done overall and it’s a winning combination. It’s also a series where with each volume you can see how JapanAnime is paying attention and refining their releases. Even with the bit of editing done to this release, After Class Lesson is a title that I’d still recommend checking out.
Features
Japanese 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: JapanAnime
Release Date: August 16th, 2006
MSRP: $24.99
Running Time: 30 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.
