If ever there was a show where the characters must be glad that physics play no role in their reality, Eiken is that one.
What They Say:
Densuke just enrolled at the exclusive Zashono academy. He’s eager to participate in extracurricular activities, but he never expected to join the mysterious Eiken Club. Strangely enough, every other member is a busty co-ed, and many of the club activities involve bikinis. But Densuke isn’t interested in anyone but the the shy and beautiful Chiharu. Will he overcome the wall of women that stand between him and true love? Or is he doomed to a lifetime of riding watersides with a jumble of half-naked women greased with yogurt?
Audio:
The audio presentation for this release brings us the original Japanese language track in stereo along with an English dub, both of which are encoded at 192kbps. The stereo mix for the show has some good directionality to it as the characters are often moving across the screen at high speeds and there are plenty of things coming in and out of the main area so the show has a decent workout to it. Dialogue is clean and clear and we had no problems with dropouts or distortions during regular playback.
Video:
Originally released in 2003 to video, the transfer for this two episode OVA series is presented here in its original full frame aspect ratio. This show is one of those OVA series that really goes for the vibrant color palette and the transfer really lets it show off. Between the foreground animation that’s just lush at times with its color depth to the great looking backgrounds that have very solid looking blue skies, this is just a great looking show. The only issue that really shows up and it does vary by monitor is the cross coloration. It’s not terribly strong on our system but there is evidence of it along most of the edges of the characters but more so in the areas such as red hair or clothing.
Packaging:
When it comes to cover art, sometimes it’s deceptive, sometimes the artwork is not representative of the shows actual style and then there are covers that are just perfect in letting you know what’s inside. Eiken, which apparently doesn’t use one of the Japanese covers, is the kind that shows you exactly what this show is about in clear detail. Lots of cute girls, one overwhelmed guy and tons and tons of tits and ass. They couldn’t have been more overt if they had put a burst sticker on the front that said “Contains more tits and ass than anything else out there!” The artwork is very well detailed, has some really good colors to it and really shows off the character designs well. The back cover has a good selection of shots from the show and has a simple rundown of the show’s premise. The production information fills out the rest of the area along with the always useful technical grid. No insert is included with this release.
Menu:
Using the same artwork as the front cover, the main menu is a static piece that has a bit of music playing along to it with the very basic selections along the left side. With nothing to the disc besides the show and a few trailers, the menus are pretty basic and easy to navigate. Access times are nice and fast and our players’ language presets were correctly read when the show started, making us use the menu even less.
Extras:
None.
I’d heard the jokes from when it first came out back in 2003 but I never actually looked up the artwork at that time. I didn’t even really pay attention to the cover art when it came out for this release of the show simply because there were so many things coming out so constantly. So when I first laid eyes on the package when it arrived, I knew I was in for a show that was just not going to be fun. When the artwork on the front cover offends you, and you’re a big fan of hentai in general, you just know you’re going to be in trouble.
Eiken takes place in something of a fantastical education institution that encompasses a massive island where 54,000 students reside from middle school through college level. We don’t really see much of this particular place other than a few locations, but what we do get familiar with is one particularly notorious club known only as Eiken. The women in this group are the types that just seem to be the oddballs of the place and tend to not fit in, but what they do have is a member named Chiharu Shinonome. She’s supposedly the most attractive, smartest and best person in the entire school and everyone wants her. This is how Densuke gets introduced to her when he bumps into her and ends up on top of her and fondling her without realizing it.
But the gag is, get this, get this, is that her breasts (c’mon, chuckle because we said breasts, that’s what the show expects) are bigger than mutant watermelons. They joke at one point that they’re F cups but they look a heck of a lot more like L cups than anything else. And honestly, I can’t find anything amusing about it, or attractive if that’s supposed to be the case. Disturbing, certainly. Offensive? Not really but that’s if they treated it normally. No, what they have to do is have these breasts abused constantly by Densuke, as he’s brought in as the newest member of the Eiken club, and he continually ends up in situations where he’s grabbing at Chiharu’s breasts. And apparently to touch them is to put her in pain and once again, that just doesn’t seem funny or titillating.
Add in a couple of other characters in the Eiken club that have similarly stacked breasts, one of them probably the same age as Chiharu and the other one looks like a pink-haired Sasami with glasses from Tenchi Muyo but with J cup sized breasts and it just goes downhill from there. Everyone in the club outside of one or two people get along well with Densuke and keep helping him to realize his dream of falling in love with Chiharu, but Densuke keeps ending up in situations where he screws up, be it his foot up through her shirt and into her mouth and seeing her naked a couple of times. To make matters worse for Densuke, Chiharu’s younger sister Yuriko, who is less endowed with a DD level of breasts but is considered normal looking here, actively wants him unlike her sister and she goes after him constantly, often without panties, and just torments him to no end.
Densuke has a hard time really getting to know Chiharu and what turns into his only recourse is to get her a really great gift for her birthday. Penniless, he finds himself part of the Eiken team for the big annual contest that’s just handily starting that has a cash prize. This teams him up with various other members of the club, Chiharu included and they do all sorts of insane looking faux-sports across multiple events where scoring really doesn’t seem to matter. One of them has a four-person team that goes down a two-mile high waterslide where the members can’t let go of each other for even a minute or else they forfeit the match. To make it worse, they take out the water and replace it with vanilla yogurt.
So yes, you have these women racing down the waterslide with white yogurt splattering all over them. Oh, the hilarity. If this had been done outright as a hentai and with more normal looking cleavage levels, this probably would have been a lot more humorous than it turned out to be. But done like it is, where you have instances like the yogurt or the chocolate slide or the pool that has eels that think they’re tentacles, combined with the over the top chest sizes, it does hit that level of really bad and simply offensive. And like I said, that comes from someone who actively watches and likes hentai and has certainly seen a fair share of really bad shows that are degrading on many levels. But something like Eiken, that takes the cake. And then it proceeds to lather it all over itself.
In Summary:
A title that’s likely to be a real split when it comes to whether you like it, it’s a love/hate kind of show that I definitely fell onto the hate side of. I didn’t find it funny, titillating or enjoyable to watch on just about any level. I was looking at the clock before I even put the disc into the player. Though I’m sure it has its fans, it can most definitely not count me among them.
Features:
Japanese 2.0 Language, English 2.0 Language, English Subtitles
Content Grade: C-
Audio Grade: B+
Video Grade: B
Packaging Grade: B
Menu Grade: B
Extras Grade: N/A
Released By: Media Blasters
Release Date: December 14th, 2004
MSRP: $19.95
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.
