Sometimes the anime you get is just complete trash. This tends to be a bit worse when it’s hentai.
What They Say
“Office Affairs” – The inter-office sexual politics begin when Ono is assigned to the “busiest” section in the company. While Ono’s not afraid of a little hard work, he is not about to let it interfere with his sex life, confident that he can handle the toughest job and his girlfriend at the same time. But jealousy soon rears its ugly head, because Ono’s new female manager is Sugiyama, who’s respected and admired for her management skills along with her voluptuous body. “Co-Ed Affairs” – A group of curious friends decide to document their first sexual exploration on video. As they learn more about their bodies, their video’s theme evolves from a mere sexual documentary into an ultra kinky adult video. The young women are totally uninhibited and candid in their discussion of sex, in their exploration of each other and in the erotic topics they choose to cover in their spicy little film.
The Review:
Audio:
The audio presentation for this release brings us the original Japanese language track along with the dub that was produced at the time, both of which are in stereo and encoded at 192kbps. The show is one that doesn’t really do anything that stands out so we get a simple foward soundstage mix where it’s center channel based. It’s just dialogue with little else besides the moaning so it doesn’t stretch and pretty much has an almost flat feeling to it. The dub feels a bit more lively when you get down to it but both tracks are your very basic hentai mix designs. Dialogue is clean and clear throughout and we didn’t have problems with dropouts or distortions during regular playback.
Video:
Originally released in 1998 and 1999 in Japan as separate OVA works, the transfer for this show is presented in its original full frame aspect ratio. The encoding captures the look of the shows pretty well, both of which have different design aesthetics since they come from different sources, but they’re mostly captured okay at best here. There’s some cross coloration to be had in a number of scenes and there’s a softness to the Co-Ed affairs episode as well which doesn’t help too much. They’re not inherently bad but they show some very basic kind of productions whose flaws get shown a bit more when you upscale it and watch it on a larger set than it was originally designed for..
Packaging:
The packaging for this release comes in a standard sized DVD case and it’s one that goes for a more subdued “not for children” label along for the top, which is clear but still feels a little off. The front cover is basically the one girl from Co-Ed Affairs partially undressed and gives you the seductive look while set against a black background. I wish they had gone for the cover artwork from the Office Affairs Japanese artwork instead. The back cover has a number of animation shots with the convenient happy face symbol covering up things as opposed to the black dot. The summaries are decent and the layout for giving the technical information for both shows is well done. The one-sided insert provides another shot of the cover and gives the chapter stops for each of the episodes.
Menus:
The static menu screens have the same look as the insert with the chalkboard behind the partially undressed woman. Selections are quick to access and moving around is pretty decent if a bit odd in moving around sometimes.
Extras:
None.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
Sometimes I don’t even know where to begin.
Office Affairs isn’t a bad little one-shot and that comes likely from being based on a manga story known as Mechiku. The show focuses on Ono, a college graduate with a good looking girlfriend. He’s starting his job at the Neo Economy magazine and is looking forward to making himself a name in the business. His boss, Chief Sugiyama, is someone he finds himself immensely attracted to. As would happen, he finds himself ending up in an affair (but not in the office) with her. His constant thinking about her (to the point where his girlfriend Rie becomes concerned about his well being) led him easily to this point when he made sure she was getting home okay.
Some amount of guilt the next day though causes him to take Rie (who works as an office assistant in the same building) to the bathroom and give her the best time of her life, which she agrees that it is. Ono tries to figure out what the best thing to do is when he gets invited to a celebration party for the chief as the magazine has done really well. He’s really surprised when he arrives only to find two other male co-workers there. Apparently, he’s become the fourth member in a foursome…
Co-Ed Affairs…. well, this one is complete trash. It’s a video game really, about three girls who take a video camera and learn about things from a neighbor boy. If it wasn’t for the really bad dialogue, you’d think it was a “how-to” video for idiots. I will say that it at least has better animation than Pure Love, but really, this is just more bad hentai. Bad animation, bad dialogue, and just general badness. It’s bad enough that one paragraph is all I want to spend on it. I will say that if you watch it with the dub you may find it to be more of just a really weird comedy, so there’s something to be said for that.
Features:
The Affairs disc is a real mixed bag. Office Affairs isn’t all that bad, but it’s just a short one-shot. Co-Ed Affairs drags the entire disc down with its general badness. I’d pass on this unless this is the only kind of thing that can do it for you.
Features
Japanese Language, English Language, English Subtitles
Content Grade: C
Audio Grade: B
Video Grade: C+
Packaging Grade: B-
Menu Grade: B
Extras Grade: N/A
Released By: Kitty Media
Release Date: August 28th, 2001
MSRP: $29.99
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.
