When her husband moves her and their child back to his parents home, Mitsuko finds herself caring for her father in law in more ways than she should have to.
What They Say:
Mitsuko has always lived a simple life as a housewife, but things changed once she moved away from Tokyo to live with her husband’s family. She never thought doing a small “favor” for her husband’s father would lead into a world full of lust. Now, she is a love puppet to her husband’s father and even his…
The Review:
Audio:
The audio presentation for this release brings us the original Japanese language track only in stereo and encoded at 224kbps. The stereo mix for it is essentially what you expect from an adult release in that it’s clean and problem free during regular playback. The stereo mix itself doesn’t have much in the way of noticeable directionality which is pretty normal and overall it sounds like a standard full forward soundstage presentation.
Video:
Originally released to video in 2004, the transfer for this OVA is presented in its original full frame aspect ratio. The source materials for this show are very similar to most other releases from Japan Anime in that it’s a very clean looking print that’s free of the usual troubles such as cross coloration and aliasing. There’s a touch of blocking going on in a few backgrounds but nothing terribly distracting or really problematic. The show isn’t quite up to some other recent releases in terms of fluid animation quality but it comes across well with its fairly pale and shadowed settings that use a real-world color palette. The character animation is where things look the best in general and hold up well across the episode.
Packaging:
Though it’s not something that appears in the show, at least not directly, the cover art has a good shot of Mitsuko in pieces of her wedding outfit while trying to cover herself and the shame she’s feeling. Her light features and colors are in stark contrast to the dark backgrounds with the eyes blended into the woodwork. The back cover provides a number of shots from the show that are clean and without any real nudity while providing a summary of the premise in between them. The bottom is filled out with the basic legal jargon and the technical grid. As usual, there is a reversible cover though the front portion is essentially the same but with a bit more nudity to it. The back cover for the reverse side has the same layout but a different set of pictures that show off several of the sex scenes.
Menu:
One of the weakest menus to date, the background is made up of the woodwork with the characters faces blended into it which is just far too dark and almost hard to really figure out, especially with such bright navigation pieces laid out with a lot of space between them all over the screen. There isn’t much to look at with the menu and submenus are essentially the same. Access times are nice and fast and the disc correctly read our players’ language presets and played accordingly.
Extras:
The only included video extra here is an image gallery done in slideshow format. For those that like their hentai on the go, the inclusion of a PSP/iPod video version of the episode is here. A menu section in the extras describes the method by which to get it in clear detail as well.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
Ew! Old man sex! Naked bald old man sex! Ew!
With that out of the way… Mistreated Bride is an interesting show in its original premise where it introduces us to a good looking and happy family whose decided that it’s time to move out the busy big city and back to the village where the husband had grown up. His family there is one of the oldest and longest surviving direct lines so they have quite a bit of pull there as well as money. The family make-up there is a bit interesting once Mitsuko and her husband and daughter move in. Her husband, Ichiro, has two younger brothers who are both still in school but his mother had died some time back. His elderly father has however remarried and she’s a very young woman, only a couple of years older than Mitsuko if that. Mitsuko is of course deferential to her but the two try to get along as friends with an understanding of position in the air.
As things tend to happen, Mitsuko is the one that finds herself at home alone most of the time as others have jobs and things to attend to. What this means is that she has to take care of the father of the family who is an elderly man. Generally kept to his room and under blankets, she tends to him with his medicine and food. But all of that changes when “Father” decides he needs a bit more help and makes the request for Mitsuko to wipe the sweat off of him. This reveals that he’s taking his Viagra as he’s got a huge erection which he then asks her to take care of. Before long, he’s got her in every position and kind of embarrassment that he can think of. To make it worse, she can’t tell anyone about it, she can’t get him to stop and she secretly is learning that she doesn’t want him to stop. Her own needs aren’t being met by her husband who is now having problems with being intimate with her in his parents home and with their daughter sleeping next to them. So it’s easy for Mitsuko to continue to fall under her “Father’s” sway.
What the old guy really needs is Viagra for his legs to be able to pull off some of those positions without his body snapping in half.
Mistreated Bride is a decent looking title overall but it has a lot of similarities in how it looks to Taboo Charming Mother which isn’t a surprise since it’s by the same creator. Those similarities are strong at times such as the how the female characters look but there are certainly enough differences as well. The character animation is pretty average for an adult title and it lacks some of the polish of Taboo Charming Mother but it’s not a bad looking piece. Mitsuko gets all of the action in the first volume but it’s unfortunate that she’s either paired up with an incredibly old bald naked guy or his ugly school age son.
In Summary:
From the moment I saw the old guy I had a bad feeling in my stomach about this show and it, unfortunately, came through. While Mitsuko is enough of an attraction, her pairings don’t help and just make me cringe and turn my eyes away from the screen. That’s certainly not a good sign. While it’s a decently animated piece and the initial premise is open to a number of possibilities due to the number of people who live in the household, the opening episode doesn’t really make me want to see any more of the show. If you’ve got a hankering for an old bald guy hung like a horse though, this may be right up your alley.
Features
Japanese 2.0 Language, English Subtitles, Art Gallery
Content Grade: C-
Audio Grade: B
Video Grade: B+
Packaging Grade: B+
Menu Grade: C+
Extras Grade: B-
Released By: Japan Anime
Release Date: March 21st, 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.
