I once coined the term "5-bladed razor" to describe shows which include ridiculous amounts of some particular thing, just to outdo anyone that came before. In the "hordes of sisters" category, I thought we had reached the limit with the show Sister Princess. In that one, our hero finds out that he has 12 younger sisters. His father seems to have been a tomcat, and had thirteen kids by thirteen different women.

Well, I just learned that there's a show that tops it. Baby Princess 3D Paradise 0 [Love] is a one-ep OVA, and it's today's Mystery Meat. (Pardon a momentary digression. That's what ANN says it's named, and that is what was used on the file. But the title page in the actual show says "2D", not "3D".)

Our hero is a senior in high school named Youtarou. He has recently joined his mother's family. He is one of her nineteen children, all the rest of whom are girls. That's right, he's got fully eighteen sisters, ranging from age 19 to a newborn. So this show leaves Sister Princess in the dust.

Little of this is explained in the show. Maybe it's explained in more depth on the studio's page for the show, but I can't read it.

I can't figure out where he fits in it all. The ANN page claims he's a high school senior, and that's the kind of clothes he wears, but there isn't room in there for that. The oldest girl is a college freshman and she refers to him as her otouto, so he's younger than her. But #2 is a high school senior, #3 is a junior, #4 is a sophomore, #5 is ninth grade, and we've got every other grade below that, all the way down to the newborn. Nor is there any indication that one of them is his twin. So where does he fit? Is he really offspring of that woman?

Having just slaughtered a few more catgirls, I admit it's silly to talk about those kinds of things when dealing with a show like this. They aren't paying any attention to whether it makes sense, and neither should we. But it has to be said that Mom is setting records for fertility, at least in anime. I don't know of any anime mother who has had 19 kids, all of whom survived, and none of which are multiple births. How many fathers are involved in all of this? No idea. But while she was creating all this life, she also had a career as CEO of a talent agency. Which is mind boggling. And there doesn't seem to be any man living in that house besides Youtarou.

I think the most amazing thing about this show is how many of the cast members I recognize. Kana Hanazawa, Haruka Tomatsu, Rina Satou, Aoi Yuuki, Mariya Ise -- this is not a B-list cast.

So how does it play? The word I wanted to use is "nauseating". Least that's what I thought before I started watching it. But that turned out not to be right. We'll get back to this at the end.

The first five minutes consists of introductions. Our Hero comes home from school and all the others are there and we get to see them all. Each one has her own intro placque that gets displayed, and I'm gonna put them all below the fold. (They weren't in order but I've sorted them.

And since a lot of the other shots I'm going to include are NSFW, everything else is below the fold, too. (I won't be using NSFW tags, so be warned.)

By the way, they're a bunch of early bloomers. The first pettanko, going down the list, is the fifth grader. The sixth grader, on the other hand, is one of the most well endowed in the show.

We were getting to know all the girls after Youtarou comes home from school. In the course of this, Youtarou gets knocked on his back by three or four of the little ones, just as one of his sisters comes home. So we get this shot:

That one's Hikaru (daughter #4) and she says she doesn't mind. Um. It actually begins with a very tight closeup of... um... and then zooms back.

Mom is the last one introduced, and she announces that they're going to make an intro movie, which means taking a trip. And Youtarou is gonna be the cameraman. Mom isn't going along, but they are taking the baby.

And then we get the OP. Which is pretty much about everyone traveling to the vacation spot by train and then by bus:

It's not quite as rough as it looks; there's a restroom with modern plumbing back in the woods.

Surprisingly, they didn't load the show up with ridiculous oddballs, for the most part. In Sister Princess they were all over the map. This time there are only a couple who are outright bizarre. Like the young one who usually wears a Miko costume, and who is accompanied by a translucent fox with nine tails. (She calls it "Kyuubi". Um...)

A couple of them are tsundere, and four or five (mostly young ones) seem to have a bro-con, but most of them are just nice and not really very eccentric. Seems like Youtarou has only recently been introduced into the household, and everyone is still adjusting. But aside from the two who despise the entire idea, the rest all seem to be giving him the benefit of the doubt.

So about the trip, it's to the mountains. They camp next to a stream. Which means?

Swimsuits! On everyone from the college student down to the one year old. (Who, I might mention, is rather precocious; she can run and she can talk. I figure her for 23 months, except that she'd be advanced even for a two year old.) The baby is the only exception to that; she's still in diapers.

And volleyball! Gainaxing! Pandering! Accidental stripping! Youtarou manages to accidentally remove the bra from one of the girls when trying to spike the ball, and her trying to block it. But before we can have any kind of reaction to that, we have a crisis.

Two of the younger girls are in a rubber raft and are being carried towards the top of a waterfall. Youtarou and Mizore try to save them, but the current is too strong.

Fortunately, Hikaru (the one who lost her bra) shows up with a rope. It's the same girl whose panties he saw at the beginning, and she apparently doesn't care. A rescue is implemented and everyone is safe.

One of the other girls comes running, carrying the baby, and trips and the baby goes flying. Fortunately, Hikaru catches her.

We're at the 16 minute mark now.

Next: Onsen. Mixed bathing, of course. And tit groping, of girls by other girls. And it means that one of the tsunderes tries to kill him after she finds out.

And then we get a fantasy (?) or nightmare (?) sequence or... something... where several of the older girls sequentially try to seduce him, or so it seems. Including a couple who tie him up.

It gets explained later. Mom told them all (without him being around) that they should all try to make him feel welcome, and maybe they should kiss him. All through the show, various ones among them, including the littlest ones, all try to kiss him and it freaks him out. In this nightmare/whatever sequence, they all try to kiss him, too. Eventually one of them really does, but it isn't part of this.

And then we get a closing gag back home, and then the ED. Which alternates between video he shot on the trip, and pictures of the girls watching the video back home again.

So what word would I use now that it's over? It wasn't nauseating, surprisingly, but it was pointless.

Why was this made? I can only imagine that it was a failed pilot. It's from someone called "Studio Comet" and they spend most of their time doing contract work. But they do have a few big name shows to their credit: School Rumble, Peach Girl, Suzuka. Plus several kids shows. But nothing that I've actually watched.

I can't complain about the production quality. The art was fine; the girls were cute, the gainaxing wasn't grotesque. The fundamental concept remains nauseating, but the implemention didn't set off the squick alarm much. But I can't figure out why it was even done at all.

It's been a year and a half since it originally came out, and there hasn't been anything more done about it, so whatever the reason was, it didn't pan out. It's anime original, so there isn't any manga or game or anything. Why? Why?

UPDATE: Sorry, I just noticed that I screwed up slightly when I resized all these images, so they don't look quite as good as they should. (It was set to "pixel resize" instead of "bicubic".)

I'm not going to do all 44 of them again, though. Them's the breaks. (Uploading 44 files one at a time is rather a bore.)

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Mystery Meat at 08:52 PM | Comments (8) | Add Comment
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