First Impressions – Shimoneta to Iu Gainen ga Sonzai Shinai Taikutsu na Sekai [NSFW]
The first meeting of criminal masterminds
Time for my second FI of the season, and my second with skylion. This show was an unknown quantity going in, but a pretty darn great first episode brings us a show that is pretty unabashed about where it’s going and what it’s trying to do. And what it’s trying to do is bring dirty jokes back to a future Japan.
What can I say about a show that had, as it’s cream on the sundae, a juxtaposition of fly copulation and a clumsily read porn track?
Things Aren’t Exactly What They Seem On The Surface
Terrorists wiped out the whole room with a super bug!
skylion: There is quite a bit to unpack here in the first episode. I think the one thing I want to tackle first is how the word “terrorist” is used. I’ve often complained that it’s become a very misused word, and I think here they are addressing that rather well. By applying it to a very eccentric, well meaning, but idiotic revolutionary, they’ve shown an exact and by the numbers way its misuse can make it an empty and hollow term. Ayame Kajou (our pantsu-on-head revolutionary hero) is a gold mine of comedy, but she is no terrorist. She’s an apple that didn’t fall far from the tree, a trait she shares with her unwilling co-conspirator Okuma Tanukichi. Can these two take on the status quo?
Punished for the crime of enjoying dirty magazines
Highway: The crux of the matter here is that as repressive (or not) as we might think Japan is to individuality right now, at least someone can envision a future where the use of any ‘dirty word’ is banned, and everyone wears electronics to warn the authorities if they step out of line. While they don’t go for heavy-handed Orwell references, and there’s none of the imagery of human misery that generally accompanies depictions of such dystopian societies, the fact is that they’re pretty darn close to ThoughtCrime. No, they haven’t figured out how to (directly) read someone’s thoughts, but getting people wearing a collar (nicely denigrating imagery there) which self-reports their transgressions maybe takes that idea of Two-way Telescreens about 5 steps further. And while the dulcet tones of Show Hayami assure us of the great public health of the country of Japan, the show makes it obvious from the beginning that there are people who really aren’t that fond of such a regime (and not just our erstwhile terrorists).
“Would you please tell me how babies are created?”
Some things just pass Anna by
skylion: I know it was a bit of a toss away line, but how Tanukichi referred to his student council president as being “so pure that she doesn’t even see the concept of impurity” is such a huge give-a-way. It’s exactly the sort of thing you want, as my money is on her being revealed as the biggest closet pervert there is. That’s the absurdist way of doing things, and that is what this show does without missing a beat.
Hyouka wants the whole truth…
Highway: The absurdity certainly works here. The concept of the “cream-of-the-crop” school being a place that is so ignorant of human function isn’t particularly original, but it’s carried to a nice end. A place where the only acceptable description of baby-making is that condescending platitude fed to children deemed too young for the truth: “when a mommy and a daddy love each other very much, the stork brings them a bundle of joy”. And the old saw about “they can learn it from their parents or they will learn it from the kids at school” takes on a whole new meaning when the parents legally can’t talk about it, and the kids at school have no idea what actually goes on.
“Hey, is that him? The guy from the worst school?”
So into this void steps Tanukichi, who I think gets a nice little turnaround from the usual anime treatment. Usually, the guy who comes from the rough neighborhood or the sketchy school is the guy everyone wants to avoid, the guy that the rest of the students are afraid of being associated with, lest they be tainted with the stink of failure. And even if it starts out seeming like that with the whispering about him, that’s not what’s going on here. What it is is desperation: Like an oracle, they think that he knows the answers they seek. They just can’t get the courage to ask him about it… except for persistent Hyouka Fuwa, whose scientific curiosity gattais into her adolescent curiosity.
~twirl twirl twirl~
skylion: I think the one moment I loved about this program was Ayame peeling back of the curtain. Yes, this high minded very moral academy has a mission statement of the most moral of schools in the most moral of places; but take another look and pay attention. The kids, no matter how much they are monitored-by-the-neck, find a way to get out the coded language. It’s basically saying, “Dirty jokes will find a way”; and this is a good thing as dirty jokes are our most common denominator of social storytelling. I mean, song lyrics cannot, as a general rule, come right out and spell out the “nasty”, they have to call it “the nasty” or some other trumped up term like, rock and roll for instance. It would be an odd thing, given our culture, to have songs basically called, to be frank, “I want to fuck you very very badly”
Bonus Dirty Jokes!
I would love it if Shimoneta came out as a very hard hitting form of social commentary. But let’s not kid. It’s a comedy from start to finish, and a very absurd comedy at that. So I’ll take it as the pantsu-on-head form of very broad slapstick, “take that!”, show it very much wants to be. That doesn’t mean it’s not touching a nerve here or there. In Japan, manga are removed from shelves for arbitrary reasons, and many developed nations are having harder and harder times administering informative, formal, and germane sexual education. “Where do babies come from”, indeed….
It’s definitely a comedy, but I think there’s going to be a difference here between Shimoneta and something like SYD, which is great if you want a bunch of period and sex jokes, but limits itself to the perviness of the individuals involved, with the only overarching commentary being “it’s funny when these girls make sex and menstruation jokes.” I think that we’ll get a bit closer to the social commentary that we might be looking for, hopefully they don’t make Ayame too much of a joke in doing so.
About Tag Team
We live, laugh, enjoy and strictly believe on "more the merrier". When together, we usually come up with very chatty, conversation-based episodics and interesting posts.
POWUH: Metanorn Regular with 105 comments
That we didn’t get the 1812 overture for the school wide orgasm is a major loss. I wasn’t as sleeved with this show as I thought I would be. It was harmless fun. Though I hope the irony of this show being Meta Fapped isn’t lost on anyone
POWUH: and LOLi Defender with 10998 comments
The morality police are on the way good citizen…
POWUH: and Vampire Lover with 11746 comments
At a time like this, I say “screw the police!”. 😛
POWUH: Meta Team and Meta-Analyst with 3844 comments
You’re lucky you don’t actually have a legal morality police squad. 😛 Some places do waste their money on them useless morality police.
POWUH: and Vampire Lover with 11746 comments
Simply put, this was pure madness in an amusing way. But definitely the kind of series best watched in a secluded location. More so with headphones on just to be safe or things will look suggestive.
Looking at it from another perspective, this morally obsessed version of Japan is just like the city in Equilibrium. Only here, the society is stamping out provocative traces of sexuality instead of human emotion. Ayame is basically saying people are suffocating themselves. Agreeable enough despite the crazy way she does things. Though I wish she found a better means of concealing her identity.
With such a wedge in the human maintenance process, I wonder how that affects the population growth. It’s probably given rise to a lot of people like Hyouka.
POWUH: Meta Team and Meta-Analyst with 3844 comments
*scribbles SFW comments on an NSFW article at work*
POWUH: and LOLi Defender with 10998 comments
I would pull strangers aside to watch this if I could….
We’re always one weird gin-up moral panic away from something like this. We had the Werthem Trials in the 1950’s as a crusade against comic books. Werthem was a well respected psychologist at Bellevue at the time. He asked psychotic criminals, and only psychotic criminals, what they read. Some of them said comic books, so to him, ergo comics made them insane. He was well respected, but not very wealthy. His book sold very well during the trials. The major comic book companies at the time created the Comic Book Code Authority, a precursor to the video game ratings, and policed themselves. Werthem ran out of money, and the CCA is no more….
POWUH: Meta Team and Spammy Tamer with 7115 comments
I’d add that, at least in the US, the media is constantly trying to gin-up some new moral panic, especially related to kids and sex (second favorite is kids and getting high). Even if it means they have to trot out an old attempt that didn’t work before (how many times have we heard about “Rainbow Parties” now?).
POWUH: Meta Resident and LN Informant with 1529 comments
Sometimes I wonder how Japanese LN authors get away with submitting premises like Shimoneta’s to their publishers.
This is considering that in other places you’d be more likely to get thrown out of the publishing house with this kind of premise.
POWUH: Meta Team and Meta-Analyst with 3844 comments
We are talking about a country that has junior gravure albums. I like to think they’re rather opened-minded and not tied down by puritanical values.
*goes back to Shogun2*
POWUH: Meta Team and Spammy Tamer with 7115 comments
They have plenty of other puritanical values. They just aren’t exactly the same as North American puritanical values.
People everywhere think people everywhere else are fairly depraved at least in some way.
POWUH: and LOLi Defender with 10998 comments
I would suspect that LN publication houses probably have more editorial than authorial control. Find a niche and fill it/dogpile on it. Or create one. So who know where the idea came from, or even if you can play author horseshoes with it…
POWUH: 900-999 with 915 comments
Akon has a song that has two versions, one sings “I wanna fuck you” and the other sings “I wanna love you”. Yeah…
POWUH: and Vampire Lover with 11746 comments
Yeah, clean or uncensored versions. The choice is yours. Another means of either being direct or beating around the bush.
POWUH: and LOLi Defender with 10998 comments
But also not being able to come out an do that can make for interesting and creative coded language.
“She’s my cherry pie, tastes so sweet make a grown man cry!” You don’t have to wonder what that means, and it doesn’t spell it out in exacting detail.
“Squeeze my lemon, let the juice run down my leg”…well, some are just awkward…
POWUH: Meta Team and Spammy Tamer with 7115 comments
There’s also the awful “Seventeen” by Winger.
“She’s only 17… Daddy says she’s too young, but she’s old enough for me…” And how old was Kip Winger when they did that song?
POWUH: and LOLi Defender with 10998 comments
…to old for his ballet tights?
POWUH: 900-999 with 915 comments
Spammy probably ate something.
POWUH: Meta Team and Meta-Analyst with 3844 comments
It must have been delicious. There appears to be a spambot attack.
POWUH: Beginner (20-35) with 33 comments
This was hilarious. Way more fun that I thought it’d be. Definitely going to keep watching.
POWUH: Meta Resident with 1692 comments
The humor didn’t really work for me. I didn’t find the sex jokes sexy, raunchy or funny. But I’ll probably try one more episode.
Given Japan’s declining population and birthrate, it’d seem to make more sense to have a future Japanese society just the opposite of this one. Or a more typical harem setup where several girls want to “do their civic duty” and bang the virgin hero to get pregnant by him. But I suppose the idea behind this show is to satirize the morality kick the Japanese government is on.
POWUH: Meta Team and Spammy Tamer with 7115 comments
Well, I found it humorous that the ‘sex jokes’ were almost all Blue Snow shouting ‘Big Dick’ or just replacing a word with a more obscene word. It really fit in with the setting, that they weren’t very sophisticated at all.
POWUH: and LOLi Defender with 10998 comments
…which made the humor all their own…
POWUH: Meta Resident with 1692 comments
Yes, I can see how it fit in with the setting. It just didn’t do much for me. But that’s why I’m giving it at least one more episode–maybe it’ll click then.
POWUH: Meta Resident with 1557 comments
I’m with HannoX, the “jokes” were all really lame, along with the setting. Nothing like SYD, which I enjoyed.
Unless it gets super rave reviews, I probably won’t touch this again.
Clearly you don’t listen to rap or rnb ^^
POWUH: and LOLi Defender with 10998 comments
…not the modern crap where they break the rule or sound vulgar for the sake of sounding vulgar…
POWUH: Meta Resident with 1557 comments
I take it we won’t find you at the front of any rap/rnb concerts anytime soon ^^
POWUH: and LOLi Defender with 10998 comments
…you would never find me at a concert…
POWUH: Meta Resident with 1557 comments
Fair enough, it’s not for everyone. I’ve been to a couple, but I prefer music festivals.