Amai Choubatsu: Watashi Wa Kanshu Senyou Pet

Hmm… What’s this? If Nanbaka had a porn version, it would be Amai Choubatsu: Watashi Wa Kanshu Senyou Pet. Initially I was going to give up after the last couple of seasons having very ‘disappointing’ ‘legal anime porn’. Yeah, who could be disappointed with porn, right? And then this prison ‘porn’ theme somewhat attracted my attention. Maybe something will be different after all. Oh, who am I kidding? I’m here to see how ‘creative’ and absurd the prison porn theme could be. Because I bet prison sex won’t be as ‘sweet’ as this one would be.

Episode 1
Hina Saotome is found guilty of embezzling a multi-national company’s fund. So for stealing a million bucks, she is sentenced to only a year in prison? Hmm… They must be lenient on women… Of course Hina claims she is innocent but nobody cares, right? The judicial is f*cked up. You’re going to get f*cked up. Haha! Oops. Hina (prison number 3077) is brought before the handsome prison warden head, Aki Myoujin. She is told to obey his every word until he release. I can see where this is going. Even more mind boggling that she is the only female in this prison! OMFG. I can really see where this is going. So there are no special prisons for females?! They let a poor woman who isn’t hardcore criminal to mix with the guys?! And as usual, we get our first hentai scene with her stripping down in the name of body inspection. And really, he really gets physical and fingers her! I wonder what he was hoping to find. So good his fingering that she passes out only to wake up in her cell. During roll call, she realizes she is the only female and all the criminal guys except that hot looking one staring at her, Yamato Higa. Then a fight breaks out. Even when the warden is there. I guess he don’t care. It took Higa to stop them. Wow. She is impressed with him?

Episode 2
Hina has a visitor. It is Kiyonori Yakumo, her lover and colleague who believes she is innocent. He is still trying to find a way to get her out but assures everything will be better soon. Suddenly Hina feels somebody licking her vagina! OMFG! Aki is licking and fingering her!!! This scene is more hilarious than it is horny!!!! She is trying to hold in her orgasm face and not let Yakumo know. He must be one dense guy not to see something is wrong with her expression and was he so fixated in her that he didn’t see the warden bending down over to underneath Hina’s legs? Whatever it is, this is the funniest hentai scene ever! God help you, Hina. Aki then takes her to some solitary confinement for prisoners who do not repent. Like those troublemakers this morning. God, putting her with other men who want to rape her? Thankfully Higa is there and he beats the crap out of them. Surprised he protected her, she tends to his wounds and notices his entire body with tattoos. She tells him her circumstances before she realizes she mustn’t trust any horny guys and cowers at a corner. She falls asleep and when she wakes up, she realizes he has been sitting in front and protecting her from whatever harm. She is confused if he is on her side.

Episode 3
Aki puts a vibrator inside her every morning she does exercise. Of course she cannot keep up with the movements. I guess this is the perfect excuse so when she passes out, Aki takes her to a private room to punish her for failing to do as she is told. And hence our hentai scene for this episode as Aki fingers her as she is pushed against the tinted glass while prisoners are working below. Can they see her? Well, if they look up. Oh, Higa saw her orgasmic face. Later when she does some job like all other prisoners do, Hina manages to talk to Higa. She learns he is doing time for getting caught in a mob auction and has got a year to go. But unlike her, he claims he is here for a reason. During the next roll call, Hina is relieved Aki isn’t among the wardens. He is in fact visiting his vegetable mother in hospital. When Yakumo visits Hina again, he tells her not to wait for a year for her release and then prove her innocence. He wants her to break out and he will help her.

Episode 4
It seems Yakumo has a plan to escape so that they could run away and live peacefully. Uhm, wouldn’t the law go after you for escaping prison? And why is he discussing this plan so openly when there is warden in the room? Is the warden deaf?! The first part of the plan works out in which Hina gets permission to use the shower area every day. The tough part is acting and not giving away to Aki who is constantly watching over her. Out of the blue he deems her unfit for the kitchen job. So he is going to punish her (but of course). He wants her to masturbate before him. In order not to arouse his suspicions, she does so. Not satisfied, he does it for her and before a mirror so that she could look at her own orgasmic face. Then he lets her masturbate with a vibrator. Is she good in playing with herself because I thought she could have faked her own orgasm instead of really cumming for real. Yeah, he gives her permission to cum. WTF. She calls him crazy but he blames her for making him so. I guess there’s some porn logic in there for that.

Episode 5
Aki visits his mom. Her condition is getting worse. He might look calm but he is getting angrier by the moment. The day for Hina to make her escape is here. As she showers, she uses the ventilation to escape. Amazingly in the dark she could remember Yakumo’s words of where to turn in the vent. And this is her first time! Aki returns early and notices some anomaly in the showers. What kind of high level detection is there in the control room? Seeing Hina not in the showers, he knows what she is doing. This scene… Hina is metres before freedom when she hears someone crawling behind her. It’s Aki!!! OMFG! How the f*ck did he crawl so fast?! And the way he crawls and catches her is so f*cking creepy-cum-hilarious!!! Am I watching a horny horror show???!!! And hearing Hina’s scream means Yakumo cries and knows she failed. How the f*ck did he tie a rope up the prison wall without any guards noticing?! F*ck this. It’s porn related logic. Hina is brought back to the showers where as expected, Aki this time penetrates and f*cks her with his dick. Yeah, she feels good but notices his sad face. Damn this guy is good because she cums when he gives her permission to. As he carries her on the way out, Higa is shocked to see this. Wait. What? Did he realize Aki beat him to f*ck her?

Episode 6
Flashback shows when Aki interrogated Higa, he was charged for protecting his yakuza superiors. It seems Aki would support him to be reinstated into society if he is released and leaves the yakuza. Now Higa accuses Aki of not protecting them anymore and is more obsessed with this woman. Of course he is not obliged to tell him anything. When Hina wakes up in her cell, she thought she saw a black angel before her. Nope, it’s the devil himself, Aki! Haha! What a joke. He tells her a few things like she will from now on only work in the laundry, cannot do showers (there goes her escape bid, they’re not stupid to let her attempt something like that again) and because of that escape attempt, her sentence is extended for another year. Shocking! Just like that? Do wardens have the power to increase prison terms? Of course it is rape time and surprisingly but not surprisingly, Hina can still manage to cum in this situation while thinking the bad circumstance she is in. Is she a masochist? As she continues working and it is getting tough on her, she breaks down. Luckily Higa is here and she feels assured. Even more so by his hug. She then tells him everything from her sentencing to Aki’s rape. She knows he cannot do anything but just needs somebody to talk to. This makes him want to protect her.

Episode 7
Hina is about to be gang raped by inmates when Aki whips them up and has them arrested. Knowing that this area isn’t suitable for her, he sends her back to the laundry section. Higa who has been watching all this feels angry. But this looks like a bigger part of Aki plan. So when Higa confronts Hina, he instantly kisses her and confesses he loves her! WTF?! I expected something like this but not so fast or in this fashion. He vows to protect her. And what do you know? Aki sees this and says romance between prisoners isn’t allowed. He will punish them both. First he locks up Higa in a cell. Then he rapes Hina in front of him! This guy is getting so good that Hina is climaxing and showing her orgasmic face. I can’t believe Higa managed to control his anger while watching all that as Aki blames him as the reason why Hina had more fun than usual. That’s the end of this punishment. Back in his cell. He thinks of a way to save Hina. Yeah, he calls the guard his tummy hurts and when he opens the door, Higa knocks him out!!! Holy sh*t!!! That was f*cking easy!!! I’m sure he could have done this a long time ago since the guards here are this useless but I’m figuring he was trying to be a good boy for Aki because of that trust thingy. No more good boy now.

Episode 8
Higa snoops around in Aki’s office and gets caught. Dumb. Thanks to that, he gets whipped as punishment. Uhm, not the sexiest scene unless you’re into yaoi, which you shouldn’t be watching this anyway. Then he calls Hina just to see the whip scars on his back and blames her for it! WTF?! Then something comes up. Is something so urgent that he left the duo together? With the door unlocked? And no guards?! Hina feels guilty as she tries to find out what he did. Not that he minds because now he has his sentence extended for another year, he can at least be with her. Oh dear. Then he starts to kiss her. At first she resists but I guess she relents when he says his feelings for her are real. Oh sure. Like every sex in porn is real. Besides, Higa is a criminal so this is somewhat okay? He masturbates her until she cums. Wow. She must really like it since she has almost forgotten this passionate feeling… Yeah, when you’re rotting in prison… Meanwhile that important thing Aki needs to attend is that his mom’s condition has worsened. At the hospital, he feels useless there is nothing he could do for her and if she dies, he will be alone. Well, you were screwing around with a female inmate, right?

Episode 9
I guess with sex, Higa now lets Hina know some info. Yuzuru Akatsuki who is the boss of the company Hina works in, is missing. There seems to be a link between them but there is nothing more he knows. She doesn’t know about this and there is a report of this in Aki’s office. It clearly shows he is keeping information from her. Even so, is he obliged to tell her? When she asks him about his past, he tells her about his yakuza life. Mamoru Kensaki picked him up to join his yakuza branch. He thought he was a good yakuza leader and supported him until he was set up and caught in an illegal weapons transaction. Aki’s mom has stabilized but he is on the verge of breaking and knowing this fact he have to live this feeling for the rest of his life. Hina senses something wrong when Aki hasn’t been seen for 3 days. Speaking of the devil, here he is! Right on the dot. Immediately he kisses her! However she can feel his kiss is passionate. Then he spots a hickey on her given by Higa. He doesn’t like her being f*cked by other man and will punish her. By f*cking her? Yeah, porn logic. Yeah, literally screwed anyhow. She is so scared that she obeys his command to strip. He gets mad when she tries to ask for his relationship with Akatsuki. Then he starts f*cking her. First time we see a 69! During that hot sex, Hina admits she enjoys having sex with Aki. Yeah, this guy is good. Sorry Higa. She isn’t your b*tch but Aki’s. Meanwhile Higa has a visitor.

Episode 10
Tsuyoshi Samejima is the guy who betrayed Higa and landed him here. Higa is not pleased hearing that some group is going to expand. When Hina tries to approach Higa, he pushes her away. Now trying to be a tough guy? Or he realized she enjoys sex with somebody other than him? Aki asks Hina if she now knows how it feels to lose everything. Oddly, Hina finds this sad expression beautiful?! Prison sex must have screwed with her head too. Then he accuses her for stealing everything for him. Cue for rape scene. Oh Hina, what’s the use of realizing you betrayed Yakumo and Higa since you’re having fun being f*cked by this guy? Samejima returns to report to his boss about Higa. And since boss is sick, Samejima kills him! The next time Hina approaches Higa, he continues to push her away. It seems Aki warned him about approaching her again because if he does, he’ll send him to some special section. I’m thinking this section is so terrifying that that this tough yakuza dude even chickens out. Anal probing? A funeral is held for the yakuza boss. While many of his men accept his death and new leader, Igarashi won’t.

Episode 11
Hina and Higa are tied and blindfolded. They are to be transported. Since they will split up once they arrive at the hospital, Aki is going to give her a farewell gift: He is going to f*ck her! Oh sh*t! This is some sick twisted BDSM. Yeah, I wonder if he is also doing it on purpose to piss off Higa. Too bad for Hina, she finds it good and tries real hard not to make a sound. Like that would ever happen in porn! Oh Hina you bad girl! She came!!! Luckily they finish their f*cking since the truck met with an accident. I know these might not be the most notorious criminals, but seriously not even a decent security for them?! It seems Igarashi has caused the accident. See what did I tell you about having no security?! Higa is freed and is told their boss got killed by Samejima. Higa sees unconscious Aki protected Hina’s body during the crash. Higa frees Hina and gives her a chance to escape to freedom. Well, duh?! The reason she agreed is because he called her by her real name instead of her prison number. WTF?! Aki is also taken and kept tied in some room. Snippets of flashback shows when his mom was still around, she was having an affair with Akatsuki. Aki was a rebellious kid then, but there was nothing much he could do. Now he wakes up and finds the tables have turned on him. Higa is going to interrogate him.

Episode 12
Higa explains the documents he found in Aki’s room contains Akatsuki’s private life. It is very clear he framed Hina who is no doubt innocent. He definitely has something to do with him hence the reason why Aki is using Hina as an excuse. Otherwise, why would Aki have protected Hina during the crash? The news reports the crash and Aki held as hostage. Now Higa and Hina have wanted posters. I guess living life as a fugitive is better? Higa gets a call by Samejima. He rejects his offer to join forces and knows this sneaky dude killed the boss like how he set him up in the first place. Looks like they’re going to war. Meanwhile Hina gets ‘attracted’ to the dark basement. Oh sure. Any girl would just head straight down there without suspicions. Of course there is Aki tied up. She sees him as a beautiful doll. Flashback reveals Akatsuki receives death threats after being involved in some shady business. Aki returned to find his parents hung themselves. Mom was rushed to hospital and is in coma since. I am deducing that Aki is forced to sexually abuse Hina because Akatsuki has a leash on his mom’s life. But f*ck all that because it’s now time for porn logic. Aki tells her to strip and sexually arouse him! OMFG! She does so without any hesitation! I guess he likes bondage so instead of freeing him and have sex, she f*cks him while still tied up. OMG. I guess it was the best sex ever. All the yakuza dudes must be so busy preparing for war that they didn’t hear weird screams of pleasure downstairs. And of course now that Hina is so thrilled to get f*cked by him, she reasons she was never a prisoner in that prison but a prisoner of Aki’s heart. I guess now it lives up to the series’ name of her being his pet, eh?

Episode 13
WTF?! Why the heck did they repeat episode 5 here???!!! Apparently I read in the comments that this episode was produced as a contest for viewers. WTF. Because the only difference is that there are some scenes that suddenly pop up those white gloves. WTF. Yeah. You’re supposed to count them. Not sure if you get to f*ck Hina for free if you count all of them that pops up in the weirdest place, some even acting as censors for Hina’s private parts. But I do wonder this: Do Aki’s real gloves count? Oh damn… Everyone who wants to participate must be confused if they are supposed to be counted. But there is 1 short additional never seen before scene here: Yakumo running away from the guards outside in comical fashion! Ayashikunai yo! Well, I guess this episode wasn’t so bad. Oh wait. It is. Because no sex scenes at all! Even if it is a repeat!

Jailhouse Cock, F*ck (By) Tha Police!
HOLY SH*T!!!! WTF?????!!!!! THIS HAS GOT TO BE THE WORSE ENDING OF IN THIS SLUTTY GENRE EVER!!!!!!! Everything is left f*cking hanging! They even dare put up a sign in the end that says how everything is now the beginning! What does this mean? A second season?! Holy cow. If it is true, I can’t believe it. Because with things still left unresolved, from Higa’s war with his own yakuza clan to Akatsuki’s mom and the real reason why he takes it all out on Hina, I can’t say that these are pretty decent plots but with the f*cking taking up most of the screen time, I guess for porn series like this, such potential story development is thrown on the wayside. As long as Hina realizes she loves to get f*cked by Aki, that’s the goal of this story, that’s the endpoint of this story. Period.

Despite saying how sh*tty the ending is, it is with utmost irony for me to say that after every season of such anime smut, this one is considered the ‘best’ of the lot! Holy sh*t! You mean to say I enjoyed it?! Am I being hypocritical? What I actually meant was how some of the illogical moments were so damn funny that it really made me laugh! For example when Aki crawled through the ventilation and caught up with Hina, that was one of the ‘best’ hilarious moments in the serious! It was just so f*cking comical! That is really comedy gold! The fact that Hina could even try and plan an escape with a third party outside shows how much there is a big security flaw in the system. But nobody cares. Because essentially everybody is just useless. Who cares, right? Not in porn logic. That is why of all the short hentai series I have watched, this series easily trumps the rest thanks to this bizarre moments. Good job guys. You really made me laugh with this one instead of being horny.

As usual, the so called f*cking of the woman is used as the recurring theme for such genres. It is already mind boggling how Hina could be the only female here in this prison. Assuming there are no prisons for women or Hina is the only female with a ‘criminal record’. Hence your porn logic setting here. The only reason why Hina doesn’t seek some way to put a stop to Aki’s rape is because of the porn logic of how much she enjoys him f*cking her or him doing an oral over her nether regions (literally Aki giving Hina a female blowjob is like, it sucks! Haha!). Like I have always said in my previous blogs, as long as you screw a woman long enough, she will eventually come to like it no matter how desolated and grim her situation is.

You think Hina who has been put to prison after being falsely accused would be having her heart and morale broken by sitting behind bars. But noooooo. She gets to ‘forget’ her troubles by being f*cked by the warden! Instead of hell, this prison is paradise! No wonder she is so confused on leaving. While the sex scenes are just pretty meh to me (believe me, you see them once, you probably seen them all), I believe this is the first time that for this type of series that the female got f*cked by 2 different guys. Usually it is just the main male protagonist but here we have 2 of them. Who knows if Hina had made love to Yakumo before but behind his back in prison, she has been f*cked by 2 bad boys. But now that she is living in Higa’s hideout, the chances of f*cking him is also as high as she is going to f*ck Aki willingly. Hey, variety is the spice of life. Hina, you lucky sleazy horny b*tch!!! Who knows if the rest of Higa’s guys will get a turn to ride her. She’s everyone b*tch is what I can eventually think of. And then, heh, everyone fighting over the right to f*ck Hina. Oh yeah, Hina, your vagina is a prison for everyone’s dick! Damn, I’m overthinking this…

I never really cared about the plot of such sleazy genres but this one in particularly had me intrigued. Because ever since Aki’s mom is shown to be in coma in hospital, I can’t help wondering why Aki kept blaming Hina for this and hence her incessant modesty outrage in prison. What is Hina’s connection to all this? Hmm… It really got me intrigued. It was never clearly explained even in the final episode. We are shown flashback snippets and you are supposed to guess from it. I suppose everyone here is for the horny part and not think of the mystery of why Hina is framed. Don’t want to hurt you brains, eh? Better hurt your penis by fapping too much!

I also want to point out that the guards in this prison feel like dumb automated robots. Not only that many of them look the same, they don’t seem like they are doing their supervising job well. If you take into account the lax of security in this place (this isn’t maximum security prison if I should say the least) but it feels like the guards are doing just a daycare job rather than actually watch over the prisoners. And why the f*ck do they have censors in the ventilation???!!!! Oh sure, in case prisoners use it to escape. Doesn’t that mean they are already giving an avenue to prisoners to escape?! Even more so that it is easily accessible through the showers! It’s like as though they want to let them escape and then catch them.

And the prisoners feel more like delinquents than anything badass. I’ve heard a lot about prison rape stories but I don’t hear anything here. Maybe we are not told and it is not relevant to the story. So I’m going to assume that there are none that took place and thus considering these criminals as non-criminally criminals. WTF did I just say… You see, these kind of prison rape sex is to also assert authority. With no males ever getting their anal wrecked and they aren’t even the least interested in the only female around (perhaps Aki is keeping a good stranglehold on Hina), this prison is literally sexless! Everybody is so straight and a good boy! Probably to enhance Aki as the biggest jerk around.

Also, the prisoners’ jumpsuit doesn’t make them look like prisoners. More like construction contractors or delivery job workers? And don’t they allow them to wear underwear in prison? Because Aki could just zip down Hina’s jumpsuit and start licking her naked pussy. It’s just f*cking weird… And they have a uniform for Hina’s size? Lucky her. There must be criminals who have such small feminine frame too.

Surprisingly, I didn’t expect myself to like the ending theme, Sweet Punishment by Rosukey. This rock piece sounds seemingly fitting into the overall theme of the series, which makes it not bad. Sometimes I find myself rocking to this badass beat after having a good laugh at the end of the episode.

It is with utmost irony for me to consider this erotica to be so far the ‘best’ that I have watched as well as the ‘worst’ in terms of its ‘ending’. It wasn’t so much the sex scenes but rather the absolute ridiculous hilarity of the situation as well as the porn logic that goes with it. Also, this series has a ‘deeper’ plot compared to the rest despite being cheesy overall. I thought this is going to be my last foray into this ‘legal anime smut’ but I guess bad habits die hard. That is why there is a high percentage of criminals relapsing. I might be physically free but my heart and mind are already imprisoned from watching such sinful guilty pleasures. Damn, I don’t know if I have been continually being mind raped and mind f*cked ever since.

Nanbaka

If you can’t get enough about series that has its characters breaking out of prisons but find the one about a high school that imprisons boys to be too pandering to feminism and too much hot fanservice spamming in your face, then perhaps breaking out of a real high security prison would seem more reasonable. Sort of. Nanbaka isn’t just about prisoners breaking out of their cell. Oh no. That would be just boring to see every episode about them trying their devious and cunning ways to beat the system to get out. Because it will be like the Coyote and Road Runner show. The same never ending stuffs. So we’ve got lots of action, lots of comedy, lots of drama learning more about the prisoners and wardens past and character and a whole lot of conspiracy to go about. Wow. Prison is more than just locking up somebody and leaving them to rot and die.

Episode 1
Nanba Prison is supposedly the most secretive and high-tech prison in the world that nobody has ever escaped before. Oops! Said too soon because inmates from Cell 13 of Building 13 have escaped. They are No. 25 AKA Nico, No.69 AKA Rock, No. 11 AKA Uno and No. 15 AKA Juugo. They run through all the traps and security layout like ease. As if this is just an easy game show for them. Building 13’s guards, Hajime Sugoroku and Seitarou Tanabata are monitoring their movements. They thought Yamato Godai could help catch them since he is on scene but this training maniac easily got lost. Bad sense of direction? When you want things done, you have got to do it yourself. So when the quartet finally reach the end gate to freedom, they are stopped by the only man who can stop them: Hajime. He easily beats them up and sends them back to their cell. So close, yet so far. Even in their cells, the inmates are happily living there. Wow. Like it is the best place to live ever? I mean, they are guaranteed 3 meals a day and follow a healthy routine. They can even read manga, watch TV and do some so why would they want to ever leave? Well, as Juugo puts it, even if he escapes (which he does as a past time in other prisons), he has no home to go. When they hear a woman is going to visit this building, they get excited to go see her. So they break out to see this beautiful blonde lolita chick. Woah. Hajime, we didn’t know you have such a cute sister. Guys, meet Hitoshi. His cross-dressing brother! OMFG! Not so keen now, are they? Hajime is then summoned by the warden of Nanba Prison: Momoko Hyakushiki. She is sceptical about no troubles surfacing from Cell 13 since Juugo, the son of a very troublesome prisoner is housed there. They named No. 610 as the Eternal Fugitive. Juugo continues talking to Hitoshi that he can escape from any lock except the ones on his neck, hands and feet. He doesn’t know how it got there nor how to remove them. Nobody could. But he thinks that this guy with a scary scar on his back neck might be the one. Therefore he has been going from prison to prison to find this dude. Now, there is nowhere left for them to run. This is the last stop, the end of the line. He will find him.

Episode 2
Hyakushiki again summons Hajime to confirm if there are no troubles from Cell 13. No ma’am. In actual fact, Hyakushiki is in love with Hajime! On the outside, she looks like a serious tough nut but on the inside she is swooning like a teenage girl on how cool Hajime is! And Hajime is like really scared of her despite putting up his cool façade. He almost got into trouble again when he gets back to his room because Juugo just escaped! Yeah, he was sleeping in his room. We see Rock enjoying the cafeteria’s food since the big shy chef, Shiro loves making food for him. There is no escape puzzle that Juugo cannot solve and today is Cell 13 inmates to assemble furniture. Too bad their creativity isn’t appreciated here. Now we see Hajime go through all the silly security layers just to enter Hyakushiki’s room. Outside her room are other guards from other buildings waiting for their turn. Yup, a big bunch of weirdoes. When it is Hajime’s turn, he is supposed to bring the files of Cell 13 inmates. What Hyakushiki is interested is why they are not breaking out considering their habit from jailbreak in other prisons. Hajime says it is hard to put it on paper. He explains for example, Nico the American was arrested for being a drug mule. Although he had a light sentence, it seems he didn’t like the injections and needles to treat his uncanny ability of being immune to poison. Because of Nanba Prison’s oral medication, he likes its flavours and thus no motivation to escape. Fellow American Rock was arrested for starting gang riots. He escaped from prisons due to bad food. Now he loves it here because of Nanba Prison’s good food! British Uno is a compulsive gambler. But his escapes are due to because he has dates with women! Because he now has no dates, thus his lack of motivation. Finally Japanese Juugo escapes prison as a hobby. Speaking of which, he almost escaped again. Is he trying to break the record for most escapes in a day?! The quartet discuss if they really should stay here because Nanba Prison is like their home. It’s nice and comfortable.

Episode 3
Seitarou complains to Hajime that Cell 13 inmates are bullying him for being weak. He thinks of quitting but Hajime chides his low resolve. If he can work here, he can work anywhere else. So Hajime suggests this method to handle them. Just give Uno surveys from women’s magazine, manga to Nico and a food menu to Rock to keep them occupied. With them preoccupied, this will make Juugo less motivated to escape since his inmates aren’t. Thanks to that, Seitarou now becomes their errand boy. At least he is motivated. A new inmate is to be placed in Cell 13. He is a ninja, No. 99 AKA Tsukumo. The non-Japanese guys are so happy to see a Japanese ninja. Apparently he got arrested for trespassing. Because Tsukumo is a bit like a show off, he challenges Juugo to see who can escape this prison first. But it seems Tsukumo is just following Juugo around. The rest too because they are the audience and judge? So when they finally bump into Hajime who expected this antic, Tsukumo tries to use his ninja moves but blunders idiotically. Since he is no threat, he will be transferred to another cell block. Later the inmates have to clean their cells as this customary for the New Year. The guards like Hajime are to clean the warden’s building. Hajime could feel Hyakushiki’s piercing eyes watching his every move. But we all know she is just admiring him. Yeah, look at his skin, his sweat. What a man! Once done, Hyakushiki has made up her mind on the cell representatives for each building for the New Year’s Tournament. Building 13 will of course be Cell 13. Because Hajime did mentions if they get chosen, it will be more work for him to clean up their mess. The more chances she gets to see Hajime, the better, right?

Episode 4
The annual tournament hosted by Mitsuru Hitokoe will have building guards and inmates team up and the winner will get prizes. The guards will get bonuses and prisoners one wish. So we see a few of the potential rivals like Building 5’s Samon Gokuu and his Cell 8, Building 3’s Kiji Mitsuba and his Cell 6 as well as Building 4’s Kenshirou Yozakura and his Cell 10. The first event has them write calligraphy. Yeah, everyone is pining for Juugo since he is Japanese. He sucks! Luckily Hajime and Yamato can write better. They win because Hyakushiki abuses her power to give them high marks. The next is pounding mochi on a daruma. Yamato teams up with Rock to fight Building 5’s Inori Hakkai and No. 2 AKA Liang. The latter is Rock’s ex-cellmate before he was transferred to another block. Seems Liang has some sort of grudge on him and wants to beat him up. Therefore he has trained hard to be the strongest and wants a training ground. However Rock fights back and defeats him. All he wants is a stone oven as fighting doesn’t fill his stomach. Yamato also beats up Inori after being motivated by Rock’s win. Next up is karuta. A guard can pair up with up to 2 inmates. Hajime selects Seitarou and Cell 13 inmates mock him that they never knew he could do anything! Juugo fears he will be picked since he is Japanese but surprisingly Uno volunteers. Well, it’s a card game, right? Seitarou faces off with Kiji who also looks down on him. But Seitarou’s hand is faster than the eye! It’s gone before you can even move! A complete sweep for Seitarou. The problem is now Uno as he is up against the queer guys of Cell 8, No. 3 AKA Trois and No. 8 AKA Honey. Uno is also getting his ass handed to him. Uno notices the card disappears into their hand before he could reach them. They believe they’ll win before he discovers their strategy and cheats.

Episode 5
Uno is more than capable of cheating. In a short while, Uno turns the tables and gets all the cards before his opponents could move. Uno has this great observation ability and he has deduced their bad habits. Therefore as long as he can see their traits, he can figure out their next move. Uno wins the game as he tells wish is to get a game room. Next match is top spinning. Building 13 will face off with Building 5. Samon sends No. 71 AKA Qi and No. 58 AKA Upa to fight. Nico is eager to enter this match and drags Hajime in since he earlier saw Upa floating in a cell. But Qi leaves Upa to fight since he doesn’t feel like it. Samon targets Hajime instead of the top. He is suspicious that he is hiding something from his report regarding Cell 13. Hajime fights back as he doesn’t like being interrogated. He hates most that people suspects him. Meanwhile Nico is impressed with Upa’s fighting skills and wants him to teach him. Upa refuses so Nico makes a deal if he beats him, he will be his disciple. Upa calls his wish insignificant so Nico says his wish is to have the latest gaming system in addition to anime and manga. Those make the world go round! Upa is surprised that Nico is able to copy moves from Liang. Though, many had to be censored since he is blurting out trademark moves from other anime. In the end, the might of Hajime and Nico finishes off their opponents. The final match will put Building 13 against Building 4.

Episode 6
This final which is a repeat of last year’s final has the first to open this sake barrel wins. Juugo didn’t want to enter but the rest kick him in. It’s his turn. Hajime also wanted to sit this out since he is tired but noticing Hyakushiki giving him death stares (we all know it’s her high level delusions), he changes his mind. It seems Kenshirou has a crush on Hyakushiki and plans to crush Hajime to prove he is her man. Yeah, he is assuming all that. Juugo is shocked to see inmate no. 634 AKA Musashi. He knows him as an ex-cellmate from another prison and isn’t too happy to see him here. As the battle starts, Hajime is owning Kenshirou, bringing joy to Hyakushiki’s inner heart. Kenshirou has his invisible whip trick but that too was easily seen through. However it is not so good going for Juugo. He is getting owned by the blind man. It might seem that Musashi wants to take Juugo’s sight since he was the one who destroyed his eyes but actually he is interested to have his shackles. Juugo would love to give it to him if he knew of a way to be freed. When Musashi notes it is that man with the scar who only knows, Juugo becomes mad. Does he know more about that guy? He becomes a mad dog trying to extract more information. Musashi surprises everyone by throwing flames. Some human combustion theory here. As Juugo is desperate to do what it takes to get info about that guy, this causes his shackles to transform. This is the reason Juugo hates his shackles and the man who put it there because he took away his freedom and tampered with his body’s structure. His hands are now sharp blades and he is looking more like a monster.

Episode 7
We take a detour and go back a bit in time. Tsukumo is surprised he got a visitor but it is his manager, Hanzou Hattori. Yes, Tsukumo is a famous actor and Hattori has gone through lots of trouble in the media claiming he has gone missing as jail time could spell the end of an actor’s career. However Tsukumo doesn’t want to go back to the life of deceit. He accuses him of kidnapping and more appropriately the director who is his mom. Or so he was made to believe. When Director wanted a new ninja movie, she wanted a real ninja to helm the role. She actually managed to find a hidden village but was chased away. However she found young Tsukumo training in the mountains himself (and failing). At first he was sceptical but soon opens up. When he reveals he is ostracized by the village and hoping his training would bring his missing parents back, Director took the chance to play his mother. Her fine acting made the little kid believe so. And so she groomed him up to be a talented actor. Hanzou claims that it was her who brought him up so it is rude to bite the hands that feed him. He ‘threatens’ that he doesn’t like being alone, which is what this prison is about. If he quits acting, what does he have left? Once Tsukumo leaves, he realizes Juugo has been eavesdropping. So he continues the rest of his story that he ran away once he found out the truth. He tried to return to his village but got lost and arrested for trespassing. As he acted as an escaped convict, he tried it and this landed him in Nanba Prison. This opened his eyes of how useless he is other than being in front of a camera. Juugo’s advice is to be himself. Nobody here will force him to become what he is not or treat him differently. This gives Tsukumo motivation to stay true to himself and hopefully will be able to smile truly next time.

Episode 8
Back to Juugo’s mad transformation, the epic super power battle between them is enough to rock the stadium. Everyone is evacuated while the wardens try to apprehend them. They will not listen and continue to fight each other. But the Nanba Prison guards show why they are the best wardens ever as it took Kenshirou, Kiji and Samon to stop Musashi. Meanwhile Hajime is trying to make Juugo spill the beans about his intentions but Juugo is just desperate to find more info on that man. Juugo’s pals intervene to try to stop him but to no avail. He is a rampaging monster. I suppose talking him out of it won’t be any effective. Before Uno gets killed, Hajime takes over and beats him up to a bloody pulp. He only stops when Hyakushiki orders him so. And with that, the tournament also ends. A few days later, Juugo is still in coma. Hajime visits Cell 13 but apparently Uno is still mad about him overdoing his job. Hajime shows no weakness and he admits he will even kill if it is his job. Hajime can’t catch a break as the other wardens also chastise him for going overboard. Then the ‘worst’ hits him. An order from Hyakushiki that he is to be suspended for 3 days. He goes into shock mode? Apparently Hajime is a workaholic so being on leave means… But his pain is nothing compared to the pain Hyakushiki is experiencing. Yeah, she’s crying in her heart over this punishment she has to mete and hopes he would forgive him.

Episode 9
Now Hajime is back, he wants to interrogate Juugo. But Kenshirou states that Musashi won’t talk till he speaks to Juugo. As they want to learn about their powers but can’t risk putting them together, they talk via walkie-talkie. Musashi asks Juugo’s objective. He laughs when it is just to find the man with the scar. He wants Juugo to give his shackles as it is his goal to find that man and kill him. That shackles will lead him to him. Musashi was a monster who can’t control his flames. But this guy claimed he could solve his troubles in exchange to become his experiment. Too bad he became an even bigger monster. He became mad and tried to kill him but he sliced his fire with his sword. So Musashi claims this man has technology that no other possesses. That is why he is willing to find him and fight him with his own technology to stand a chance. It might not look plausible but he is willing to risk his life and he gallows for it. However ever since he came to Nanba Prison, doctors put some chip into his body that controls his fire. So it’s impossible to take his shackles for now. He just wanted to tell him this to see his reaction. Now it’s Hajime’s turn to lecture Juugo. He is empty and lacks greed. Observing his numerous prison break, his lack of greed has him escape not even for fun. Because he has no objective, his escape somewhat barely prolongs his objective, his reason to live. This makes Juugo realize he never wanted anything. So the shackles somewhat gave him a sense of wanting something. Then he realized the lighted up faces of his cellmates. That face of when they have something they want. However the more he feels that, the more he fears of turning into that monster and killing them. So it’s back to ‘running away’. Hajime tells him Building 13 won the tournament so he can name whatever he wants. However Juugo can’t think of anything. After all that brain racking and eye opening thoughts, he screams he wants another chance. Hajime throws his number tag and warns about his harsh life awaiting that will never be the same. Juugo isn’t fazed. He won’t run away and face them head on. Welcome back.

Episode 10
We go back in time to see what happened to our Cell 13 inmates while Juugo was out. Hyakushiki orders Kenshirou, Kiji and Samon to take turns supervising Cell 13. On the first day, Kenshirou escorts Nico to see Dr Okina Otogi for his check-up and medication. It seems the reason the others follow is because of his super sexy android nurse, Kaguya. It is Kiji’s turn on the second day. Seeing how easily they get depressed just thinking about Juugo, he thought of lighting things up by telling the general layout of Nanba Prison. It’s so huge it has a shopping complex and indoor ski?! Soon Kiji and Uno get into an argument over who is more beautiful/handsome. Till Seitarou steps in and they get even more upset because he is the prettiest boy in prison! Samon goes in on the third day but finds them missing. He finds them hiding because Yamato wants to take them for training and they don’t want his hell training. They try to give excuses and delay but eventually they can’t escape his hell training. Meanwhile Hajime who was suspended, brought home work, finished it, finished work of other wardens and even helped in some building construction! Hardcore workaholic! Back to normal time, Juugo still doesn’t understand what Musashi is trying to tell him so Hajime is forced to explain he is betting on him to find the man with the scar since he lost his powers. Juugo feels awkward returning to his cellmates. But they are more than happy to see him back. Because they act like normal, this makes Juugo feel bad as he apologizes for all that has happened. He is sorry for not understanding them and always trying to run away. Sorry for always hiding something. Don’t sweat it. They’re cool with it. Hyakushiki is glad Hajime is back. Because Mitsuru tried to troll her by wearing a mask of Hajime, she beats him up. Hajime is nervous to hand her the report on Juugo’s recovery. The moment he enters and sees her scary face as well as Mitsuru’s bloody body (her scary smile doesn’t help either), he quickly gives the report and dashes out!

Episode 11
Rock’s stone oven is here. He invites Liang over to taste his pizza and Chinese food. Liang is shocked that Rock is even concerned about his health after the tournament and thus baked these foods. He even gets philosophical about the joys of eating. Of course he attributes this to Juugo. Had he not met him, he wouldn’t have changed. Rock was a rich kid. He ran away as he refused to become like his dad. He became a delinquent, thrown into prison and the wardens starve him. Juugo gave his bread but he refused to eat crappy food. Thus Juugo breaks them out just to let him eat at a better place. Food never tasted so good. Nico is under Otogi’s treatment. Everything is well for him except that Otogi is quarrelling with his mad scientist wife, Kazari over this morning eggs. Don’t ask. Nico’s requested games are here. Heck, he’s got an entire arcade. He invites Upa over to play. Upa didn’t like the idea of Nico being his disciple. Kazari passes a handphone that has all the games Nico wants to play. But he notes that it is better and more fun to play with others. Of course Nico also attributes this to Juugo. Trapped in a room and starring at nothing but a white ceiling, he thought he would die like this but Juugo freed him and introduced him to manga. Thanks to him, Nico never felt more alive and wants to carry on living. Musashi passes by and Uno still doesn’t forgive him even though Juugo doesn’t mind it all. But since Musashi does say sorry, Uno forgives him and becomes his friend. He invites him to his game room tomorrow. But there is a strict rule that Musashi is not allowed outside his underground cell. Kenshirou is willing to overlook that provided he tells him about his past.

Episode 12
When Musashi was born, his temperature was higher than others. He led a happy life till his teens when his fire goes out of control. When he became human combustion but survived, that is when people accused him of arson. Things took a toll for the worse when his home burnt down, killing his parents. It wasn’t his fault but the police tried to arrest him but he burnt them. Since there were witnesses, it was the end of the line for him. In a prison in Germany, that is where he met the man with the scar. Of course we already know what happened. It was there he too learnt that his assistant, Elf was the one who framed him and the culprit who started the arsons. They do so because human experiments are illegal in every way. But if such is done on inmates, nobody will care about them, right? Eventually, that prison burnt down and he was transferred here. Although Musashi lacks the power for revenge, his desire to kill him won’t. Musashi thought Kenshirou won’t believe him but he does. Kenshirou was once a cop investigating experiments in prisons. His higher ups would always dismiss his findings. Thus he had no choice but to become a warden to continue his investigations. He promises to bring the culprit to justice because he can’t forgive those who violate the law. Uno invites all the inmates and wardens from the tournament to his new game room. Looks empty. Will slowly build it? Well, those guys from other blocks too donate some of their games. When they are to go back to their cells, the inmates protest too short a time. They get beaten up and sent back. Juugo can’t sleep that night but it isn’t something unpleasant. Uno talks to him and despite naming all his negative traits, it gives him character. It doesn’t matter where they are. As long as they are living happily, they’ll take it slow and enjoy tomorrow. Juugo goes outside to think and never has he felt like looking forward to tomorrow. But he is interrupted by Elf.

Episode 13
Could it all be in Juugo’s mind? But Elf is real. Though, he can pop up anywhere and despite stabbing Juugo, the pain is real but in a flash it is all gone. Juugo tries to act he doesn’t care about Elf but the latter ‘laments’ how cruel for him to forget the guy who saved him. The guy whom some consider as saviour and others as traitor. Juugo might not have clear memories of his past, but there is one that he remembers about a guy telling him to run. Could it be that guy whom Elf is describing interfered in their research and freed some specimens? Elf reminds Juugo he is a puppet and has some very cool stuffs. Juugo acts he doesn’t care so Elf pins him down and hints he is going to cut out his brain. Juugo fears being killed and struggles. He frees himself by transforming his hand as a sword. Juugo accuses him of doing the same to Musashi but it seems Elf doesn’t know what he is talking about. Elf is only here to check on his status. He is here to take some new samples but after seeing Juugo’s angry face (he thinks Elf is gunning for his friends), he has a better idea and will leave for tonight. Juugo is now overcome with guilt it might be his fault again. He fears for tomorrow. That night, Juugo and his cellmates escape again. Once more, they have to face Hajime as the final boss. However Juugo locks down his friends behind and goes to fight Hajime alone. He looks dead serious in escaping this time. Though he won’t say it, Juugo’s logic to escape is so that Elf will keep chasing him and leave his friends alone. They try to tell him to stop but Juugo is rampaging. Still, his blade hands are not match for Hajime’s might. After much pleading to Seitarou they want to stop Juugo, he lets them out. They come in between the brawling men. Juugo stops as he doesn’t want to hurt them. They use this chance to pin him down. End of fight. They reconcile and argue like they’ve always been. Of course one final beat up from Hajime to return to their cell. After Juugo apologizes to them, he vows to protect their future and his.

Episode 14
Hyakushiki fawns over Hajime again. Mitsuru plays another prank on her and she beats him to a bloody pulp. Hajime comes in and sees this bloodbath. He gets freaked out and leaves. Déjà vu? Mitsuru seems to be searching for something interesting to happen all over Nanba Prison but watching the inmates and the wardens, just boring and ‘funny’ stuffs happening. Then we have Building 13’s pet cat, Kuu who is also somewhat a warden since Hajime picked it up a long time ago and let it stay. Kuu is such a friendly cat even Cell 13 takes a liking for it. Kenshirou cursing his height because shorty Samon got a pet from Hyakushiki after doing a good report and because he is smaller than her. Finally we got something ‘interesting’ happening when suddenly a syndrome has everyone swap hair colour. Everything gets chaotic as many do not like the hair colour they swap wife. Of course the one who is not infected by this is Hajime. Guess why? At this point he is the most invincible man in Nanba Prison.

Episode 15
Hyakushiki addresses the new recruits for Nanba Prison. It looks like Building 13 will be getting a new warden. Wow. Who is that cute babe?! Oh wait. Looks familiar… It’s Hitoshi! Hajime is in shock. Worst nightmare? Uno and Rock start their conspiracy theory if Hitoshi is really a guy and related to Hajime. Because there is no way this cute rabbit is related to this brute gorilla, right? Because of that, they start to play a game of tag and if they manage to catch them, they’ll believe. Of course Hitoshi lacks endurance so Hajime wants him to go home instead of being a bother. But he is adamant he wants to help despite being slow and clumsy. However Uno and Rock realize there might be more than meets the eye for Hitoshi. Because when Hajime starts throwing his brother and nothing happens to his body when slabs fall on him, they better believe this cross-dresser is Hajime’s brother now. Looks like Hitoshi has a very strong and durable body. Hajime continues to chase them down by swinging him around! But when Mitsuru is here to get Hitoshi, it seems Hitoshi is only here as he asked a favour and only to be a warden for one day. Hitoshi finds everyone interesting and fun and likes Nanba Prison even more. Am I hearing this right? A person liking prison? So as he says his goodbye, his cute perfect smile has Uno and Rock doubting if he is really a guy. That distraction has Hajime catch them. Hitoshi is now assigned under Kenshirou. Didn’t see this coming too, eh? Honey and Trois try to hit on this hottie without realizing his true identity.

Episode 16
Rock tries to spar with Samon. However he is quick to dodge his punches and enough to inflict damage just by poking. Eventually Rock loses since all he does is swing blindly with brute force. Samon might look cool but the moment Rock wonders why he always loses to Hajime, he loses his cool. Hyakushiki informs her wardens that she is being called for an emergency meeting at the HQ. It is regarding data on Juugo and Musashi. She will be away for a while so she leaves it to them to watch over Nanba Prison. As the wardens discuss later, Mao Nimajita, the substitute deputy supervisor of Building 8 believes that everyone is still suspicious of Nanba Prison because of that incident. He accuses of Samon trying to make a move when Hyakushiki is gone. This irks Samon as he doesn’t want him to put him the same as that person. Mao further accuses him of becoming a supervisor to replace his own brother, Enki who was the former supervisor for Building 5. Seems Enki killed an inmate and then fought his own comrades when they try to stop him just to show off his superiority. After Samon storms off, Kiji slaps Mao for labelling others when he himself isn’t there. He tells Mao off for being jealous that Samon outranks him, act resentful without acknowledging his efforts and insulted his family. He is the worst. Samon laments his fate of always being compared differently from Enki but ever since that incident, everyone now compares him as the same. He is then visited by Noriko Sanzou, an old friend. Her brother, Houzuki was recently posted to Building 5 and she is quite worried about him. She hopes Samon can look after him. She seems to think Enki is still the supervisor since Samon lies that he is the deputy and came in his place. Seitarou reports to Hajime that Juugo is acting strange ever since he seriously tried to escape. It is like he is forcing himself to be normal. When Juugo sees Rock, the latter suddenly attacks him! Similarly when Yamato returns to his office, he attacks his colleagues.

Episode 17
Rock and Yamato continue to attack. While Hajime easily overpowers Yamato, Juugo gets a real beating till he needs some saving from Tsukumo. Even so, Juugo continues to blame himself for not being able to protect Rock. When they spot a weird talisman behind Rock’s neck, Tsukumo tries to grab it. Not sure if Juugo still want to talk through Rock because it isn’t getting through. Rock faints when Tsukumo takes off the talisman. The same when Hajime for Yamato. After seeking treatment, they believe they have seen this talisman somewhere. It is from Building 5. Trying to deduce the culprit’s ulterior motive is no use so what else is there but to head to Building 5 themselves. Initially Hajime will not allow them but because Uno the smooth talker claims he has no manpower and it would be dangerous to leave these escape experts alone, he is forced to take them along. Inside Building 5, Hajime gets trapped in a huge cage. Uno laughs his ass off for the swap places before the inmates get their own karma as they fall down the trapdoor pit. Hajime is confronted by Inori.

Episode 18
Hajime is handcuffed and locked in a cell. Opposite him is Samon in a similar predicament but messed up. The inmates drop into a cell and find Liang and Upa there. They explain that they are in this situation because a former supervisor escaped. They tell what they know and heard about Enki. Flashback shows Samon was trying to find missing talismans when a guard informs him that Enki had escaped. He couldn’t inform earlier because somebody messed up the communication system. Samon decides to handle this himself since there is no time to go back to HQ for backup. He is warned that not only Enki escaped but 2 others as well: Former guard Ruka Gojou guard and also a former boss of an assassination organization. When Samon entered the garden, he saw Ruka frolicking around in the pool before Enki beat the crap out of him for being weak. Ruka mocks Samon how everyone couldn’t stand working under him ever since he took over Enki’s post. Samon is shocked to see Inori on their side. He was the one who messed up the communication system and has never liked Samon. More flashbacks showing Samon was hesitating to take down Enki when he went on a rampage. It was Hajime who stepped up. It is perhaps why Samon is always desperate to surpass him. Because Samon sees nothing else but himself, thus why Inori could always deceive him. Juugo and co try to make their escape when they find Hajime’s nametag on the ground. Uno hatches a plan to save Hajime and Samon because if they escape, harsher penalties would only await them and this will cause Samon more problems. Going deeper underground they find Honey and Trois locked up too. They were invited here but were caught in a trap and Kiji taken away. They join in their plan since the more reinforcements the better.

Episode 19
After dodging the zombie guards, they rest in the ex-supervisor’s management room. While looking around, Juugo stumbles upon a confidential file in which states he is a human experiment. As they head down to the next level, Liang is attacked by a warden, Rokuriki. They notice he has an attack talisman on him and is under the manipulation of Enki. Upa had to finish Rokuriki off since Liang hesitated. The duo let the rest go ahead as Liang places his hopes on Juugo to free the wardens. Do they have to destroy the entrance too just to force them to continue? Liang reminisces how Rock told him Juugo saved him. He didn’t understand his meaning of freedom and he thought it was getting out of prison. Liang trained every day despite being a criminal is because he wanted to repay his mentor (Samon). However he couldn’t do anything when Enki made his move. He started thinking what he could do and realized the meaning of freedom. It is the fact he can do something. Liang faces off with resurgent Rokuriki and this time easily knocks him out. The duo are now faced with Hachiman who is their former boss. He reminds them about the rules of the underworld in which they lived by. People are trash and the strong make the weak submit. He is going to teach them again they are just his tools. Upa quickly beats him up and tells him off they don’t know anything about joining society. That is why they are here to learn and make a fresh start. Besides, they are never his tools. If he wants to go back to a world where power is everything, he’ll have to beat them first.

Episode 20
Upa is surprised that Nico is still around. He puts him aside so as not to let him be influenced by their fight because if he starts imitating them, it will put a strain on his body. When Hachiman unleashes poison gas, he reveals that Qi made it for him. Flashback shows Qi was taken to Hachiman to work for him. In return, he would have his debts cleared. Qi happily did that as long as he could make medicine. He also made sleeping medicine for Liang since he doesn’t want to kill the enemies he is supposed to take out. Liang on the other hand, witnessed his master on the verge of getting killed by Hachiman. Fat pig made a deal with him he will spare everyone and his temple if he just gave Liang to him. He did. A life lesson Liang learnt about being human. While it looked like his master obeyed his teachings and saved a lot at the cost of one kid, it also meant he did whatever he had to in order to save himself. When Qi realized he was making poison instead of medicine, he blew his top. Hachiman had mixed his medicine with drugs and sold them for money. Qi would have wanted to quit but after Hachiman showed him how he brutally beat up Liang for letting go his targets, Qi realizes he doesn’t have the power to defeat him. Without power, you can’t protect anything. If it was so easy to live the right way without really meaning it, villains like Hachiman wouldn’t have existed. Nico tries to help fight Hachiman but without his medicine he grows weak. However he revives when Hachiman sticks lots of poison into him not knowing his special body. Despite so, Nico is still physically weak and Hachiman overpowers him. Nico starts to feel pain when he is strangled. With the remnants of his medicine waning, Nico seems like he has died. But then he comes back alive but with a different dangerous personality.

Episode 21
Nico turns into some wild beast attacking Hachiman furiously since he has got some medicine smell. Nico acts like this because of a side effect of an old experiment where he became a guinea pig to test different poison. Qi then pops up to let Nico attack him so that he can jab him with a serum. This is the medicine that Hachiman forced him to make. Qi also injects one into Hachiman. However this guy is too big for it to take effect. Qi was never on Hachiman’s side as he tells his former boss how he is quick to judge and use others. There is one thing he will never forgive him for. When Upa was brought in, his organs were stolen and presumed dead by his clan. Despite so, Upa continued to work hard under him to buy them back. Angry Hachiman punches Qi. Upa and Liang come to his rescue. Qi explains himself he was just playing the villain. To deceive your enemies, deceive your friends. Upa still doesn’t like Qi because he transplanted his own organs into him after realizing Upa will not live long. The trio team up to fight Hachiman. But they’re not aimlessly missing him. Qi uses poison in the form of gas to slow him down and then paralyze him. Then some flashback of Qi with Samon. Because the latter believed in him, Qi doesn’t understand why he was called a traitor after that Enki incident. It makes him believe he can start over again. The poison takes effect as Hachiman starts to fear for his life. He is choking and strangling himself to death. But don’t worry. The drug is only strong enough to render him unconscious.

Episode 22
Upa can’t help wonder when he removed the talisman on Rokuriki, he felt it wasn’t from Enki. Nico learns of Upa’s reason to protect Building 5. After Hachiman’s organization fell and all of them thrown in prison in China, that is where Upa first met Samon. He sent gifts from Upa’s clan after he told them Upa is still alive. Thus Upa has this principle of returning the favour when someone does something for you. Trois enters a room housing those zombie guards. He checks out the parts that builds them. The rest are then confronted by Ruka who won’t let them go further. Ruka gets mad when they call him a queer as he does not want to be classified the same as Kiji. He sets Youriki and Kokoriki (Building 5’s wardens under control by that talisman) to go after them. Kiji is complaining about his captivity because it is ruining his makeup?! Kiji tries to bribe Ruka by letting him out in exchange of some custom made 100% hyaluronic acid formula makeup kit. Ruka is in a dilemma to betray Enki over this. Trois has dismantled and assembled those zombie parts to create a bazooka and blows the wardens away. Oh, he also modifies it as a flamethrower. As they move along, Juugo seems to be spacing out so they remind him he is an important key to unlock the doors. Ruka heard that and takes Juugo hostage to make them reveal their intentions.

Episode 23
Trois dumps a fire extinguisher on Ruka’s head and they all make a run for it. At a safe distance, mad Honey seems to be unimpressed with Juugo. He tells him to go away. How are they going to unlock doors then? That skill might be convenient but when it comes to anything else, Juugo is practically useless. This means if he is dead, he can’t use his unlocking skill. With Juugo hit hard by his words, Uno gives him assurance about the burden he has to carry, etc. Yeah, he trusts him. Too long their talk that Ruka has caught up. He uses the target to target and get rid of Juugo and Uno. As expected, Juugo is useless when caught and takes a beating. Honey doesn’t want to save them but when Trois tells him how ‘unattractive’ he is now, change of heart? Honey reveals his secret technique which he was supposed to save up to escape prison. Each bullet has strings sewn into them. Look closely and you’ll see that everywhere is riddled with those strings in which he can manipulate like a puppet. Trois is able to deduce Ruka popping up anywhere. Beneath the floors is a pool where he can swim freely. Plus, the floor panels are not fixed and can be shuffled, hence why ‘puddles’ can pop up anywhere. Using this knowledge, Trois is able to pinpoint Ruka’s location as Honey smokes him out (strings him out, rather) and then entraps him between the concrete walls. Ruka can’t escape since Trois literally threw a spanner into the works (the floor) and the ground cannot reshuffle easily. At the end of all that fiery badass explosion, Ruka emerges alive and is going to get real serious in fighting to the death.

Episode 24
Honey uses all he’s got to bring the slabs together to protect everyone from Ruka’s death winds. Better hurry and think of a next plan since he is bleeding out. Trois suggests Uno and Juugo run ahead while they distract Ruka. After all, what can they do? Before Ruka’s death winds could kill Honey and Trois, Juugo turns back to turn the tables in their favour. He is in blade form. He could even absorb Ruka’s death winds and throw it back at him. Juugo almost drowns in the attack so Honey jumps in to pull him out. As they move along, they are now confronted with Youriki and Kokoriki. They are not controlled anymore. However they do not believe the inmates when they tell what is going on and are going to arrest them. Trois and Honey stall them so Uno and Juugo can run ahead. But Uno gets captured by Ruka. Juugo reluctantly moves forward to complete their mission. Youriki and Kokoriki are confused after seeing Ruka. They are in a dilemma to capture which side first. Shouldn’t they capture both? They decide to go after the inmates. The prisoners buy some time by collapsing the walls. They are a disadvantage and can’t attack the wardens because that would only extend their sentence. Trois mentions that Kiji is held on this floor since he can smell his perfume. Uno then hatches a plan that is guarantee to succeed.

Episode 25
Juugo cuts down zombie guards in his bid to find Hajime. Trois reluctantly uses his special charming skill to win Ruka’s heart. It only works on girls but Ruka is an exception because he thinks he is a girl at heart… But I wonder why Trois couldn’t have just used this in the first place? With Ruka under his charm, Honey is able to steal the key to Kiji’s cell. Once they free him, he becomes a nagging monster to put the wardens and inmates in their place. Yeah, this might be worse. We see Kiji isn’t more than just a tranny concerned with his looks (he still is) as he makes Ruka tow the line after a slap (Ruka can’t beat him after all). Kiji leads the way to head back up and reunites with Nico’s group. They are now faced with more zombie guards. Hajime can’t sit around do nothing and wants to bust out. Is he going to risk his limbs? He came here to work and can’t be bogged down by just losing a few limbs. WTF?! But so manly! Luckily Juugo has found him and stops him. However Hajime chastises him for being down here. Juugo shuts him up that he is here on his own will. And there’s that lecture on how his life changed thanks to meeting those guys, blah, blah, blah, he wanted to really escape but the truth was he didn’t want people to hate him, blah, blah, blah. Then Juugo has his turn mocking Hajime for being easily captured and it’s rare to see him in cuffs. Hajime just noticed Samon is here and can’t risk showing his skill. However Hajime doesn’t see the point of it now. After Hajime is freed, at first he wanted to leave Samon behind but thinks about the consequences and his reputation if he escapes alone with a prisoner. Samon is shocked to see Juugo easily removing the handcuffs. Immediately Samon tackles Juugo down. He is mad that Hajime knew about this all along and this means he endorsed an inmate’s escape. Juugo punches him for being too noisy. Oh, but there are more zombie guards here for him to take out his frustration via brute force. Kenshirou makes his way here and Enki prepares to go face him.

Episode 26 (OVA)
Cast away all you know about the series because it is Nanbaka high school version and the characters recast! Seitarou is a new teacher of a delinquent school but often gets bullied by his students who are the Cell 13 guys as well as Hitoshi. Falling for the same tick every morning? They also don’t pay attention and whenever he tries to correct them, they get mad. Hyakushiki is also a delinquent in this school but she rarely makes her appearance. Seitarou notices that Juugo is docile unlike the rest but is warned that he is more than meets the eye. Musashi soon becomes a transfer student to his class and they soon end up fighting. Seitarou tries to stop them but gets beaten up in the crossfire. If you consider him bandaged up from head to toe as alright… Juugo and Musashi are to be expelled for that but Seitarou passionately stands for them because they are his precious students. I guess they like his passion so they agree to let this slide. The delinquents now respect him a little. Seitarou feels glad to be a teacher but he might have said it too soon because the worst delinquent will be back tomorrow as his suspension is over. Yup, that guy is Hajime. Oddly, Hajime sits in front of class and attentively listens to his lessons. Cell 13 guys try to sneak up on him and beat him up but he beats them all up using Hitoshi. So that was a greeting? More so, Hajime strictly makes them pay attention in class and those who try to slip out gets dragged back in. He is also well liked by other students and teachers so what is wrong with him?

It seems a rival school whose delinquent leader is Samon heard about Hajime’s release and his gang is going to pick a fight soon. Seitarou thought he could prevent it by talking to them but they don’t give a damn. Later he learns that Hajime got suspended because Samon and his gang harassed him at his part time job as he fought back. Apparently Hajime was working to earn money for Hitoshi’s surgery. Seitarou tries to talk to Hajime that fighting is bad but that guy is living in a rough world and has come to expect people will look at him with prejudice. The inevitable fight is here. Samon and co have stolen their school’s flag. Before anything could happen, Seitarou comes in between them. He slaps Hajime and got punched back instead. With him being adamant because they are his precious students, Samon and co back down from this farce. But they wish they had a teacher like that too. In the aftermath, Seitarou got fired for hitting a student. It has been a year as Hajime writes a letter to him and he is sorry for that. He studied hard and is now a correctional facilities officer with the Cell 13 blokes often getting into trouble so as to regularly ‘visit’ him. Seitarou looks forward to his next teaching job but discovers this isolated underground prison school that only houses 1 student: Enki. He fears teaching in a school like this again. What are the chances of him dying on the first day?

Nanba Wonderland
WHAT THE HELL???!!! WTF???!!! Nani kore?! Baka?! What in the world is this unsatisfying ‘ending’???!!! Just when I thought things are starting to move again after taking too long with this ‘rescue Hajime’ arc, and here they end the season and the series with this totally f*cking atrocity. This is a crime and they should make it a law for ending an unfinished anime!!! Instead of lightening their sentence, I am very tempted to increase their life sentence! Everyone who made this anime must be sent to prison and locked up forever!!! Ahem… Sorry for the outburst but I need to let that all out instead of keeping inside me before it explodes. But really, those were my sentiments and shock when this series just suddenly ends like that. Nanbaka might not have been perfect but I was overall enjoying it and that ender really took a dive for this series’ reputation. It’s like a sucker punch to say that oh, you’ve been enjoying this anime? Here’s a reminder that prisons aren’t supposed to be fun. Blam. This ending. WTF. Bad endings are one thing, but if there is one thing I can’t stand more than those are the ones that are like this. Unfinished (that atrocious Mahou Sensou comes to mind). It’s like they ran out of budget to even make one more proper closure episode. Sheesh. Sure, there are lots of potentials for it to run for another season but was it necessary to be left hanging like that? I mean, heck, they didn’t even start the final fight with Enki or even do some warming up. Sighs. So yeah. It was fun. And then boring. And then sudden disappointment. Time to move on…

From the way the plot and series is going, I thought it could go on forever since there are quite a number of potential developments. Heck, I was thinking it could go on as far as triple digits in the number of episodes but I think it is a good thing that it ended only 25 episodes. I might sound contradicting but actually it isn’t as based on my paragraph above but from this context that I will be saying it is. Don’t get me wrong. It is not that I did not enjoy the show but at the way the second half has been going, my interests started to wane. Now, I particularly like the first half where they introduce the characters as well as the plot and the mysterious guy in the mask whom I was just really curious and wanting to know how he is connected to all of them and his ultimate goal. But by the time we get to the second half, at first it sounded interesting with the return of badass Enki.

However this final arc (which I somehow feel they want to showcase some Chinese stuff and Journey to the West reference) has been taking too long and it feels like forever. I have a feeling it is to help give other supporting characters like Liang, Upa, Trois and Honey some screen time, to know more about their background and for them to showcase their skills. Yet the progress of this plot feels like it is slowly inching forward. That is why I said it could be on par like One Piece or Bleach who can dedicate an entire episode for one lousy minor plot or drag out a particular fight. Besides, it wasn’t as much fun since the usual quartet of Cell 13 isn’t together (Rock has been out cold ever since right till the end) and Hajime’s presence has been sorely missed as he became a prisoner. Not to say that Hyakushiki was part of the main casts but knowing that she went away and ‘never came back’ (as far as the season ended) felt like we are missing one of those top ‘demons’.

Looking at the heads of Nanba Prison, somehow it reminds me of Bleach’s Soul Society’s Gotei 13. It is like as though they ripped a few familiar elements and mashed them up to get some of the characters you see here. Like Kenshirou feels like a mash up between Byakuya, Zaraki and Kyouraku. Kijin feels like he was taken after Mayuri and who could forget Hajime has this uncanny looks to Madarame because of their shiny bald head. Despite having the same number of heads, this series unfortunately doesn’t show all of them. At least not in this season. It would have been interesting to see all of them because of how weird all of them looks and hence they will equally have some sort of weird personality to go with. Yeah, Nanba Prison is a freak show for both wardens and inmates. So this is where abnormal people go…

Therefore if you start looking properly at Nanba Prison, you really wonder if this is a prison facility. Because the prisoners here are treated more equally than those treated outside and living freely and perhaps even more rights. That is the irony that I came to think about while watching this show. It is no wonder why none of the prisoners don’t really give it a serious thought to escape. No wonder they all look so happy and having fun. Why the hell would you want to leave a place that takes good care of you? Sometimes I feel it gives the wrong message that crime pays. Of course, these prisoners have been to the sh*ttiest prisons all over here before being landed in this final stop. It’s like saying, you’ve been through hell and now be at ease because at Nanba Prison, we treat you like a human being. Yeah, basically that is all what everyone in this world wants. To be treated fairly like a human being. With certain wardens and inmates having ‘close knit’ relationships, it is no wonder they can just walk anywhere within the facility like as though it is some huge gated community! It is a good thing its location is a secret because once people find out how cool it is, they might purposely commit some crime just to be admitted into here. Yes people. Nanba Prison is that good!

With so many characters other than the main ones, it is no doubt that with the limited number of episodes, it is the series greatest asset and liability. Each of the prisoners and wardens have their own past and stories to tell. Through its pacing, we get to discover and learn more about them. Sometimes it makes you feel that they aren’t really such bad people and were put in here under circumstances. Wrong place, wrong time. While some characters have been decently fleshed out, some are just briefly covered. I know it is greedy to want to know about everyone’s past and that is just not possible right now. It could if this series ran forever. But then again, I would have complained that they’re overdoing it and prolonging the series with more episodes to drag out the plot. But with each of their individual traits, it helps make the series funny overall as their silly personalities and ideals clash.

Like the quartet of Cell 13, once you get to know them, they are really fun guys and not as bad as you might have think of them. Like Rock who loves to eat, Nico with his infatuation of Japanese otaku culture and Uno loving to gamble and flirt, everyone is just so freaking positive and sunshiny! They can all attribute this big change to Juugo whom ironically I feel is the one having the issues of battling his inner demons. Despite changing the lives of others, he still finds it hard to change himself. Mostly I see him as confused and trying to find a place where he belongs. He is trying to justify and find a reason why he needs to exist. Can’t blame him after learning what he has gone through but sometimes looking at him trying to play the considerate guy by not getting his pals involved can be annoying. You just want to scream to him to get over it and open his damn eyes because it makes him look like he doesn’t put his faith in his buddies.

Then there is Hajime who is the only one who can deal with the Cell 13 quartet’s shenanigans. Nothing but a bit of violence to help? Maybe because he is a workaholic and the only way to take out his frustrations is to rein in those troublemakers? Yeah, it sounds like a good excuse for a good punching workout. Because anybody who will have to deal with Cell 13 breaking out daily and multiple times would have been fed up by it all and would just quit or request a transfer. Not Hajime. He might not look like it but I have a hunch he enjoys it. Maybe that’s why he ‘likes’ work. Like I’ve said, who else can do this job? Being a male dominated series, Hyakushiki is the only female character (I know there is Noriko but she is neglectable), her running joke seems to be putting up an commanding presence but deep down inside her heart she is just a teen girl in love fawning all over how cool he is. Whether it is a good thing or not her inner feelings do not translate to her outside expression because she always seems scary in the eyes of others, especially Hajime who too also puts up a brave front before her but inside he is scared sh*t.

There are probably a lot more things I would want to say about the other characters but that would feel like rehashing what I know about them so I’m not going to go in depth about it. (Yamato getting lost and his eternal positivism plus relentless training, Seitarou’s pretty boy looks, Hitoshi the cross-dresser, Kijin the queer, etc). The diverse characters not only showcase their personalities but also their abilities which is essential to make the action parts work. It would have been interesting to reimagine that this series would become dark and serious like another prison themed anime, Deadman Wonderland. So we can see how the characters use their unique abilities in battles. Personally, the fight scenes are just ordinary and nothing much to shout about. The series is trying to find a balance between action and comedy (albeit not perfect) so there are decent amounts of fights to go about without getting bored easily. Despite all their silly persona, don’t let that fool you since they are still capable and skilful in their very own right when it matters.

On a trivial note, you might have guessed from the course of watching this anime that all the characters’ names are based on puns off numbers. Mostly are Japanese numbers but there are others whose number punned names are in Chinese or French. So it is safe and more accurate to say that all the characters especially the inmates, we do not know about their real names since we call them based from the number that they were assigned in this facility. Yeah, it would be one big hell of a coincidence if they that name was real and they got a prison number that is a pun of it. Or maybe the prison decided to mess around and gave them a number based on their name. Otherwise, why is there such a large gap between the numbers of inmates in the same building? Unless they assign the number randomly but then again, too big of a coincidence.

The art and drawing are quite bright and vivid. It really doesn’t feel like Nanba Prison is really a prison. Even more so, the very colourful characters. And I don’t mean just their personality but you can see how the prisoners are colourful on their physical appearance. Besides, they all don’t wear the same prisoner uniform. I don’t know if this isn’t part of the rules because if you look to other buildings other than Cell 13, it’s like those prisoners are free to dress in their own clothes they like. Is this a fashion show? I know, if everybody ends up dressing the same prisoner uniform, it would look boring and monotonous. Even without their trademark clothes, they’ve got all sort of weird and colourful hairstyles that make them stand out. Yeah, it’s never visually dull in Nanba Prison. Oh, I also want to mention that doesn’t Hajime look a bit like Saitama in One Punch Man? And doesn’t Hyakushiki look like Akame Ga Kill’s Esdeath? I also noticed that Nanba Prison is one freaking clean prison. You might have noticed that there are this sparkling effects in almost every scene! Yes. Not kidding. I thought they were trolling us or something but you will notice those shiny effects. However in the second half, it seems it has lost its shine. I don’t see them anymore and no wonder the scenes look dark, gloomy and depressing.

There are quite a number of casts here. A few recognizable ones such as Tetsuya Kakihara as Uno, Yu Kobayashi as Upa and Kenjiro Tsuda as Mitsuru. The other casts are Yuuto Uemura as Juugo (Tsukito in Kamigami No Asobi), Airu Shiozaki as Rock (debut role), Daiki Kobayashi as Nico (Oochuu in Reikenzan series), Tomokazu Seki as Hajime (Chiaki in Nodame Cantabile), Satomi Akesaka as Hyakushiki (Esdeath in Akame Ga Kill – wait a minute…), Souichirou Hoshi as Samon (Kaoru in Ai Yori Aoshi), Kimeru as Kiji (debut role), Shouma Yamamoto as Kenshirou (Jun in Amairo Cocoa), Shunsuke Takeuchi as Yamato (Guildenstern in Servamp), Keito Okuyama as Seitarou (debut role), Takao Mitsutomi as Honey (debut role), Yuuto Adachi as Trois (Bruno in Oushitsu Kyoushi Haine), Yuuki Fujiwara as Liang (Shinji in Chaos;Child), Genki Okawa as Qi (Moemoemoe in To Be Hero), Toshiyuki Toyonaga as Tsukumo (Mikado in Durarara), Yoshimasa Hosoya as Musashi (Rom in Show By Rock), Takaya Kuroda as Enki (Renjou in Kurenai), Naozumi Takahashi as Ruka (Bunta in Prince Of Tennis), Kouji Takeda as Hachiman, Eishin Fudemura as Hitoshi (Roman in Tsuki Ga Kirei), Daisuke Kishio as Elf (Suginami in Da Capo series) and Masanori Ikeda as the man with the scar (Shishio in Rurouni Kenshin).

There is something very catchy about the rock opening theme, Rin! Rin! Hi! Hi! by Hashiguchikanaderiya Hugs The Super Ball (say that band name again?!). It feels like fun and groovy. Something that suits the overall theme of the series. As for the ending theme, Nanbaka Datsugoku Riron by the Cell 13 quartet with Hajime sounds very weird. It sounds very messy since they are singing all over the place. And it feels like Hajime’s ‘role’ in ‘singing’ this song is to rebuke and scream his head off. Wait. I don’t think he is singing in most of the parts. Hear him let loose his usual scream at the end of the song. So I guess to distract you from all that messy weirdness, hence they distract you with the synthesizer effects.

Overall, despite its very unfinished ‘ending’ that is hard to ignore by the time you reach the end, this is still quite a funny and entertaining series. It has its potentials and interesting characters but even if the draggy second half took a lot of the fun out of it, the series is still worth watching. Just hope that people don’t get the wrong idea that going to prison is good and hoping for first class treatment as seen here. Nor should they see that breaking out of prison is such a fun excursion and if you get caught, you’ll get another chance to try it again. However, in today’s world I believe with the technological advances in modern society, we don’t even have to commit and crimes to be put into prison. We are all already prisoners of our minds as we are all hooked and influenced by social media. Like how I am serving a life to eternal sentence watching animes… It’s so fun… No wonder I’m not trying to escape from this eternal sentence.

Prison School OVA

After the successful and very interesting TV series, it is not surprising that I was really looking forward to Prison School OVA. I thought it would be another one of those episodes taking place somewhere in between the TV series or a random unrelated story but this OVA takes place exactly after the boys have been freed from prison, cleared of their guiltiness and the USC being sent to prison in return for their heinous crime. If you think that there wouldn’t be anything more interesting after the boys are finally free, then you’d be in for a surprise.

Mad Wax
We see the USC getting a taste of their own medicine being ‘abused’ by the real student council. Kate outrages Mari’s modesty. Meiko and Hana come to her defence but Mari doesn’t want them to do anything that will provoke them and prolong their sentence. However Kate fires back that she is the one to say because wasn’t she doing the same kind of treatment to the boys? Therefore she is the lowest person ever and they are the ones recognized as prisoners by the chairman.

Our boys are enjoying their freedom. Kiyoshi can’t help think of the steamy kiss with Hana which is freaking amazing! But remember, he has Chiyo… She wonders if he is okay with the dark truth never revealed to the public. Kiyoshi honestly doesn’t care about it anymore and he is more worried he got Chiyo into this mess especially her sister who is now in prison. Because Kiyoshi’s hands are injured, he can’t feed himself and Chiyo does this on his behalf, sending jealous rage to the other guys. But Shingo can’t stay in the jealous pack because he has got Anzu to do the same. And Andre too. He has got his own ‘mini harem’ as the girls find his fat body amusing and do not hesitate to take a punch! Bliss for the masochist! Gakuto can’t take anymore of this so he leaves for the library to find haven in his Three Kingdoms. That is where he meets this girl, Mitsuko Yokoyama. She shares the same Three Kingdoms interest. Gakuto starts panicking if all this is a trap because why is a girl being so nice to a guy who has infamously soiled his pants? He even has doubts shaking hands with her. But then she whispers she also soiled her pants before and understands his feelings. Though, that was in kindergarten. And so it is a start of a beautiful friendship. Gakuto gets a first taste of how klutzy she is when a chain reaction of accidental events in the library that involves the shelf falling down causes her panties to come off! Nice full view of her ass! OMG! Meanwhile, Joe is the only lonely guy and he has his ants to play with. He realizes one of them is missing and frantically searches for it only to almost get creepy with some other girls. When the ant is found, he realizes it has no freedom when it is free. It made him wish he was back in prison.

The other guys are surprised that Gakuto has now a companion of his own. They can’t believe his incredible hijinks of viewing her ass and think it might be some honey trap. Andre notices Joe has been acting strange and goes to talk to him. Joe seems to feel out of place. He lacks the skills the rest have and wished he could be back in prison. It was hard at first but he got used to it. He felt he could rely on those bars. He is not like them. Gakuto gets more accidental fanservice from Mitsuko when he accidentally drops his books while daydreaming so when she picks it up, her panties got stuck in the plant. You can imagine what happens when she stands up… Joe seriously wants to go back to prison. He is thinking of groping a girl’s ass (why the f*ck is she exposing her butt like that?!) but is swiftly stopped by Andre who wants to know what the heck he is doing. Joe doesn’t answer and walks away. Gakuto predicts another fanservice mishap but this time he hears Mitsuko scream. She thought she saw a flasher. A naked man with only ropes tied in BDSM style. Gakuto vows to protect her. They see a stray dog and when Mitsuko takes the leash, the dog starts chasing a stray cat. Round and round it goes… Yeah, Mitsuko ends up being tied like BDSM style. Seriously, I don’t know how it can turn out like that. We see Joe talking to himself in the bathroom. He is the naked BDSM culprit. Calling himself a coward who is all talk and no action. He is trying to psycho himself to do it. The next time will be for real.

Rumours of the naked BDSM pervert spread. Andre heard it but first he realizes he never thought of doing that kind of act! He goes to check his spare rope and finds it missing. Andre talks to Kiyoshi and Shingo to go help Joe because he is acting strangely lately. But the duo have plans with their respective girlfriends and all they could note is not Joe’s strange character but the BDSM rope that Andre brings around. Andre isn’t pleased that they don’t care about Joe and now understands why he wants to go back to prison. He rushes off to find him and uses his inner masochism to sense Joe’s next move. That hooded guy is going to exhibit himself before a bunch of girls changing at the locker room. Meanwhile, Mitsuko yet again gets into another fanservice hijinks. That pervy stray dog starts licking her, uhm, that part. She loses balance and trips over barrels of water. What the f*ck are the barrels haphazardly parked there for?! Andre realizes he cannot make it in time to reach Joe. That is when Mitsuko and the barrels of water flood the hallway. The slippery floors give Andre the idea to slide like a human bobsled. But how come Mitsuko is faster? He notices her exposed skin did the trick. So Andre strips himself (I wonder how he does it in that position) and only wearing his BDSM ropes. Now he is fast! Joe is about to open the door when a cute girl comes up to him to give him cupcakes they made during home economics. Joe is shocked. Is she talking to him? That’s right. Sure? Who else is there, buddy? This is not a joke. She is really talking to you. Wow. She finds his reaction funny and hilarious. Oh my. Such a sweet girl. You blushing, Joe? Welcome to the club. Andre then crashes into the changing room. In that split second, the guys understood what the other was trying to do. Joe realizes Andre was here to stop his crime. The other guys come by thinking Andre is the rumoured culprit. Joe has no choice but to agree with them. However Andre is fine with things as they are because nobody lost anything. Besides, he is enjoying the beat down by the girls. Yeah, a win-win situation, no?

Prison Of The Heart
This OVA does not disappoint and certainly lived up to my expectations. The only disappointment is that there were no more episodes! I need more of this series! Though, I can’t help feel a bit disappointed that the USC have been primarily ‘forgotten’ for the rest of the series seeing they did the ‘opening gig’. I’m not really a sadist and despite the USC doing bad things on the boys during their tenure, watching them getting their just desserts I just feel a little bad for them. Because the real student council members themselves look like badass freaks and my guess the reason for their harsh punishment is that they have some sort of grudge against USC and thus the reason why they only made their move at the end of the TV series instead of doing their bit to help the boys. But that is another story to explore. So please make another season of this.

This OVA is all about the boys just like the TV series. The biggest question of belonging is perhaps the theme of this OVA. Because now that Gakuto and Andre seemingly have found some sort of happiness in the opposite sex, it all boils down to Joe who feels isolated by this fact. I believe he doesn’t want to go back to prison. It is just that because his friends are too busy thinking about their own girlfriends, he felt neglected. No more bromance? That is why it doesn’t matter where he goes but the prison was the most likely of choices since it was a time where the guys were hardcore close. They were together. Even if he does land in prison all by himself, he has those memories and those familiar walls of all those that happened. And of course, it wouldn’t be nice for Joe who might be the least impactful character to go out on this state as he too finally finds the start of his own romance. Hopefully it will hit off. Yeah, it proves that girls in this school aren’t yuri lesbians.

The original TV series has its fair share of fanservice. This OVA is no different since there are actually bare tits! Well, if you bought the BD versions of the TV series, it will be uncensored. Since I didn’t, this is the first time I’m seeing those delicious uncensored boobs. Though, they are just limited to USC scenes. Is this why they had their appearance? Otherwise the rest of the series’ fanservice relies on Mitsuko’s unfortunate turn of accidental events. It is like she has a knack to turn something ordinary into extraordinary porn-like positions. Heck, which guy doesn’t want to have this kind of girlfriend?! And the more Gakuto sees her, the more he might change his interest from Three Kingdoms to 3 sizes of Mitsuko. Hahaha!!!

Overall, the crazy and bits of this OVA is still interesting despite the no-brainer moments that make no sense. Like what the f*ck was a stray dog doing in school anyway? Or how can a few barrels of water flood the entire hallway so fast? Screw logic! It is for the sake of entertainment! Oh yeah. I’m not complaining. Hopefully there would be another season and maybe it would be about the boys-starved girls trying to get their hands on the limited resources known as guys. Because. It will be hell. I would like to see how they break out of this harem paradise prison.

Prison School

Attention all feminists! Gather up! Because it is time to teach those men and let them realize their place. Even at sacred places like school which is supposed to be a place for education and learning, there is no end to the illicit fantasies and delusions of those dogs. Why, if there is only a prison in school to jail all those pigs. Well people, I hope you don’t get the wrong idea that this is a feminist anime. Heh. I don’t even know the definition of it by today’s standards. But as far as the anime Prison School is concerned, it might look like some sort of thing that extreme ‘feminists’ would like to cheer on. Because a group of boys is jailed and tortured by the hands of the female prison wardens all because they did one small tiny minute silly petty crime against the girls. Don’t worry. This series isn’t meant to stoke or fan the gender divide. But it has got lots of great stuffs that I guarantee that will keep you interested. Violence, blood, sweat, tears, poop jokes, fart jokes, fanservice, comedy, drama, friendship and feminism. Okay, maybe they didn’t have the last one.

Episode 1
Hachimitsu Private Academy was once an all-girls high school but recently opened up to boys. It is no wonder the male to female ration is 1:200! But only 5 boys enrolled?! Therefore it is no surprise that this is mainly the reason our perverted guys enrol here. Ask Taketo Morokuzu AKA Gakuto, Shingo Wakamoto, Kiyoshi Fujino, Jouji Nezu AKA Joe and Reiji Andou AKA Andre about it. Kiyoshi tries to talk to a girl but… What to talk about?! Mind went blank… But other girls keep their distance so his record streak of never talking to a girl before continues… In class, Kiyoshi is the only guy and he had the bad luck to drop his sumo wrestler themed eraser next to the class’ prettiest girl, Chiyo Kurihashi. He thought he is busted but turns out Chiyo is a sumo fan too! His pals are wondering why Kiyoshi didn’t turn up in their usual guys’ meeting. That’s because he is busy talking to Chiyo about sumo! Even he isn’t so infatuated in it, I guess he’ll go with the flow talking to Chiyo who is so passionate about it. She hopes he could take part in a sumo tournament in 2 weeks. That night, the guys begin their devious plan: To peep at girls. I mean, it would be a waste not to, right? However when Kiyoshi realizes they are going to peep at his class, he starts fearing Chiyo will hate him. Gakuto’s plan is to hang Kiyoshi’s handphone from the rooftop down to the window to peep. In Kiyoshi’s panic, he accidentally drops the phone. He has to go pick it when Chiyo comes in! Is he doomed?! Luckily Chiyo is near sighted without her contacts and thinks Kiyoshi is her friend Mayumi Tanaka! His escape is made impossible when Chiyo brings him into the bath. Full of naked girls! The other guys also prepare to barge in but are attacked by crows. Kiyoshi cannot understand what Chiyo is talking about the Underground Student Council (USC) and their warning for the girls to stay away from the guys or face punishment of jail time up to a month. When the real Mayumi comes by, could this be the end of Kiyoshi? A girl barges in to warn the guys are peeping. They scramble and this gives Kiyoshi the chance to escape.

However he sees his buddies captured and being publicly interrogated-cum-tortured. That is when a girl hands him an official guide book of the USC to introduce those whipping girls as Hana Midorikawa the secretary and Meiko Shiraki the vice president. So who is the president? You’re looking at her. Mari the Crow Master! Oh sh*t! Kiyoshi is beaten up and dragged to the other guys. He fears the worst when Chiyo sees this. The quintet are now placed in a prison school where they will serve their one month sentence. The guys argue human rights violation and will take it to the higher authorities. Sure, they can do so. But just remember to mention the peeping and they’ll get expelled. It’s their choice. They are also forced into hard labour to erect a barrier around their prison. Meiko continues her dominatrix abuse on the guys but Kiyoshi views she went too far as she wants Andre to lick her boots. However later the guys are not appreciative of Kiyoshi’s defence because they really wanted to lick her boots and they’ve never got up this close to peek at her panties!!! Besides, her spit was delicious???!!! These guys are goners! Noticing Meiko’s tactic backfired, Mari sends in Hana to do the job. She may look like a cute and nice girl but the slightest wrong makes her chop you up into pieces. Oh, did I mention she is a karate master? Oh sh*t… And she’s wearing pants underneath. Sorry, no pantsu. The guys are forced to find 4 leaf clovers. Good luck… Kiyoshi returns a baby crow to its nest. Chiyo sees this and believes he is not a bad guy. After all, grandma said those who love sumo can’t be evil. Now it makes him harder for him to confess his peeping deed. Worse, he makes a promise to be at the sumo tournament. After Chiyo leaves, Hana is seen trying to take a dump near the tree. Kiyoshi must keep quiet or doom he will be. But the mother crow pecks him thinking he was trying to steal her baby. And down he falls…

Episode 2
Hana screams and although this attracted everyone, she won’t make Kiyoshi say what happened. Yeah, too embarrassing. Amazingly his life was spared too. Mari’s father is also the chairman of this school. He learns that the boys are in prison. Although he considers their peeping action as normal for boys their age, he won’t stand up for them but wants Mari to at least give them the weekends off as stated in the rule. But later when Mari returns and sees the porn sites her father was looking at, she gets more pissed off and has decided to enforce stricter rules on the boys. They are now clearing the wasteland to create a vegetation garden. They get motivated to work hard and earn their weekends but when Mari only allows them 3 hours because she views they are behind schedule, this makes Kiyoshi think his date with Chiyo is under threat and there is no choice but to break out. Slowly and patiently, he digs a hole behind the garbage shed with only a fork. Can he bust out at this rate? Chiyo then throws him a message about the tournament and it gives him hope. Kiyoshi notices Gakuto acting different towards him. And when he hints about that message, Kiyoshi fears his secret is out. However Gakuto didn’t rat on him. Hana returns and calls for Kiyoshi. She doesn’t believe that he has not told the others about that peeing incident. She wants him to pee right in front of her! This very ambiguous scene is cut short when Gakuto comes looking for him. It seems Gakuto was trying to hint that he will help him break free. Meanwhile the chairman knows Mari has seen his porn website and I think he purposely drop his porn pictures before her. But this only serves to make her hate it all even more and will enforce even harsher rules.

Meanwhile Gakuto and Kiyoshi discuss about their escape plan. You thought Gakuto is being a real friend trying to let him escape for free, eh? In exchange, he wants him to buy some Three Kingdoms figurine since he is a history freak. Next day as usual they are clearing the shrubs, Kiyoshi and Gakuto start fighting. This makes Hana do a karate kick that accidentally destroys the shed. After Meiko does some S&M punishment on them, Hana forces them to rebuild it. Of course this is part of their plan that they can dig a way out without being supervised. Only one problem: Hana returns to supervise them. Hana fears Kiyoshi is whispering to Gakuto about that peeing incident so she calls him to do it now in front of her. Since he can’t, she makes him drink some tea. Gakuto comes up with a lame idea to turn Hana his bride. He thinks from her personality she is a history freak like him but when he starts blabbing, she beats him up not understanding a word he says. Kiyoshi needs to take a leak and surprisingly Hana gives permission but follows him. He runs and locks himself in the toilet but she jumps over and into the cubicle. Now your dick is mine! She is forcing him to undress and pee! During the struggle, let’s say Hana got herself all wet. Hana calls in sick although Meiko can’t understand why she is covered with ‘golden showers’. With Hana out of the picture, Gakuto thinks they can proceed with their breakout plan but gets beaten up by Meiko as usual.

Episode 3
The breakout plan is moving along smoothly as they make the hole bigger. Now that Kiyoshi can fit through, he slips through to do some reconnaissance. However there is the chairman burying all his porn. It’s amazing he can identify which women by their butt. With him around, Kiyoshi cannot get back and Meiko is suspicious. Gakuto stalls long enough and even putting up some trap for Kiyoshi to come back. Later, Meiko puts up next week’s work schedule and it seems they will be doing something different and split into teams for the track club’s regional meet which falls on the day of the breakout. As Shingo is paired with the duo, they wonder if they should let him in on their secret because he too is getting suspicious of them getting too close. However Shingo misinterprets their words as being gay and even in this hilarious bath scene where he mistakenly sees the duo in ambiguous gay position!!! Then they spot him and he gets the wrong idea they want a threesome! He switches out to go work with the rest. As the building the duo will be working in is far from the garbage shed, Kiyoshi discovers he can travel undetected via crawling under the drain that leads there. He overheard Shingo telling the rest about their gay time. Meiko whips them back to work and then starts doing her squat exercise over the drain. I’m sure Kiyoshi is mesmerized by this butt view but as he moves along, Meiko slips and her high heel stabs his butt! When the guys are lined up, Meiko is suspicious about Kiyoshi taking too long in the toilet. Shingo covers for him by saying he has haemorrhoids. There is blood coming out from his ass! Thanks to that stabbing, it saved him.

The guys get to attend computer class with girls although they are given that vile stare. If you’re wondering why Gakuto ordered some sound device, it’s not to learn English. To cover up while Kiyoshi is away, he will play poop sounds in the toilet to avoid suspicion. That is why this computer class is for him to download poop sounds! But do you believe it? NO POOP SOUNDS OVER THE INTERNET!!!!!!! There is only one way… Record his own poop… Kiyoshi doesn’t want him to sacrifice himself like that but Gakuto is willing to help his friend more. Here comes the sh*t!!! OH SH*T!!! He soiled his pants… Record success. Now with everything laid out and even their detailed timing of the plan is absolutely flawless, nothing can stop Kiyoshi’s breakout, right? But when he goes to check the hole, it is covered with cement! OMG! Why?! It seems the chairman dug up his porn. Then he realizes he still needs to get rid of it and buries them back at the same place but with cement. He spotted the hole in the wall and covered it up. Gakuto falls into depression knowing their hard work is all gone. It couldn’t be the USC because they would have been punished so it must be a school staff. He starts blaming Kiyoshi he should have checked the hole (gay joke?) to see if the cement was wet and could have destroyed it had it not hardened. He starts screaming to give his sh*t back!!! Their other friends I suppose make some sniggering gay jokes but ultimately they will support them all the way. Yeah, they totally got the wrong idea. But Kiyoshi believes there is only one way left. He is going to cross-dress as a girl and breakout through to front gate. As a laundry service always comes by weekly and park near the dorm’s rear entrance, they can steal a dress and put it back after everything is done because nobody is going to pick up the uniform during the weekend, right? But next day, Gakuto seems to be getting pervy with Meiko to get beaten up more. What’s gotten into him? With Mari in the picture, he then makes this ultimate move by pulling down her skirt!!! Don’t worry. She’s wearing leggings underneath.

Episode 4
In addition to Meiko beating him up, so do the crows. Gakuto later stays late at the student council office to seek Meiko’s forgiveness. But how is she shaving his long hair will help in the plan? You see, Kiyoshi walking out in a girl’s uniform would draw suspicion because of his male looks. So what better way for a wig to cover that up! Genius! Now they have to steal a uniform. When the cleaner guy is here to collect the uniforms, Kiyoshi is waiting underneath the drain covers for the right moment. But since every moment is too dangerous for him to be spotted, Gakuto calls out to the baldy to pick a fight with him. This gives Kiyoshi enough time to get out and start searching. If it only wasn’t filled with panties… When the guy has had enough with Gakuto’s taunts, he heads back. Kiyoshi must get out or risked being spotted. He hides under a laundry basket but he gets locked inside the van. When it drives off, the van seems to have crushed the laundry basket that Kiyoshi put there beforehand. The guy gets down to inspect and this gives Kiyoshi the chance to escape via driver’s seat. Brilliant. Meanwhile Mari talks to Meiko and notes the guys have become more defiant. It only proves that Meiko is slacking in her supervision and not because they have gotten used to their environment. She warns something will happen to her if anything scandalous happens again.

Here comes the big day. After Kiyoshi puts the sound device in the toilet cubicle, he crawls underneath the drain and then puts on the girl’s uniform. Meiko gets suspicious when a familiar strand of hair flies by her. Kiyoshi needs to hurry putting on the uniform as Meiko is coming around. But the blazer is too tight! Ripped! Ingeniously, he covers it by carrying the bag on his back. Meiko is fooled as she thinks ‘she’ is a fellow student and walks away. Kiyoshi is just metres away from freedom but he had to be caught by no other than… MARI!!! Of all people! But luckily she doesn’t realize his identity and calls out to ‘her’ because she thinks it is not wise for a girl to be carrying a bag like that. As she tries to correct her bag, she spots the rip and believes ‘she’ was trying to cover it up and apologizes for the embarrassment. Kiyoshi is now in seventh heaven as he meets up with Chiyo on this sumo date. He couldn’t care less about the sumo but he is so freaking happy to be with a girl. Even happier when she gets close to him to take selfies. When Meiko is suspicious that Kiyoshi is nowhere to be seen, Gakuto mentions about his worsening piles. She goes to check it out herself and because he didn’t answer, Gakuto plays the poop recorder. She gets turned off and walks away. As Kiyoshi relieves himself at the toilet, Chiyo accidentally spills her tea on his bag. Then she sees a uniform inside… When Kiyoshi returns, he couldn’t understand why Chiyo looked so upset. Then she calls him disgusting and walks away. Realizing his bag has been peeped into, the real reason why Chiyo is mad… The uniform he stole belonged to her! OMG!!! Shingo hasn’t seen Kiyoshi for so long and thinks he is slacking. Meiko is also getting more suspicious and goes to the toilet to order Kiyoshi out. The poop sound is not working anymore. Meiko breaks down the door.

Episode 5
Well, Kiyoshi is back but he is crying. And I don’t think it is because his piles are that painful. At first Gakuto thought he failed to acquire his figurine but when Kiyoshi hands it over to him, he is so happy that he couldn’t listen to the real reason behind Kiyoshi’s tears. The moment they stepped out of the toilet, Mari confronts them. She knows Kiyoshi is the one who cross-dressed as a girl and escaped. Kiyoshi feigns ignorance but she shows the selfie Chiyo uploaded on the social media! Oh sh*t! Furthermore, Chiyo is Mari’s little sister! Double sh*t! Kiyoshi is forced to admit. If that was not bad enough, Shingo punches him for escaping to go dating while the rest bust their ass at work. Kiyoshi is kept isolated and interrogated although he mentions he is only working alone and no other boys were involved. It is decided that based on the rules, everyone will get collective punishment. Although the rest gets a month extension in prison, Kiyoshi will get expelled. Gakuto wants to protest but it seems Shingo doesn’t care. He is mad not because Kiyoshi went out dating. It is because he never told the rest about this and thought they would rat him out. It’s like he doesn’t trust them. Meiko talks to Mari that in reality they have no power to expel Kiyoshi. On the contrary, there is a way. Chiyo decides not to further mope in her room and return to her normal school life. But she hears rumours about a boy breaking out cross-dressed and is getting expelled. Kiyoshi is brought to see Mari and she wants him to sign this voluntary withdrawal from school form. Mari coaxes him to do so or risk living the next 3 years of his school life branded as a pervert. Kiyoshi believes this is for the best but he only regrets not clearing up the understanding with Chiyo.

Suddenly Chiyo barges in to protest what Mari is doing. She explains she invited him out. Kiyoshi gets his chance to clear up the misunderstanding. Mari argues Chiyo is not the guilty party but the victim. If Mari is still persistent in expelling him, she will also quit school. And here she signs on it. Chiyo adds that she saw Kiyoshi rescued a crow’s nest and like Mari said, anybody who doesn’t hate crows is a good person. However Mari doesn’t believe so and wants Kiyoshi to sign but he refuses, citing he will do his best to reform. Mari dismisses them for today. But Chiyo threatens if she makes Kiyoshi drop out, she will also be submitting this form. Now that Kiyoshi’s misunderstanding with Chiyo is cleared up, he has nothing left to fear. Why not? After Chiyo smothered his face in her nice gentle boobs, yeah, that guy is pretty motivated. The big encouragement to remain. But now he faces another challenge. Shingo leads the guys in isolating Kiyoshi whether they are in the cell or at work. Gakuto is forced to side with Shingo. He accepts this fate but at least he has Chiyo’s boobs to carry on. Meiko knows Mari won’t let this go and true enough she won’t. This time she will have all the boys expelled under the codename DTO (Dog Transferral Operation). Meiko is tasked in observing the habits and hobbies of the guys in order to find their weakness. Like Gakuto’s Three Kingdoms, Joe’s ant farm, Andre’s diary and Shingo… He looks like the most upset having the sentence extended. As Kiyoshi is cleaning the toilet alone, guess who is back? Hana! So she’s taking a dump there? As usual, she intimidates him and has not forgotten what he did to her the last time. She makes him say that she isn’t the dirty girl. And maybe next time she’ll have him prove it in front of her. I hope Kiyoshi has enough fantasies of Chiyo’s boobs to get him through this. He is going to need it. A lot.

Episode 6
The USC are discussing about DTO. Knowing the guys are not that dumb to do anything to get them expelled, they need to make the public know that they pose some sort of danger and turn all the girls in school against them. Then not even the chairman can defend them anymore. Noticing that Shingo is leading the shutting out of Kiyoshi, Mari has the perfect plan. Meiko calls Shingo privately and treats him with goodies aside from not beating him up like the rest. He can have all this if he does what she says. This means ratting out information about the guys’ behaviours and the likes. Tempted by the great food, he mentions about Joe’s love for his ants that when Andre accidentally spilled them, he went into rage and wanted to kill the big masochist guy. Using this piece of information, the USC put forth their plan. As the guys are relaxing outside, Kiyoshi spots Meiko talking to Shingo. Joe is walking his ants (I guess that means letting them out of their farm) when Shingo calls him. Joe then notices one of the crows is eating his ants. He rushes to save them but Meiko stops him. He gets violent enough to push her down. Hana lands him a kick. Mari views this violence as violation. He would injure the vice president over some insignificant ants. He is ordered to be placed in isolation but Joe’s anger doesn’t stop there. Blaming Mari for her f*cking crows, he takes up a sharpened wood and aims to stab her! That is when Kiyoshi jumps at him. Although Kiyoshi gets stabbed, but it is right in his asshole! OMG!!! Is this some sort of running joke?! It’s bleeding like hell! He calls it haemorrhoids to cover Joe’s violence although it is clear that he tried to attack the USC. After being placed in solitary confinement, Mari has Andre return his ants that he was ordered to collect back. They are still alive because of anting. Crows try to bath themselves in ants to cover themselves with secretion used as insecticides. She mocks him for being an ant lover but yet doesn’t know a lot about them. So who is he calling an ant murderer for this misunderstanding?

Kiyoshi knows he has a bad feeling when Hana escorts him to the infirmary. You bet. After putting cream on his ass, she returns with a pot. Time for him to pee in it. Gosh. She’s not over that yet? While he is at it, she’ll take a commemoration picture. This guy is really screwed. He puts up a struggle for that but since they’re short of time, she is going to pee on him! WTF?! She has him lie on his belly while she prepares to pee on top of him. Suddenly Chiyo comes in! Oh sh*t! It would be bad if she sees them like this. They hide underneath the bed as Chiyo looks for Kiyoshi. They are so close and can’t make a sound till Chiyo leaves. Hana felt something touching her from the bottom. And it’s growing bigger… Oh sh*t! After Chiyo leaves, Kiyoshi instantly apologizes but Hana has already passed out. Meanwhile Mari sees the chairman to report Joe’s violence. I guess he is trying hard to hide his porn he ordered via courier but after forcing to get up to answer the phone, Mari spots his porn mouse pad. That’s it. DTO must be intensified. Joe confronts Meiko and didn’t expect what happened to Joe because it looked like he set him up. However she shuts him up to continue doing as he is told or she could just rat out the good food he is exclusively getting. Shingo continues to bully Kiyoshi. However Joe tells him off to stop acting like a brat. Joe warms up to Kiyoshi and thanks him for saving him or he could have been in a real prison. Kiyoshi tells him about the odd thing that day because he saw Shingo talking to Meiko and it was weird to have all the USC gathered at the yard at the same time. While Hana doesn’t remember much of that dick touching incident, Meiko gives Shingo 2 hours of free time outside school.

Episode 7
Enjoying his new freedom at the arcade, Shingo meets this senior girl, Anzu Yokoyama and looks like he’s quite smitten with her. Back at school while Shingo cleans the toilet, he finds a little sword toy accessory (Gakuto accidentally dropped it while he was agonizing over his conducts). As Shingo is troubled he might not get goodies, he shows the toy to Meiko but she slaps it away upon learning he picked it up from the toilet. Unfortunately it bounced into the snack she is making and to be served to Mari. She accidentally bites it and Meiko is filled with guilt but can’t tell her the truth. Meiko then does more research on this toy and it leads to some information on this Guan Yu figure. Speaking of Gakuto, he is in depression for losing that precious toy. On another free day, Shingo goes to the arcade and again chances upon Anzu. Seems she has him accompany her. She wants to invite him out to a movie (b-grade horror movie of giant grapes killing humans?) but he isn’t sure his next time off. She gives him her scrunchie. On the day he gets to go out, hang it on the prison barricade and she’ll be at the arcade. Meiko lines up the guys minus Shingo and hands them a snack each. When it is Gakuto’s turn, she hands him that piece of toy. Remember this? In fact, she takes out the entire figurine he has been hiding in the toilet. Meiko has done some research to know that this is a very limited edition that only comes out on the day in which Kiyoshi broke out of prison. This means Gakuto aided in Kiyoshi’s breakout. Gakuto pretends he doesn’t own it although we can see his body reaction at its limits. Meiko goes further in testing him by riding on the figurine. Any more force, she will break it. If he admits abetting Kiyoshi with the breakout, she’ll return the figurine. Gakuto dives to grab it and this is a sign to show he admits the truth. However to everyone’s shock, Gakuto smashes it on the ground!

Later Kiyoshi feels sorry for Gakuto for wasting his effort. But Gakuto has no regrets. Although anguished over the broken figurine, his conscience is not clear because this is nothing compared to feigning ignorance when Kiyoshi was bullied. He vows never to do such a thing again. When Shingo arrives late, he picks up the toy and accidentally mentions where he found it. Mari realizes the truth and faints! Meiko is ready to accept her punishment in any way but is totally ignored! Her punishment is not to receive punishment? Gakuto apologizes to the guys for hiding the truth for so long. Shingo wants payback for his double crossing but it seems Joe doesn’t mind. The USC didn’t find out about the assisted breakout and if not for Kiyoshi saving him that day, it could have been even much worse for everybody. He is in no position to criticize Gakuto. Andre also forgives Gakuto because he was trying not to create more trouble for them. Shingo is so mad that he accidentally reveals where he found the toy. How did he know Gakuto hid it there? Uhm, the USC told him? Did they? Well, they did notice Meiko and Shingo have been pretty close recently… Meiko thinks Mari having her wear a smaller uniform size smaller is the punishment. Yeah, no revealing cleavage or pantsu but it looks like her boobs are about to burst out any moment. Andre has gone long without punishment and would like to receive her whipping. However she never hit him. This continues until he falls into depression. As Meiko is weakened from not being used to wearing the smaller size uniform, Chiyo helps her rest at the USC office. Then she spots the DTO manual… When Meiko recovers, she reports about Andre writing his embattled feelings of not being punished in his diary. With this, Mari will initiate DTO tomorrow. Chiyo is eavesdropping outside and heard this horrifying news.

Episode 8
While Shingo is happily out with his Anzu date, Andre is suffering from punishment withdrawal. Yeah, it’s getting real bad. As Meiko leads the guys for another labour job, they pass by Chiyo playing go with Mayumi. Shingo spots a hidden message on the board. However he cannot decipher the meaning (that is, the plan to kick them out). Andre is already at the stage of hallucination and hearing Meiko’s voice. It leads him to the correction office whereby he spots his diary. Strangely, it has recently written events. Thinking it might predict the future (because it was written he will get his punishment), he starts hearing Meiko’s voice. He sees her in the distance as she tempts him to come get his punishment. Andre becomes desperate and lunges at Meiko but the barb wire fence is holding him back. When Kiyoshi tells Gakuto and Joe about the hidden message, Gakuto deduces it and they realize Andre is in danger. By the time they find him, he has broken through the barb wire. This has been a setup because it looked like Andre broke out. A second escape will extend their sentence by another 3 months and a third will have them expelled. All they need is for the snitch to return. The lovebirds are probably having the time of their life pinching each other’s cheeks (?!). Shingo spots a couple of boys bullying his friends for ‘betraying’ them to go hang out with a girl. When he tells them off, surprisingly the victim throws sand at his eyes and says not to bully his friends. This makes Shingo feel guilty as he spills all to Anzu. However Anzu is also hiding a secret and she too feels guilty about it. Flashback reveals Anzu is the captain of the guard for USC. Mari made a deal with her to give her an executive post next year if she is successful in this plan. That plan is to delay Shingo’s return on his date as he was told if he was a second late, it would be counted as tardiness and thus a breakout attempt. Anzu tells him to hurry back as there is not much time. He adjusted his watch while they were at the movies so he is 30 minutes behind time.

The guys continue to believe in Shingo as they yell out his name amidst getting beaten up by Meiko. Shingo dashes home and almost gets hit by a truck. Just when all hope is lost, Shingo is seen returning via that truck. Courtesy of that cleaner guy! Is he going to make it? 10 more seconds left! But the door is lock! OMG! Time ticking down! Hurry! Time’s up! He’s late. Expulsion is on the cards and Mari couldn’t be happier. The door wasn’t locked but just opened in a different way. This was the labour job Meiko had the guys did earlier on. Back in the cell, Shingo admits everything and feels guilty for being a hypocrite. He doesn’t mind the guys beat him up. Kiyoshi softly touches him and calls it even because all of them are as guilty. But when Shingo explains all the flirtatious things they did, he gets beaten up for real! You just made them jealous, eh? The guys are brought to the chairman’s office to be told of their expulsion once he affixes his signature. Of course he plans to hold on the signing as long as possible. Chiyo argues they were set up and she saw that DTO plan. However Mari denies of such scheme and the physical evidence has been taken care of by Hana. The USC celebrate their victory. Mari calls Anzu for explanation and she admits she was smitten by Shingo and thus told him the truth. But since DTO was a success, it doesn’t matter. Kiyoshi rallies the guys to fight back and not sit about waiting for a miracle. Because the school’s seaside camp during summertime has got that wet t-shirt contest! Who wouldn’t want to set some wet tits?! They need evidence about DTO. Shingo believes he has seen it somewhere.

Episode 9
Shingo remembers seeing it in the computer of the correction office. But if they have disposed of the paper, surely they can’t be that dumb to keep the email. Gakuto who is also a computer expert has a solution. A recovery software. The problem is only breaking into the office. With the school committee unanimously resolved to expel the guys, all that is left is for the chairman’s signature. This means they have no more labour and their times spent are only either in their cell or outside. Either way, they will not be near that room and Meiko will be on her guard. But Gakuto has another idea. Although all of them cannot take on Meiko and her strength, they can use that strength against her. Now we see the guys playing arm wrestling and Andre seems to be the strongest. They even think he is stronger than all the girls. Including Meiko. She heard this and cannot let this slide. She is going to arm wrestle them. Of course this is part of the plan to steal the keys from her jacket and use the time to download the software and recover that email. Gakuto claims Meiko can’t arm wrestle Andre the big boss and must go through all of them. So when he goes first, it was no challenge to Meiko. He got his arm contorted…

Next is Kiyoshi. Although he puts up a little fight, he got distracted by her tits and is about to lose. That is when Gakuto kicks the table for it to crumble and disrupt the match. This is when he steals the key and heads off. Now the rest must stall her for at least 10 minutes. Kiyoshi requests a rematch and this time loses. He is so distracted with her tits that he didn’t realize his arm was twisted! Shingo goes next and he is about to rant about his made up story of him being the king of arm wrestling in his heydays. But Meiko doesn’t give a sh*t and wants to start. His plan of stalling her with his story failed. Instant lost. Next is Joe. Can this sick guy do it? Not only instant lost, he is thrown to the wall! And now it all boils down to Andre. 7 minutes left… However Meiko spots a single strand of hair on his nipple. This greatly distracts her! This is the reason why Andre is able to hold his ground. The swaying of that strand annoys her and makes her lose strength! Then she realizes all she needs to do is not see it. With all her strength, she downs Andre. As she puts back her jacket, she realizes her keys are missing. Then she notices Gakuto is not around. Right behind you. Dropped these keys, boss? After Meiko leaves, the rest wonders if he has been successful. Unfortunately, the slow connection means he got as far as installing the software. When he heard Andre crying out, he hastened back. Sorry, no evidence. All the guys can do now is only wait for the day of their expulsion and weep in their sleep. Even men cry…

Episode 10
Gakuto is completely broken. He belongs in the mental institution. When Chiyo slips a message in the food, Gakuto thinks he has an escape plan. They’ll escape by disguising themselves as food leftovers! There’s no hope left… Like prisoners on death row, they get their last meal. Gakuto orders grasshopper rice and Meiko actually goes to catch and fry them! But after eating too much of those disgusting bugs, it looks like he got his sanity back. Meanwhile Mari sees the chairman and can’t wait till he signs those papers. Too bad he is doing his ‘miscellaneous work’. Watching butt pics on his PC. When Meiko hands the papers for their expulsion, she sounds like as though she’ll be missing them. She then sees the wasted grasshopper food. Angered that her effort was wasted, she beats up Gakuto. So much for those sentiments. However with the hope of seeing nipples and wet t-shirt contest, they can’t give up. Kiyoshi has written an appeal to the chairman for extension and hopes Meiko would deliver it. But the next day as they are brought out, they see the torn appeal letter. It was never delivered. But surprisingly the chairman wants to speak to the boys privately back in prison. Meanwhile Hana is in cooking class and she is on the verge of remembering that infirmary incident. When she drops her mushroom underneath the table and tries to reach it, another mushroom drops between her legs. Now she totally remembers the humiliation… Enraged, she goes to the prison looking for Kiyoshi with a knife in hand! Does cutting the mushroom signify anything? We guys are clutching our legs tightly, aren’t we? Meiko cannot allow this fuss and let others view badly of the USC so she does a submission move on her till she passes out.

Kiyoshi explains the appeal letter was fake and just bait. He wrote the real appeal on the form knowing that Meiko will let her guard down when told so. The chairman isn’t amused of Kiyoshi’s blackmail. He wrote he knew about those ‘treasures’ he buried outside. Kiyoshi mentions the need of more time to gather evidence of DTO. That is when the chairman asks if they prefer boobs or butts. Kiyoshi instantly knows this is a trick question that will determine if they live or die. Remembering he likes butts, he answers so. The chairman is impressed because no man who loves butts is evil. WTF?! But why butts? Oh no. The question that will determine your fate so think careful. The chairman won’t allow them to discuss since if they like butts, their answer must come from the heart. Plus, if they answered the boring ‘because they are there’ or ‘there is no reason or basis to like something’ answer, an answer he is disappointed to hear so many times, it’s the end of the road. Kiyoshi’s mind goes blank because he is after all a boobs person. Think, man! Think! When he sees Meiko’s boobs peeking through the window (she’s trying to eavesdrop on their talk), that is when he starts ranting about some evolution crap about boobs being from butts and all that nonsense. Say no more. The chairman hugs him and believes him to be a true ass lover. Even though he can postpone their expulsion, it can only be for the most a day. This is not enough time for whatever Gakuto’s plan. However he says a true man can achieve the impossible in a day. Mari is not pleased over this extension but the chairman replies he has decided there is room to question whether or not heir expulsion is justified. Besides, what could go wrong in a day? While Mari is still angered by this decision, Hana offers to handle the boys’ final day. Oh no. Those dead evil looks…

Episode 11
Part of the plan seems to involve Chiyo. They might not like the idea of dragging an outsider in but she’s their only hope. Next, they have to tempt Meiko to do butt wrestling with Andre. However it is not Meiko who is watching them today. It’s Hana. They make a gamble trying to get her to do butt wrestling but Gakuto got his butt kicked! Ouch! I hope his butt didn’t crack… Hana whispers to Kiyoshi that she remembers what happened at the infirmary and to watch out his eryngii. It’s a mushroom, by the way. Meiko thinks Mari has lost confidence in her but as the latter explains, she never doubted her loyalty. She deduces the guys pulled a fast one over her because they must have deduced her behavioural patterns after being posted there for so long. With Hana, they cannot predict her. So the guys are contemplating how to get back into the correction office with Hana around. Kiyoshi reveals Hana has a grudge against him and he can enter it easily. Chiyo receives the message that the boys will move tonight after supper. She is spotted by Anzu who assures her that she is by her side and will cooperate with her. Mari feels something is wrong as the boys have not made their move. Having a hunch they will do so tonight to prevent their expulsion, Meiko goes to patrol the area. Kiyoshi and Gakuto pretend to fight till the latter bleeds but Hana doesn’t care. But when Gakuto screams out something going on between Kiyoshi and Hana, did that girl start to bring Kiyoshi away and alone into the correction office. Oh my… What is she going to do with that scissors?! Goodbye his eryngii? Actually it is just to cut a bottle for him to pee in it. Phew. Oh, she’s not over that yet?

The psychology game begins. Kiyoshi takes off his pants and is butt naked. He wants Hana to help hold the bottle for him. Seeing how flustered she is, this means she is not used to this and can use this to stay in control. However the tables are turned when Hana also takes off hers! For what? To pee on him. They’re going to do it simultaneously? Kiyoshi regains control when he corners her at the door and becomes assertive (his plan is to unlock the door). She knee kicks his gut and ‘horror’ came when he sees her crotch that he terms as Medusa! Well, even if he isn’t turned into solid rock, let’s say his eryngii became hard. Now it makes him harder to pee. Guys know the struggle… Hana is about to pee on him when Meiko’s voice is heard after she catches an intruder. The boys fear if Chiyo is caught, the plan is dead over. But it isn’t Chiyo’s voice they hear. It is Anzu’s. This is part of the girls’ plan for Anzu to sacrifice herself so Chiyo can move freely. With Hana being a bit panicky and assuring Meiko nothing suspicious is going on here (locking back the door too), now Kiyoshi has a another full view of Medusa! When Hana realizes this, she starts crying that it always had to be him. Being seen peeing, getting peed on, getting his eryngii pressed on her and now this. She’s crying so hard that he feels sorry. But surprise! She kisses him!!!!!!!!! Is this her love confession? Well, she claims that she is stealing and ruining his precious first kiss. This is her revenge against him. The kissing resumes…

Episode 12
While Anzu gets her face full of Meiko’s crotch as interrogation, the other boys believe Anzu was trying to help them because if she was working for the USC, Meiko wouldn’t have caught her. Hana continues to kiss Kiyoshi and she won’t let him go. He notices her kissing is stiff. It is not a real kiss. A kiss of the child. He hates to do this but for the sake of their plan, he turns the tables by giving her a passionate French kiss! Here comes the tongue! She is utmost shock until she passes out! Kiyoshi then unlocks the door. Chiyo, who was only told to enter the room when the lights are out, thinks of heading in early. If she does so, the plan would be in jeopardy. Kiyoshi then yells out it is not over yet (signalling a hint to Chiyo) but Hana has had it. Time to return to his cell. Once she does, the guys want to go to the toilet so they make a quick one before returning quietly. Meiko’s interrogation yields no results. Could it be Anzu was just strolling there? However Meiko and Mari could still feel uneasiness because they know better the boys are planning something. Could it be Anzu is just a distraction? They head down to the prison to check but everything seems to be in order. The guys are in bed. No hanky panky. Next day, the boys are brought to the chairman’s office. He reads out their crimes and oddly enough, they didn’t even make a sound for a plea to object. Before the chairman hands in the forms to sign, Meiko realizes something strange about Gakuto. This is not him! He is shorter than usual. It is Joe disguised as him! Then who is Joe? Who is underneath that hood? It’s Chiyo! Then where is Gakuto? The school brings him in while beating up this pervert only in his underwear. Something about not wanting to sully Chiyo’s clothes.

This is how they did it. After Chiyo snuck in, she hid in the toilet. So when all the guys where there to pee, that is when Gakuto, Joe and Chiyo exchange clothes. Chiyo took Gakuto’s place and stayed in the cell while he went on to continue recovering the data. So after he has downloaded it, he escaped and hid outside. By that time, Meiko and Mari came and did their rounds and found nothing. They didn’t think he could have done it so fast so they explain how this plan started since that arm wrestling gig. So where is the proof of the USC’s DTO scheme? It is all in the USB. Right in Gakuto’s ass… Eww! Well, I knew the chairman like butts and asses but… He takes a look at the data and confirms the USC’s underhanded tactics in expelling the boys. Hana then realizes that Kiyoshi had tricked her. She gets mad when he admits that kissing was just a distraction to unlock the door. She is so mad that she starts beating up. However Mari protects Kiyoshi and bears the brunt of her punch. She doesn’t blame her underlings for they were just carrying out her orders. She is to take the blame for everything. With their plot exposed, the chairman will decide their punishment later. But for now, he declares the boys free for they have served their time for the only crime of peeping at girls. Feels good to be free, eh? In the aftermath, we see Kiyoshi getting along fine with Anzu as well as Shingo with Anzu. And there might be another romance brewing with Gakuto and a new girl. Andre gets his much needed punishment because all his classmate girls use him as a punching bag, impressed by his sumo like build. Joe? He’s happy with his ants… The real student council president, Kate Takenomiya confronts the chairman about the sentence he is supposed to carry out on the USC. Just because one of them is his daughter doesn’t mean she can get away with it. He agrees. And so it is decided the USC will be sentenced to prison. They tear Mari’s clothes as mockery to put on the prison uniform. There is nothing she can do but to accept her fate and shame. And off the trio go while the guys uneasily watch them. You do the crime, you do the time.

Breaking Out In Laughter
Hey, wait! It’s already over?! I thought I was just getting started here?! I must say that this could be easily one of the best animes not only for the season but for the year. I can easily vouch for that because there was never a dull moment, not even a blink of a second. Every nano-second had me glued and intrigued in wanting to know what will come next. What moves will the boys make? What schemes will they come up with? Will they be alright? Will they succeed? Will they falter? What obstacles will they face to throw the spanner in the works? How will they use their resources and wits to overcome them? And how will the ladies react and counter to all that to make sure the guys stay in place? So you see, if you think very much about it, regardless of all the violence, fanservice and poop jokes, this entire series is like a battle of wits as both sides try to stay ahead and outwit the other to achieve their goal. And oh, this series made me laugh so hard and I don’t think I have laughed so for a long time for many episodes. Seriously, this anime is funny too! Oh, the oxymoron.

Therefore the execution and the flow of the plot of the story are seemingly flawless despite all the other ‘revolting’ distraction of boobs and blood. Some may find it distasteful but personally I find them funny and add ‘spice’ to the overall. It enhances greatly just about everything. It is just a tad sad that this series only had a season of a dozen episodes because seriously, I was so immersed and ‘lost’ in this world, that when it reaches the end, you can say I was somewhat surprised it is already over. After all, at least the end of the current season as the boys finally achieve victory by killing two birds with a stone. Their freedom and right to continue to stay at school. But with the constant scheming of both parties, there is never a wasteful moment. Every precious second counts. And that is what makes the watch very exhilarating and exciting. Man, I never thought seeing a bunch of guys breaking out of prison (legally for their freedom, that is) would be this fun. Great job everybody. On a side note, the last prison themed series I watched was perhaps Deadman Wonderland. This one is more violent, depressing and just unsatisfying (especially the so called ending).

In addition to that, this series has also some ‘great’ comedy value. Whether it is all part of the plan or accident, most of the funny moments will guarantee to make you laugh out loud. I know I did. Whether it is paranoid Gakuto screaming his head off about something or over nothing or that poop jokes and fart jokes that would make you chuckle and at the same time feel repulsed, if you can’t nonchalantly laugh at this kind of things without thinking too much, you need to go see some sort of specialist or therapy. Even in dangerous situations like Hana’s close up with Kiyoshi in the correction office, despite the perilous state that anything wrong could happen anytime, they can still make it look genuinely funny. If these guys weren’t against each other so much, they would be great jokers. Or rather, it is because they are against each other and being put up in such situations that these funny moments could come about. Kudos to everyone for making me laugh so hard. Really.

Making this series even more interesting is the bunch of unique and odd characters. It is safe to say that most of them, if not all of them, have some sort of weird fetish or hobby that ‘normal’ people would find revolting. Andre’s masochism might be a very common one and Gakuto’s Three Kingdom may fall under the rare category of history buffs and geeks. He is also like the whipping boy of the series. It feels like a running joke and sometimes he might be a masochist because if there is a guy who often gets beaten up for something or nothing, this Three Kingdoms fanatic is the one who takes all the beating. But I have never known a character who actually loves ants so much! Can you even think of a person in fiction of real life that loves ants as much as Joe? Of course if you’re talking about scientists and researchers studying on these little bugs then it is a different story. I’m talking about ordinary Joes (no pun intended) who has a strong and weird obsession with ants while most of us wouldn’t hesitate to stomp them. Uh huh. He will even kill you for that so don’t go stomping them in front of his eyes. Yeah, he even got names for them. Good luck telling the difference.

Meiko seems to love doing weird exercises that makes her sweat profusely (and also give us good fanservice views) and I think this is a long shot but I think Hana has got a little fetish for omorashi (something to do with pee). Sure, it seems like an excuse to get her revenge but noticed her perverted face each time she anticipates and forces him to pee right in front of her? She might be no girly girl, but don’t you think it is kinda disgusting for her even wanting to watch a guy pee? I mean, even if it is too much as a girl, isn’t that just sickening? Unless of course she has a fetish for that. And don’t get me started on the chairman’s fetish for butts…

For the guys, perhaps Kiyoshi is only the ‘normal’ one. Because looking at the rest, sometimes you think they are a bunch of weirdoes and misfits. Heck, aren’t they? We’ve got a big Buddha guy with a small face, a sick hoodie guy, a geek who looks like a psychopath (even scarier when he had long hair) and a blonde yankee. They look so odd and that’s why Kiyoshi seems so ‘normal’ and out of place. But they are all perverts either way. Boys will be boys. I don’t even know how the school only managed to enrol 5 of them but perhaps they are in experimental phase for a co-ed schooling system. It would be interesting to see if this prison system works when the male to female ratio are almost even. So while it is great to see some bromance cultivating closely among the guys, not all females are ‘bad’ as seen by Chiyo and Anzu. Despite the rest of the girls having negative perception of the guys, it goes to show that sometimes it isn’t the outlooks but the character of the heart that steals their heart.

Meiko might seem like a serious character (aside providing fanservice). Someone whom you do not want to mess with. But there are times when she reveals herself as a joke character especially when she starts sweating that is outside her usual training exercise. For instance, when Mari accidentally made an error in her speech, Meiko became so troubled in her mind in noticing that error and wonder if she should correct her or not. Then you see her sweating profusely. Then there is this time she wants Mari to punish her but was totally ignored, it made her look like a fool. In a way, could it be that Meiko is also a masochist for Mari like how Andre is for her? She is only a masochist for the president but a dominatrix for the boys. The chairman too feels like a joker character. Looks intimidating, sounds intimidating but that is all to it till you hear what he sometimes has to say or the perverted things he tries to cover up in the midst of doing. Hana is equally, if not more dangerous than Meiko because her punches and kicks really pack a punch. She doesn’t hesitate to get violent and own you if she doesn’t like what you’re saying. One minute she can put up an angelic face the next minute, she looks like she could give yandere queens a run for their money.

Something about Mari that makes her seemingly hates boys. Could it be because too much of catching her father watching porn? She seems to be pretty cool in handling such situations. I am sure that Mari who is always calm and never really losing her cool, is not really a bad person but it is just a little sad that with the lack of her back story, we are unable to see or understand why she hates them enough to go to great lengths to get them expelled. And perhaps a reason why she is the crow master. I guess with the real student council’s appearance in the very last scene, perhaps it answers why the USC is named so. Illegal or not, personally I think the real student council look more dangerous and psychopath as compared to the USC. From the looks of it too, looks like they have a grudge or rivalry against the USC. So where were they the entire time? Maybe just plotting. Or just watching from the shadows (the irony?) the downfall of Mari and co.

So everybody has got somebody to love in the end? It seems very unlikely for this anime but it feels like some sort of ‘happy ending’ for the guys. The best reward for a guy is to get the girl in the end, right? We have straightforward cases like Kiyoshi and Chiyo, Shingo and Anzu, and now a potential for Gakuto. I also briefly read that in future, Andre too got one of his own, a sadistic girl who can provide his masochistic needs. You know what they say about opposite attracts, right? What about Joe? Is he going to be left out? As long as he has got his ants… Obviously Hana has a thing for Kiyoshi and after seeing so many animes, my guts tell me that the only reason she picks on him and is persistent with her revenge thingy is because she likes him. Want to bet? And I think Meiko too has some soft spot for the boys because she is the one who spends most of the time with them guarding their cell. Because you tend to notice that she notes that the boys will soon be expelled, so and so. How come she doesn’t sound happy saying that? Like as though she dreads when it happens? Hmm… I wonder if the guys will be keen in looking forward to the wet t-shirt contest after finding romance.

I don’t think this is intentional in anyway but I am sure that people these days somehow can ‘see’ it. Because this series seems to be painting boys as the ‘good people’ while a big majority of the girls are just being the b*tches and villains. If you can look past the fact that the victims are boys and the real perpetrators are girls, I think there would be no problem. Because the fact is that the boys despite having done some wrong, they were framed by the very people who were supposed to uphold the law. That is why not to say that I wished for the downfall of the USC (it is with mixed feelings of sadness and relief that they head off to prison), because of this setup, you can’t help root for the boys to have their plan a success. Each time when something comes in the way of their plan or it doesn’t go as intended, you feel their pain and frustration. Like how your favourite football team closely misses scoring the goal. And then you’d be filled with hope when they come up with the next plan. All because they simply never gave up. At times they might be on the verge of defeat and hopelessness. Their despair is too tempting for them to give in but they persevered. That is why in this context the main reason why we root for the boys not because of their gender or anything else.

I would be lying if I say fanservice is not the biggest attracting factor here. Either you will be disgusted or you will be delighted. Well, this is also classified as an ecchi anime so be warned. If you are open minded, you would see all those glorious fanservice scenes and jokes about butts and poops to be funny. We are human after all. We smile when sexy scenes prop up and giggle at fart jokes. It is no shame. Unless it happens to you. Meiko as you can obviously see is the big offender in this category, contributing to a big majority of deliciously sexy and tantalizing fanservice scenes. Her boobs are so humongous that not only it looks freaking fake but as though she just jumped out from a hentai series. So much so almost every scene of her, your mind goes wild thinking if the scene might suddenly change into a hentai one. Even more so the way she dresses and that sexy trademark little purple pantsu she always wears. Yeow! Boobs shot, crotch shots, butt shots, panty shots and whatever angles you can think of, Meiko has done it all. Can we get more? Prepared to be whipped then!

Don’t forget the violence too. There will be blood spilled either way in every episode. Whether it is from the harsh beat down from the wardens or that sick butt jokes (I thought Kiyoshi’s ass bleeding would somewhat become a running joke of the series but I guess after a couple of times it could be quite distasteful and hurts even if you’re watching it) or even Joe’s sickness that has him cough out little pints of blood, there is no shortage of them. Well, it is a good thing that they aren’t anaemic. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. After all that smack downs and hammering, I am sure the guys would have build up some sort of immunity. They must have, right? Unless you’re the kind like Andre…

I want to also point out the water or rather liquid in this anime. Firstly, we have them mainly from Meiko’s sweating. Sometimes I feel that she sweats is some sort of ambiguous sexual subtexts. The rate she sweats out, she can probably fill an Olympic size pool by the end of the day. The other liquid is the pee. Although not much, I thought they look just like plain water. Not to say that I am a pee expert but when I look at them as portrayed here (for example when Kiyoshi accidentally first caught Hana peeing), I thought it was just normal water flowing.

At first I thought there was something very similar to the animation and visual style. This includes the colouring and the shading as well. Somehow I perceived it very similar to Shingeki No Kyojin and thought both animes to be produced by the same production studio. It turns out not. This series is produced by J.C. Staff and perhaps some of the visual similarities of their other productions like Bakuman can be seen here. Maybe it is the same dark brown colour of the girls’ uniform which closely resembles the same colour of the soldiers in Shingeki No Kyojin that made me thought so. Another reason is perhaps the nearly realism look on some of the character’s face. In a way I thought the animation for them was done via rotoscope. Especially when you take a look at Hana’s scary face. Sometimes it looks ‘scary’ enough to be almost real. Some of the other visuals are also creative like when the situation gets dramatic for the guys and they are drawn in a different light which makes them look a whole lot different yet funny. There is also the creative and ingenious use of Lego bricks to depict Kiyoshi and Gakuto’s escape plot to help the former see Chiyo. Delightful!

Voice acting, I particularly love Kana Hanazawa as Hana. She did a very good job in portraying both the angelic side and the brutal version. Her ability to seamlessly switch back and forth between both forms is what makes her character stand out despite having very much less screen time compared to Meiko and the lack of any need for her character to resort to fanservice to be memorable. Sayaka Ohara’s devilishly calm but scheming voice makes her suitable to play the role of the cool headed villainess. She helmed similar roles before such as Bel-Peol in Shakugan No Shana series, Karen in Blade & Soul, Indicus in Log Horizon, Chuu in Etotama and more recently Koukaku in Chaos Dragon. Shizuka Itou as Meiko is also no stranger in voicing odd character roles. She was the voice of that blonde b*tch in Ansatsu Kyoushitsu as well as a certain arrogant rich blonde in the Fate/Kaleid Liner Prsima Ilya series.

For the rest of the voice acting casts, they include Hiroshi Kamiya as Kiyoshi (Yato in Noragami), Katsuyuki Konishi as Gakuto (Oga in Beelzebub), Kenichi Suzumura as Shingo (Sougou in Gintama), Kazuyuki Okitsu as Andre (Midori in Aoharu x Kikanjuu), Daisuke Namikawa as Joe (Rock in Black Lagoon), Chinami Hahsimoto as Chiyo (Yuyu in Hidan No Aria AA), You Taichi as Anzu (Sayo in Love Lab), Keiji Fujiwara as the chairman (Sven in Black Cat) and Ami Koshimizu as Kate (Ryuuko in Kill La Kill). Since the prison boys are stealing the limelight in this series, it is no doubt that they also sing both the opening and ending theme under the name of Kangoku Danshi. Ai No Prison is the opening theme. The super cool hard rock beat feels like the guys are singing and fighting their way to freedom and it feels like they’re having fun doing so. Tsumibukaki Oretachi No Sanka as the ending theme is more fun and relaxed rock-and-roll-like piece. If you love the series and love rooting for the guys, you’re going to love both songs too.

Overall, this series is a very enjoyable and interesting affair to watch. If you can get pass the violence, blood, fanservice, poop jokes, fart jokes and all the other ‘disgusting’ stuffs that were used in making this series wonderfully entertaining and funny. Seriously. One of the guilty pleasures you must have. Seriously. After all, those who love ecchi stuffs cannot be bad guys, right? Wait… That doesn’t sound right… I hope they have another season of this because it is fun to see the prison break and all the funny stuffs (intentional or not) that goes with it. Uh huh. It is bad of me to want them to go back to prison but I guess there is where the fun is. Maybe next time is the USC’s turn to make their prison break from the real student council? Yes, second season please. If prisons in real life were like that, it couldn’t have blurred the line between pain and pleasure further. Heck, everything is like a grey area. Because if this Meiko character is the kind of prison warden as we see here, I won’t be surprised to suddenly find the prison population experiencing a boom in bad boys and probably converting mild and herbivore guys into perverted masochists. Then they wouldn’t mind breaking out and getting caught again all over again. Till they change the warden to a fat ugly mistress or some gay macho uncle! Breakout for real and never coming back, haha!

Deadman Wonderland

When you get caught for a crime, you get arrested, go to trial, if convicted, you go to prison. End of story? Well, not in Deadman Wonderland. It isn’t as simple as that as there is more than meets the eye for prisoners who are locked up in this prison. They’re not just rotting their sinful lives away in a cell or making car plates, you know.

In a future where a major earthquake has sunk 3/4 of Tokyo, Deadman Wonderland is Japan’s largest and privately owned prison facility built on ground zero itself. It operates like a circus, amusement park and tourist attraction so the public can come in and watch inmates, especially those on death row do embarrassing performances to their amusement. I mean, these are criminals, right? What better way than to shame them by putting up such carnival acts for the pleasure of the common people. Besides, no amount of repent will make this hardcore criminals atone for their sins. But what will human rights activists say about this? What happens an innocent and framed person is put behind these walls? On the outside, it may seem like an ordinary prison but deep down, there are lots of shocking dark secrets that may have you think that this is much worse than modern slavery. One such kid, Ganta Igarashi, is going to find out the hard way, the hard realities of life…

Episode 1
Ganta and his friends, Mimi and Yamakatsu are discussing about their upcoming school trip to Deadman Wonderland. Are we excited to head to the so called amusement park yet? Ganta has been living a pretty normal life though he is one of the many citizens affected by the great earthquake, resulting him in having no memories of the tragedy 10 years ago. As class resumes, Ganta spots a caped person floating outside the window. Before he knows it, the perpetrator unleashes a terrible blast decimating the classroom. Ganta wakes up in the pitch black darkness and to his horror sees the decapitated heads of Mimi. The villain, as Ganta identifies as Red Man, suddenly sticks some red crystal into his chest. Next time Ganta opens his eyes, he is in hospital but the police are arresting him for the massacre of his classmates. He is the only survivor. Of course everything is happening so fast and he is in shock of the developments. Not to worry. Court-appointed attorney, Tsunenaga Tamaki offers to help him out the best he can. The trial goes on but in the end, Ganta is found guilty and is sentenced to death. Ganta goes berserk and claims his innocence but was beaten up by a couple of fathers of his dead classmates. Though restrained by the cops, they show him a footage as evidence whereby cocky Ganta himself was planning his classmates’ massacre. Was that really him? It’s hard to say no. Off he goes to Deadman Wonderland, still shocked at his life turned upside-down. As part of the new inmates at the prison, they are given the low-down on what to expect in this prison by the head security chief, Makina. The first thing the other prisoners ask this strict, no-nonsense prison guard enforcer is how big her tits. “G-cup!” she says with confidence. I guess if you’re going to be on this job, you cannot be embarrassed with anything and expect those scums to ask such things. Another prison, Yoh Takami bumps into Ganta. He apologizes but Makina tells him to return what Yoh stole though the latter denies anything. In an instant, Makina slashes right across his body! Perhaps an example to expect the harsh reality they’ll be facing in this prison?

Later Makina and Tamaki are having a discussion about Ganta’s death sentence today. She thinks the plan is absurd and that they should just let him be and he’ll die before he knows it. But Tamaki asks her about what she would do when receiving presents. Of course, open it. And Tamaki hates waiting and wants his presents. Ganta is having it real hard adjusting to life. Reflecting everything that has happened so fast. His good times with his friends, the sudden trial, people pelting him with eggs and wishing his death. He wish he is dead. Suddenly a girl with white hair and thick mittens jump down and would be more than happy to kill him. Instinctively, Ganta avoids her iron rod swings. This girl, Shiro tells him that his reactions mean he doesn’t want to die. Ganta is dumbfounded she knows his name when a bunch of thugs come to mock Ganta about his massacre. But they are beaten up by Shiro who believes Ganta didn’t kill them. Suddenly there’s an explosion on the top structure. It is going to crash down on them. Ganta’s is determined to live to avenge his friends’ death when suddenly his chest starts glowing red. Using his reflexes, he uses his blood to blast the falling structure. Meanwhile Tamaki, who is also the promoter of Deadman Wonderland is looking through Ganta’s profile and notes he is unfortunate to have met Wretched Egg and lived to tell. He has 2 options for Ganta: Suffer and die or live and become his toy. Elsewhere, Makina and her team corner a death row prisoner taking another prisoner hostage. The hostage taker is in a panic, demanding some candy as he is out of Cast Points (currency used in this prison). What to do? Makina orders to do nothing and stall for time. Shortly, that guy starts bleeding internally and falls dead. Makina notes that is his death sentence. Ganta finds himself in one piece in the aftermath and Shiro is alive and fine too. The airhead girl starts talking about eating snacks together because they are friends. I guess he can’t stay gloomy forever so he agrees.

Episode 2
Tamaki talks to Makina about the failure in Ganta’s death sentence accident. He considers that failure a real success. Makina is not amused and wonders what this promoter sees in that kid. In the infirmary, Ganta is getting treated by the nurse, Rei Takashima. She advises him to eat his candy if he is to survive which was supposed to be in his beg when he first arrived. But Ganta didn’t find any. Ganta sees Yoh recuperating in the infirmary ward. Shiro drops in to invite Ganta to participate in this afternoon’s Dog Race Show, an athletic obstacle course in which the winner received 100,000 Cast Points. Later Yoh is seen informing Tamaki about Ganta’s participation. Ganta, Shiro and Yoh are preparing to enter the race with other participants by warming up at the backstage. Suddenly, Kouzuji Kazumasa and his underlings come in to instil some fear in the prisoners. They are to let this violent ex-Taekwondo guy win or die. Kouzuji gets violent on Yoh when he smiles wrongly. He also overheard Ganta’s crazy comment and also gets rough. No choice, Ganta plays by his rules even if they seem unfair and this earns him the right to live longer. Because Shiro is being an airhead and ignoring him, Kouzuji is ready to punch that whore’s face but is stopped in time by Makina. It’s time for the race. Ganta remembers reading the booklet of the prison rules and finds out the importance of the candy. He has to eat one every 3 days or else the poison in the collar (every inmate has this) will be released and kill him. And each candy costs 100,000 Cast Points. Man, he better win this. As the obstacle race starts, Ganta gets firsthand view of the horror obstacle course. Prisoners can really die on this race! It’s like Death Race but minus the cars! See them get slashed into half, jump to their death, electrocuted and getting shot by arrows. The crowd really loves seeing blood, eh? Shiro and Ganta are lucky to have gotten this far and the former is like having fun all the way, even to a point getting in Ganta’s way. I guess it’s the sweet bread consolation prize that Shiro is motivated to get. Kouzuji plays dirty by using his underlings as shield. In the final stage, Ganta, Kouzuji and Shiro are the final participants. Only one winner will walk away with the Cast Points. The rule of this final is simple. Whoever holds on to the black Deadman ball in this battle royale at the end of time wins. It’s no easy feat since the floors will be collapsing. And there are sharp spikes underneath. So a series of catch begins and Kouzuji starts playing mind games with Ganta hoping he will succumb to his supremacy. Ganta finally has had enough of this and tells him off if he wants to kill him, then do so. Till then he will live by his own rules. In the dying seconds, Kouzuji slides off the floor to his death. Shiro is having the ball and clinging on by her feet. Ganta sees her bruised body and realized that she had been protecting him throughout the course instead of being a nuisance. Shiro falls off and tosses the ball to him but he grabs Shiro’s hand instead, saving her. In the end, there is no winner and the displeased crowd starts booing and throwing their stuffs. Ganta laments his fate that he will be executed soon since he won’t have enough cash to buy the candy.

Episode 3
Tamaki is having a discussion with some committee. They didn’t like how he turned the event into a public massacre. He reminds them he is in charge here and to just cough up enough funds to keep Wretched Egg locked up here. Ganta is in his cell when he finds out Yoh is his cellmate. He gives Ganta his first candy seeing he feels guilty in crashing into him then and making him lose it. Ganta is very grateful and he better be because Yoh went through lots of trouble to get that. Plus, he notes the race’s difficulty and could’ve died if he had entered. You can say that injury by Kouzuji was somewhat a blessing in disguise. Also, he is Tamaki’s lackey in watching over Ganta. Ganta tastes the candy and finds it horrible. Just like reality, eh? Tamaki gets a call that the Mother Goose system is down. The place is in a mess and Wretched Egg has escaped. He wants everyone to do whatever it takes before Wretched Egg cracks a smile. While Ganta is eating ice cream with Yoh, he suddenly sees the Red Man who unleashes a super whirlwind that it could cut off your limbs! Ganta also gets some cuts but revenge is on his mind. Without thinking, he materializes his blood and shoots at him but nothing happens. Then Red Man escapes, Ganta collapses and Yoh couldn’t believe what he just saw. Ganta wakes up in the infirmary feeling okay with Shiro next to him. He overheard the next bed talking about a person whom Ganta thinks is Red Man. They think he is being locked away in G-Block. Makina confers with her team about Ganta’s strange display of powers. Seeing that their pride rests on maintaining peace and order within the walls of this prison, she wants him captured alive and quickly. She authorizes the use of Necro Macro and the lockdown of the prison. Yoh talks to Tamaki about what just happened. Tamaki notes the Red Man has been safely captured and throws him lots of Cast Points cards to shut him up and as reward. Ganta hears the announcement that he is wanted at the security room. But he has not time as he is rushing to G-Block. Does he know where that is? Luckily he bumps into Yoh who tells him there is no G-Block as all blocks are from A to F only. Shiro knows a secret passage so Ganta pesters her to tell. She suddenly starts getting upset and seals her lips. Necro Macro arrives on scene and is targeting Ganta so he pleads for Shiro’s help. She agrees and lets them through a small air passageway. Thank goodness they got away in time before they got fried by the blast! In a dark place, Necro Macro is still after them. They see a sign on the wall that tells them this is G-Block. It really exists, huh? Necro Macro goes out of control and attacks them. Makina and her team lost the machine’s signal and she fears it may have gone to an area which she has no control over. Ganta apologizes for getting them both into trouble. Upset Shiro kicks away the machine while berating Ganta an idiot. She is upset that Ganta continued to mention he killed all his friends. That’s because Shiro is his friend. Now you get it? So that’s why she’s so upset? The Necro Macro revives and grabs Shiro. Ganta wants to save her but it seems he couldn’t call forth his blood powers like before. Plus, he is too weak. Suddenly somebody slices and destroys the machine with ease.

Episode 4
Ganta thinks this guy is the Red Man and charges. But that guy pulls out a sword made out of blood from his arm. He recognizes Ganta as Woodpecker and wants to know when he is going to use his Branch of Sin. He feels disappointed and walks away. Ganta realizes he needs to use his blood power and with his determination, whips up a powerful blood ball and throws it at him, breaking his ribs. Now that guy is pumped up. Introducing himself as Kiyomasa Senji AKA Crow, he wants to have fun with Ganta and lunges at him. Fortunately Shiro stops him dead in his tracks so as not to pick on Ganta. Senji gets embarrassed upon seeing Shiro and tries to cover her up with his shirt. Ganta realizes he is not Red Man. Suddenly guards surround them and shoot tranquilizers. Makina is upset that there is no trace of Necro Macro’s wreckage or the prisoners so she is going to see the director personally. By the rules, she has to go through the promoter but she doesn’t care if she gets disciplined because it’s her job to maintain order, not to follow rules. Yoh and Shiro are taken away separately and detained elsewhere. Yoh asks about G-Block but is confused about Deadman, Branch of Sin and blood manipulation powers. To make things worse for Yoh, the guards confiscate all his Cast Points cards. So much for that. Senji is being examined by Rei and she thinks of cancelling tomorrow’s match due to his broken bones. But he tears up the place and threatens to kill her if she does that. Ganta is strapped down in a lab and is shocked to see Tamaki. He introduces himself as Deadman Wonderland’s promoter and will use any trick in the book to get Branch of Sin users here. So yup. That video of Ganta planning to kill his classmates was made up. Ganta’s blood is boiling but Tamaki continues to mock him. The rest warn Tamaki not to overdo it or else he won’t be able to participate in tomorrow’s experiment, Corpse Carnival. What experiment? Tamaki explains that Ganta, nicknamed Woodpecker will be up against Crow in tomorrow’s battle-to-the-death between Branch of Sin users. Winners get so much Cast Points that Dog Race Shows won’t matter anymore. Ganta isn’t going to follow his wish but Tamaki says if he does, he may just get to meet his classmates’ murderer one day, Wretched Egg or Red Man as he is known to Ganta. Tamaki continues that carriers of the Branch of Sin infection began appearing 10 years ago after the Red Hole incident so this experiment allows them to release their special powers to their limits. Then he forces Ganta to watch the blood curling gory and violent Corpse Carnival promo video (he can’t blink!).

Episode 5
Even if Ganta loses and dies, he’ll still be valuable because parts of his body will become useful as samples. See all the other samples in the room? Freaky lab! Makina tries to see the director but is stopped by a pair of loyal guards outside. She insists so they point their sword at her neck. She backs down. Ganta and Senji meet at the Corpse Carnival birdcage stage with several ‘guests’ (cartoon icons?) watching with glee. Ganta fires several blood projections but Senji slices them away. It is apparent he hasn’t mastered them yet. Then he starts feeling cold. Obviously. He shot out too much blood, didn’t he? He starts feeling scared as Senji moves into serious mode and shows he is serious in killing him by slicing the tree with ease. Ganta gets cut here and there and is lying in shock on the floor. Then he remembers Shiro. She is his childhood friend. Meanwhile Shiro wants to go save Ganta quick because he is weak. Despite that, she notes one thing awesome about him. No matter how bad things are, he gets back up. Senji is totally disappointed that yesterday’s fight may just be a fluke. Ganta gets up staggering. Though he is scared and in pain, he isn’t going down with a fight. He materializes a blood ball and shoots it straight up to drop a structure on Senji. Though Senji easily slices it away, it’s just a distraction so Ganta could get up close to him and fire a blood ball point blank at his chest. Pow! Senji is knocked out. Ganta wins the match and thinks Senji isn’t such a bad guy after all because he was giving him a high-five after the match. In his room, a programme called Corpse Carnival Post Game Show airs on TV. It is a penalty game for the Corpse Carnival loser. Senji is tied to a chair while Rei starts a slot machine. On Senji’s cue to stop, the slots state “Right Eye”. This means Rei and her team are going to extract his right eye now. Oh sh*t! Warning: Watching this scene may make you throw up because it is f*cking gross even though most parts are censored out!!! I can even feel the pain of Senji’s right eye being extracted!!! AAAAAAARGH!!! Meanwhile Yoh manage to get more information about G-Block and returns to the area with Shiro. Yoh uses silly Shiro as a distraction to fight the guards but he gets more than he bargained for when he sees her destroys an entire tower! Is that her blood on fire?!

Episode 6
Yoh makes his getaway while the prison team cleans up the mess. Ganta hears a commotion outside his room. He sees a young girl, Minatsuki pleading to a weird guy, Masu not to eat her flowers. Ganta offers him his food but it’s not enough. He wants more. Minatsuki takes Ganta and hide in her flower filled room. They talk about this sick place especially the recent post game show they saw. Minatsuki gets close to Ganta, making him fluster. Then she undresses herself to show the scars on her back. She tells him about her violent father when she lost mom to the Red Hole incident. One day the beating got out of hand, before she knew it, unknowingly she used her blood powers to kill him. Her brother never believed her blood powers could kill their dad so cruelly and did everything he could to protect her but she ultimately ended up here. Ganta tells her they should escape from this place and will protect her so she doesn’t have to use her Branch of Sin. Their escape ends in failure as the guards round them up and tells them to save it for tomorrow. Ganta doesn’t seem to know yet. Tomorrow’s Corpse Carnival pits Woodpecker against Humming Bird, which is Minatsuki. Meanwhile Tamaki is talking to the director in his dark room. The director isn’t amused of yet another Corpse Carnival taking place and reminds Tamaki that Deadman Wonderland is a birdcage he built for himself and not his dream land. But Tamaki says the show must go on. Ganta and Minatsuki step into the ring. At first he couldn’t fight her but as soon Minatsuki takes off her earrings, Ganta feels a whiplash. Minatsuki suddenly has a change in character and becomes a violent sadistic b*tch. Seems all that goody-two-shoes act was just pretend because she loves to see his depressing face. It makes her climax. The match is interrupted when Yoh, dressed as a guard starts knocking on the glass. Yoh is Minatsuki’s brother. Seeing the audience is giving out a good reaction, Tamaki allows Yoh to enter the stage to add to the drama. Though Yoh couldn’t believe his sister is a Branch of Sin user, he still wants them to escape. He has accumulated lots of Cast Points to buy her freedom.

Minatsuki knows her brother is a fool and tries to pin the blame on Ganta for tricking her. Yoh steps up to protect her. Minatsuki is prepared to whip them both till the bone when Yoh mentions this is how she killed dad. When Yoh came home, he saw concerned dad approaching naked Minatsuki. In his rage, he tried to kill him. He thought he did but realized it was Minatsuki’s Branch of Sin instead. He also realized too late that dad never laid a hand on her. He never believed in such powers till he witnessed it firsthand. He tells her she doesn’t need to lie anymore. But Minatsuki gets upset because she can’t climax without seeing the depression of others. She beats up Yoh while trying to tell Ganta her brother isn’t all that good either (especially the bumping into him part which wasn’t just an accident). Even so, Ganta replies Yoh believed she was innocent, saved up for her release and even protected him. Minatsuki calls him a liar, a hypocrite and attacks him. Ganta can’t fight back because she is using Yoh as a shield. Minatsuki tells about her mom, which in fact isn’t really a mother. When the Red Hole incident happened and shook the place, Minatsuki was pinned down. The first mom did was to take her plants and run, leaving stunned Minatsuki trapped. Ganta continues to fire his shots but they all missed. Actually it’s part of his plan so that one of them ricocheted to hit her. With Yoh out of the way, Minatsuki binds Ganta’s hands. Ganta coolly walks towards her and tells her off that just because she was betrayed and lied to once, she lied and hurt everyone. Isn’t that making her more miserable? He head butts her unconscious. Man, he must have a very hard head. The audience are disappointed because they want to see more blood and death but Ganta shows them his middle finger and to shut the f*ck up because he had already won. Wow. Where did he learn that badass attitude so fast? The director notes Ganta is an interesting boy wonders if Shiro is awake. He wants her to make his wish come true since the lullaby is stopping.

Episode 7
What’s this? The director and Shiro in some blood fight? Killing continuously and dying perpetually? Huh? Yoh and Ganta are at the infirmary. Yoh recounts how he saved his trapped sister and made it a point to protect her. Suddenly a slight tremor rocks the place. Yoh holds up a cabinet from falling on his sister. The siblings talk to each other while Ganta remembers about Shiro. Meanwhile the director is defeated as Shiro notes about the activation of Mother Goose system again. She wants to know the continuation of the lullaby but the director there won’t be any because she is an abandoned egg. Then Shiro dons the mask and cape and she looks like Red Man! Holy sh*t!!! The prison guards are tending to the wounded prisoners. Ganta talks to Senji when they hear a commotion from Minatsuki’s room. She doesn’t like her sister-complex brother following her everywhere and throws a flowerpot at Ganta for peeking. It hit Senji instead. Ganta remembers his childhood days with Shiro. The one whereby Shiro is sick and tired of all those needles and experiments. Ganta cheered her up with some super action hero called Ace Man. She just got to call him and he’ll come save you. Shiro wasn’t amused and breaks the toy. Outside, Ganta is being attacked by a dog. If not for Shiro jumping out from the window and landing on the dog like a gymnast, he could’ve been a goner. Tamaki learns from Rei that the red crystal in his chest is a capsule of femtomachines. An aggregation called Nameless Worm. Though nothing much is known, they at least know those from the Kanto region where the anomaly occurred became infected with the Branch of Sin. She doesn’t have enough technology to generate Nameless Worm materials since she has no way of examining its source: Wretched Egg, who is completely the director’s toy. Ganta remembers the post game show and tries to get Cast Points to free her. However he runs into Karako Koshio and takes a punch in the gut. Yoh runs into Tamaki with a super monk named Azuma Genkaku. Tamaki reminds him that Cast Points work differently in G-Block. This means all the points he saved up are for nothing. He becomes enraged so Genkaku fires his air guitar at him. Ganta wakes up in a lair belonging to a group called Scar Chain, an anti-management society. He meets their leader Nagi Kengamine and is offered to join them. Their goal is to destroy this absurd birdcage and they need as many allies as possible. But Ganta needs to stop the penalty game. Oh, it’s running now. Minatsuki tries to act tough but couldn’t hide her fear. Nagi sends a signal via a transmitter in his tooth. And it seems the slot machine reads “Hair”. WTF?! Why do they have that option? Rei is upset she got a useless piece. Minatsuki is so relieved. Genkaku crashes into the lair and knocks out Karako. He is going to kill them all. Ganta shoots a blood ball but it disappears before it could reach him.

Episode 8
Before Genkaku could kill Ganta, Shiro jumps in, breaking his guitar. He cancels tonight’s performance and goes away. Ganta is brought to meet the other members of Scar Chain. He is also introduced to Bundou Rokuro, the intelligence officer of Scar Chain and the one who saved Minatsuki during the penalty game. Most of the members are puzzled about Shiro in this block because if she’s not a Deadman, how did she end up here? Her answer is that she has always been living here. Meanwhile Makina and her assistant suit up, preparing to sneak in and steal Tamaki’s secret data. Every year they have a week long inspection to show the public that the prison meets the country’s safety standards. They will use this period to do their illegal raid as everything shuts down during inspection week and even that promoter can’t leave sensitive data lying around. Nagi and Karako convey their plan of a mass Deadman breakout during the week but as noted, the Undertakers (special enforcement anti-Deadman troops under Tamaki like Genkaku) will be a real problem. Ganta informs them about Branch of Sin not working on them but Rokuro shows them a video that Ganta simply missed. That wasn’t how Ganta remembered happened. Everyone laughs at Ganta so he gets pissed off that they are pretty slacking for a team wanting to break out. He is not going to join them and leaves with Shiro. Elsewhere, seems Tamaki is playing bowling with the director’s head! So Deadman Wonderland has become his, eh? Ganta talks to Senji and the latter isn’t pleased he fought an Undertaker. He wants in on the action next time. Ganta learns more about Nagi. Seems Nagi was forced to fight his wife in Corpse Carnival. He lost on purpose and in the penalty game lost his voice. However Tamaki went back on his words and wanted to penalize his wife too. They tried to escape but she was killed by Genkaku.

Ganta goes to find Nagi and apologizes for not knowing anything. Ganta understands he wants revenge just like how he wishes one against Red Man. But Nagi corrects him that he isn’t out for revenge. He has no time because he wants to bring down this place and be free. He wants to hold the baby his wife bore before she died. That’s why he has no time for revenge. That night Ganta thinks about Nagi’s words. He asks what Shiro wants to do. What do you think? Eat lots of snacks and ride the Ferris wheel. Genkaku gets a new guitar while couldn’t help think who the hell that Shiro is. Then Rokuro comes up to him and everything is within his calculations. Oh no. A rat? Ganta returns to Scar Chain and seeks to join them. Shiro wants to be by Ganta’s side but he has Shiro wait in the room till everything is over as promised. Karako cheers up Shiro with a little advice on love. Like she understands. As long Shiro loves Ganta, everything is okay. Nagi continues to go over the plan with his members. It’s not a jailbreak that they’re aiming for but a data chip containing evidence of Tamaki’s illegal operations. They need to leak this out to the real world. With Nagi and Rokuro seizing the control room, the rest will be split into 2 groups to create confusion before riding up the freight elevator. Nagi and Rokuro start off well, dispatching the guards in the control room while the rest being to cross the bridge. Seeing it has weight censors, they cross over by walking on one of the member’s blood in which he uses as a walking net. But the weight is too overwhelming and it breaks. Necro Macro is activated and fires some kind of acid that burns right through your bones! Karako stays behind to hold up the falling bridge so that the rest can cross over. She tosses the data to Ganta and places her hopes in him. Now he’s holding a big responsibility.

Episode 9
Karako remembers how she was a loner in this group till Nagi appointed her as his second-in-command because he believes she is more than just a strong fighter, someone who knows there’s a friend by her side each time she hears the bell on her neck ring. Karako isn’t going down yet. She coats her body with blood, which serves as a defensive shield. Then she pummels Necro Macro till it explodes. Ganta and co have reached the elevator but find no resistance. They just need to wait for Nagi and Rokuro to activate it. Speaking of them, Nagi sees a little girl, Hibana Daida. He thinks this nice girl is lost. Seriously, in this place? Nagi wants Rokuro to activate the elevator but the latter shows his true colours that this isn’t going to happen. Undertaker Hibana takes out a big massive sectioned sword and whips Nagi. His Branch of Sin of explosive isn’t working on her. He realizes that Rokuro was the one who edited the video of Ganta’s blood missing Genkaku. Rokuro explains about Worm Eater, which instantly oxidizes the Nameless Worm that lives inside the Branch of Sin users. This means when a Branch of Sin hits an Undertaker’s weapon, it dissipates. Hibana continues to pound Nagi, as far as scrapping his skin off! She thinks it’s just punishment and that pain builds character. However Nagi tells her she is no lady as she proclaims and just a little girl because proper ladies aren’t vulgar, twisted, rotten and pathetic like what she is doing now. This snaps Hibana as she remembers how her mom tortured her with devices for the slightest mistake. So it’s no surprise she punished her own mother by killing her. What landed her here was the massacre of her kindergarten friends, in which she still insisted that she was just punishing them. Hibana randomly swings her sword till it chops off Nagi’s arm! He throws the arm at Hibana as distraction while he shoves Rokuro’s head into the wall (I guess he was bored that’s why he wasn’t paying attention). Hibana wasn’t paying attention to Nagi’s chopped off arm because he uses the explosive blood in it to knock her out. Nagi uses his last ounce of strength to activate the elevator. Everyone had a nice time joking riding it up till they realize Genkaku and the guards are waiting for them and starts shooting them. Rokuro tells Nagi that he has no chance of winning because it’s his job to make it so. Besides, why do you think Tamaki played along with his crap? He could’ve easily wiped them all out a long time ago. Nagi uses the transmitter in his teeth to relay a message back to his lair. Shiro goes to the lair because she can’t sleep but sees a strange boy. Ganta witnesses in horror one by one his comrades getting butchered. He is about to be done in by Genkaku but an Undertaker reminds him it’s time so they leave. Ganta and only 3 Scar Chain members are left. Suddenly Shiro jumps in, takes the data chip from Ganta’s hand, throws it into a burning room with highly inflammable content, shuts the door and BOOM! So big the explosion that it dented the door. Why didn’t she get away from the door? Was she holding it back? Well, it wasn’t broken.

Episode 10
Contrary to Shiro’s question if Ganta he is okay, he is not. In fact, he is so mad that she destroyed their only hope. He punches her for being a nuisance and doesn’t want to see her face again. Regrouping back in the lair with the other members, they are surprised to see Karako returning alive. Karako isn’t going to give up yet though they’ve lost the chip. The inspection isn’t done yet and all they need is 1 of them to get outside and demonstrate their Branch of Sin to the inspectors. They think Karako should be their new leader but she feels Nagi is still alive because Genkaku won’t kill him. Speaking of which, he is tied up and Genkaku is trying to coax him to join the Undertakers. Elsewhere Makina and her assistant are trying to download all they can from Tamaki’s computer. However that guy unexpectedly returns. They hide nearby and see Major Aohi from the Defence Ministry. Aohi wants to know about the production’s developments so Tamaki lets him know they’re still researching on how to synthesize the Nameless Worm. Aohi doesn’t want to end up with copies of uncontrollable monsters but as Tamaki puts it, if you eat the poison, you might as well eat the plate. So they’re way past the point of no return. Makina realizes the list of prisoners she saw in Tamaki’s computer. Scar Chain are discussing if they were being toyed from the start. The think of hiring a strong fighter. Ganta feeling guilty over his failure volunteers but Karako thinks they can’t afford any more slip ups. When Rokuro comes in, he is clearly upset about the leaked plan. The one about the bomb in the data chip. It was supposed to blow them all away so someone must have found out about it that’s why they’re all still standing here. Yeah, there is no data in that chip. Ganta realized Shiro was trying to help them all along and he jumped the gun. As the guards come in, Rokuro lets them know they are all hostages till Nagi changes his mind.

Genkaku continues to inject drugs but Nagi perseveres and not giving in. Genkaku makes him remember how he massacred his troops after he killed his wife (Genkaku was hiding in fear, witnessing everything. And having an erection watching all that). Nagi doesn’t remember so Genkaku knows he has already lost it. Crazy Rokuro is going to execute one by one the Scar Chain members till Nagi gives in and the first one up is Ganta. While admitting he was the one who edited Ganta’s video and framing him at his trial, he introduces a couple of Undertakers and their sick past and heinous criminal activities, they are going to kill him when Senji slices them both in half! Yeah, he’s looking for a piece of Undertaker action. He realized he just killed the strongest ones. So much for some potential Undertaker action. No choice, he makes do with the small fries. The Scar Chain members fight their way out and since the guards have Worm Eater in their weapon, Senji’s blood sword isn’t working. But that’s not a problem because he uses his supersonic blade faster than the speed of sound, blasting through the air pressure to slice and break through the Worm Eater. Rokuro is feeling the pinch because his perfect calculations are now naught. Karako wishes Senji to join them but he refuses because he thinks there is no difference being on the outside either. Both worlds are just as crazy and messed up. And about their stance of banding together their strength, he tells them off that if they aren’t strong enough, they shouldn’t bare their fangs. Shiro trudges her way back to her room, upset that she was just trying to help Ganta. All she did was listened to that strange boy’s advice. He heard over the transmission from Nagi about the bomb in the chip and relayed it to Shiro. She’s eating cookies all alone and crying. When suddenly that strange boy shows up. He has a hard time remembering his own name. He finally remembers. Toto Sakigami AKA Mockingbird. Shiro isn’t thrilled to meet him but he assures he won’t do anything bad to her.

Episode 11
Ganta must be really thinking how weak he is. So weak that he seeks Senji’s help to train him to be strong enough and punch this pathetic self of his. I guess Senji couldn’t refuse after seeing all that pathetic tears. Meanwhile Shiro still feels empty in her heart even though she says she couldn’t care less about Ganta anymore. Really? Toto is like fanning the fire, saying how weak and irresponsible humans are. They like putting the blame on others and let them suffer. Shiro asserts she still hates Ganta and goes off to find and punch him. Karako and the other survivors move out. Seems Karako lied to Ganta about their meeting time and planned on leaving him out. She remembers Nagi showed her a picture of his daughter in his locket. However there is no picture in it but Karako played along that she could see the picture of his child. Senji feels Ganta’s bullets are too weak and needs to break the sound barrier to stand a chance. He takes all his candy and smashes them except for one. He wants him to penetrate his defence and shoot this candy. If he can’t do it faster than the speed of sound, his death sentence will be carried out right here. Ganta shoots but none of them are good. The place is looking like a butchered scene with lots of blood. Toto interrupts their training as he is looking for Shiro. As said by Senji, Toto is supposedly the strongest Deadman around. Toto gets close to Senji, licking his blood and would have done the same to Ganta if Senji didn’t warn him about their training session. Genkaku seems to have a new toy of his own. Nagi like a mad Incredible Hulk, is smashing the skull of a prison guard! Shiro drops in among the guards and it seems she is a little drunk (perhaps from the sweets). Karako disguised as a guard panics seeing this girl here and tries to get her away. However Genkaku recognizes Karako’s kansai accent anywhere, kicks off her mask and restrains her.

Senji tells Ganta to go seeing at this rate he won’t have enough blood to last. Ganta makes a final shot that not only pierces through the candy but destroys the mirror. That is the shot Senji wants Ganta to remember. Suddenly Genkaku appears on the screen to tell everyone he’s got Shiro and Karako in custody. He gives them a choice to either continue with their escape or save them. Either way, they’ll still die. While the rest had no choice but to soldier on, Ganta is on his way to save them. He thought the rest think he is weak that’s why he left them out. He runs into several guards but Minatsuki repays her debt by killing them all. She won’t join them in the jail break (because she has to take care of her brother who is still injured) and points to the direction of the Undertaker’s base. Ganta thanks her and is on his way. When Ganta arrives, he shoots his smaller and sharper blood shot. So fast and powerful that the guards are sent flying away! Shiro still tries to act tough but eventually rushes to Ganta’s side. However Hibana’s sword breaks her leg. Genkaku will have them see the gig of despair and behind the door sits Nagi. Looks calm. Well, that’s not a good thing. Karako goes up to him and tries to remind him about his kid but he tells her there is no picture in the locket and that Genkaku killed his wife and daughter who was still in the womb. Nagi tried to plead with Tamaki but he was shown his baby in a lab tube like an experiment sample instead. That’s when his rage built up. That’s when he started hating everyone who lives. He couldn’t accept the fact his wife and child are dead. In his despair, his blood bombs blow up the place as Genkaku relishes in Nagi becoming his ideal evil.

Episode 12
Aohi is disappointed that with the end of the inspection, everything is back to square one. He thinks Tamaki as the one behind the bloodshed but as he puts it, Deadman Wonderland is a place that is neither good nor bad. Just a microcosm of society. Behind the beautiful music, rages the ugliest people. He is just a facilitator paving a path for those insane people to earn their freedom. Nagi goes on a killing spree. See how he ripped the guts out of the guards!!! Karako laments she couldn’t protect Nagi, a weak person. A totally opposite person Ganta thought as. Nagi is aiming for Shiro so Ganta protects her, using his body and gets beaten to a pulp. Ganta still have the strength to give his heroic speech like he hates seeing his friends getting killed, the irony of Nagi’s words about having no time for revenge and that he still has light because he’s too ashamed to see what’s important in front of him. The sound of Karako’s bell helps him regains his sanity. Ganta stands firm in protecting Shiro when suddenly he collapses. It’s not that he ran out of blood. Rather, he hasn’t eaten his candy. Death sentence is inching closer. Karako slaps Nagi to his senses and hugs him. But it’s not going to be a fairytale ending yet because Genkaku stabs through Karako’s chest but she’s still alive. Ganta fires his best shot at Genkaku but it isn’t working. Genkaku reminds Nagi he is supposed to be a demon who loathes everyone and saves them via death. He purposely missed Karako’s vital organs so that Nagi could kill her himself as salvation. However Nagi feels not the need to do so because his friends are his salvation. Since Nagi isn’t the murderous tool he is, Genkaku fires a blast from his guitar right through Nagi. Man, it’s a big hole through his gut! Not only that, he starts killing all the guards and wounding Hibana. Flashback time. This is why Genkaku is always talking about salvation, saving others. When he was young and lived at a temple (I thought he looked so much like Naruto’s Gaara), he was often beaten up by his temple mates. The master monk thought he always went out to town and picked a fight. Genkaku has always pondered about enlightenment and salvation seeing the irony of human’s suffering. Then during the Red Hole incident that caused great damage to the temple, he saw how peaceful a dead cat was and realized. He killed his bullies and realized that death is the ultimate salvation.

Meanwhile Hibana who is getting away from that mad scene bumps into Toto. She doesn’t know who this boy is and starts attacking him. But it’s a grave mistake because Toto kills her with the supersonic move he copied from Senji. Ganta still feels the weakling he is and his chest is glowing in red. Genkaku continues to rant about the word consisting of nothing but terror and oppression. He will continue his salvation till somebody comes to save him. Shiro’s leg suddenly heals. She stands up and is about to turn into a mad killer but Ganta this time will do the honours. Funny red marks appear all over Ganta (just like with Shiro) as he blasts Genkaku with the most powerful blast he has ever made. So powerful, it blasted a hole right through the ceiling! Nagi quotes that he will be Genkaku’s guide to hell. I guess he’ll be his salvation. Nagi in his dying breath gives Ganta his candy seeing he doesn’t need it anymore. Karako and a couple of Scar Chain members escape the island. Ganta stays back with Shiro seeing he can’t leave his friends behind. He apologizes for hitting her but she doesn’t mind it because it doesn’t hurt anymore. Friends again? You bet. Besides, Shiro is happy she gets to see the Ferris wheel. Ganta cries in her bosoms. It’s not because the candy tastes bitter. Tamaki loathes the uselessness of Genkaku’s team. Makina wonders if a few death row inmates have escaped seeing he doesn’t look so good. He denies and instead says none has ever under her watch. He is just getting used to his new position as the director seeing the previous one died without naming a successor. Makina plans to interrogate Ganta and Yoh on their whereabouts for the past 11 days and will use any means to do so. Tamaki gives the green light for her to do whatever she wishes. Makina meets up with her assistant who has picked a suitable one from the promoter’s list of normal prisoners. On the rooftop, Shiro hums a nostalgic song made by Ganta’s mom. He wants her to stop seeing it was the song the Red Man sang during the massacre. He wonders how he knew the song. Oh Ganta. It’s just right under your nose… So close yet so far…

OVA
The OVA is Senji-focused and takes place 2 years after the devastating effects of the Red Hole incident. Everywhere is much lawless and chaotic. People are confused trying to get their lives back. Some turned to a life of crime. Senji, a policeman is using his Branch of Sin to slice up petty criminals. He would’ve killed if not for his elderly superior telling him not to. Back at the base, Senji gets into a brawl with other cops whom he thinks leaked the info. His other pals try to gently remind him about staying out of trouble but I guess a tough guy like him isn’t going to learn it the easy way. While at the market, Senji spots a kid he knows, Izuru being chased by a pair of ruffians from a local gang called Goreless Peace. They are trying to teach Izuru a lesson for stealing from their turf when Senji uses his Branch of Sin to slice a deep cut over one of their chest. Though the ruffians live, they run away but promise to be back. Senji takes Izuru back to his sister, Hinata. She slaps the kid for trying to steal again. We can see Senji has feelings for Hinata, the way his body language is reacting. Hinata is remaining positive due to the events that have happened and trying to live life normally with the rest. As Senji leaves that evening, he is surrounded by Goreless Peace members. Their leader, Keigo Ugachi wants Senji to join them to tune and rebuild the world from scratch and filled it with beautiful melodies. He wants a peaceful world without bloodshed and even if it means taking out a kid is necessary, he’ll do what it takes. Yeah, the irony. Keigo continues his persuasion about being tied down to his policeman job with a stupid boss and selfish colleagues. But Senji isn’t interested in his crap though Keigo surprises him by coming close to him without him noticing and managing to avoid his slices with ease. Senji spits on his shoe as his final answer but Keigo is sure they’ll meet again. That night, Senji’s superior had a talk. Senji believes this world is full of sh*t no matter how many people they arrest it’ll still be the same. That’s why there is nothing wrong with idiots cleaning it up that sh*t. Keigo contacts his superior, Akatsuki, noting the interesting man Senji is and that he is of their kind.

Next day, Senji sees fire coming from Hinata’s place. When he arrives, he sees everyone massacred. Hinata is dead. Izuru barely holding on to his last breath. But eventually he dies. In his agonizing scream, Senji sees the mark of Goreless Peace on the handkerchief in Izuru’s hands. Somebody is going to pay. Senji calls his superior to say he is going to massacre everyone in Goreless Peace. Not as a policeman but as himself. His superior and his pals need to take action before it’s too late. Senji arrives right in the middle of Keigo’s dinner. He thinks he has accepted his invitation and admits her got rid of the things that are holding him back. After all that ranting, Senji just tells him he is here to kill him. His superior and pals arrive on scene to take out the small fries. Senji chases after Keigo but it’s a trap. Senji gets trapped in his blood of web like a helpless bug. Yes, he is also a Branch of Sin user. Keigo tortures him and couldn’t stand his pathetic cries because he heard so many of them during the massacre. The melodies he intends to fill the world are the ones filled with silence. No matter how angry Senji is or even if he breaks through the web, he finds himself back to square one and trapped again. Senji’s superior comes in only to be caught. Keigo crushes him. Senji is so mad that his knife enlarges big and long enough to stab through Keigo’s shoulder. He is about to kill him when his superior ekes out a voice telling him to stop. He can’t kill because he isn’t that kind of person. Senji further enlarges his sword to scare the sh*t out of Keigo’s pants. Probably he hasn’t learnt to control it yet so he passes out due to lack of blood. In the aftermath, Akatsuki gets news that Keigo has been arrested and notes Senji will be sorry that he chose to rise against him. Deadman Wonderland is in the midst of construction but the police guys aren’t convinced that things will change even if they cover it up with something shiny. So it’s back to work as usual for them.

Deadman Walking…
Oh, that wasn’t really much of an ending. It feels like everything was just at a halfway point. Maybe not. Perhaps not even a tenth of the way there. Of course it feels unsatisfying that everything ended so abruptly without any solution in sight. There are so many developments left unfinished and unexplained so I think if they really give the green light to make a sequel, I’m sure we’ll see lots more of it. The real reason behind the Red Hole incident, the deep and dark secret that Tamaki has been holding, the list of prisoners Makina has obtained from the promoter, the experiments Tamaki has been conducting and selling to the military, the real motive why the director built this prison as his cage and how it turned into a big showcase of prisoners, the mystery of why Branch of Sin users are able to control their blood as weapons, the Corpse Carnival, what happened to Yoh and Minatsuki, what will be of Rokuro’s fate, who the hell is Toto and yes, above all the most tantalizing one would be the mystery behind Shiro as Wretched Egg and Red Man. Why did she massacre Ganta’s classmate. Or is she really the Red Man? The only similarity that confirms it is that creepy smirk. How did she end up in Deadman Wonderland? Is it really her ‘home’?

The story flows quickly from Ganta being framed and earning a spot in Deadman Wonderland, the way things work around the prison, to the thought-to-be-never-existed G-Block to the Corpse Carnival and finally the rebellion by Scar Chain. However a dozen of episodes aren’t enough to do justice to all the plot because running a prison isn’t just as easy like it seems although Tamaki is like a big child who never grows up. Look at all the toys in his room. Behind that eternal sly smile lies something deeper. Something more sinister. Something darker. He has got his own personal and ulterior motive and I doubt that succeeding and becoming the director isn’t the end of his goal. But I guess he has got to be a very busy man because in addition to just running the prison, he has got to go round looking for people who contain Branch of Sin, frame them and put them in as candidates for Corpse Carnival for his amusement as well as the others. Probably he’s got too much time on his hands that he could even create the Undertakers and toy along with Scar Chain’s plot. Why not turn every prisoner into his Undertakers then? Must be some tough sh*t training they have to pass that I didn’t get. Makina is certainly the no nonsense woman guys will never want to mess with. No matter how big her tits are. Think twice before you make a move. Don’t even think about it. She’ll slash you before you even have time to reconsider. She is the kind of person who is fit to take charge and control of a prison ward. It’s a good thing that she strongly upholds her believe in maintaining order in the prison. If she was given more liberty in her control, Deadman Wonderland would be rid of any kind of dirty fanfare. No Corpse Carnival whatsoever. Just plain boring prison. Yeah, where would the fun be? But still, don’t mess with her.

I don’t know about Ganta. From the start he is portrayed to be someone who is weak. Someone who tries very hard to stand up against all that he believes in. In the end, he too realizes how pathetically weak he is and has always relied on the aid of Shiro to rescue his butt. But it’s a good sign for him because it means the only way for him to survive or even have a chance to achieve his goal is to get stronger. With more practice of his blood shots, I’m sure he’ll pull off more devastating and awesome moves. Just hope he just doesn’t get anaemia and shoot out too much blood till he dies. He needs a faster way to regenerate his blood. I can’t wait to see his reaction if he ever finds out Shiro as Red Man. As for Shiro, she is definitely not only the most mysterious character but the most airheaded one as well. There were many signs to indicate that Shiro isn’t just an ordinary prisoner of Deadman Wonderland. For instance, she has no prisoner number. She pops out from just about anywhere. For a moment, I was even thinking that she might be a ghost! But heck, people can actually touch, see and hear her so I guess that isn’t possible. But then again… The only problem with Shiro is that she doesn’t really know how to convey what she wants to say in words. That is what makes her a happy-go-lucky airhead. For example the bomb that was hidden as the data chip. Ganta wouldn’t have gotten so mad and pissed off or even go so far as to slap her if she had just said everything was a trap to kill them. We didn’t hear her say that there was a bomb in the chip. We didn’t hear her say anything about the ruse. She just said she did this all for Ganta because he is weak. Maybe even if she did tell him about it, there is a chance Ganta won’t believe her but at least it should have opened that kid’s eyes.

I’m not sure why Senji wants to stay in G-Block to continue being a fighter for Corpse Carnival. Has he really given up on the outside world even if it’s both the same inside this prison? From my perspective, he is strong enough to slice everyone through if he really wanted to get out. The OVA on him was a good episode featuring his past but it did little to let us know how he ended up in the deepest parts of the prison. Now with an eye-patch over his right eye, sometimes I thought he looked a bit like Bleach’s Zaraki. He nearly has the attitude to match it. Something about the Corpse Carnival bugs me. If the fighters are supposed to fight to the death, wouldn’t that mean that there are lots of dead fighters by now? Even if many do not die and simply lost, does it mean that Rei’s lab is filled with lots of body parts? This means lots of crippled Branch of Sin users, right? Perhaps there are more of such users than shown. Maybe running into hundreds. So that’s why it seems that those especially from Scar Chain just had one or two body parts taken away. Doesn’t seem much, right? Feels like they’ve been through Corpse Carnival just a handful of times. And survived. And why are the contestants named after birds? So if the best Deadman is just a Mockingbird, who is the grand phoenix, if there is any? Speaking of Scar Chain, I find them a really odd bunch of oddballs. Really. It feels like the group came from all walks of life. If you noticed some of its members, it includes a granny with a katana, a pregnant woman and a wheelchair ridden guy. It makes you wonder if they are really hardcore criminals. But then again, everyone here is a Branch of Sin user and it is a big possibility they have been framed for a crime they did not commit just like Ganta.

One of the biggest complaints and grumbles I have for this series is the total darkness of the scenes. No, not the gory action or blood. Some of the scenes are purposely darkened so much so you can’t see a damn thing and it is very annoying. I was trying to strain my eyes real hard trying to glimpse what is going on through the darkness without adjusting the brightness and contrast of my screen because from past experiences, I know it won’t make any difference. So if you’re going to watch this show, just beware that there will be lots and lots of dark scenes in each episode that will really make you want to expand your eyeballs. Oh sh*t. Just saying about eyeballs made me remember about that horrendous right eye extracting scene!!!! Yikes!!! I’m never going to watch that episode ever again!!!

Also be warned that if you’re watching this show, you should have expected lots of gore, violence and blood. You could have even guessed it from the name of the series that this is no walk in the park. I won’t go so far as to say that you will really want to puke by seeing brains get smashed, guts getting pulled out or limbs getting cut off but if you’re a weak-hearted person, it’s best to stay away from this show. Maybe I’m quite numb myself after seeing lots of violence (thanks to the TV news. Yeah, thanks. That helped a lot) so I don’t really feel that it is thaaaaaaaaat violent. Okay, maybe it is. But still it is manageable for me. What do you expect? In nearly every episode, somebody gets killed whether it’s a minor prisoner or the guards. Yeah. Life is really cheap. So cheap that it makes you think why the heck they spend a fortune putting up flashy shows and keeping the prisoners here. Oh yeah, I forgot. It’s like a show business. On a trivial note, the end of each episode is narrated by Makina in a gloomy, bleak and hopeless tone, which is befitting of the series’ setting.

Kana Hanazawa as Shiro here feels like she is the prisoner version of Kobato. Get what I mean? Okay, maybe it’s because I lumped them in as both characters are somewhat airheads. Romi Paku as Ganta, I thought she was like voicing a weaker version of Bleach’s Hitsugaya or Fullmetal Alchemist’s Edward. Junichi Suwabe’s cool and calm voice fits Tamaki because the character lacks other emotions in his speech so you are unable to tell what really goes on in his mind. You can recognize his voice from Prince Of Tennis’ Atobe and Kuroshitsuji’s Undertaker. Other casts include Takako Honda as Makina (Hone Onna in Jigoku Shoujo), Masayuki Katou as Senji (Matoma in Shigofumi), Daisuke Ono as Nagi (Koizumi in Suzumiya Haruhi No Yuutsu), Kumiko Itou as Karako, Jun Fukuyama as Rokuro (Lelouch in Code Geass), Miyuki Sawashiro as Toto (Shinkurou in Kurenai), Iori Nomizu as Minatsuki (Nymph in Sora No Otoshimono), Yuuki Kaji as Yoh (Subaru in Ro-Kyu-Bu) and Toshiyuki Morikawa as Genkaku (Naraku in Inu Yasha). The opening theme is totally a hard rock piece sung in English, One Reason by Fade. It’s the kind of song that tells you what to expect from this kind of show. But for the ending theme, Shiny Shiny by NIRGILIS left me wondering if this kind of dance pop music should be suitable for this violent and dark genre.

A deeper aspect that this show tries to tell us is who are the real villains. Prisoners may be sent to prison and forced to do acts that are embarrassing and equally inhumane. Our pleasure at their expense. We cry for their blood seeing them in life or death performances. So does it really make us different from the criminals? Ganta sure learn the hard way. Not so fun now being on the prison inside, eh? See how the spectators jeered and booed when there was no clear winner at the end of the Dog Race even if they have seen every other single darn prisoner getting killed. Aren’t we any different than our bloodthirsty ancestral savages, no? The only difference is that they have already done something wrong and convicted by the law. We haven’t. Yet. So what gives us the right to visit the prison like as though it’s one huge theme park attraction just to laugh at the silliness just because they did some bad stuff in their lives. Who hasn’t done something bad in their lives before? Tiny or big, a bad deed is still a bad deed. That’s why Deadman Wonderland is a place full of irony whether you are the prisoners, the staffs working in it or just a visiting visitor. Everyone is just plain sick. And the yearly inspection just to check everything is in accordance with the humans right thingy? Give me a break. You can’t even fool a newborn with that argument. I think if everybody really wants to see blood, Corpse Carnival would be legalized live through your TV channel. Hey, anything with possible with humans. Why? Simple. Because we can!

Just remember that if you are going to do the crime, be prepared to do the time. It is sad that throughout the ages, humans don’t really learn from their lesson. That’s why we continue to fight each other over the centuries over trivial things. In that sense, that is what makes us humans too. If Apocalypse descends on us now and we survive, there is a big chance that humanity will take a big step backwards. Building the biggest prison won’t do because Earth itself is a prison for us human beings. But the saddest case would be those who are framed and forced to do time for a crime they never commit only to be cleared of their name decades later. Or never. Their entire lives wasted in that instant. No money or points could buy you freedom. That would be very much a bitter pill or candy to swallow. I’m glad my chocolate still tastes sugary sweet… :)