The Summer 2023 Anime Preview Guide

TenPuru

Akemitsu Akegami was always told by his father that "no one can live alone,"...but he's sure determined. After all, his father sure wasn't saying it with the best intentions, and Akemitsu had no desire to become like that creep. But when a chance encounter with a young woman leaves him with all too impure thoughts, he decides to do what he must—become a Buddhist monk and renounce worldly ways. But the temple he decides to devote himself to...is full of women.

TenPuru is based on Kimitake Yoshioka's TenPuru -No One Can Live on Loneliness- manga. It streams on Crunchyroll on Saturdays.

I've said it before and I'll say it again. There is something to be said for a show that isn't afraid to unabashedly show you what it is right from the start. TenPuru is the newest in a long line of sexually-charged harem rom-coms. However, what sets this one a bit apart is our hero, Akemitsu.

In harem anime, there are generally three types of main male characters: the pervert (who sexually harasses every girl he sees), the accidental pervert (who keeps ending up in sexually compromising situations with the girls through no fault of his own), and the oblivious man (who doesn't even seem to notice the women throwing themselves at him). TenPuru does the amazing feat of mixing all three into a single character.

The trick here is that Akemitsu is a man of extremes. Due to his father ditching his family to run off and chase women, Akemitsu is determined to live the opposite life. In his mind, you're either a sex pest or celibate—there is no in between. Expectedly, this is what throws his life into chaos. 

In an attempt to become the living embodiment of the oblivious man trope, he has repressed his own natural desires to the point that, when they do explode out, he struggles to control them. He can't help staring at cleavage and immediately jumps to asking his love-at-first-sight crush to marry him. He even has to punch himself in the face a few times to keep things from getting out of hand. Of course, his struggle to keep himself under control is constantly put to the test by a conga line of accidental pervert situations. 

And honestly, it can be rather amusing at times. Akemitsu is not a bad person and is doing what he thinks is right by trying to purge his sexual desires. However, he's just too immature to realize that his own attitude towards sex is the cause of most of his problems. It feels okay to laugh at the absurdity of his plight—especially because you are rooting for him deep down and want him to grow as a person.

In the end, while I'm more than a little impressed at what the series is attempting to do with Akemitsu, I doubt I'll continue watching this one from here on out. But if fanservice-filled harem rom-coms are your thing, you should definitely add this one to your list.

I've seen a lot of bad butts in anime and manga but check the image for what I think just might beat all of them. Look at it. It's like two unevenly-filled water balloons nailed to a post. Imagine the wedgie. With the way her cheeks move independently, I imagine she needs to keep them vacuum-sealed at all times just to stave off the chafing, which, if left unchecked, would lead to sores, putting her at HIGH risk of infection every time she—

Sorry, I was starting to get gross again. But also, if TenPuru can be crude humor top to bottom, then can't I be little a crude as a treat? But I don't know why I should be surprised; time and again, anime and manga has proven the old adage, “Nothing trumps the rump,” to be sadly incorrect. Director Kazuomi Koga already displayed a stunning lack of interest in women's posteriors in his adaptation of Rent-A-Girlfriend, so is it any surprise this is a boobs-only affair?

Koga is directing two series this season, this and The Dreaming Boy Is a Realist, and it's plain to see which one gets the boobs treatment and which one is a sad, asymmetrical butt. While Dreaming Boy was stiff and disjointed, TenPuru bursts with energy and bright colors from top to bottom. Each boob-plant is fluidly animated and rendered with care; every time a woman accidentally exposes her underwear to Akegami, it's lacy and detailed, and their horror and embarrassment shows clearly in their facial expressions. It's absolutely beautiful—all as it indulges in the worst excesses of '00's-style harem anime.

I confess, despite all my overt feminist leanings, it's hard for me to get mad at something like this. It's like getting mad at a small dog for humping my leg. It is what it is—and while I would be fine if works like this all disappeared into the ether, I prefer this kind of childish, voyeuristic fan service to be siloed off where I don't have to see or think about it. I was more annoyed at how, with a few details changed, it was almost beat-for-beat identical to the first chapter of Love Hina, but also, why mess with a tried and true formula. Love Hina was an enormous crossover hit and even I had the whole manga—though 20 years later, I can't fathom why.

Oh, and one more thing! Shout-out to whoever cast Masayuki Akasaka as Akegami. Instead of the usual nebbish stammering, Akasaka's voice is deep and resonant. His performance didn't stand out overall, but having a voice that was unusual and pleasant to listen to definitely bumped TenPuru up by a half star.

I certainly can't accuse this show of burying its lede. If you make it through the first minute, in which our protagonist's father happily abandons the family in pursuit of having sex with as many women as possible, you know if you'll have the patience for this shamelessly stupid harem comedy. If that wasn't enough to decide it for you, then by the time Protag-kun abandons the world for the Priesthood because he talked to a cute girl and immediately became afflicted with his father's insatiable thirst for p*ssy, you'll for sure know if you're interested in watching more. This is going to be very dumb, very much on purpose.

I appreciate that, honestly. It immediately establishes that this is pure farce, here to deliver contrived fanservice and dumb jokes. If that sounds like fun to you, then have at it. Compared to the maudlin attempts at sentiment from the equally shameless Café Terrace and Its Goddesses from last season, it's honestly refreshing to see a series embrace being a cheesecake delivery vehicle without any attempts at pulling heartstrings or pretending our main character is a complicated person. There's even some actual comedy to his misguided quest to Pray The Horny Away while the divine forces of the universe conspire to hurl him into no less than three pairs of boobs in the span of ten minutes. That adds a layer of humor to the inevitable train of T&A, which is just good, economical storytelling.

The biggest issue, however, is in the production values. While the show has put its most premium resources into the fanservice shots, nearly everything else is threadbare. There are a lot of cut corners, awkward shots, unpolished animation, and even attempts at comedic style shifts that don't look how they ought to. Between the new animation studio and a director already handling a second struggling production this season, I suspect that will only worsen as the series continues. Masayuki Akasaka's vocal performance also put me off. It feels like he's trying to be zany and over the top, but the timbre of his voice changes so much that he often sounds like a completely different character. It's just jarring enough to take you out of a lot of the jokes.

So yeah, this decidedly isn't the best version of itself, but there's something to be said for something that's upfront about its intentions. If nothing else, it went by pretty quickly and was never painful to get through.

There are many reasons why you might not be able to raise your child, but “I have to go schtup as many women as possible all over the world” is one of the worst. It also tells you a lot about the show that it's the setup for; the entire raison d'être of TenPuru is to be horny. Its first episode never introduces a female character face-first, and a few passing ones are just butts or boobs as they run by. Heck, at one point ostensible main heroine Yuzuki's breast is all we see of her onscreen, glowing weirdly like it's limned by protagonist Akemitsu's perv-o-vision. So whatever else we can say about this episode, we can't say that it didn't warn us.

As far as the rest of it goes, much of it feels like an updated Love Hina with more fanservice. After Akemitsu falls hard off the no-girls wagon, he decides that the only way to recover his equilibrium is to become a monk at a men's only temple. Regretfully, his uncle gives him the wrong information. The previous monastery has become a nunnery, and because logic isn't a major driving force here, it just so happens that his dad isn't just a horny dad; he's also a debt dad, and he owes the temple money. I think you can guess where things are going: Akemitsu will end up living with a harem of nubile young ladies who will do their best to resist him while they inexplicably end up in comprising positions with him. That's the thrust of the first episode's plot, with Akemitsu ogling or accidentally stripping and groping his way through the cast.

This sort of series often relies a bit too much on mean humor along with everything else, and that feels true here. Akemitsu has one foundational misunderstanding that leads to the entire scenario where he's treated like a sex offender, and no one bothers to listen to his side of the story until the head priestess comes home. (And flashes him.) Everyone's at fault, but only Akemitsu gets the blame, even for something his father did that he was totally unaware of. The point is plainly to throw as many girls at him as possible with “wacky” misunderstandings, but it doesn't quite work because he's being set up to fail here, at least on a plot level.

If you're looking for fanservice, you'll find it here, and it's decently drawn and animated for a given value thereof. (As is, boobs jiggle at the slightest provocation.) But if you're looking for a plot to go with it, you might want to look elsewhere.

Okay, hear me out; I promise there's a reason for the positive score up there. Yes, TenPuru is an unapologetically stupid sex comedy that puts the “@SS" in “Trash,” if you know what I mean, and I don't know if I could ever call it “good" in the traditional sense since this sort of show would only have ever seemed novel or interesting back in, like, 1995, maybe. On the other hand, though, it is a comedy that made me chuckle a few times, and on purpose, no less. Hence the extra stars.

I know my system is a paradigm of airtight critical evaluation.

In all (un)seriousness, I couldn't help myself. Sure, I have successfully convinced a shocking number of professionals across multiple fields that I am a healthy and functional adult when I am, in fact, a dork who gets paid to share his opinions about cartoons and video games on the internet. Despite the façade of mature, respectable authority I try to convey, I am just as susceptible to dumbass jokes about anime boobies as any millennial man-weeb, so long as the jokes are funny. And when our main character Akemitsu gets cheerfully abandoned by his deadbeat dad, who is literally too goddamned horny to raise a child or keep himself out of millions of years worth of debt? I laughed. When the gaggle of befuddled waifus-to-be held a forum to debate whether they'd get paid more to send our guy into slavery or simply by harvesting his organs? I laughed. When the man dedicated to living in spiteful celibacy repeatedly discovered that fate had conspired to throw him headfirst into a harem anime sleazefest? God help me, I laughed.

So, is TenPuru a “good anime that you should feel completely unembarrassed to enjoy in polite company?” Um, no, I don't think so. Is it a successful throwback to the sophomoric sex comedies that certain hormone-addled youths happened to think were the funniest damn things in their dirtbag years? Yeah, I'd say so. Watch it at your own risk, but if you know what you're getting into, you might end up having an okay time.

Just make sure to have an alternate tab to switch to in case Mom walks in.