The Conversation is a segment in which two fellow iSugoi staff members—Douglas and Shawn—discuss various anime titles or films that they’ve watched. Not necessarily a review, it provides a conversational environment in which to discuss and highlight their initial thoughts concerning the series or film in question.
The Conversation in this segment will be of the infamous 3-episode OVA series entitled “Chōjin Densetsu Urotsukidōji [Legend of The Overfiend]“
Douglas: I’ve heard about this series for a while now, and I remember the people I’ve heard about it from always brought up the hentai aspect of it. I know it’s infamous for its tentacle element, and this was pretty much the first series to start it.
Shawn: Yeah, a lot of people seem to be focused on the shocking side of it, mostly the graphic sexual exploits of the film, and just brush it off as just another violent and sexual hentai-like anime. I guess it can be considered hentai, but I personally wouldn’t consider it entirely hentai. It’s definitely over sexualized and has extreme violence that you won’t find in other titles such as Dragonball Z, Bleach or Naruto. I’m surprised I actually got you to watch it! [laughs]
Douglas: [laughs] Yup, I usually don’t watch these types of series. The series of OVA’s are based on the manga series by manga-ka Toshio Maeda.
Shawn: You’re right, there is a manga series. Most anime titles are from manga series, but some series and film come from original concepts. In the case of this series, there are 16 episodes that have been produced. We basically watched the original three that started it all. So, what did you think of it?
Douglas: Well…[laughs]. I think you pretty much see every sexual position in this series, right?
Shawn: Right.
© West Cape, Team Mu
Douglas: And there’s a whole bunch of stuff involving the beast, demon and human world intermixing. The human world is where we start out at, but before that we have this narrator describe the Legend of The Overfiend, but we as the viewer don’t really know what the Overfiend actually signifies. We don’t know if it’s a good thing or bad thing. A lot of the characters within the series don’t even know what it is themselves, which I found funny. One of the Man-Beasts (half-man, half-beast) is named Amano, if I remember correctly?
Shawn: Yes, Amano Jyaku. He’s can be considered the protagonist of the series…but I really don’t want to consider him the main character. The story seemed to be focusing on him a lot, even though there are other characters.
Douglas: Yes, his mission is to find the Overfiend.
Shawn: He’s been searching for 300 years to find the Overfiend. He’s been searching the human realm for that long. According to the legend in the series, the Overfiend is reborn every 3,000 years, so Amano has been searching the human realm for the better half of his 300 years, trying to find the Overfiend. He can apparently sense the Overfiend when he nears him, and the Overfiend takes the shape of a human until he awakens. I don’t think this is really a spoiler, but his sense of judgment about the Overfiend is slightly off at times. Just a little bit.
Douglas: I felt that way too. He’s on this quest to protect the Overfiend, and unite the human, demon and beast world. From what I got watching it, the demons don’t want the worlds to unite, right? I mean, wouldn’t that be better though? It’s hard to understand that logic given the circumstances.
Shawn: Right, that’s what the legend says. They believe the Overfiend will unite the three realms. All three realms are on Earth, but are mostly unaware of each other.
Douglas: Yes, the narrator in the beginning mentions that too. He also mentions something along the line of “O, You Arrogant Humans!”…
Shawn: [laughs]…Yeah, you have to put up with that little annoying voice over for all three episodes. Each episode always starts out with that annoying bastard.
Douglas: Yeah, he is a little annoying! Anyways, let’s talk about the actual characters of the series.
Shawn: Okay.
© West Cape, Team Mu
Douglas: We have Amano, which we already discussed. We have Nagumo Tatsuo…
Shawn: Yes, Nagumo. Basically, he’s the archetype for every harem male lead…[laughs]. He’s a horny bastard.
Douglas: He’s not the guy you would envision as the Overfiend, but we later find out he is. We also have Akemi Ito.
Shawn: We have Akemi, who is the female school idol. I don’t think we have to go into any further discussing than that…[laughs].
Douglas: [laughs] Yes!
Shawn: You can just imagine what female and school idol in the same sentence means. Essentially, every guy wants to bang her, every girl wants to be her.
Douglas: Then we have Megumi Amano.
Shawn: Yes, she’s Amano’s sister. And she’s very, how should I say this…
Douglas: Promiscuous?
Shawn: Yes.
Douglas: Especially with the demons, right? [laughs]
Shawn: [laughs] Then we have Kuroko. He sorted reminded me of that little green alien in the TV series The Flinstones. I believe his name was “The Great Gazoo”? He reminded me of him for some reason. We finally have Norikazu Ozaki, who is the typical school jock.
Douglas: Yes. The story seemed to start off as a slapstick school comedy to be honest.
Shawn: Yes, very slice-of-life. We jump right into a basketball game, where the star player is making all the girls excited for him. What’s funny is that Amano believes he might be the Overfiend. This is basically the first couple of minutes of the series.
© West Cape, Team Mu
Douglas: I have to add that this series had this weird atmosphere of violence and sex. I do have to mention that this series had a lot of sex. A lot of sex. There is a lot of sex between different races too.
Shawn: [laughs] If you want to put it that way.
Douglas: There also seems to be a lot of ultra-violence as well. I would say there is a good mixture of both.
Shawn: Yeah, in this series you have people get their guts ripped out, just a lot of graphic shit.
Douglas: It’s one of those series where you expect a battle to end rather grotesquely, wouldn’t you agree?
Shawn: Yes, and if you’re for the faint of heart, this series is definitely test your will.
Douglas: The series gets progressively more sexual and violent as it get further along. You eventually get some scenes that go on for over 5 minutes in length, which is a little awkward at times. In the series, the demons seem to derive their power from performing sexual acts.
Shawn: I believe the demons need to perform the sexual acts to preserve their life. It’s very weird!
Douglas: There is plenty of fan service for sure, but I felt it was taken way to far at times. This is not your typical fan service at all.
Shawn: No, this is kind of stuff that if exposed and made apparent to some parental lobby group, will basically lobby it to Congress. You know how that goes. They will just considered this trash.
Douglas: When you have “beastly-rape” scenes in an animated series, I would imagine it would cause some serious commotion if it were made widely available and marketed.
Shawn: Yes, the “beastly-rape” scenes are an understatement. The majority of the series is dedicated to even more bizarre stuff than that.
© West Cape, Team Mu
Douglas: What makes it even funnier is that most of the male characters are complete losers that seem to get the ladies only after they’ve obtained the powers of a demon or beast. Very interesting concept there.
Shawn: I agree. I believe the creator was on to something.
Douglas: [laughs] Yeah. I mean, Nagumo didn’t have sex until after he displayed his demon powers. The same with Yuichi Niki. He couldn’t even approach a female until after he got the demon power in the series.
Shawn: That’s a strange way to put it. It seems like you have to obtain demon powers just a have sex with a girl. Is that what you’re saying?
Douglas: [laughs] Yes, but only in the series though. I’m not insinuating that doing that will help you in real life!
Shawn: [laughs]
Douglas: Besides all this, the story is not grounded in reality at all, and there is a lot of irrational stuff that occurs. For one, after Akemi get “violated” by a demon, she acts like nothing happened!
Shawn: She’s pretty screwed up in the head if she can just move on after something like that. What’s funny is that she basically goes out with Nagumo afterwards, which seems totally offbeat and forced.
Douglas: I also wanted to add that it’s pretty rare to find animated series of this magnitude today. This series pretty much created an entirely new genre, which is always fascinating to me. If anything, it should be respected in that regard, whether you agree with the content or not.
Shawn: I agree. I mean, let’s face it, Japanese animation is better known around the world today than it was when this series came out. Saying that, you don’t see a lot of series taking risks like this one nowadays.
Douglas: Yes, this is definitely more of a cult classic than anything.
Shawn: Yes. It started that whole tentacle-rape-monster-demon-thingy…[laughs].
Douglas: [laughs] Hey, for what it’s worth, it’s a very interesting series. Art-wise, the tentacle stuff has been around for a long time, but this was the first time to actually have it in animated form. Toshio Maeda should be proud! [laughs]
Shawn: For creating an entire genre, I would say he should be!
Reactions after watching it: It’s definitely not for everyone (really, it isn’t), but for what its worth, you get to view the invention of a new genre that is still persistent to this very day. While not fans of the particular genre, we respect the film for showing the rather wide audience that anime can curtail too, even if its extremely strange.
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Very interesting this show sounds very out there, though I’ve seen a hentai or two that were out there, they usually were always sex but very little graphic violence or gore (though rape could be considered such). I agree that many cult classics opened doors for far better material, and weather you care for the content or not, they can be respected for doing that atleast.