In today’s rant at Megatokyo, Fred mentions how some REC viewers found the final moments of the show’s first episode to be troubling. I’ve noticed the same reaction, and find it a bit perplexing.
After all, when you consider how often romance anime teases the viewer with near-sexual situations or, for that matter, pleases with graphic fanservice, why would two adults having consensual sex be shocking? Yes, I understand the complexity of the couple’s situation, and agree that Fumihiko could be charged with taking advantage of Aka in a moment of weakness, but as far as sexual encounters in anime go, the scene in question was pretty vanilla.
Honestly, compared to the original manga (NSFW!), the REC television series is about as scandalous as an NHK documentary!
I have a feeling that regular anime watchers are just used to being teased until the very end when the main protagonists *gasp* hold hands! Not that we’re prudes or anything… okay, maybe we are.
I suppose now that they’ve done it, the only way to go is harder core?
Well, that explains it all, really. I haven’t read the manga, so I was not fully aware of the *hot action*. But as I was watching the show, the fact that they just pretty much nonchalantly decided to have sex is what took away from the show for me. I’m not bothered by the fact that there IS sex, but the way it just happened:
“So yeah. Your house burned down. We had dinner, we’re as good as a couple, right? Let’s do it” “Ok… Wait… What’s your name?” “Fumihiko. Lets get to sexxing it up, now.” “Ok”
I mean, I can sort of see that they’re trying to show that she’s a bit fragile after a big accident, and that deep down, he’s really cheering her up… but it was just SO meaningless.
I hyped it up for myself A LOT. The sex kinda took some of the goodness away.
While I can now see that the manga went a bit, um, deeper into the sexing, I kinda agree with Jeff on this. I’m actually more interested in seeing what their relationship does now that the sex is no longer a mystery. This is where some anime can be really frustrating, and for once I don’t feel frustrated by another “almost sex” scene that I’ve seen a bajillion times. You have two people that met by chance, at least from what I gathered, and by a series of other chance encounters with each moved to the next level. What I liked about it was the natural progression of things. We just got 26 episodes of the average harem show in 11 minutes, without the loser guy overtones.
I’m marginally approving of it at this point. For it to really work, then it has to be dealt with in the remaining episodes. And dealt with doesn’t necessarily mean it has to be negative; it would just be nice if it wasn’t a stunt.
And as a final word, I think they were both caught in a weak moment. I think in general he’s just unhappy, and she also is, but that’s just first episode impressions.
*looks at the manga scans*
…wow.
“We just got 26 episodes of the average harem show in 11 minutes, without the loser guy overtones.”
That pretty much summarized my thoughts about the show so far. I think it’s alot more interesting to watch an already existing relationship than going through the 26 episodes of your typical romance anime just to get perhaps a kissing scene in the last 2 minutes.
I’m over joyed with this more mature aproach where they show us more intimate scens without really showing anything. As long as it isn’t the main focus I think REC will be great.
I totally have fallen in love with this series after 1 episode… damn, what guy wouldn’t have done the exact same thing…we have a word for guys that wouldn’t here….”girls”
heh.
I will say this, looking at the raws we have there will be a little more sexual activity. The anime stops at the end of volume 1 and there are now 5 volumes of this series and it is still going.