English Dub Review: High School DxD Born “Summer Break! Off to the Underworld!”
Funimation really screwed the pooch on this one.
Overview (Spoilers Below)
There is nothing more irritating than unnecessary censoring. We have a show here, which is already rated TV-MA, so the viewers already know what they’re getting into. Why are we getting floating D’s over the D’s? With shows like Game of Thrones already throwing tits all over the place, and Sons of Anarchy getting as close to showing nude people as you can possibly get, you would think that companies would this as an opportunity to push past the prudish standards that are imposed on the public by the FCC. Just think, we could have had this instead. It’s a shit quality, but it conveys the point rather well.
Now, before I am labeled a hypocrite, I have been really hard on a certain sect of anime fans. Namely, the mouth breathing basement dwellers that hiss at sunlight and have a hard time seeing a real life nude female. I’m not picking up the flag for them because they’re such a small fraction of the fan base as a whole, it’s not worth the fight. What I am fighting for, is the integrity of the show, and the way those floating D’s divert any focus from the show, and onto the animated D’s or whatever picture is put in front of the tits (not the D’s that are supposed to be there). That’s the worst part of High School DxD BorN.
Let’s start a running list of ways the tits were censored:
- D’s
- Feathers
- Steam
The story is flimsy, at best. We have a bunch of students who are on their way back to the underworld for Summer break. Sucks for the main character, Issei, because he has to leave his lavish mansion with enough room to bang out all of the girls in different rooms, multiple times over. The entire group, including everyone in the harem, go to the Underworld and fight a dragon. However, the armor that Issei wears knows the Dragon Demon.
And then we go back to the fan service. The end of the episode was another scene in hot springs, with Issei and Azrael getting obsessive over the girls’ tits. While I was writing this review, I realized that all of the tits, floating D’s, feathers, steam, and all of the over-exaggerated reactions from Issei that comes during the episode is nothing more than to hide shallow characters and the even shallower plot.
You can hide behind the shock value of Issei and the antics of the women he keeps the company of, but when you sit and pay attention, you see that there is nothing of redeeming value that you can’t get from any show Funimation puts out that is essentially the same thing. Shows like Absolute Duo, and World Break: Aria of Curse for a Holy Swordsman do the harem thing better, and don’t have to hide behind the tits and shitty jobs of censoring the tits.
