English Dub Review: Conception “My Child?!”

I take it back, all Ecchi anime is shit.

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

On the day of his high school graduation, Yuge Itsuka goes to meet his cousin Mahiru (they try to hide it by saying “my relative’s daughter” but IT’S HIS FRIGGIN COUSIN) on the roof about an urgent text message. Turns out she’s pregnant, but before she can say who the father is, the two are sucked into a magic portal in the sky which places them in a labyrinth. Once there, Mahiru expels some sort of weird energy that turns into a muscley demon that tries to kill them. Boy, kids sure do grow up fast. Itsuki somehow manifests a sword and destroys the thing with one blow because of course he does, and they escape the labyrinth to find they are in a new world called Granvania.

They are greeted by a depraved floating stuffed animal named Mana whose every other word of dialogue is about sex, and some guy in a tiny hat who is less than cardboard. They then meet the king, who explains that visitors from other worlds come sometimes with zodiac signs on their skin which makes them able to fight monsters, and if they don’t do it they can’t go home. Only it turns out Itsuki has a bunch of marks all over his body, which means he’s gotta have sex with twelve girls who each have one of the same marks in order for them to give birth to new “Star Wards” that can fight the big bad monster at the center of the labyrinth and DO YOU HONESTLY GIVE A CRAP ABOUT THIS?

Oh yeah, and his cousin is one of the twelve, so now we get the great privilege of watching them undress and make out, but the episode mercifully ends before we actually witness the act.

OUR TAKE

I’m a pretty secular guy, but even I think I might be going to hell for watching this. I’m no stranger to the weird proclivities of anime, especially ones that sell themselves primarily on sex appeal, but I’ve never sought out one that was so transparently just about justifying a sex scene for such a dumbass story. Usually, the most glaring moments are simply peppered over an at least decent story that I can concentrate on and enjoy while I grit my teeth through the bad, but not here. I really have to wonder if this story didn’t come about because the author knocked up his cousin but had a mental breakdown when she told him, so he came up with this fantastical backflip in his mind to rationalize that not only DIDN’T he knock her up, he is actually REQUIRED to do so to her and several other girls in order to save some faraway dimension.

That’s how lazy, shameless, and just plain disgusting this show has started and if the next two episodes are any indication, it does not improve. Though frankly, you’re not very likely to win me back when you start as low as incest and go lower to pedophilia. Yeah, a whole third of the girls shown to be in the queue look like they’re in grade school, so have fun to feel your soul die inside you when we get to them. Unless you actually do enjoy seeing that, in which case I hope to never know you. At least a most of them look old enough to minimize the creep factor slightly, and a couple looks like actual adults, but that does nothing to keep my skin from crawling even thinking about this concept.

But honestly, I don’t expect anything I say about this show to sway anyone one way or the other. This story is an adaptation of a dating sim (in case that wasn’t blindingly obvious), which apparently is supposed to be pretty fun and maybe playing this as a game is more tolerable, but I’m never going to seek it out to be sure. This series and that genre already have a built-in fanbase that’s going to dive right into this no matter what, and anyone with even a sliver of moral decency left in their body is going to steer clear. I’m not even against dating sims as a genre since there are many that are leagues better written and more engaging than this. Perhaps this is another case of a good source material being made into a poor adaptation, but that’s what was put in front of me.