So, if you thought the plot for last week’s entry sounded like an overly complicated excuse for porn, get a load of Super Hxeros: In a world assailed by aliens trying to wipe humanity out by draining people of erotic energy, it’s up to a group of teenagers to be horny enough to get super powers and fight back!
In other words, it’s pretty much the same pitch but with a sentai flair rather than battle school. And, okay, I’ve been surprised by what sound like terrible pitches in the past. How’s this one do?
Like last week, I’ll give this a preface where I expound on the idea not being as stupid or porny as it might seem at first. The idea of aliens trying to eliminate humanity the slow way, by reducing the birth rate and letting us die out more or less naturally, has been done in Science Fiction before. Actually, it’s been done quite a lot. I think the version I remember best from respectable western scifi was an episode of Stargate SG-1 where that was the Bad Future for humanity if things weren’t set right by technobabble. It’s been done in less totally respected but more tonally close works too, like Darling in the Franxx, which I adore even with all its flaws, the execution of this sort of plot being one of them.
But like last week, I think most people could predict that a show with this kind of pitch isn’t going to use its concept responsibly or with any sense of dignity. Maybe we get a decent show out of it anyway, but it’s sensible to go in with some serious doubts.
We start out meeting main character Retto Enjo. His biggest problem seems to be that his childhood friend, Kirara Hoshino, has turned into a frigid man-hater quite in contrast to the budding romance they had going as kids. However, he knows that this is due to an encounter with a Kiseichuu – a vaguely feminine alien bug person that operates by draining humans of their erotic energy, equated both to the conventional drive and, really, the will to live. He, however, has become able to fight the monsters, and reveals this by punching one out (at the cost of his clothes). Evidently, this is due to an invention from his eccentric uncle.
While trying to patch over a classic ecchi misunderstanding with Hoshino, they’re set upon by the Kiseichuu again, leveled up from its punching out and ready to rumble. The encounter causes Hoshino to break through layers of repressed memories as they have to go on the run, leading to her and her old flame being in fairly close contact once more. Eventually, she breaks through enough to recall that the monster in the past that tried to drain her literally exploded because she was too horny to handle even as a grade schooler, and while that made her shut herself off, she’s still got it. She and Retto power up together to take out the monster’s mini-kaiju ultimate form, and end up stranded and clothesless to work out their issues some. Finally, we’re introduced to the rest of team Hxeros, a trio of girls who pick up Retto and induct Hoshino into their number, which she still is not totally comfortable with.
The next episode works out Hoshino joining properly, as she ends up confronted with a Kiseichuu at school with Retto not immediately around. She confronts it without any powers and of course he pops up at the last second to save her, leading to them both being stripped (again) and having to hide from potential onlookers in a slightly compromising position, after which she agrees to join the Hxeros and live with the team base per request.
After some monster of the week bull with homeopathic character building for the girls, Hoshino manages to get abducted by the bugs. They take her to their nest to bait in the rest of the team, which is fairly successful other than the fact that she almost immediately breaks out and runs into the bug princess, who is pretty much the opposite of the other bugs in every way (ability, intent, and so on) and who looks more like a wolf girl than an insect. She makes friends with this bug, Chacha, and then gets re-captured to be hauled out as a hostage to force Retto to surrender. He does, but gets to give enough of a speech that Hoshino cracks through her repression enough to summon her own energy and kick the ass of the evil bugs.
In the wake of this, Chacha is rescued, takes on a form that’s Hoshino with darker skin and the wolf traits (Hoshino alter?), and joins the team to help them with the ultimate goal of beating her mother, the queen of the hive.
It turns out that Chacha can mimic just about any living thing, which leads to some remedial zany antics with the team at home as she tries to figure out what makes them tick, taking Retto along for the ride. This is indicative of the next phase of the show – more pointless monster of the week and ecchi romcom puttering!
The show does introduce another set of characters, one of which is actually important as much as anything in this show, in the form of the Tokyo Hxeros branch and their ace, Shiko Murasame, who becomes obsessed with Retto after their first encounter manages the apparently difficult task (despite her Hxeros fighter status) of turning her on. She then becomes the comedy rival for Hoshino. Hoshino, for her part, kind of knows she wants Retto but still can’t bring herself to act anything but cold to his face for long enough to spit it out. This is despite starting to hallucinate her child self as an imp telling her to go for it, and a firm stance that she’s not going to let this other interloper have him. Not that he wants to be had by anyone other than Hoshino, but that’s neither here nor there.
I suppose I do have to give this show a limited crumb of credit in that it’s not going with the typical gormless male protagonist who can’t decide or express what he wants in terms of romance for no good reason. It’s not better, mind you, because Hoshino is not a terribly likable tsundere, but at least Retto’s reticence seems well-founded.
We do a random date stuff episode, the obligatory beach episode, sightseeing followed by a long and lame Retto/Hoshino scene, and some more pointless puttering to get to the point where a new governor (disguised alien bug) takes over and has the uncle arrested and Hxeros formally disbanded. After some time moping, the team gets back together on their own and decides to investigate this suspicious circumstance.
Of course, this turns out to be the bug queen. She mind-controls Chacha, pens up the heroes, and reveals her plan to farm humans for H-energy rather than annihilating them. We get the one scene that even pretends to approach the levels Hybrid Heart got to when the team decides to douse the lights and have a fantasy orgy to create enough energy to break out of their prison. Even that manages to not be all that steamy. Lewd? Sure, but mostly by technical traits. Chacha breaks her mind control and stands up to the bug queen and the team get their super suit transformation sequences which come late and lame.
Retto and Hoshino end up going after the bug queen while the others fight her summoned tentacle monster. She temporarily mind controls Hoshino, but Hoshino snaps out when hearing Retto talk about what he loves in the real her, allowing them to do a combo attack to blast away the Queen.
In theory, this is kind of the end of the war, but there are no doubt straggler bugs to deal with, so Hoshino can hold out on her “When this is all done I’ll tell you how I feel” promise and the show can play us out with uncle freed from charges and team Hxeros back together.
So, Super Hxeros has a lot of problems. The biggest problem, though, is simple: it’s focused unfittingly on the romance between a protagonist who is milquetoast at best and a fairly unlikable form of Tsundere.
For the focus issue, please remember: this show is supposed to be a super-ecchi Super Sentai outing. What should that normally imply? Well, the Sentai action should be good. Theatrical villains that are larger than life, dynamic if overblown fights, all that fun melodrama that the likes of Shikizakura and Sailor Moon would love to provide. Naturally, Super Hxeros doesn’t do that – its Sentai material shows less effort than something the characters of a better show would watch in the background, that’s supposed to look lame and fake next to the real show.
And on the other hand, it should be spicy. I don’t review Hentai and I’m not going to ask for it, but if you’ve got a blank check for nudity (however censored) and a theme all about eroticism, surely you can use it in scenarios where the time, place, and mood are fit for things getting legitimately steamy. Even if you can’t let the characters bang, at least understand what makes for good media foreplay and deliver it. I’m fairly certain a good writing team could make a show much hotter than this even if they weren’t allowed to get anyone’s clothes off.
Instead of applying time, effort, and skill to these elements, they instead put their time and effort and probably what little skill was to be found towards the “Will they or won’t they?” dance of Mr. Main Character and his Ice Queen Tsundere.
Now, I have mentioned several times before in other reviews that I tend to like Tsunderes… but you have to do them well. Hoshino is not done well. She crosses several thresholds to loosen up but still acts on her tsun baseline, even though any reason she had to be that way is evaporated by the halfway point of the show. Her basic story is that she repressed her sexuality because she was embarrassed being called out on it by an exploding alien, causing her to go far to the other direction. Despite this she does clearly like Retto and want him, and even admits it to herself in the second half. She gets some passable (in character, good) speeches directed her way to be honest with herself, again by the halfway point, but the show tries to have it both ways on taking that to heart or not. This means that in the second half we don’t really understand what her hangup is, and since the show wastes so much time and focus on its leading couple, to the exclusion of really developing everyone else, that’s a big loss.
Retto’s issue is much simpler: He’s generic. He likes Hoshino in Episode 1, still likes her by the end, and… yeah, that’s about it. He’s not a complicated or interesting dude. Which wouldn’t be such a problem if the show didn’t play him like he was interesting.
Super Hxeros takes the dregs of Rumble Garanndoll’s ideas – being generally a sort of “anti-censorship” piece – and pours them over lame imitations of sentai action with monsters of the week that wouldn’t make it as bottom rung Sailor Moon mooks, but the main course is just this unbelievably stale ecchi romcom that lacks purpose, direction, or even reason.
In the end, that’s the main reason this show is getting a Fail.
Among Fails, Super Hxeros is not going to be one of my most hated. Really, I feel like I could forget it pretty quickly. The art and animation weren’t godawful, and just about everything else was… lame. The characters except for the leads were cardboard cut-outs and the leads weren’t nearly good enough to do the lifting they were asked to do. It’s deficient on just about every scale, but that’s all. It’s not overwhelmingly bad or aggressively offensive.
But there’s nothing to save it, nothing to pick it up, nothing to recommend it on. There’s no point at which I could say that even a particular element that’s worthwhile had a passing grade, there were no vignettes or monster of the week scenarios that were unusually engaging, and no joy to be had in the dry romance. It can’t get anything other than a flat fail. Don’t watch Super Hxeros, it’s not worth the time.