3 Episode Taste Test: Goshuushou-sama Ninomiya-kun

Call­ing Goshuushou-sama Ninomiya-kun stun­ningly unima­gin­at­ive would be a gross under­state­ment. In three epis­odes the series has done noth­ing to endear itself; the only bait it has for its mea­gre hook is the fan-service which given the ropey art-style is per­haps not bait at all. Three epis­odes is enough to see exactly where this series is head­ing: it more or less star­ted at rock bot­tom and each epis­ode just gives it a new shovel to keep digging.

“she con­stantly attracts mem­bers of the oppos­ite gender and eli­cits bur­ied homo­sexual tend­en­cies of the same gender”

» Gal­lery

It’s fair to say that series like Goshuushou-sama Ninomiya-kun are a dime a dozen, from Green Green to Amaenaideyo, mediocre fan-service is usu­ally not a valid enough premise to war­rant sit­ting through a series, be it 13 or 24 epis­odes or longer. Series such as Girls Bravo or Ikkit­ousen more or less per­fec­ted the rampant expos­ure of the female form, the former rely­ing on increas­ingly racy con­tent while the lat­ter delving into clas­sical Chinese lit­er­at­ure; GSNK has neither the energy or the cre­ativ­ity to main­tain interest bey­ond an ini­tial viewing.

The premise is of a suc­cubus who has little-to-no con­trol over her powers of seduc­tion which means she con­stantly attracts mem­bers of the oppos­ite gender and eli­cits bur­ied homo­sexual tend­en­cies of the same gender. The foil to this hack­neyed plot point is the tit­u­lar Shungo Ninom­iya who, while sup­posedly a gif­ted martial-artist, is charged with pro­tect­ing the dim-witted suc­cubus from the brain­less male popu­lace. Accom­pa­ny­ing this is a devi­ous incubus brother of Tsukimura, a loud-mouthed sis­ter of Shungo and a pro­to­typ­ical yander­reko, Reika Hojo. The char­ac­ters and situ­ations are as trite and ill-conceived as the setup would lead one to believe, at no point is the rauc­ous flail­ing any­thing more than tir­ing and the series seems to have been the sub­ject of a 24 minute, tit­il­la­tion bypass operation.

Pre­ceded by a short vign­ette of no worth other than to delay the inter­min­able open­ing, it is only the end­ing which proves any value and even then, the mediocrity of the song is off­set by the bright and kin­etic anim­a­tion intro­duced at the close of the third epis­ode. Anim­a­tion is con­sist­ently ques­tion­able, some­times decent while other times mak­ing oth­er­wise slim char­ac­ters as thick and ugly as trees. The only not­able name in the series is the anim­a­tion stu­dio, AIC Spir­its, who gif­ted us with Tokyo Majin (both sea­sons) as well as Burn Up Scramble and the pre­vi­ously men­tioned Girls Bravo; only Mai Kad­owaki, who voices the busty suc­cubus, has had any pre­vi­ously star­ring roles which isn’t to say the other voice act­ors are bad, it’s more indic­at­ive the of the over­all quality.

There is noth­ing that can be recom­men­ded about Goshuushou-sama Ninomiya-kun; it sinks beneath adequacy into a tur­gid pit of clichés and bore­dom. It has no humour, no plot and no hope of doing any­thing other than being a stark reminder of how not to craft a show around fan-service. ¶