It’s funny sometimes how anime is judged by outsiders as being almost exclusively sexual. This is somewhat understandable, though, since a lot of the bootleg anime material that made it to the West before anime became mainstream was essentially pornography – what’s referred to as “hentai”. These programs, although they might actually have pretty good stories at times, depict explicit sexual scenes and leave nothing to the imagination.
The truth is that hentai only makes up a tiny percentage of all anime, and it is only a weird combination of American sex negativity and an almost perverse Puritanical obsessions with it that created this idea.
“Ecchi” or “little H”, on the other hand, is a decidedly more popular and much softer genre of anime with a strong emphasis on sexual humor and fan service aimed at viewers who like things raunchy. Any genre can be crossed with Ecchi, but it tends to be the “harem” subgenre that gets it the most.
Love Hina
Love Hina is most likely responsible for establishing Ecchi harem anime as a fixture of mainstream anime media. The manga first came out in 1998, with the anime series airing in the year 2000 for 25 episodes.
Keitaro is a rather hapless, bespectacled guy. A sweet everyman nerd who really wants to go to the prestigious Tokyo University. Why? Thanks to a childhood promise with a girl he can’t quite remember. Now where have we heard this hopelessly romantic idea before? Yup, this is an idea that’s been reused more than a few times since Love Hina, but it felt pretty fresh when the show first aired.
Keitaro has now failed the entrance exam twice (it’s really hard by all accounts) and his parents are no longer willing to fund his idiocy. One thing leads to another and Keitaro ends up as the manager of a girls-only dorm owned by his grandmother. High jinks, as you can imagine, ensue.
The dorm is inhabited by several colorful and, of course, very pretty young women. All of them have some level of attraction to Keitaro. This is THE harem anime after all. The poor bloke just gets thrown under the bus constantly by things completely beyond his control.
Love Hina is not as slick and refined as modern harem anime, but that’s to be expected. Despite the mildly sexual content, the show manages to be sweet, innocent, and funny. Modern harem anime often step over the line into actual sleaze, which sort of spoils the appeal. If you’re going to watch any Ecchi show, watch this one. It’s a gentle intro that’s good in its own right.
Highschool DxD
So if Love Hina is an example of an innocent Ecchi show, then High School DxD is the very opposite of that. The main character is an openly perverted sleazeball, but of course with a heart of gold!
In this world, demons and angels and fallen angels battle behind the scenes of the mundane world. Issei Hyoudou gets caught up in this secret supernatural war – something that actually kills him outright. He’s resurrected as a demon, serving under the daughter of Satan herself. It also turns out that Issei possesses a holy weapon of great power, which is part of the reason he was targeted in the first place.
As he learns to control his powers and their demonic team accrues more and more hot women, the stakes keep getting higher. Will he have to fight Satan himself in the end? Will he get the girl he really wants? I guess you’ll have to watch and see.
I actually quite enjoyed this show, although at times it did really push my tolerance for Ecchi tropes. If gratuitous T&A is a problem for you, well, steer clear of this whole category, I guess, but this in particular.
Highschool of the Dead
I like a good zombie show as much as the next person, but shows like The Walking Dead really don’t hold my attention for long. It’s also become a rather worn-out genre in the West, with everyone trying their hand at a “fresh” take on the zombie mythos. Zombie titles have been far rarer in the anime world and as I sit here I have a hard time coming up with many titles that have a zombie apocalypse as their setting. So, in that respect Highschool of the Dead is already pretty notable.
The main characters are a group of high school students and the school nurse who are trying to survive a zombie outbreak in present-day Japan. It’s the same major beats as other similar shows. Society is collapsing, other humans might be more dangerous than actual zombies, and maybe they have to end up doing things that they could never have imagined, just to survive.
Wrapped up in the medium of Ecchi anime, it does feel a little different. It’s more colorful, for one thing, and not simply filled with dull browns and greens as many zombie stories are. The show starts of at the school itself, but they quickly move on to other holdouts. The show has plenty of tension, but lots of charm. Zombie and Ecchi fans alike should like it.
Date A Live
The plot to Date A Live seems a little contrived, but in practice it turns out to be quite cool. The show is set many years after a major catastrophe known as a “spatial quake” lays waste to Eurasia, killing about 150 million people. Since then smaller such quakes have happened, but thanks to early warning systems people usually evacuate in time.
The main character in the story finds out that mysterious female beings are actually behind these quakes, and if he can make them fall in love with him their powers will be sealed and transferred to him. It sounds dumb, but it’s actually a pretty cool “monster of the week” show until things get a little more in-depth. The only difference is that the monsters are hot girls. Who would have thought this formula could work?
Rosario to Vampire
Tsukune Aono has such poor grades that no high schools will accept him. Is his life over? Does he have to enter the workforce and live on minimum wage until the day he dies? Luckily one school in particular has accepted him, except “Yokai” Academy turns out to be a school for monsters. It’s a school that prepares them for life among humans, which is why they must maintain human form on campus at all times. If anyone finds out that Aono is not in fact a monster himself, his goose is cooked!
At first he’s ready to bail and never come back, but the lovely vampire Moka grabs his heart and our hero decides to keep up the con for her sake. As time goes by more monster girls are let in on his secret and agree to protect it, but in the end Tsukune’s humanity itself might be at stake.
Rosario to Vampire is a great little show that balances comedy, sexual elements, and some pretty neat battles into one easy package. It’s not the height of art or anything, but it definitely is worth a look.
Heaven’s Lost Property
Heaven’s Lost Property is another Ecchi show that turns on the sex a little too much for my tastes, but the premise itself is quite interesting. Here we have another perverted boy named Tomoki. He just wants to be left alone for the most part, but in his heart he does wish to one day meet an angel. One night a winged girl falls from the sky. She’s an “angeloid” hailing from a world called Synapse and quickly swears herself to Tomoki as his servant. It’s not long before more angeloids start showing up and expected chaos ensues. Who are they? What do they want? Will he get lucky with any of them?
The show actually has some pretty interesting character dynamics. Tomoki tries to help the angeloids get rid of their slave mentalities in order to act more like human beings. It’s a very comedic show and much of the humor derives from the fish-out-of-water dynamic. Those with fair fan service tolerance will enjoy it as a casual watch.
Is This a Zombie?
Is This a Zombie? is a show that took me completely by surprise. I started watching it because there was nothing else left to watch at the time, thinking it was going to be utter tripe. I could not have been more wrong! This show is actually one of those rare deconstructions of multiple genres. It makes fun of tropes from various anime staples while still telling a good storing AND while being utterly hilarious.
When we start the adventure, the main character, Ayumu Aikawa, dies and is then resurrected by a powerful female necromancer, who he now has to serve. To make matters worse, he’s not only a zombie, but through contact with a magical girl (with a chainsaw!) he also becomes a cross-dressing magical girl. Yeah, it’s completely bonkers.
This is straight up one of the funniest shows I’ve seen in a long time and it is very self-aware to boot. If you’re done with all the mainstream stuff and can appreciate trope-destroying satire, then Is This a Zombie? could be right up your alley.
Demon King Daimao
Nothing worse than a self-fulfilling prophecy, right? That’s what Akuto Sai finds out. He just wants to make the world a better place than it is right now. Be a good student, help people out – that sort of thing. In the magic school he attends they have a aptitude test that works a bit like the sorting hat from Harry Potter. It will tell you what your future job will be. In Akuto’s case the results simply say “Demon King” – not exactly the career he had planned for himself. While Akuto doesn’t buy it, the rest of the school takes these results very seriously and they start to treat Akuto differently. It turns out that being marked as the future Demon King has both upsides and downsides; the question is: How will Akuto navigate his new life as a marked man?
My Wife is the Student Council President
Of all the shows on this list, My Wife is the Student Council President is the most Ecchi of the lot. I was actually a little taken aback the first time I watched it, since I did not expect it to be quite so explicit. It still borders on the right side of the big H, but expect something somewhat more raunchy than usual.
This is another sexually-themed show that uses a central contrivance to generate comedy and drama. Basically it’s similar to shows like Three’s Company, where some secret or misunderstanding is the catalyst for almost everything that happens. The deal this time around is that our main character is a serious boy who really wants to be the student council president. Unfortunately, he loses to the incredibly popular Ui Wakana. So Hayato Izumi has to settle for being the Vice-president.
One evening Ui shows up at his house with her luggage, informs him that she’s moving in and promptly does so. It turns out that their parents have arranged for them to get married, but never bothered to tell Hayato. It also turns out that the bubbly, confident and professional Ui is rather ditzy in private. She often tries to please Hayato in all sorts of ways, but is not particularly competent at any of these things. Will they figure out a way to make thing work and keep their secret while still in school? That would be telling! This is a great little show with a fairly short run. Despite the higher-than-normal level of nudity, it’s actually very sweet and romantic, so don’t let that hold you back.
Kill la Kill
I’m ending this list of with another title that parodies and deconstructs the Ecchi genre with a vengeance. That’s not to say that it does not perpetuate the same genre tropes! No, it goes the other way and pushes them to the bleeding edge of absurdity.
Brought to us by the same fine folks who made Gurren Lagann, Kill la Kill is technically a high school drama, except this high school rules the city with an iron fist and acts as the training ground for students with superhuman powers granted by special “life fiber” uniforms. The higher you rise in the ranks the more powerful the uniform you are given. The people at the very top have the most incredible uniforms with unique abilities.
Into this bizarre system comes the rebellious and very fighty Ryuko Matoi, searching for clues to her father’s murder; clues that lead her to the very top of the school’s power structure.
Kill la Kill is an imaginative, no holds barred blast. Really, it’s surreal and yet makes perfect sense. Just like with Gurren Lagann, you just need to go with it until you understand what the show is trying to say – about the anime medium and about its own central themes. There are multiple levels upon which Kill la Kill can be enjoyed; the shallow level of titillation being only one of them. The show knows this and knowingly winks at the viewer every now and then. Still, even when you watch it without caring about subtext, Kill la Kill is great TV.