Last year, two OVAs by the names of Koharu Biyori and Ryofuko-chan were released and both took an eternity to get fully subbed, but now they both are. These two are both ecchi comedies, though both of different flavor, and likely to appeal to different audiences.

I’ll first say that I’ve only seen 2 of the 4 eps of Ryofuko-chan thus far, but I’m neither sure if I want to finish it or if doing so will actually be any different from just watching 15 minutes of it. Ryofuko-chan is disturbingly un-entertaining. It is a story of an overlord from the famous story 3 Kingdoms and his right-hand man who have turned into little girls in modern Japan, along with their horse who randomly appears as various things from teddy bears to inner tubes. The horse is voiced by Norio Wakamoto (the emperor from Code Geass and KYAROUL from Baccano) and is his most ridiculous role yet, which unfortunately is totally fucking retarded.

Ryofuko-chan has tons and tons of blatant loli fanservice. Thankfully, it is my favorite kind of fanservice where, while blatant, the characters don’t talk about it – the fanservice isn’t a part of the story or whatever, it’s just there. Which leads us to the problem – there is no plot whatsoever. Now mind you, that can be said about a lot of things, but this is a whole new level of plot-less-ness. The show appears to be a comedy, but there are no jokes. There are things that kind of seem like they might be supposed to be jokes, but nothing that can actually qualify as a joke, and nothing that could possibly make you laugh. The things that almost kind of resemble comedy are all purely situational. The characters, for the most part, have next to no personality whatsoever. Ryofuko herself seems to be bold and fast-acting, but she’s just sort of there most of the time, doing things. Her assistant just seems to be there with her, making little, objective comments about whatever is going on to herself. The horse thing is a pedophile, and no one pays attention to it. Actually, no one pays any real attention to each other at all – there is next to zero character interaction. It feels really, really weird, because even the most basic, stupid comedies at least have the characters’ cliche personalities to bounce off of each-other, but this show doesn’t.

The only character with any semblance of personality is Ryofuko’s tsundere classmate who acts like she hates the god-warrior but actually has a complete crush on her. Which brings me to another thing – occasionally, the fanservice does, at least, work. As a person who has tons of loli-yuri pics, this shit should at least be up my alley in that regard. However, it even fails as a fanservice show by completely ignoring the whole loli-licious cast for large portions of time per episode. These times can be spent focused on some blatantly gay muscle-bound fisherman, or random other ugly dudes and their adventures that contain absolutely no fanservice. I guess it’s better that way because it’s kind of creepy getting off on Ryofuko-chan and her friend, considering that both of them still have the minds of old dudes, and the friend happens to be pretty perverted. Plus, the damn teddy bear is a lolicon.

As for Koharu Biyori

Someone’s a Shana and Ichigo Mashimaro fan!

It’s a hell of a lot better, not that such a thing was difficult. This one i much more of your Completely Average Ecchi Love Comedy. It’s about maid robots, otaku, and plenty of hijinks. Like Ryofuko-chan it is cram-paked with fanservice (though with considerably more boob-shots) and unlike Ryofuko-chan most of the girls in KB are well-built, though they’ve pretty much made a point to cover the entire breast-spectrum, from loli up through gargantuan. The show was kind of funny at first, but then oddly got a bit dramatic in the second and third eps (though only as much as ecchi-comedies ever do.) I did laugh a couple of times, especially at some of the great parodies in there (a massive Marimite parody in ep 3 had me rolling) though needless to say the drama did nothing for me. There were some cute characters involved, though none that were really my type.

Koharu Biyori is actually very worth watching if you’re bored, need something light, or just horny. Otaku like myself will appreciate some of the references and parodies, but it isn’t extreme enough to truly impress. Still, good for a late night with nothing better to do.