Junji Majima, Miyu Tomita & Yusuke Kobayashi -- Ikouze Paradise（イこうぜ☆パラダイス）

Ever since getting back from Japan for good and getting into anime viewing again in the early part of the last decade, I've seen my fair share of programs with those elements of naughtiness, although my anime buddy doesn't go out of his way to get the hentai stuff. For example, I did catch "Tejina Senpai"（手品先輩）about the inept magician student who inadvertently shows more than her tricks. And up to now, the one show that really took the cake for all sorts of sexual innuendo was "Seitokai Yakuindomo"（生徒会役員共）. For such a seemingly straitlaced high school, the kids at Osai Academy could have given the folks at "Porky's" and "American Pie" a run for their money.

But then in the Winter 2020 season of anime, there came a show that most likely became the most talked about series for the season and it may have knocked even my "Seitokai Yakuindomo" off the top of the mountain. Yup, I did catch most of the episodes of "Ishuzoku Reviewers"（異種族レビュアーズ...Interspecies Reviewers）, the show about a group of buddies (including a fallen angel) in a fantasy land whose raison d'etre is to visit, sample and critique the various brothels in the region as a public (and very personal) service.

Nothing was left to the imagination here. My friend told me that there were three versions of the show: the censored one, the fairly uncensored one that got onto some of the subscription anime channels (and it's the version that my friend and I watched), and apparently a legendary take which supposedly shows everything that got the animator in some hot water with his bosses. I have to say that Episodes 3 and 4 took the royal cake and left our jaws hanging with me often saying "Wow! They really went ahead and animated that, didn't they?". The crazy thing is that I was also informed that the original manga didn't have those really sex-crazed scenes; the animators must have had a heck of a time at work. In fact, I had to look for a while to find a YouTube video of "Ishuzoku Reviewers" that I could place up here without having to warn folks. In double fact, the show got booted off a number of channels including Funimation and Amazon Prime Video since apparently they didn't realize what they were getting into (including a new way to enjoy barbeque).

Still for those who understand Japanese, I'm going to have to give a small warning about the lyrics for the opening theme "Ikouze Paradise" (Let's Go Paradise). When the opening line is "I love being a pervert!"...well, you know what I mean. The song is performed by the three main cast members Junji Majima（間島淳司）, Miyu Tomita（富田美憂）and Yusuke Kobayashi（小林裕介）as human Stunk, angel Crimvael and elf Zel respectively.

As they say in the entertainment industry, there's no such thing as bad publicity, so "Ishuzoku Reviewers" got plenty of it, and it certainly didn't hurt that "Ikouze Paradise" quickly became one of the catchiest anison in recent memory since it was inspired by the Village People's "Y.M.C.A." and "In The Navy". I think the philosophy here is if one's gonna get laid, get laid to a great disco number. You can thank Big Magnum Tachibana（ビッグマグナム橘）and Golden Ball Shinozaki（ゴールデンボール篠崎）(overcompensating for their names apparently) for their work on creating this one.