Harem in the Labyrinth of Another World

Episode 9

Every Wednesday I fire up the latest episode of Harem in the Labyrinth of Another World in the desperate hope that it'll afford me something funny, or amusing, or entertaining to talk about. And then, every Wednesday, I am inevitably disappointed by the utterly dry, depressing way each episode insists on playing out. It hardly seems fair, does it? My esteemed contemporaries were able to make gleeful lemonade out of lemons; James got to play with The Fruit of Evolution and its nonsensical, scattershot plotting and complete lack of animation consistency. Steve was able to revel in the outlandishly inept attempts at regular, varied sexiness in World’s End Harem. Hell, I myself had plenty of fun in the past taking on embarrassing slogs like In Another World With My Smartphone or hilarious roller-coasters like King's Game. Harem Labyrinth may give me almost nothing, by comparison, but by god, I've got to try. Surely I can do something with this review of this latest episode apart from detailing the show's exhausting procedural approach or presuming to analyze the writing's depressing underlying sociopathy.

Okay, so what do we got? Uh, we catch sight of Michio's nipples during his and Roxanne's morning make-out session at the beginning of this episode! The essential male nipple? That's a classic bit, right? In fact there's a bit more skin exposure focus in this episode for those who are going the extra-quarter-mile for those uncensored releases, nominally focusing on Michio eventually acquiring a bath as this story does. So there's a little imagination spot of Michio picturing Roxanne, whom he's seen naked and hooked up with dozens of times by now, stripping down to get in the bath, and a culmination of that actually happening with him later. And yes, it would be easy for me to roast the hilariously purple prose that is Michio's narration of he and Roxanne's trip to bathtime bone-town, coming off like any fourteen-year-old's first attempt at writing erotic fanfiction. But hey, at least it's some kind of branching out for the sex scenes, with the authorship here actually coming off like they're more titillated by this extremely vanilla situational fantasy than they ever were by the whole slavery thing.

In fact, the slave element here only exists uncomfortably alongside Michio's efforts to get the bath working as intended as motivation for Roxanne to 'reward' him with that kind of hot-water hangout. It's a classically ill-conceived application of mechanical effort deserving those kinds of immediately gratifying benefits of companionship, as opposed to bonding with someone simply out of interest or empathy for them and—Oh no, there I go again. Uhh…hey isn't it actually super funny how we cut to the pair's post-coitus cuddling almost immediately after Roxanne declares "I'll {Verb} your {Noun} too" to her milquetoast master? I choose to believe that played out in real-time and Michio really did shoot off all his mana after barely a second-and-a-half of a slippery handjob. See, hilarious with this harem in another world!

To what credit I can give it, what can charitably be called the connection between Michio and Roxanne forms a bit more of a consistent through-line with this episode than normal. After cruising through kobolds they can beat on autopilot in the new dungeon and even returning to the old Vale Labyrinth for a couple quick scenes, we catch up with the pair at a point actually needing to try against an enemy and its ability to induce status effects. Michio's concerns for not wanting to 'lose' Roxanne to the kind of combat she happily throws herself into does seem mostly predicated on that idea of property and ownership, their interactions still operating on transactional tasks of taking hits and healing, as opposed to Michio engaging with Roxanne as a person with her own motivations and—Dangit, no! The monster they fight in this part is called a 'Beep Sheep'. 'Beep Sheep'! That is objectively hilarious and I wish Harem Labyrinth had provided that sort of baseline amusement way earlier in lieu of those endless tree monsters our heroes were mowing down.

Like there are just enough actually funny gags strewn throughout this episode to almost make up for the bits the series only thinks are amusing. The buildup and cut to the kobold's slow, weak attack is genuinely well executed. Like I said, the overall look, the presentation of this thing actually ain't bad, Passione knows their way around an anime production. It's just held back by the flavorless oatmeal of the source material they're stuck with, so we're reduced to watching Michio and Roxanne build fences, and do their laundry, and cook stew…

…Okay actually that stew bit even manages to demonstrate an upswing in Harem Labyrinth's ecchi ambition here, off-color joke about Roxanne swallowing her master's delicious thick white cream that it provides. Like maybe if it got clever to that degree more often, instead of simply settling for Michio blushing like a schoolboy at the umpteenth glimpse of his whoops-now-she-works-for-you wife's cleavage, this series would be enough of a horny good time for me to avoid padding things out by griping about all the time they spend grinding (in the labyrinth) and grinding (on the bed) in this show.

Maybe it's just me trying extra hard to grasp at anything else about the Harem Labyrinth this week, or maybe there really was that little bit more to it, but at least I feel like there was a bit more variety to even the stuff that could be complained about this episode. And the amateur, uneven efforts at a narrative theme here even look to potentially pay dividends for the most unbelievably underutilized element of the title next week, Michio resolving to finally increase his slave count to something resembling an actual harem at the end of this one. Of course, there's something to be said about the point that Michio's solution to Roxanne being in too much danger in battle is to buy another person and force her into danger in battle, which speaks to that aforementioned uninterrogated sociopathy at the heart of the writing propelling him. Say what you will about The Rising of The Shield Hero, at least that series had a base understanding of character, conflict, and motivational writing to set up a scenario where we got an explanation of why a character would feel forced to turn to person-ownership to serve as party companions. Harem Labyrinth simply assumes everyone watching is as sociopathic as it is with no further elaboration—

I mean uhh textbox censorship and boring game mechanic procedurals and vanilla sex scenes, hey, isn't this show just so hilariously inept?

Rating:

Harem in the Labyrinth of Another World is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.

Chris is a freewheeling Fresno-based freelancer with a love for anime and a shelf full of too many Transformers. He can be found spending way too much time on his Twitter, and irregularly updating his blog.