World's End Harem

Episode 4

After last week's limp performance, I'm pleased to announce that World’s End Harem is back in its top, turgid, and titillatingly terrible form. I was wracked with worry that this show would prove to be nothing more than a two-pump chump—that its tastelessly sterling introductory episodes would be wasted on wan navel-gazing, and that the navel would in turn be censored into inky oblivion. Thankfully, this is not the case. The show has not grown any "better" between episodes three and four, but it has circled back to the kind of over-the-top nonsense that I most enjoy from it.

Doi's storyline again takes up the bulk of the episode, and it still feels like it may as well be its own separate show. However, now that we're past his interminable backstory, we're afforded a better concentration of this po-faced playboy's shenanigans. I still wish World’s End Harem hadn't so quickly defaulted back to a basic high school setting, but at least it's fun again. Doi, for instance, begins the episode awoken into a post-coital haze, covered in bruises. Nobody comments on these, and the show has yet to make any gestures towards BDSM, so we're forced to conclude that he and his teacher must simply be boning so hard it's rending his puny little body apart. Now that is funny.

WEH then wastes no time diving into the pool scene. It's one of the most standard exercises in anime fanservice, yet once again, the broadcast's draconian censorship rips out any hint of crack or cleavage, leaving in its place only an irregular gaping maw in the fabric of the universe. A classmate practically shoves her vulva in Doi's face, but all we can see is him blushing in front of the void. I love it. And the boldness of these antics does generally make up for our limited purview. I have no use for subtlety here when I can instead watch the class shrimp get yeeted into the shallow end.

Doi's determination to be the dumbest boy alive also lubricates the show's otherwise pedestrian efforts at being sexy and/or conspiratorial. You don't have to be Sherlock Holmes to figure out the high school is actually his own personalized stud farm. Heck, you don't even have to be Paul Blart to piece together all the shockingly available information. And still, when Doi gets a limpid-eyed roommate who begs him to help her get changed, all he can think about is how hard it must have been for her to grow up rich. Even his loyalty to Yuzu, his sole defining character trait so far, flies out the window when Ichijou crawls into his bed and starts whispering sweet nothings about the scar on her butt and her dead would-be husband. With pillow talk of that caliber, who could possibly blame Doi for funneling all his fluids from his brain into his dong? At one point, marveling at his newfound ability to talk with girls, he basically concludes that he simply can't help it if every woman of breeding age just so happens to trip crotch-first onto his twig-and-berries. I mean, what's the more likely situation: that there's a worldwide conspiracy to wring out his seminal vesicles, or that he's just a natural Lothario?

Obviously, it's the former. There are no normal circumstances under which an entire building of women will collectively soak their skivvies for a guy with the exact appeal and tenor of a future actuary. Even the dumbest boy alive eventually realizes that something is off, although Doi still completely misses the target when he confronts Karen about it. And you might wonder why she bothered hiding the truth from him to begin with when she so readily hands it over at the first sign of confrontation (and, again, when it was so laughably easy to figure out anyway). It's a fair question, but I think it's justified when we consider that Doi is not at all smart. It also, importantly, results in a hilariously literal Big Reveal when Karen instructs the entire class to strip in front of him as he recoils in horror. Despite the series' best efforts, the scene is overly dramatic and deeply unsexy, and that's exactly what I want out of World’s End Harem.

Our brief check-in with Reito is another episode highlight that proves the series is, at the very least, more interesting when it focuses on his side of the story. Who needs lame old high school harems when Reito here is the star of a daily variety series watched by 94% of Japanese women? His refusal to fuck has also incited a gaggle of protesters fighting for their God-given right to be pumped full of his spunk. I really enjoy the idea of widespread social unrest stemming from one man's “noble” commitment to monogamy. I also expect that issue will come to a head soon, given the unsubtle foreshadowing about his sister's safety and his own determination to not cum from his lower head. Can you imagine the ransom note? “We have Mahiru. If you want to see her alive again, bring only yourself and an industrial-sized tub of lube to the following location.” I don't want to get my hopes up, but this better happen.

Between last week's episode and this week's, I think I've more precisely sussed out what makes World’s End Harem appealing to me. It's not so much its incompetence, but rather its particular intersection of incompetencies. Its dramatic and horny aspirations are constantly at war with each other, yet it is equally terrible at both of them. The paper-thin characters can't hold an ounce of pathos, and even if it didn't censor everything up to and including a French kiss, the pathetically unsexy direction and storyboarding would neuter any chance it ever had at arousing its audience. Watching World’s End Harem is like watching two clowns duel with pool noodles. And you better believe I've got front row tickets.

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World’s End Harem is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.

Steve can be found on Twitter if you want to read his World’s End Harem livetweets. Otherwise, catch him chatting about trash and treasure alike on This Week in Anime.