Kekko Kamen (Revised) Review

Welcome back, fellow Otaku!

This post is a bit of a special bonus, as it’s an accompanying piece to my recent review of this year’s Genericon You might recall that I reviewed today’s show way back in 2011 (Click “***” to read it), but what you don’t know is that today’s show was the first DVD I ever bought at a con. A lot has changed since then, as you can tell. With that out of the way, let’s take a revised look at Go Nagai’s infamous series, Kekko Kamen!

Story/Setup
Taken from the anidb page:

“At the academy Takahashi Mayumi attends, higher education has sunk to the lowest levels of depravity, with armed hall monitors, teachers who wear masks to hide their identities and special detention sessions in a torture chamber beneath the gym! It is a curriculum designed to chew up sweet young things, and poor Mayumi has been voted "Least Likely to Survive" in her class! Is there no hope? Can no one save her?

Enter Kekkou Kamen, the most outrageous super-heroine ever! Clad in a red mask, red boots and nothing else, she is the supreme protector of innocents like Mayumi. Armed with her trusty nunchaku and a body that just will not quit, she will make chopped pork out of the swine, who run this school from hell! But who is she really? The only one who knows for sure is creator Nagai Gou and he is not giving anything away... expect lots of free peeks at Kekko Kamen's magnificent physique!”

A goofy, silly, and stupid story. This I can get behind!

Setting
Toenail of Satan's Spartan Institute of Higher Education. That is the name of the school that Kekko Kamen takes place in. This should tell you how badshit insane the show is. Despite the name, the school is rather standard for the time. What makes this school dive into the “WTF” sea, is just what the bad guys setup. There’s a teacher’s lounge with sexy women, a workshop where one of the bad guys are produced (See the “Characters” section below), and a “Sexy” torture dungeon. I’ll let that seep in.

Characters
The cast of characters in Kekko Kamen is small, but memorable. The character that this show is named after isn’t in as much as you think, but that actually works in her favor. She’s smart, sexy, and actually can act a little shy, but in a funny kind of way. If Kekko Kamen was in the show say 75% of the time, then I think that the character would be ruined.

There’s other primary characters as well. Mayumi Takahashi takes up most of the screen time, and is always the victim of the bad guy’s perverted plots. She not necessarily stupid, but there are times where she acts a little ditzy (Cute ditzy, to be specific). Yuka Chigusa acts like a guide/protector for Mayumi, and Toenail of Satan (Yes, that’s his name) & Teacher Ben are the typical perverted evil villains.

The last group of characters in Kekko Kamen I’ll talk about are the villains-of-the-day. For starters, they stay within the episode they’re introduced in. Secondly, when the villain in question is defeated, they’re never heard from again. Having said that, Kekko Kamen has perhaps one of the most “WTF” group of villains ever made for an anime. Here’s what Go Nagai made:

A Female Nazi S&M Teacher (Yes, you read that right)
A Male Buff Gym Teacher (Who is later revealed to be gay)
A Female Android That Sprouts Electrified Tentacles From Her Back (Is it wrong that I wanted to see them sprout from her robo-vagina?)
A Male Swordsman (That loves to cut off the girls’s uniforms)

Yeah....those are the bad guys....and I love em!

Animation
The animation has the look & feel of a typical Go Nagai show of the 90s. He always had a distinct way of drawing characters, places, etc. Despite that, this isn’t one of his strongest shows. It isn’t ugly by any stretch of the imagination, but this show feels slightly lackluster in how it looks. Episode 3 seems to have slightly higher animation quality, as the look of that episode has just a little more polish, but that’s just me.

Voice Acting
The voice acting in Kekko Kamen, for the most part, is actually pretty good. There are only a tiny few voices that don’t sound great, but they are almost exclusively regulated to secondary characters (There is one primary villain that sounds like she’s trying to hard to replicate a German accept, and sounds a little weak in the process). Apart from that, the characters have some nice voices. The heros sounds great, and the villains have a perfect combination of sinister & silly.

Episodes & Episode Length
Kekko Kamen is a 4-episode OVA, each of which run at about 30 minutes in length. The great tragedy about this show is that there were supposed to be more episodes (One of the characters breaks the 4th-wall, and tells the audience this), but due to a low demand only four were ever produced.

Availability & Pricing
Despite being a ADV Films release from 2005, Kekko Kamen can still be found if you know where to look. Over on Amazon, there are 17 copies available. 8 of them are new, while 9 of them are used. Pricing is also fair between the two: new copies start at 27 dollars (Which isn’t too bad, all things considered), while used copies being at close to 8 dollars in price. The 27 dollars is fair, but the 8 dollar price is considerably better.

Extras/Other
For the most part, the extras on Kekko Kamen are as standard as extras on any other anime DVD, ADV Films produced or not. The only extra that is somewhat atypical is a collection of production drawings, but even then it feels a little lackluster (There’s only a couple drawings, and they seem to go by rather quickly).

General Impression & Rating
Kekko Kamen has, had, and shall always be my number one anime. True, it has some faults, and it isn’t necessarily the most politically correct OVA out there, but there’s a charm to it that you can’t escape. Go Nagai has always been an individual that wasn’t normal, and this anime proves it. It’s bizarre, it’s weird, it’s funny, it’s.....Kekko Kamen!

Kekko Kamen gets a 8 to 9 out of 10.

See you next time. Until then, stay Otaku!



***
Here’s the trailer to Kekko Kamen, and the Kekko Kamen manga (Which is even more batshit, apeshit, fuck-nuts than the show). Enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aOwKFaDUSKM

mangafox.me/manga/kekkou_kamen/

Oh, and here’s where you can watch the show. Double Enjoy!

http://www.anime1.com/watch/kekko-kamen/episode-1