Amaenaide yo!!

Fantastic


First of all the story was fantastic, I loved the characters the plot etc.
Believe it or not, aren I'm looking at you you fuck, the anime has deep underlying themes such as religion and taboo, it raises issues such as should
religious institutions be able to able to exert their sexuality on widely accepted people such as women instead of little children?
The plot follows a young buddhist priest in training who has trouble containing his sexuality, and goes through various trials including testing his faith to Buddha with many sinful girls possible corrupting him. Overall the animation quality was fairly decent, for it's time, and the ... dub cast really brings character to the story.
If you are a fan of ecchi and a riveting story of exorcisms and such then this is the anime for you.






I love it

'Amaenaide yo!!' or 'Ah! My Buddha' could be best described as an anime that sets out to deliver ecchi/harem type entertainment... and fails at it. In a nutshell, it's an ecchi anime with minimal ecchi, lots of plot holes, incoherent script and awful character development.

The story and the setting might look appealing to ecchi watchers, a young monk in a buddhist temple filled with hot nuns? It'll be interesting right? Well it would be but not in this anime. 'Ah! My Buddha' succeeds in screwing up this kind of a setting with tedious, sleep inducing subplots and fillers. In fact this whole anime feels ... like you're watching a filler that just doesn't seem to fit into anything. The story goes absolutely nowhere and half-way through this nauseating 12 episode series, you feel like you're going to vomit your brains out.

For starters, the "ecchi" here is sporadic and absolutely pathetic. Aparently the makers thought that seeing a half-covered thigh for 2 seconds classes as ecchi. Laughable. Moreover there's no finesse here, the ecchi is used in the most inappropriate moments and in the most innappropriate ways. Spirits of dead people groping teenage girls... seriously? Is that what we've lowered ourselfes to?

Second thing, the male protagonist - Ikkou Satonaka. He serves no actual legitimate purpose in this anime other than being everyone's buttmonkey. Punched in the nuts, kneed in the face and tasked with a buttload of chores. This kind of humour is only good if it's used in moderation, in this anime however it's the ONLY type of humour and it's grossly overused to the point where you just wish the male protagonist would stand up and leave the funny farm and all the slavers around him to their own fuckery.

Last but not least, all the rest of the characters and their development. The rest of the main cast, which is comprised of girls, is there to look fakely serious and remind the male protagonist that he's a "worthless piece of scum" who needs to control himself. 5 minutes later they grope each other in front of him and he gets brutally mutilated because apparently it's his fault. Uhm, excuse me? I don't know about you but I'm not a fan of sadism. This kind of a thing just doesn't appeal to me. As for character development, there is none. The characters have been 'programmed' to do the same thing every episode. Hurt Ikkou and get off on his misery. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat...

Despite the plot and the characters being dreadfuly bad, there are two things preventing this anime from being a flat out disaster. That's art and sound. The art is good and precise, granted, there are a few oddities here and there from time to time but the overall quality is impressive.

Sound is perhaps the only truly remarkable component of this anime. Suprisingly, the opening is very catchy and well made giving you the impression that you're about to watch something enjoyable. Too bad the anime itself couldn't live up to that expectation. The rest of the soundtrack is also good and voice acting, despite the horrendous plot, authentic.

That however doesn't change the fact that a majority of people will not enjoy this anime and it's current rating accurately describes what you should expect. Boredom and irritation. The setting certainly had a potential but the makers (I'm looking at you DEEN) couldn't and didn't excecute that idea in the right way. Quite the contrary, they executed it in the worst way imaginable.

You won't be missing out on anything if you decide to avoid this anime.

After taking a stroll down the alphabetical listings of Crunchyroll, I found myself stumbling upon "Ah My Buddha!!". I thought to myself, "This seems like a comical harem piece from 20-odd years ago worth dusting off!" I wish I had just gone to bed and dreamed of a better show that didn't actual exist. Because after 12 episodes of this dreck, I'm rather upset with my poor decision making.

This Studio Deen adaptation of the manga of the same name had me at least interested to start with. After all, Studio Deen has done well in the past in almost all genres. So, some seinen must ... be pretty good? WRONG! Allow me to expand upon this, Ikkou is a 16-year old boy who trains at the Buddhist temple run by his grandmother. He is the only male in the ranks of similarly aged Buddhist nuns in training whom are all drop dead gorgeous archetypes of anime sex objects. Does hilarity ensue? Only if you're interested in the same, "Oh, you saw me naked by opening the door so here's a punch so hard you go through the wall!" scenarios that all of us have seen again and again and again.

"Well, this could be saved by some character development and good storytelling!" I tell myself. I hung on for the whole series and was practically punching the wall in frustration at not just how poorly the characters and world are built, but how simply it could have been rectified. I was reminded of "The Cafe Terrace and It's Goddesses" in terms of lack of a motivating plot to lynchpin the story together, but at least that title had the presence of mind to flesh out it's female roster by doing more than just showing us acres of flesh. "Ah My Buddha!!" has each character distinctly drawn, but outside of the "best girl" being set up early on- it's kind of difficult to care about them when the stakes of each episode are so low.

A typical episode goes like this; there are ghosts in this world. They are so normal, they appear as humans and act so natural it's sometimes a "twist" that they're of the un-quiet dead. Ikkou has a gift that when sexually aroused he turns into a super-monk capable of settling even the harshest of restless souls and sending them to the afterlife. So, we get a ghost or supernatural creature and then things get dicey, so one (or more) of the nuns disrobe to stimulate Ikkou into his final form and win the day. Rinse. Repeat.

Formal antagonists are introduced much too late and are kept nameless, sort of building interest in a second season... wait, there's more?! Nevermind that now. Ikkou could be more than a "We have Tenchi Muyo at home" looking horn dog, but his good points are given lip service so we don't just hate the guy as the biggest pervert this side of Ryo Saeba without a pistol. I wish the ladies each got more of a spotlight to develop themselves from time to time, but I'm still not even sure of half their names after 12 episodes! This series somehow got an English dub and one so mediocre you would think the VAs were using their audition tapes.

This show is bad. The sad thing is I'll probably end up seeing the rest of it just for the sake of chaos itself. Can't take my eyes off a train wreck, can I? 3/10. Skip it. Buddha forgives- I DON'T.