Welcome to D50’s Hentai Corner, part of Otaku’s weekly anime feature. The current plan is to have the Hentai Corner every first weekend of the month, and three other monthly features with different themes. We’ll see how long that lasts. This week, I’m here to talk about about a little series called Hitoriga.
It’s about rape, humiliation, and manipulation. If you had certain expectations of this anime based on the above screencap, congratulations; you’ve successfully been bait-and-switch’d. Seriously, I have seen a LOT of rape hentai, and I’ve deleted more than half of them. This one isn’t necessarily a “keeper” by my standards, but for some odd reason I haven’t deleted it yet. It’s not the worst that I’ve seen, but it is rather extreme in a different way than you might expect.
FYI, the version I’ve watched is without subtitles, so I’m guessing the story purely by the actions of the characters. The heroine is a young girl that gets molested in a train. She goes to a counselor to help her through the trauma of that day. So far, the plot is respectable and more realistic than most. Then comes the truly horrible part. Her counselor drugs and hypnotizes her, forcing her to relive that trauma in her dreams while he has his way with her in reality. The counselor apparently is able to plant hypnotic suggestions as well, causing her to react more pervertedly in key situations and getting her to travel to places for him to meet up and start another terrible counseling session. Throughout the series she drifts between reality and hypnotic nightmare, and both worlds are hellish. That’s right; this is an anime about a girl that gets raped AND mind-raped AT THE SAME TIME.
Throughout the series, you can’t help but feel anything other than ridiculously sorry for this girl, and it’s frustrating as hell that the villains barely get any comeuppance at all. It’s fucking depressing. Since I know no one here is actually going to watch it, here’s a spoiler: by the end of the series, she finds out what’s been going on with her counselor and she angrily confronts her. Then makes love with a true lover. Only she’s actually just been hypnotized by the counselor into thinking that last part happened and she completely breaks mentally.
If you were to actually watch this all the way through, I doubt there’s a feel-good anime out there that can make you feel clean afterwards.
On to the ratings:
Wankability : 4
To its credit, Hitoriga boasts some of the most arousingly-drawn animations I have ever seen. But if you were to actually fap over it, be prepared to feel incredible amounts of guilt.
Pleasure Rating: “I can’t believe I watched the whole thing”
Rewatchability: 3
Once you’ve seen it, there’s no reason to see it again, unless it’s for wanking. In which case, despite the subject matter, the animation quality is just that good. It’s really a shame it couldn’t be used for the powers of good… though if you’re looking for something on the other side of the morality spectrum and of equal or greater animation quality, I strongly suggest Hatsu Inu.
Music: Forgettable
Marketability: 2
It caters to some strong niches, but being hentai niches, it doesn’t lend itself to much growth potential. You’d be hard-pressed to find someone that would be proud to display a Hitoriga poster, I imagine.
The Bottom Line: Hitoriga is something truly unique, even amongst rape hentai. But in the end, it’s just far too depressing and niche to really suggest to anyone except someone you know to be a certain kind of depraved. I believe a group has subtitled it by now, but I just don’t feel like getting it.