[US Adult DVD] Sinners Paradise: Genesis

[Chris Beveridge]

Review by Chris Beveridge

Mania Grade: D
* Audio Rating: B+
* Video Rating: B
* Packaging Rating: C
* Menus Rating: B
* Extras Rating: C+
* Age Rating: 18 and Up
* Region: 1 - North America
* Released By: Critical Mass Video
* MSRP: 19.99
* Running time: 30
* Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
* Disc Resolution: 480i/p
* Disc Encoding: MPEG-2
* Series: Sinners Paradise

In Summary:
Watching this out of order likely hurt my enjoyment of it, but I don’t think I would have gotten much out of this anyway. This first episode really doesn’t seem to have much to it because like the second one, it plays out in a fairly disjointed form and isn’t exactly clear about a lot of the details. It’s a cruel and crude piece with alternate dimensional male characters that are generally faceless and without any kind of actual character to them to make it a compelling epic story that they seem to want to tell. There’s little that I can find to recommend here as I didn’t care for the character designs overall or the plot, never mind the non-consensual and uninteresting sex scenes. Vanilla tends to be pretty hit or miss with their stuff, but I’ve found when they have a miss they generally are a big miss for me. And this is one of those.

[Hayate Kurogane]

Hmmm...definitely not near the top of the list in terms of good hentai, but I guess I enjoyed it more than I had any right to?

I did like the character designs, and Erika's tan lines, though a rather uncommon design choice, did work for me (uh, another personal fetish revealed to the masses?). The only thing I found odd about the designs was the girls' diminutive shoulders; it's not as weird as it sounds, but... well, folks can take a look for themselves and make their own decisions.

While the animation isn't going to win any awards either, I was pleased to see that it was better overall, and with more on-model consistency if nothing else, than many of Vanilla's offerings over the past few years.

And, while this is kind of a strange observation to make, I thought the (Japanese) voice acting was actually pretty good. Yes, yes, there's the moaning and panting and all that, but you listen to the opening scene where Erika and Akino are hanging out on the roof of the school, and their conversation is actually quite sprightly and natural. Maybe the seiyuu were just having extra fun with a somewhat normal scene when juxtaposed with the awkward (to some degree, whether they're used to voicing hentai or not) sex scenes. I don't know. I just thought it was more lively, as a relatively actionless scene, than such scenes as found in a number of "regular" anime voiced by veterans.

At the risk of sounding completely out to lunch, I'll also give props to Erika's seiyuu managing to come across as, well, not boring as possible when she's gagged and watching her teacher get raped by a group of soldiers. There's only so much you can do vocally when your character has a rag stuffed in her mouth, and is supposed to be scared and shocked for like five minutes, so, bonus points for as good an effort as can be expected in such a situation.