Karen

By Chris Beveridge     June 08, 2002
Release Date: May 30, 2002



What They Say
During the school soccer game, the cheering squad rebels against its captain, Ryo, and threatens to quit. To keep her squad together, Ryo accepts a challenge from her squad members. The first challenge is to keep cheering perfectly while having a sex toy inside her the whole time.

However, the challenges keep getting worse. Ryo is sexually assaulted by the cheerleading squad. She is forced to agree to group sex with the rugby team. Will Ryo be able to complete the challenges? Will she be able to keep the team together, and remain the captain?

The Review!
Karen is single episode tale of a woman in a mans world, who ends up using her assets in ways she probably didn’t expect. The story in the end is something of a downer to be sure.

Audio:
For our primary viewing session, we listened to this disc in its original language of Japanese. This is a pretty straightforward stereo mix with nothing going to the rear channels and only some minor directionality across the forward soundstage. Dialogue is nice and clear and we noticed no dropouts or distortions on either track.

Video:
The transfer for this disc is fairly ok, but there are some minor issues with it which seem to be in the materials themselves. There’s a fair amount of aliasing, especially during panning sequences and there’s a definite layer of cross coloration hovering around the edges of the characters. Colors look nice and solid and backgrounds don’t exhibit any macroblocking.

Packaging:
The main cover shows Karen in her state of undress showing how she tries to deny her physical attributes as well as a version of her in the school uniform. The back cover provides a number of screenshots of animation and a summary of what to expect. The discs features and staff are clearly listed as well. And as with all NuTech discs to date, there is no insert in this release.

Menu:
Using the sports theme, the main menu loads to a stadium shot and the big display where it settles and provides some animation and the menu selections. Access times are nice and fast and the main menu loads pretty quickly. The layout is everything we’ve seen before from NuTech so there’s no surprises here.

Extras:
The only extra included here is a minute long video gallery that shows various stills from the episodes to music.

Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
The story of Karen focuses on the character or Ryo as she’s the leader of the male cheer squad. Now, these aren’t cheerleaders, they’re men in their full school uniform simply doing the “hurray, hurray” and school name with it while one of them beats on the big drum. The school also has a cheerleading squad, which plays the more expected routine.

Apparently she got to be captain of the cheering squad through sheer determination, with the tryouts being based around who can hold the flag in the gear you wear the longest. She managed to hold out longer than any guy, so she gets to wear the boys uniform when participating and leads the squad on the field. But apparently she’s pushed them harder than anyone else, and has no caused a revolt, which would lead to the first time in the schools ninety year history that there wouldn’t be a cheer squad.

The squads solution for Ryo? They essentially try to humiliate her out of the squad by having her do various things, such as getting training with the cheerleading squad without wearing her panties, sleeping with the rugby team for every point they score and having her “wired” for more than half a game without being able to do anything about it.

The show works the humiliation angle pretty well and forces her into situations she definitely doesn’t want, but ends up liking in the end. These kinds of shows really aren’t the kind I like, but for those who do, the way the disc came out is fairly ok. The only main visual issue that bothered us was the aliasing that was so prominent.

Features
Japanese Language,English Language,English Subtitles,Image Gallery

Review Equipment
Toshiba TW40X81 40" HDTV, Skyworth 1050P Progressive Scan codefree DVD player, Sony STR-DE835 DD/DTS receiver, Monster component cable and Sony speakers.