Alternative titles: Shimoneta to Iu Gainen ga Sonzai Shinai Taikutsu na Sekai
Light Novel Adaptation by GENKO
Streaming on Funimation

Premise

Seriously, just read the title.

colons’ verdict: I shouldn’t expect cultural criticism from pornography

Shimoneta is a show about the dangers of a particular kind of oppression that many real cultures are dealing with today. It is about revolutionaries and freedom fighters. It is about the dangers of teaching celibacy, of pretending that sex doesn’t exist, of suppressing the oldest and most natural speech humans have. In this world, every citizen wears a necklace which detects when they say anything deemed ‘unhealthy’ and alerts the authorities, who duly descend on ropes down the sides of buildings and kick through windows to arrest them. Everyone talks in euphemisms, and the education system does not teach children how reproduction works.

Episode one sets up our characters in their natural setting. Shit Protag, who you already know, is a transfer student from a school known for having ‘the worst morals.’ We meet him on the way to his first day at a famously clean, healthy school. At one point, a fellow student emerges from under his desk into his crotch area and asks him where babies come from.

Blue Snow is a revolutionary; a woman wearing underwear over her face who yells difficult-to-localise dirty puns and distributes pornographic trading cards to unsuspecting citizens in expertly-orchestrated attacks. She’s also Ayame Kajou, a member of the Student Council to Help Protect Public Morality. She’s basically Sex Batman.

By the end of the episode, Sex Batman and Shit Protag have together organised an attack in which a school assembly is interrupted with footage of two flies having sex, while Sex Batman offers graphic and enthusiastic voice-over. Of course, being shocked by the very existence of ‘lasciviousness’, the student body is confused and not sure what to do with this somehow new sensation brought on by the footage. A victory for awareness!

You may be thinking this makes for a strong, positive message. What you have to remember is that Shimoneta is also a super tropey light novel adaptation, and the entire premise appears to exist exclusively to provide Shit Protag with a harem populated by women with a particular interest in some kind of sexual liberation. The front cover of the first book doesn’t exactly pretend otherwise, and neither does the show. It is a critique of Japan’s peculiar obscenity laws, delivered with as little nuance as possible.

Perhaps the marketing is just bait, and they’re going to turn it around and teach their implied demographic something valuable. Or maybe I’m reading too far into it, and the fact that this show is so shallow is the whole point. There could be art here. I’m not holding my breath.

Marlin’s verdict: Soulless

I couldn’t agree with colons more in general and less in principle. The entire premise of this show is predicated on a lie, because humans have sexuality it means they must be able to express it at all times. Also, the way I see it, our “sex terrorist” is far less progressive than any of her classmates. She seems desperately clinging to this false idea that people should always do what “feels good” to them. This basal appeal to desires as opposed to actually pursing is just a hollow crutch. All she really is doing is spouting “dirty” words and invading people’s lives to satisfy her delusions of how people should act. It’s childish to the point of ridiculousness, and any thought that this could be commentary is laughable at best, frightening at worst. It’s also predicated on the absolutely nonsensical logic that knowledge about sex somehow perpetuates obscenity. It’s obviously not knowledge of the act, but the inability of people to place any restraint on their behavior. I learned about human anatomy long before it was the subject of any crude middle school jokes, and there was never any correlation between the two. The later terrorism makes it seem like this was the first time these students were aroused in their lives, but that in itself does a disservice to the very underpinnings of human psychology. This show is a disgrace and something that should be offensive to everyone except perhaps those like the petulant manchild that wrote this trash to begin with.