Interspecies Reviewers

Episode 9

Interspecies Reviewers has featured such crazy content in its first eight episodes that even a visit to an undead brothel doesn't count as the most bizarre in a general sense or the freakiest in a sexual sense. (Those honors still go quite firmly to the egg-laying experience a couple of episodes back.) Still, it isn't for lack of effort, and there are all kinds of risqué jokes just begging to be made here.

The explanation for the existence of the brothel Necrowaif (and yeah, we won't dwell on the meaning of that name too much) is pretty clever: it exists primarily to service a vampire count who lives in a castle several days' journey out in the wilderness. Since the count can sleep for years at a time, and thus might be visiting only once a decade or so, all of the succu-girls have to be undead just to be around that long and without losing their minds from boredom. Hence it's not an establishment which is going to see normal traffic. The reason why Stunk, Zel, and Bruise are there is laid out just as neatly: they're delivering items for the count, and he happened to overhear them talking about being eager to get back to a brothel in town. Some of the options here range from amusing (the busty ghost who can only encourage a customer to masturbate) to just plain wrong (the skeleton succu-girl), though all but Bruise end up with more living-like succu-girls like the zombie girl receptionist (who wins points for literally putting her brain back in her head upon customers' arrival), a Chinese hopping vampire known as a jiangshi, and a vampiress. This installment also doesn't fail to bring up practical issues, like the zombie bodies being cold or the faint rotting smell that's too much for a beastman.

This time around the second half is less a second visit and more a collection of tidbits. One involves Crim's solo visit to a brothel where magically-created and animated slime is used rather than direct physical contact with a succu-girl, who doesn't even disrobe. This is different from the slime girl used earlier, as it's more about being stimulated all over by a lotion-like substance rather than an adaptation of traditional sex, and it's not hard to understand why Crim really got into it or piqued the interests of Stunk and Zel with their description of the experience. The reveal that an Archmage is apparently responsible for the more magically-themed brothels like the animated slime place and the Gender-Swap Inn is also interesting; given the direction that the next episode is going, that may not be an idle detail.

The other part is the shocking discovery that the reviewers now have some competition, as it seems like a few others are also running with the same idea. The biggest point of interest here is that one of these new reviewers is a bi-leaning succubus who is also whole-heartedly into creating erotic lesbian films. That gives the series an excuse to bring both the hyena and halfling succu-girls back for the first pure lesbian action, and while much of the action is blank-screened, the scene gives the impression of being one of the steamiest yet. This part also involves a rarity for this series: setting up a plot thread for the next episode. In this case, it's sending the guys (with Crim included this time) on a journey to a brothel in the “magic city” which got top marks from the other reviewers. Gotta admit, I'm curious to see what that entails.

As a final thought, the person who is doing the subtitles for AnimeLab for this series deserves a call-out for the exceptional job being turned in here. This series had to be particularly challenging, especially with words being bleeped out in the Japanese dialog and sexual slang no doubt varying between the two languages, but every week the subtitles have been smooth and appropriately saucy. Perhaps most importantly, they don't come across as trying too hard to be hip. Honestly, I can't imagine that task being done better right now.

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Interspecies Reviewers is currently streaming on AnimeLab in Australia and New Zealand.