Monster Mush

Oh, the things I stumble upon…..
There’s a project on which I am currently working, that I have yet to make any official mention of, which involves a Naga; one of the serpentine deities that appear across several Asian mythologies.
As with all my projects, I nose around on the internet to make sure my designs aren’t inadvertently similar to existing ones. With everyone being exposed to the same content thanks to global communication, the risk of likeminded individuals with no connection producing similar material is increasingly common. This led me to the discovery of a character called Miia and cause for me to once again write: “Dear Japan. WTF?”

Monster Musume, a manga, a video game and an anime, is described on Wikipedia as a “Fantasy Harem Comedy”. The “fantasy” aspect stems from its gaggle of female characters being mostly titted versions of cliché RPG encounters. The one whose depiction led me here, Miia, is a snake woman who shared a couple of minor physical similarities with my design: elf-like ears and scaly sideburns. Details that I plan to change, because I don’t want to run the risk of people suggesting I was inspired in any way by this product.
Why? Surely the sexy character design is just my thing?
Visually, certainly, I could watch that centaur lady bounce around all day, but there’s more to a character design than that. The creatures on display here are the most 2 dimensional wank fantasies you’ll ever find.
This is the first “harem” anime I’ve ever watched simply because the concept is so f**king offensive I’ve actively avoided it thus far: a mob of females fawn all over a single, “unlucky” male, doing all they can to be what the writers perceive as perfect bride material; subservient bimbos who will cook and clean and happily pork the Master of the house whenever he’s in the mood.
Now, it doesn’t matter what you dress this up with, be it the unusual spin of the girls being monsters or it being a comedy (the Japanese interpretation of it, at least: Benny Hill meets Robert Rodriguez), it’s so devoid of dignity and insulting to the intelligence of all that the concept is unforgivable. It is beyond redemption and you’d be hard pressed to imagine a way it could be made worse.

But they give it a go.

Papi is the second monster girl to show up in the series. She’s a harpy who looks about the age of a school girl. Yeah. You know enough about Japan to know where this is going. That sinister obsession they seem to have with underage girls? It’s here, as the cover art suggests it is in most “harem” series. But what makes Papi’s presence so much more “wrong” than in other examples is that here they actually try to make an excuse for it. They try to make it sound just fine that she can be seen as a potential partner for the “hero” of the piece: Harpies, we’re told, have smaller, child-like bodies, so that they may fly. She may LOOK like she’s 12, but it’s OK: she’s the same age as her busty house-mates, so you don’t have to feel guilty at all! Continue jerking off.

I will admit to having watched 5 or 6 episodes. To start with, I thought it was going to be a self-aware parody that was mocking the genre. When I found out that wasn’t the case, I kept going as I was morbidly curious to see just how bad it was going to get. Beyond that, my main reason for hanging around was the irritatingly catchy theme tune: www.youtube.com/watch?v=7BGYzZ…
I’ve no idea what the lyrics are (probably something about how much they enjoy housework) but it’s got itself firmly stuck in my head.

I’m done with it now. I've had enough. I can't stand any more. I need to go watch a cocktail of Batman The Animated Series and X-Files to try and purge this horror from my subconscious.