The original Shoujo Sect manga was a series of very loosely connected “Plot, What Plot”-type Yuri porn chapters set in an ubiquitous girls school. While the couples depicted in each chapter may or may not have had any relationship to each other, the larger story – what there was of it – revolved around the promiscuous playgirl Honda Shinobu and schoolmate Naitou Momoko. Momoko moved through many of the early chapters as a catalyst or voyuer, while many of the stories directly involved Shinobu or members of her harem.

The stories were, in most ways, completely meritless porn, (which of course means that many people think they are awesome) but at the end of the second novel, several surprising things happened. A plot complication arises that separates Momoko and Shinobu and ultimately, they meet each other once again and finally become lovers. The end of the book ties up their story in a wildly amusing epilogue that was so charming in it’s own cracked way that it quite made the whole work for me. (For slightly more detail, feel free to read my reviews of Volume 1 and Volume 2.)

The anime is…odd. I expected it to follow the same PWP format of the books, basically following one primary couple per OAV, with an extended sex scene. Instead, it rewrites, cuts and pastes pieces of the stories into a slightly new whole and, even more bizarrely – adds details where there were none previously. Like, they were *trying* to make a real story out of it. Sadly, it doesn’t really work.

When we join the anime, Shinobu has a reputation as the school “bad girl” and she flashes her underwear to prove it. Momoko remains the catalyst/voyeur for the first couple, whom many Yuri fans will be pleased to know are sisters. There were two things that made it hard for me to find their sex scene appealing – 1) the noises they were making sounded rather like they were chewing their own arms off, as opposed to having what was supposed to have been enjoyable sex and; 2) in at least one moment I couldn’t help but notice that their hair and nipples were color coordinated. ^_^; This was so distracting that I was simply unable to stop laughing throughout.

In fact, I laughed through a great deal of this anime. I guess that’s pretty normal for porn, since it’s quite often laughably bad, but since I don’t watch it, I’ll have to take other people’s word for it. (No, I actually don’t. Live-action porn bores me to tears. I’d rather spend an hour at the dentist’s. Really. Anime porn usually makes me laugh, so there you go, I guess.)

The upshot of all this is – the Shoujo Sect anime had a lot of talking, some really choppy story-telling and howlingly funny sex. If you actually liked the manga, then you may really want to avoid this as being vastly inferior to what is hardly a work of literature. If, “zOMG Yuri hentai – all girls, no penor!” then by all means, please enjoy.

Ratings:

Art – 8
Story – 6 as a comedy, 4 as a drama
Characters – 7
Yuri – 10
Service – 8

I was marginally irked that my favorite couple was turned into a school legend and their roles were switched, but it’s not like I’m going to lose sleep over it. ^_^