Last year, I reviewed a god awful hentai called Gauss as a farewell to Studio Arms when they announced they were likely going bankrupt. Now that they're finally bankrupt and liquidated, I feel compelled to do just one more! Since Elfen Lied has been my favorite anime since 2006, I have a long relationship with anime's least loved studio. Nobody else on MAL is going to give them a sendoff, so it's my duty! Today's review is looking at One: True Stories. This is based on a Key visual novel with character designs by the same lady who did Clannad, Air, and Little Busters. There areactually 2 version of this production. The first is a 3 episode, super condensed OVA that does a horrible job capturing the original VN. Then studio Arms decided to randomly insert a few sex scenes and release the same anime again as a hentai!

This doesn't really work well as a hentai. Firstly, the character designs are meant to be cute with their MASSIVE eyes, but not really "sexy". Secondly the pacing is some of the oddest I've ever seen in a hentai. Do you want to know how long it takes to see so much as one tit? 25 minutes! That's longer than any of Arm's non-hentai anime! What do we get instead? A boring highschool student skips out on cleaning duty and waxes philosophical about bullshit on the school roof. "The world feels like it's slowing down. I hear the dogs barking in the distance and the sound of rolling thunder from beyond the hills. Will I be able to follow those sounds?" Bruh, this is a HENTAI! This hentai is so selfish it's jerking itself off before getting the audience off! I have never in my life seen a hentai with so much meandering Tumblr poetry for no reason. It's like the MC thinks that he's Bob Dylan...and he's not.

Since this hentai is very slow and takes itself quite seriously, you would expect a wholesome romance right? Instead, the director decided to adapt each branch from the VN and have the character bang a different girl in each episode. That's because this is directed by Kan Fukomoto, best known for directing tentacle rape hentai like La Blue Girl and Wordsworth. He's not exactly a tender, romantic type.

So at least the animation will be good right? Studio Arms was known for having pretty decent animation for its hentai. PLEASE say we got Rin Shin or Yasuomi Umetsu. Nope! Just the guy who did the animation direction for Ninja Resurrection!

For 25 years, Arms was one of the strangest and least loved studios in anime. However, I will argue they were actually important! Their hentai Kite was able to somehow become a cult classic in the West, which was referenced in music videos and even received a live action remake with Samuel L Jackson of all people! Elfen Lied was listed as a key inspiration for season 1 of Stranger Things, which became a merchandise empire and the #1 show on Netflix worldwide. This obscure hentai studio was actually able to leave a stamp on pop culture like few other anime studios. Even the most casual anime fans and people who have never seen anime in their lives have heard of some of the anime produced by these schlockmeisters, which is more than I could say for 98% of anime studios.

Instead of writing my own eulogy for Arms. I'm just going to re-use the eulogy Bill Murray wrote for John Belushi.

"He actually enjoyed disgusting people! Being disgusting! The thrill of offending people and making them uncomfortable. He was despicable! (holding back tears) He will not be missed!"