CREAM LEMON: LEMON ANGEL

DESCRIPTION

CAST

TV SHORT EcchiLemon Angel (1988)
OVA ComedyCream Lemon

REVIEWS

• 

  mechamagica

  80/100
  Lemon Angel has some bizarre charm and atmosphere even if it wasn't really supposed to.

  I don't know why I feel compelled to write this as my one and only anime review. _Lemon Angel_ is a bizarre 37-episode ecchi series, serving as a few things: a spinoff of the greater _Cream Lemon_ hentai series, an advertisement for said hentai series (sharing some similarly lascivious content), and *also* an advertisement for the up and coming idol group by the same name—Lemon Angel. I get the impression that it served as an early influence for later crossover promotional media for idols. The idol group themselves had some nice tunes to their name, several of which serve as the background music here, both in their original album-recording form and in arranged forms sans vocals. I think this is the basis of a lot of what makes this odd series fascinating to me: the songs often lend any given scene an entirely different /feeling/ from what it might have conveyed without that music, becoming bittersweet or joyous at times that are so ill-befitting that it leans into the surreal—or, in other cases, making some of the more exploitative scenarios (played for titillation and/or laughs, mind) a bit more eerie. Probably not on purpose. The bulk of the content itself consists primarily of the anime alter-egos of the idols themselves (voiced by the actual idols, of course, sometimes to very humorous effect!) being thrust into oddball erotic scenarios, many of which they of course protest. Train groping, bizarre noncon scenes, sexual dreams come to life, everyday love stories, and some strange bouts of outright surrealism and/or slapstick gags. The animation itself is limited indeed, with many selectively still shots, regularly including entirely non-animated dialogue scenes. It's another aspect that seems to lend the whole series a very strange and hypnotic quality at times. Pivoting back to the _eerie_ quality that this show conveys to me at times: it's full of very Japanese sexual cliches, and there is a casual nonchalance about it that reflects its age especially. The girls are compliant in these horny little vignettes and often casually narrate over scenes, seemingly unaffected and unbothered by the almost insidious nature of its sexual content; to everyone involved, it's all normal enough. The slightly plastic, yet wistful sound of the pop songs to which these scenes are set frequently re-contextualizes the very strange casual attitude of the series in a somewhat unnerving and always fascinating way for me. I genuinely enjoyed this because I get a kick out of its charming '80s visual style, and I get a kick out of its charming '80s idol music—and, in simple terms, that's exactly the goal. But to me it's also a strangely captivating little time capsule that reflects some uncomfortable social ills. If you're not as weird as I am, you will not like it nearly this much, but godspeed if you are.
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