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30-sai no Hoken Taiiku (30HT) is supposed to be a sex guide for 30 year old virgins but only ends up being a light time-waster. The concept is very interesting and there have been some other attempts at it along the years, but they all end up taking the comedy routine and are thus mostly erotic comedies (or even parodies of this sad situation) so don’t exactly expect to learn how to get yourself wise and deflowered by watching it.

There is no other way to explain how dull it felt for me without comparing it to the oldest of this kind, a set of OVAs titled Futari Ecchi (FE) and in a way it is a semi-review of it as well. Whatever, once again the first title of a genre is the best and the point of reference to all those that followed it. Don’t blame me if the successors of an idea barely manage to do something better with it.

The anime adaptation only covers the first chapters of an extremely long and still on-going manga but the issue is dealt in a very bold and interesting way. 30HT on the other hand is hardly trying to have the same feeling and context. So compared to FE, it loses on all aspects.
- Very short episodes. No time to get into the mood properly.
- Censorship of the bad kind. FE was keeping the naughty parts invisible or replaced them with bananas. Here, they use these stupid boxes that hide everything and they can’t even speak basic naughty words without being BLEEPED.
- The advises it gives are mostly about dating and flirting, and even those are things most people know anyhow. FE was about ACTUAL sex education.
- Barely any actual sex; the whole show is a slow build-up with high amounts of non-H ecchi towards the first time, while FE was beginning straight with it.
- Stupid Deus ex machina cupids. I mean seriously, you get these supernatural chibi thingies messing with the characters lives because fate demands it or something. HORSE SHIT! FE was always about normal people having to find the guts and the brains to learn and do things right on their own instead of waiting some miracle to happen. Noce messages you give use there you stupid show; it’s like only God can help middle aged virgins.
- Not many characters present. Although FE was also focusing on the main two, there were still many others (especially in the manga) whose advises and their own sex life issues were constantly present to flavour the plot. Over here it remains very basic and linear.
- Low production values. Ok, they weren’t that high in FE either, but DAMN look how cute everybody looks. The cupids are excused somewhat but the main characters are supposed to be middle aged people and look like they are still twelve or something. Stupid moe fad; leave me alone!

So after all this mess what are you left with? A high amount of sex jokes around a four-eyed dork and a frustrated damsel. They are pitiful and I guess there will be many amongst the target audience who will identify with their issues. They are also kept as blunt as possible to make them as identifiable as possible but that is exactly what makes them nothing more than generic plot devises and not fleshed out personalities. Plus, the show DOESN’T teach you anything significant. The FE manga had endless charts of statistics and graphs and stuff about the human body but this one is just the basic stuff you can learn by simply scrolling through porn sites or something.

So in all, it is not much of a title to have high expectations about. Watching any high calibre ecchi or harem show will most likely be more entertaining than this for having better production values and for not pretending to be meaningful.

And now for some excused scorings.

SUGGESTION LIST
Futari Ecchi
B Gata H Kei