Hi all,
I received today my copy of Dorei Ichiba OVA (translated as Slave Market) and between ROD TV, Flutter of Birds or ComiPa TV, I decided to watch this one first. As you can imagine, this quick look contains spoilers, so, caveat emptor.
Now, before continuing, I haven’t played Dorei Ichiba nor Dorei Ichiba ~ Renaissance, but at least, I do know that the OVAs are based on the game. If you want to check more info posted previously regarding Dorei Ichiba (specially the endings and the plot), you can check them here and here, specially posts from Orochi.
The anime feature the three girls, Bianca, Cecilia and Myia (in this order). Each OVA goes through each girl, how Casius (the main “guy”) got to know each girl. The girl in the cover is Cecilia and, needless to say, it makes quite an attractive cover. Some sex scenes are consensual (for example, one from Cecilia), but they are mostly rape. On the plus side, the anime is not 75% dedicated to sex scenes as it had some plot, but, unfortunately, it contains scenes that are, well, in my opinion disgusting (defecation and urination, et al).
As for the story itself, it started OK, but from the second half of the Cecilia’s story, it went downhill, as Casius himself admits. Since I am a sucker for jun’ai and/or ren’ai endings, I was hoping for such an ending, but alas there was no chance it would happen [specially after watching Cecilia’s episode where she protects him and says “He (Casius) might be a bad man, but there was a time he was kind”]. At the end, Casius was killed in such a horrid way, that I will have to say he deserved it.
Putting the story aside, as a plus, they have the intro of Dorei Ichiba (the game), “To Lose to Amber” and I’ve is credited for the endings (there were no intro for the OVAs). As you can imagine, there is no reference of this anime being related to a game. In fact, I am relieved that they DIDN’T mention it was related to the game (sure, according to Orochi, it has jun’ai endings, but there are more bad endings than good endings…) as people might get the wrong idea. If the game is ever released to the English market, I might think about getting it or not. If the anime is a reflection of the game, I might end up not getting it (as a side note, I haven’t purchased Gibo, yet).
Conclusion: putting the game aside and judging it only as a stand-alone anime, I would say it is above average to other anime like this one (hey, at least it had some plot). However, elements like defecation and urination might turn some people off…
[This message has been edited by fxho (edited 07-27-2004).]