Five Card Episode 2 Review

Running Time: 29 min.

Director: Akebi Haruno

Cast: Anime featuring the voices of Inari Vachs and Tabitha Stevens

Initial Expectations: Outside of being under a half hour, Five Card 1 impressed me. I’m expecting more of the same here.

Initial Reaction: It’s another nicely done episode, but a lacking DVD.

Who Should Watch It : Anybody who likes anime or is curious about it

Who Should Avoid It: Anybody wanting to watch consensual sex

Audio /Video Quality: The technical aspects are pretty impressive. The audio is clear and well balanced, as is the video. There aren’t any great feats of animation here, but for Japanese anime, it looks about as good as I’ve seen it.

Music: The music is about the same as what you hear on Japanese cartoons today, or at least it sounded about like what I heard in the thirty seconds of Pokemon I once endured. It’s nicely balanced with the rest of the audio, and fits the cartoon feel very well.

Disc Complaints: The feature doesn’t even run a half hour, and there’s only four episodes in the series. From what I understand, the cost difference between authoring a half hour feature and a two hour feature is almost negligible. NuTech could have put this entire series on one DVD-10 (the same disc their using for each single episode)! I think this would have cut their costs significantly, and they could have passed the savings onto the customer while making just as much money. It also makes you appear very greedy and uncaring to me. All combined, it means that although I really like the feature, I can’t think too highly about the overall DVD. When I look at the anime offerings that companies like A18 / Central Park and Kitty are offering, my thoughts on the overall DVD only sink lower.

Menus: The menus are animated with the same feel as the movie. The main menu has a nice little bit of animation, and the chapter menu lets you choose a scene based on a small clip of the scene and a scene title.

The Feature: Daina Nariyuki is one of the most popular teaches in school. He’s young, charming, handsome, and he knows it. His main goal, however, is to get in the pants of four of his students, a jock, a bookworm, the student council vice president, and a loner, as well as his assistant. Onikuma, the dean of students and basketball coach, has plans of his own for many of Daina’s planned conquests, which Daina and Mayu start to learn more about in this episode.

Naoki, the jock, is the focus of several small scenes next. Onikuma, the dean of students fucks her, he turns her into a whore, molests her on the basketball court, and finally gives her some juice drugged with aphrodisiacs rather than the performance enhancing drugs he told her they were. She masturbates for him out of control and then begs him to fuck her. Unlike most anime pop shots, this one actually ends with a facial. It’s a decently done scene that’s much more stroke-able than most Japanese scenes I’ve watched due to Naoki’s obviously wanting sex and getting pleasure out of it, even if it is drug induced.

Mimika, the loner, fucks herself on a dildo in the next scene after the dean drugs her with an aphrodisiac. She hates him, but ends up begging for his cock and he only lets her have the plastic one. Naoki gets turned on as she watches Mimika, and first plays with herself and then sucks the dean’s cock. Amazingly, Naoki’s portion of the scene is completely consensual, and the lead-in to it is very well done. There’s definitely a dark overtone here, but the consensual, lustful part of the scene with Naoki made it work very good for me.

Lisa decides that Daina needs to have sex with her after learning that he and Mayu had sex earlier. Most of the scene is a flashback to Lisa pleasuring herself, but there’s a little sex too. It blends in nicely with some of the plot, and although far too short and limited sexually, it works great for the overall story.

Five Card 2 nicely continues the series. The sex is a bit more varied, although it isn’t quite as well done, and the storyline proceeds nicely through it. Sadly, as much as I like it, I have a very hard time recommending it for somebody to purchase. Other companies, such as Central Park and Kitty, offer anime DVDs with full length features or entire series for roughly the same price as this one. Maybe it’s the cheap Scot in me, but I can’t help but feel a bit ripped off when I pay over ten bucks for a DVD and I only get a half hour feature. Granted, I was really interested in this title, but the entire series could have easily been fit on one DVD. Five Card 2 is a nice feature, but overpriced for what you get. Rent this one before you buy it.

Extras: The extras are the same on every Five Card DVD. There are three photo galleries, one for Tabitha Stevens, one for Inari Vachs, and one for the feature. Each gallery lasts about two minutes with six seconds per very nice looking full screen photo. The B-side of the DVD is also devoted to trailers of other Nu-Tech movies.

Themes: Straight, non-consensual sex, rape, prostitution, masturbation, squirting, toys, and B&D

Raincoat Factor: Medium High

Condom Usage: None.

Overall: Currently, the Five Card series can be found online for between $11 and $22, with several stores offering it near the low end, or you can pick up the entire series as a four DVD box set for between $25 and $77 with many stores offering it for around $40. Although I can justify the $25 for the box set, I have a hard time justifying anything over ten bucks for a half hour DVD even if it is well done like this one.

Note to NuTech: It looks like your marketing scheme is to gradually bleed people’s money away rather than giving them a decent product at a fair price. With companies like A18 / Central Park and Kitty offering a similar product at a better price and more attractive offering, such as offering entire anime series on one DVD (which would have been easy to do here) for roughly the same price as what you get for a single episode, as well as giving them extras and a great transfer. I’m sure your competition is very happy to have you continuing to produce DVDs like this. It’s the best help they could hope for.

If you have any questions or comments, please e-mail me .

Other reviews by Astroknight