Five Card Episode 4 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, this series has impressed me. I’m expecting more of the same here, although not much of an overall DVD.

Initial Reaction: It’s a nice end to the series, but as usual the DVD is lacking greatly.

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. Unfortunately, Onikuma, the dean of students and basketball coach, has plans of his own for many of Daina’s planned conquests. Daina finally figures out what Onikuma’s doing, and sets out to free his Queens.

Daina and Naoke start things off. Actually, they start things off with a bit of the scene from the previous episode. Daina gives Naoke a facial as well as an internal pop, with the footage being having a fairly even split between old and new action.

Daina heads over to get a taste of Lisa next, so they can finish what they began a couple episodes ago. They exchange oral favors with Daina pulling a Clinton and popping on Lisa’s uniform. They still manage to fuck, and Daina gives Lisa a second pop in her puss. It’s a pretty good scene with a nicely loving feel.

After the drug goes wrong, Mayu tries taking Onikuma’s overgrown cock in her mouth. After trying to suck it, she begs him to fuck her ass from behind. Mayu gets covered from head to toe in guy goo, and then begs for him to fuck her pussy. After a couple positions, Onikuma finds out one of Mayu’s secrets, which brings the scene and the dark part of the plot to a decent end. It’s not exactly a good scene, but it does have a little humor and works well.

Meanwhile, Daina takes the last of his Queens, Fumiko outside. He fucks her in a couple positions before finally popping in her pussy. It’s another scene with quite a bit of love in it, and shows a nicer side of Daina.

Five Card 4 brings the series to a nice close. It nicely mixes the darker sex with the lighter and more loving sex, as well as the darker and lighter plot threads. Everything’s wrapped up cleanly, except for one matter that seems better left unresolved, and is done so very nicely. The movie has a much heavier emphasis on the sex than the other episodes, but it also brings in a little humor and lightheartedness that make the feature much easier to watch than many other anime movies. The biggest problem here, as with the rest of the DVDs in this series, is that they don’t even last a half hour. If a normal adult DVD is a meal, this barely even qualifies as a snack. It’s more like a taste to make sure it tastes right. Five Star is a good adult anime movie, but I’d strongly recommend renting it before shelling out the big bucks on 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, and anal

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 and had some new extras unlike this one. Rent an episode of this series before you consider putting out the big bucks for it.

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 .

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