So, we’ve hit the end of the Winter Anime season, so I’m going to take a short break from the Let’s Play to get through some of the anime series I finished this season – starting with the fanservice anime I went for this time – Chained Soldier.
Chained Soldier almost falls into some of the same categories of “Almost but not quite hentai” that shows like Cafe Terrace and its Goddesses fell into – where there’s always a certain degree of nudity each episode, but they don’t go as far into actual sex as some of the isekai anime like Slave Labyrinth (aka Isekai Rance) went into. Specifically, the focus is on BDSM and domination play, without ever quite getting into actual sex – and without necessarily focusing on how IRL BDSM works (like with Nana to Kaoru – which is the series I kind of wish people, normie or otherwise, who started discovering BDSM through the Fifty Shades series would read, as by all accounts of people who are actively into that scene, it’s much better at presenting safe BDSM than Fifty Shades is.)
The premise of the series is that Japan is facing a problem with portals from a demonic realm that have been opening all over the country from the parallel dimension of Mato (or Matou), disgorging demonic entities called Shuuki, which generally kill people. However, by eating magic peaches, women can develop superhuman abilities that allow them to fight back against the Demons, shifting the gender equity balance to one where women have a higher position in society. Our main character, Yuuki Wakura, ends up in Matou and is rescued by a woman named Kyouka Uzen, the leader of the Mato Defense Corps Seventh Division, whose power allows her to bestow superhuman abilities on entities that become her slave, in return for a reward. Yuuki agrees to become her slave in order to fulfill his own dream to become a hero, and in so doing avenge the disappearance (and likely death) of his sister at the hand of the Shuuki. And if you hadn’t guessed from the first paragraph, the “rewards” for Yuuki end up often being somewhat sexual, though never quite to the point that they’re actually having sex.
And, just for good measure, you can add in some clothing damage in the various fight scenes leading to nudity, plus the hot-springs at Seventh Division HQ. Plus at least one of the other characters, Shushu Suruga, has a power that allows her to go full Ultraman, but also can – and is – used to appeal to a few mild kinks as well.
The animation and action series are generally fine – and the societal shifts to having men serve in a more domestic role does also serve to allow for Yuuki to provide some solid food porn in addition to the regular fanservice. Additionally, I did have a worry going in that the series was going to go into some of the same misogynist directions that other works that have women moving into a position of authority in society does, but thankfully that was not the case. The character dynamics also work out pretty well, both with Yuuki and the various members of the Seventh Division, along with the Seventh Division members and parts of the Sixth, along with the introduction of the Transformed Human characters later in the series.
In terms of the heavier fanservice with the “reward” scenes, this makes for a sort of odd situation where we’ve had more Skinimax-grade fanservice shows (as mentioned earlier), the ways that Chained Soldier backs off from approaching actual sex feels almost cowardly. Admittedly, that’s something intrinsic to the source material, and it’s possible that the staff did approach the mangaka with a request to take things a little further and he declined – so some of the… cowardice lies with the mangaka as well.
In all, I did enjoy the series, I think mainly on the strength of the character dynamics, though the action scenes are well done as well, and the fanservice is pretty well done – it’s skeevy in just the right ways where if it did go further, it would feel natural to the characters and how they’ve been written. A second season has been announced, and I might give it a try, assuming that season isn’t too overcrowded – season one was interesting enough that I’d watch more, but not so much that a second season would be a must-watch.
Chained Soldier is available for streaming on Hidive.
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