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Papillon Rose: OVA and Episodes 1-6
Jul. 11th, 2013 08:53 pmWherever there's a successful work of fiction, there will always be people in the audience saying "Man, that would have been a lot better if the characters spent more time fucking each other." Some of these people will acquire the money and resources to make their spooge-stained dreams a reality, and thus you have: the porno spoof.
The Magical Girl genre is no exception to this rule; over the years, Japan's porno-masters have brought us Venus 5 (94), Magical Woman M (96), Magical Kanan (00), Angel Blade (01), Beat Angel Escalayer (02), and the one we're looking at today, Lingerie Senshi Papillon Rose.
Papillon Rose started its existence as a metafictional website that described a tv show that didn't (yet) exist. There were episode summaries, screenshots made by photoshopping Sailor Moon screens, and even lyrics for the opening and ending credits. Interest for it grew as more and more people stumbled across the site and inquired as to where they could watch the (nonexistent) show, and eventually the property spawned a) a 24-minute OVA, which serves as the first episode to a nonexistent first season, and b) a 6-episode TV show, “New Season,” which serves as the full second season, with flashbacks to the nonexistent first season included to fill us in on the backstory.
The OVA follows closely in the website's footsteps, being a porno version of Sailor Moon, except that strictly speaking there’s no porn in it. The sex scenes are all R-rated and avoid explicit nudity, and most of the sexual content is of a more, er, metaphorical bent. For instance, the villain-of-the-week does the usual schtick of sucking energy out of hapless muggles, but she achieves this by attaching the end of her whip to the (male) victim’s (clothed) crotch and fellating the handle of the whip, while her “victim” makes orgasmy noises. It’s unmistakably a blowjob, but everyone’s clothes stay on and there’s no direct mouth-to-dick contact, so it’s not quite porn.
Since Papillon Rose is a porno spoof, the plot and characters are just the same ones as Sailor Moon, but after being put under the porn-ification ray. Sailor Moon dresses in slinky lingerie, her main weapon is a vibrator that she pulls from her crotch, and her finisher requires her to kiss its tip. Usagi works at a lingerie café, and she first meets Mamoru when they have a one-night stand together at a love motel. Tuxedo Mask no longer throws roses; instead he throws gobs of semen. Luna wears a condom on her tail and identifies Usagi by crawling up her leg and sniffing her crotch. The villain-of-the-week is a lesbian with a whip who reacts to Sailor Moon’s “In the name of the moon” speech by French-kissing her and later gives her a hearty butt-whipping, S&M-style. And the all-female mooks fight by spraying flammable white fluid from their nipples and firing missiles out of their boobs.
Honestly, I really enjoyed the Papillon Rose OVA. It's everything a porno spoof should be — gleefully perving up every aspect of the source material it can think of, all while being as ridiculous as possible. It also has a lot of fun nods to the classics of the genre: the title card is in the style of Cutey Honey, the right-hand-villain is named Sister Beene (à la Sister Jill), and when Rose first transforms, she yells "Honey Flash" and her clothes shred off before Luna scolds her and makes her do it properly. On the downside, the animation is very cheap in places, and the OVA ends with Luna giving Tuxedo Mask a blowjob. GROSS AND UNNECESSARY.
Three years after the OVA came out, the franchise made the jump to television with Papillon Rose: New Season, and a clean-up job ensued to make the story suitable for broadcast. Rose now works in a modestly-attired maid café in Akihabara, Luna's tail-condom is now a cute bow, Tuxedo Mask's jizz-tossing is gone, the attack names are no longer sex-themed, and there's a new trio of villains whose schtick has zilch to do with sex or fanservice. There's even a funny bit in the first episode where Rose reaches down to pull out her vibrator-of-doom, but Luna stops her, saying that her old attack is too raunchy for television; instead, Rose must pick up a random object and transform it into a weapon whenever she wants to fight. As for the plot, it continues on from the OVA: Rose is joined by two other Lingerie Senshi and later a third who serves as the Dark Magical Girl.
You might think that clearing away all the extraneous bouncing balloon-boobs, horny tentacle monsters, and CAT-ON-HUMAN BLOWJOBS from a gutter-minded titty-fest would make for an improvement. Unfortunately, in this case, it's like removing the PB&J from a PB&J sandwich — all you're left with is two slices of bland Wonder Bread. Papillon Rose's whole schtick was that it was a porny version of Sailor Moon. Take that away, and the show has no identity of its own. It just comes across as the most boring and derivative Magical Girl show imaginable.
To make matters worse, there is a metric ton of really humiliatingly blatant otaku-pandering in this show. I mentioned Rose's gig at the Akiba maid café, and that plot element is just an excuse to include a bunch of male otaku in the show's cast and make them vital to the plot. In particular, there's a trio of fanboys who are main characters, and when they aren't helping out the girls during the monster fights, they're watching the fights and chatting about them on not!2chan. In return, the heroines are very fond of their maid-café-patronizing hangers-on, leading the girls to say things like "Akiba is the sacred town of our beloved otaku! I will not allow you to desecrate it!” This is pure shameless wish-fulfillment for lonely basement-dweller guys who only wish they could meet bodacious lingerie-wearing magical girls, let alone have those girls talk to them, let alone let alone have them treasure them as invaluable allies and be inspired by their speechifying. I'm usually proud to be a nerd, but while watching this show, I frequently felt deeply embarrassed on behalf of my nerdly peers.
Bottom line: When a show's whole raison d'être is sex and fanservice, taking those elements out and failing to replace them with anything new is a stupid idea. Papillon Rose was at its best when it stayed true to its mission of porno-spoofing Sailor Moon.
The Magical Girl genre is no exception to this rule; over the years, Japan's porno-masters have brought us Venus 5 (94), Magical Woman M (96), Magical Kanan (00), Angel Blade (01), Beat Angel Escalayer (02), and the one we're looking at today, Lingerie Senshi Papillon Rose.
Papillon Rose started its existence as a metafictional website that described a tv show that didn't (yet) exist. There were episode summaries, screenshots made by photoshopping Sailor Moon screens, and even lyrics for the opening and ending credits. Interest for it grew as more and more people stumbled across the site and inquired as to where they could watch the (nonexistent) show, and eventually the property spawned a) a 24-minute OVA, which serves as the first episode to a nonexistent first season, and b) a 6-episode TV show, “New Season,” which serves as the full second season, with flashbacks to the nonexistent first season included to fill us in on the backstory.
The OVA follows closely in the website's footsteps, being a porno version of Sailor Moon, except that strictly speaking there’s no porn in it. The sex scenes are all R-rated and avoid explicit nudity, and most of the sexual content is of a more, er, metaphorical bent. For instance, the villain-of-the-week does the usual schtick of sucking energy out of hapless muggles, but she achieves this by attaching the end of her whip to the (male) victim’s (clothed) crotch and fellating the handle of the whip, while her “victim” makes orgasmy noises. It’s unmistakably a blowjob, but everyone’s clothes stay on and there’s no direct mouth-to-dick contact, so it’s not quite porn.
Since Papillon Rose is a porno spoof, the plot and characters are just the same ones as Sailor Moon, but after being put under the porn-ification ray. Sailor Moon dresses in slinky lingerie, her main weapon is a vibrator that she pulls from her crotch, and her finisher requires her to kiss its tip. Usagi works at a lingerie café, and she first meets Mamoru when they have a one-night stand together at a love motel. Tuxedo Mask no longer throws roses; instead he throws gobs of semen. Luna wears a condom on her tail and identifies Usagi by crawling up her leg and sniffing her crotch. The villain-of-the-week is a lesbian with a whip who reacts to Sailor Moon’s “In the name of the moon” speech by French-kissing her and later gives her a hearty butt-whipping, S&M-style. And the all-female mooks fight by spraying flammable white fluid from their nipples and firing missiles out of their boobs.
Honestly, I really enjoyed the Papillon Rose OVA. It's everything a porno spoof should be — gleefully perving up every aspect of the source material it can think of, all while being as ridiculous as possible. It also has a lot of fun nods to the classics of the genre: the title card is in the style of Cutey Honey, the right-hand-villain is named Sister Beene (à la Sister Jill), and when Rose first transforms, she yells "Honey Flash" and her clothes shred off before Luna scolds her and makes her do it properly. On the downside, the animation is very cheap in places, and the OVA ends with Luna giving Tuxedo Mask a blowjob. GROSS AND UNNECESSARY.
Three years after the OVA came out, the franchise made the jump to television with Papillon Rose: New Season, and a clean-up job ensued to make the story suitable for broadcast. Rose now works in a modestly-attired maid café in Akihabara, Luna's tail-condom is now a cute bow, Tuxedo Mask's jizz-tossing is gone, the attack names are no longer sex-themed, and there's a new trio of villains whose schtick has zilch to do with sex or fanservice. There's even a funny bit in the first episode where Rose reaches down to pull out her vibrator-of-doom, but Luna stops her, saying that her old attack is too raunchy for television; instead, Rose must pick up a random object and transform it into a weapon whenever she wants to fight. As for the plot, it continues on from the OVA: Rose is joined by two other Lingerie Senshi and later a third who serves as the Dark Magical Girl.
You might think that clearing away all the extraneous bouncing balloon-boobs, horny tentacle monsters, and CAT-ON-HUMAN BLOWJOBS from a gutter-minded titty-fest would make for an improvement. Unfortunately, in this case, it's like removing the PB&J from a PB&J sandwich — all you're left with is two slices of bland Wonder Bread. Papillon Rose's whole schtick was that it was a porny version of Sailor Moon. Take that away, and the show has no identity of its own. It just comes across as the most boring and derivative Magical Girl show imaginable.
To make matters worse, there is a metric ton of really humiliatingly blatant otaku-pandering in this show. I mentioned Rose's gig at the Akiba maid café, and that plot element is just an excuse to include a bunch of male otaku in the show's cast and make them vital to the plot. In particular, there's a trio of fanboys who are main characters, and when they aren't helping out the girls during the monster fights, they're watching the fights and chatting about them on not!2chan. In return, the heroines are very fond of their maid-café-patronizing hangers-on, leading the girls to say things like "Akiba is the sacred town of our beloved otaku! I will not allow you to desecrate it!” This is pure shameless wish-fulfillment for lonely basement-dweller guys who only wish they could meet bodacious lingerie-wearing magical girls, let alone have those girls talk to them, let alone let alone have them treasure them as invaluable allies and be inspired by their speechifying. I'm usually proud to be a nerd, but while watching this show, I frequently felt deeply embarrassed on behalf of my nerdly peers.
Bottom line: When a show's whole raison d'être is sex and fanservice, taking those elements out and failing to replace them with anything new is a stupid idea. Papillon Rose was at its best when it stayed true to its mission of porno-spoofing Sailor Moon.
