Cool Devices - Lilith Likes to Watch Animated April

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Title: Cool Devices
Year: 1995

Starring: Yoko Asada, Shihori Niwa

Director: Hiroshi Matsuda, Junichi Tanabe

Synopsis: A set of Japanese animated stories revolving around various sexual perversions. - Via IMDB.com

Lilith's Notes: Classic gateway hentai.

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"Again, please."

Last April, when I decided to do a month full of anime, I imagined plenty of people yelling at the screen demanding certain staples of hentai be reviewed.

Yes. Obviously some of them should. But I didn’t want to make it too easy on myself. I didn’t want to reach for something that’s both top-shelf and low bar. Sure, I could have just reviewed Ninja Scroll and pat myself on the back for a job well done, but where’s the adventure in that?

So, I come to Cool Devices, an OG of hentai, not out of reverence for the material, not because it paid dues by merely having a 1990’s release date, but because we just wandered drunkenly through Easter Weekend and it was the only dirty cartoon I could think of that had a bunny.

I have to tell you a secret viewers. I actually had this review archived for Animated April for a while, as I couldn't get a copy of this in my fair country as it's illegal. But on a whim the last time I was in the US in a night of debauchery I watched Cool Devices for the first time in decades and thus this review. So yes, more coming soon, but for now, it's Rabbit season

Cool Devices, for those of you who didn’t grow up in the wild west days of the Internet, is an anthology of hentai, made by several different studios. I’m not going to review all the shorts at the moment because I want to savour it.

But, I mentioned the bunny, so that’s where we will begin.


LOVER DOLLS BY PROTONSAURUS

Even though it’s not the first episode on the first disk of the collection, it is the first episode I ever recall seeing. During a stormy night, a girl with bunny ears is locked in a cage. A girl with cat ears and tail comes into her dungeon and the two have sexy times until their master spots them and punishes the cat girl. As the miss kitty is punished, Bunny girl recalls her own punishments.

A story does unfold here. One gets the sense that, after the bunny is locked away after her punishment, the cat girl came in to soothe her pain. With sexy results. This is again hinted at when the bunny girl tries to tease the catgirl’s nipple as she she’s being fucked by their master.

The title of this segment isn’t coy. These are very much love dolls for the faceless master to use and abuse and discard. He doesn’t care about them in any way other than if they can bring him pleasure. Praise appears to be stingy, and coveted by the dolls.

The animation is pretty good for its time, of course there’s an animation loop but it’s fairly detailed and I’ve seen far worse. There is one second or so of animation where the bunny is whipped and her fingers twitch. It’s sudden, nice symmetry, and I like it.

The character designs are fine, and distinct enough but they virge a little too Astro Boy for me, with round eyes and individual eye lashes that stick straight up. It’s too cutesy and young. I get that they’re trying to evoke dolls but it’s more unsettling than most anime.

But, it’s a good self-contained story. If you look hard enough, you’re rewarded with a plot, and two cute anime girls in animal costumes pleasuring one another.

A word of caution though, you might want to lower your volume. There is a lot of high pitched anime girl screaming in this one.


WINTER SWIMSUIT BY FUYUNO MIZUGI

There’s something off about this one and it’s not easy to explain. I think it’s a problem with artistic perspective. I mean actual physical pencil to paper perspective. There are a lot of shots in this one where the female character’s breasts look like one is bigger than the other. Once she’s topless this is no longer a problem but it’s just weird.

A guy and a girl are in a public pool on a cold winter night. He fondles her, she sucks him, he gets an x-acto knife and cuts her bathing suit open across her breasts and down her crotch. They fuck.

One good thing I can say about this one is it does indeed make her breasts look very, very soft. It sold the appeal of fondling. A lot of time anime and animation itself fails to do this. Once again I do not like the character designs. When you don’t have names and you barely have a plot, character designs are all you can go off on. I found the female’s hair and hairstyle to be rather garish and the male is just faceless, so he barely counts as a character.

It’s kind of fun if you like the thrill of edge play, but there’s not much more too it than that. Pretty basic, with very basic character design and nice breasts.


ENEMA By ?????

A nerd in a sweater gets fucked by her classmate in a bathroom stall, and then they do anal.

This one is a bit of a puzzle. The animation isn’t great, a lot of the thrusting is just two or three keyframes over and over again, and a lot of it is loose and sketchy. Fingers are terribly drawn.

But the characters really seem to be into it. She’s nervous, he wipes her eyes. She willingly, enthusiastically sucks her own juices off his fingers. She’s meek, yes, probably new to this, but seems to be very much a willing participant.

In the wide world of 90's hentai, that’s quite refreshing.

So this whole review begs the question, are these three episodes of Cool Devices good? Or were they simply what we had back then?

I admit I'm biased here. Cool Devices is like Heavy Metal to me; formative for me and my friends, these episodes are not as good as some of the others in the collection. There is one episode that actually made me feel emotions and you probably know which one it is if you’ve seen these shorts. There are some episodes that cross the line from extreme to flat out unenjoyable for me that I tend to skip when revisiting this series. If my rambling about these three episodes has piqued your interest and you have an affinity for classic style anime, you should probably add this to your shelf. There’s a little something here for everyone, whether you want to admit it or not.

Best Moment: The entire thing, it's a classic!

Worst Moment: The entire thing, it's a classic...

LILITH'S SCORE: 3.5/5

Until next time, my voracious voyeurs. I’m Lilith, and I’m always watching.