Last Modified: February 11th, 2006
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HEN is the title of an anime produced in 1996 based on a manga series by Hiroya Oku by the same name. It was translated and released in the US on VHS in 1997 and came out on DVD in America on the 12th of February 2002. The translated version was renamed Strange Love when released by Central Park Media (known for titles such as Night Shift Nurses). The anime contains two episodes that run to about eighty minutes in total. The DVD can be obtained from online retailers for the recommended retail price of $9.99 after a price reduction in July 2005. The translated DVD also contains both the English and Japanese soundtracks, along with English Subtitles. This is one of a small percentage of hentai titles that are offered by the major online retailer Amazon and it frequently ranks within their top 10,000 DVD chart for daily sales.
Hiroya Oku is most well known for his work on the popular shounen manga Gantz, which is currently running in the Japanese weekly magazine 'Young Jump', it has now exceeded two hundred chapters in length. Along with Gantz and HEN, he also produced the manga Zero One in 2000, although it ended after only three volumes. Both Gantz and HEN have been adapted to the small screen, with Gantz having a twenty-four episode TV series shown in 2004 and the HEN anime being detailed on this page. He is popular amongst Japanese fans and Western fans alike, although many of the latter do not know about the hentai manga he has produced in the past, and only of his most recent and famous manga.
The story focuses on the busty high school student Chizuru Yoshida, an arrogant beauty who thinks she knows better than the world. Due to her looks and body, she also works as a model and actress which gains her much attention from both males and females at her Tokyo high school. As she handles all of the girls that want to be her; and the teachers who want to be with her, including Sushiaki Karasawa who has only just started teaching there. After seeing Chizuru on a television advert for shampoo he becomes obsessed with her, and once she realises this she turns up to his home and gives him an offer he can't refuse, to let her sleep round. Chizuru's boyfriend, Hiroyuki, a famous rockstar introduces her to his neighbour, a young girl named Azumi Yamada who is very shy. Chizuru falls head over heels in love with her straight away, and wants to have her, the question is... what will Hiroyuki do when he finds out?
When you begin to watch the first episode of this series, you begin to think that Chizuru is the perfect girl. She has it all; the looks, the brains; the abilities in sport and a craving for sex but it isn't long before you start to realise that she is pretty heartless and that she has never really been in love. Due to her school banning students having jobs, she has to keep her modelling and acting jobs on the down-low until one day a horny young teacher (Sushiaki) realises that she is the same girl he saw in a shampoo advert and that he might stand a chance with her if he tries to blackmail her with this information. When Chizuru is told that he knows, she turns up to his house in order to change his mind, he obviously thinks that she is going to have sex with her, but thanks to her skill at jan,ken,pon (rock,paper,scissors) she manages to get away by only getting naked for him.
In the second episode, things start hotting up as she meets a girl who lives next door to her rockstar boyfriend. She is heading up to Hiroyuki's to have sex with him and notices her get in the elevator with them, and as she leaves in the morning she realises that she cannot stop thinking about the girl. Then, the girl shows up at her school as a new student, and Chizuru realises that she is starting to fall in love with her, and she wants to have sex with Azumi. Hiroyuki is angry when he hears about this and Chizuru has to take dramatic action to prevent him taking her precious virginity as revenge for what she did to him. This story is billed as a romantic comedy, but it is less funny than some may say. One thing missing is the lack of closure at the end, and how short the story is as a whole, it could have easily spanned a few more DVDs or been granted a sequel.
Overall, the translators have done a good job on bringing this title over to Western audiences, not much has been cut which is really good to see. The production itself is very entertaining and is fun to watch, it doesn't take very much time out of your day to watch it. The characters are well thought out and both of the episodes are great, although the second one might be slightly more entertaining for the larger amount of sexual content it contains.
Some fans have noted that the English dubbing for the character of Chizuru are inaccurate. In the original version she was portrayed as a somewhat posh, sophisticated and stuck up character. However, in the translated version her voice is portrayed as very brash and lower class, which may alter some fans' view of the character as a whole.
The translated DVD includes features such as the original Behind-the-scenes featurette, an art gallery, credits for the cast and crew, original scripts, profiles of each of the characters and trailers for other and similar releases by the same company.
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