Hen Online

All the comments here so far are describing the wrong video. This "HEN" was the live action version that preceded the forgettable anime. It was a lot better than the anime and also more accurate to the manga. The VHS version was more explicit than the TV broadcast version. There were two parts to this story, both dealing with same-sex romantic relationships. Part 1 featured the macho Suzuki (Aoki) suddenly falling in love with a bishonen boy Yuki Sato (actress Aiko Sato). Part 2 was the more popular version with loose schoolgirl Chizuru (former adult video star Asami Jo) suddenly falling for the innocent transfer student from Kyushu, Azumi Yamada (Miho Kiuchi). I don't think this was ever released outside Japan, unfortunately.

Hiroya Oku is a manga creator best known for 'Gantz.' He wrote a number of strips called 'Hen' which were published in 'Weekly Young Jump' starting in 1992, and later collected in paperback (tankoubon).

A TV show called 'Hen(Hen) Suzuki-kun to Satou-kun' was broadcast on TV Asahi as part of their late night 'Weekend Drama' slot from April 6th to May 18th, 1996. It starred idol Aiko Satou as the male student Satou and Shinsuke Akagi as his classmate Suzuki. The original manga is a story of a macho guy who falls in love with an effeminate looking male classmate. In the TV show, they play the whole thing for laughs by having Satou played by a good-looking female idol. Both Aiko Satou and Shinsuke Akagi are clearly enjoying their roles, and it's all good fun.

From May 25 to June 29th, TV Asahi ran a second series called 'Hen Chizuru-chan to Azumi-chan' based on a separate manga, also by Oku. In this one, the brassy athletic Chizuru (played by Adult Video actress Asami Jou) falls for an innocent ingénue who just transferred into her class, Azumi (played by idol Miho Kiuchi). Jou and Kiuchi have a great time playing up their parts, and Shinsuke Akagi is even funnier here as Chizuru's wounded boyfriend. All three do some nudity, which was mosaic-ed in the original run, but both series' were later released on VHS with fewer cuts.

Oku's 'Hen' manga was also later adapted into an Original Video Anime released in 1997 by Toei Video.

The premise of "Hen" a.k.a. "Strange Love" is this: A very large-breasted girl.

That's about it.

The two episodes I saw weren't very interesting. The girl models as a way to support herself, since she lives alone, but also attends a university which forbids its students to work. To disguise herself, she wears tinted contact lenses. One of her professors manages to recognize her in a commercial, despite this awesome camouflage, by her breasts. Face it, there aren't that many ZZZ-cup women walking around. He blackmails her and she agrees to "stay over" at his place, with predictable results.

The second episode brings up that old standby guaranteed to perk the interest of any hormonally-overdriven young man: lesbianism. There's a new girl at the university who awakens those special feelings in our heroine. Her boyfriend isn't all that happy about it, though.

Each episode is overlong by at least 15 minutes, skimping on both the "sex" and the "comedy". There is a decent amount of animated nudity, if that's your thing, but it isn't as explicit as it could (and probably should) be. There was only one moment that made me laugh, and nothing that titillated me (forgive the pun). About the only recommending factor I can think of is that this is "clean", not full of phallic tentacles violently molesting helpless schoolgirls.

Only 2 episodes were made of this 'vannila' anime, But judging by the poor animation, the crappy stories and a 'heroine', who's an evil manipulative prick-tease, I'm surprised more than one episode was made. So 2 is WAY more than enough. Yoshida Chizuru is the aforementioned prick tease, she's a stuck up bitch who everyone apparently loves because of her huge tits (well that and she's on a TV commercial. The first episode has her teasing a teacher and spending the night at his place, but not letting anything happen, aside from shaking her tits on his face. It made me wish someone slammed a brick in her head. Then used the brick on me for actually sitting through the whole show. It's crap. The second episode wasn't that much better (because face it, it couldn't be worse), and has to do with this big titted selfish bitch having a lesbian crush with predictable results. The show doesn't have nearly enough nudity to make it even remotely watchable and what it does have is beyond tame. One of the worst anime shows I have ever had the misfortune of watching BAR NONE.

My Grade: F

DVD Extras: Meet the Characters; Sub-titled Behind the scenes; and Trailers for "Sprite", "Garaga", "Detonator Orgun", "Maze", and "the Ping Pong Club"

DVD-Rom: Stills Gallery; Script, Cast bios, and web links