30 Day Anime Challenge: Day 2 – Anime You’re Ashamed You Enjoyed

This category is meant to bring shame on you for your shadiest of choices, and I’ll be honest, it’s working. I even considered breaking the law and lying on the internet for this one. But what’s the fun in that? My pick for the anime I’m most ashamed that I enjoyed is Keijo!!!!!!!! (yes, there really are that many !’s in the title). I can feel your judgement reaching out at me through my monitor, but don’t unsubscribe yet. Hear me out.

I will admit, when I started watching this show, I was really only doing it for what would obviously be ridiculous fanservice, because sometimes that just the kind of anime you want to watch. What I didn’t expect was the surprising character depth and fun “sports” element. For an anime that’s meant to showcase women duking it out in the water using only their boobs and butts, there was a lot of thought put into giving the different women backstories, motivations, intelligence and strength. In other words, they took a concept that should have been all about the women showcasing their bodies for our ridiculous entertainment and turned it around. Even more surprising, the sport of Keijo was actually pretty exciting to watch. There were several moments where I really felt a little tense about what was going to happen.

Now, is this the most intelligent character driven and thought provoking anime? Obviously not. It is still very much about the fanservice and that much is very obvious. But amazingly, it brought enough to the table to give me enough entertainment to not only like it, but consider possibly watching it again someday when I’m feeling nostalgic.

What anime are you ashamed you enjoyed?