I’m done explaining the series. It takes too long and is pointless. It’s also self-explanatory, so use your big human brain. I watch a random anime with this site here, and I have two rules. I don’t need to finish it if it’s awful or watch the whole series if it’s long. (Here are the previous posts. #1 #2 #3.)

As for what I’m hoping for, I don’t know. Something. I don’t really have any preferences this time around. I just hope it’s a little more interesting than last month’s. If I could make a crazy prediction, I hope it’s Izetta the Last Witch because I just bought that series and will watch it regardless. Surely that won’t happen, though… It didn’t.

Stop me if you’ve heard this before; I don’t know what this anime is! This series helps me find pretty obscure stuff, which is what I wanted. As for Heaven’s Lost Property,  uh, I don’t know. Let’s see what it’s about. The image makes me nostalgic, at least.

“Ever since he was a child, Tomoki Sakurai has always woke up with tears after a dream of an angel. His childhood friend Sohara Mitsuki worries about this and decides to seek the help of Eishirou Sugata, an eccentric sky maniac. He concludes that Tomoki’s dream is undoubtedly connected to what is known as the New World, a floating anomaly that scientists have failed to understand. Recruiting the New World Discovery Club’s first members, Eishirou schedules a time to meet up in order to observe the mystery in the sky. That day, Tomoki’s peaceful life is changed forever when a strange girl falls from the sky and begins to call him master. Sora no Otoshimono follows the daily activities of the New World Discovery Club as they begin to learn more about the Angeloids that have arrived on Earth.”

That actually doesn’t sound that bad. Unfortunately, trailers are a thing, and so are genres. This looks like a very blatant fanservice-heavy, ecchi harem anime. While that makes me a little nostalgic in its own right, I can’t stay that it’s my favorite kind of series, though I’d be lying if I said I outright hated it either. Done right, it can be pretty enjoyable. Will this be? I don’t know. I’ll let you know on the other side, which for me will be like a week probably. For you, it will be passed the next image. Time is a fickle thing.

So, I was pretty spot on with my predictions this time around. Heaven’s Lost Property is exactly what I said like 100 words ago. It’s a harem. It has tons of fanservice. It is ecchi as all hell and apologizes for none of it. Let’s go over the reasons why I, a straight male, often doesn’t like fanservice because It may seem like I’m just trying to sound better than I am. I’ll start off by saying that’s not true.

If you want to have your panty shot or two, or you want to have your male character conveniently fall into inappropriate areas of your female characters, I don’t mind. Yeah, after seeing it happen about 200 times, I may ask for some more creativity, but the fact is anime is often targeted towards younger adult males, and teenagers and they love the stuff. It makes sense. I won’t get upset about that, and it doesn’t actively bother me. Don’t hate the player hate the game, right?

What I mind is when you ruin any credibility or seriousness your anime has by having a random panty shot thrown in like it’s to fulfill some quota. Oh, look at this girl locked in a battle to the death with some monster! Oh, no, she’s wearing a skirt, she shouldn’t jump! Oh, man, look at this super serious scene. I wonder what that girl’s crying about? Uh, oh, she didn’t close her legs! You’ve seen it too many times, I’m sure. That’s fanservice and ecchi I don’t like. When they force it for no reason. If you want to have it, fine, but do it right.

Then you have anime where the entire thing is shameless ecchi. These have another set of problems, mainly that they all feel the same. The characters and scenarios are interchangeable. They’re all about some guy who manages to get into the exact same four or five awkward situations with all of the beautiful women around him who will all fall in love with the main dude for some reason before getting their hearts broken because the anime is a harem. I bring this up because Heaven’s Lost Property falls into this category, except it’s better.

And I don’t mean that morally. This is exactly the kind of series you think you’re getting. It’s like, 15-year-old boy bait if I’ve ever seen it. It’s shameless as hell. There’s an entire episode about Tomoki trying to buy an adult DVD. An entire episode about Tomoki becoming a girl just so he can sneak in the baths with them. It’s pure ecchi, but that works in the series favor.

Heaven’s Lost Property is not concerned with being something it’s not. It knows perfectly well that it’s ecchi, and it doesn’t shy away from that for a second. Like I said, more or less every episode’s plot is in some way related to that fact, even for the main story. Tomoki does or wants to do something perverted, and insanity ensues.

This is exactly what you want out of a comedy ecchi series; it really is. Tomoki’s a good old perverted lead. He has a harem with someone for everyone: childhood friend, tsundere, angel girl big and small. Take your pick! And the anime takes this generic setup and does wild things with it. I give the series credit for being surprisingly creative. I mean, they manage to turn Tomoki wondering into the wrong hot spring into a deserted island survival episode. A festival becomes an all-out war with cork guns.

What I don’t like is when ecchi ruins an otherwise decent plot. What Heaven’s Lost Property does is incorporate the ecchi into its plot without ever trying to be better than it is. This is a great thing overall. People who don’t care for or hate ecchi will not like this series. But they don’t have to. It’s not trying to draw them in. It’s playing to the fans the genre already has. And I am not really one of them. I like good stories and characters. Anime like this usually doesn’t have either. I almost dropped this three episodes in and was going to write about how hard to watch this anime was, but I changed my mind.

You see, for as much as I hate to admit it, I laughed a lot watching Heaven’s Lost Property. Like a lot. Almost every episode had me audibly laughing. I think it was sometime around the episode that every pair of panties Tomoki looked at exploded that I finally chilled out and realized what this series is. It’s stupid as hell, and that was the entire point. And when the series about Satan working at McDonald’s is one of my favorites, you know I’m a sucker for stupidity.

That’s where I think the series really won me over. I think I have a problem with ecchi when it isn’t self-aware. This series is as self-aware as Tomoki, who constantly shouts how much of a pervert he is. It’s so self-aware that all of the stupid tropes I’ve seen a thousand times actually start to feel funny again.

It was a wild experience for me. I went into it expecting to dislike it. I started to dislike it as I watched it, and somewhere along the way, I just stopped caring and started to appreciate the series for how stupid it actually is. It’s ecchi, for sure, but it isn’t obligatory ecchi. It’s not a series that has ecchi. It’s an ecchi series, and  I’m amazed that it’s actually well-done. Not just the ecchi bits. For some reason, this anime actually has a decent overarching story.

Behind all the ecchi episode plots is the main story revolving around Ikaros, and eventually Nymph, and just what angeloids are. Why they were created, why they have to follow their masters, and why they can’t feel emotion. There’s an entire episode dedicated to teaching Ikaros how to smile. You know, a cute episode about helping this girl learn to feel happiness in this wacky ecchi story.

You’d think that would be the only instance of this anime taking something seriously, but it’s not. They take the theme of these angels being chained to and forced to follow their masters, this concept that could be exploited incredibly easy for ecchi situations, and handled it somewhat maturely and in an interesting way. What? No, you heard that right.

A large part of the plot revolves around Nymph, who acts on orders from her corrupt, abusive master against her will to hurt Tomoki and the people she starts to care about. But because her master isn’t Tomoki, she’s forced to hurt them anyway, all the while tearing herself apart in the process. This is an ecchi anime, remember? The same show where a freaking bird gets its feather plucked off, leaving Nymph with bloody hands on her master’s orders, is an ecchi anime. How? How does the same series with gender-bending perverted Tomoki have serious plot points that actually make me invested in what I’m watching? It’s a mystery.

This whole series is a mystery. Its plot actually has good ones too. I admit I’m curious about what angeloids are. I’m curious to see what happens to Ikaros and Nymph. I want to see if Tomoki finally accepts his damn childhood friend’s feelings (haha, wishful thinking). I’m actually invested. I care. I care about the story and characters in this shameless ecchi anime.

There are only one of two possibilities. Either I’ve been corrupted, or this series is somehow good. I’m inclined to believe the latter. I mean, most of the time, it even went through the trouble of having a different ending song based on the plot of each episode. What ecchi anime does that? Most actual good series don’t go that far. Not to mention the opening is fantastic too. As weird as it is to me, Heaven’s Lost Property is actually good.

This shameless, harem, ecchi anime with an unlikable perverted main character actually has a decent story that is handled in an interesting way. Miracles can happen. That’s not to say this suddenly becomes a 10/10, but I would actually call Heaven’s Lost Property good, which I didn’t expect. In fact, I would say it’s given me a decent example of how to make a good ecchi.

This, again, is why I do this series. Every time I roll the dice, I have no clue what I’ll be watching. This is a series that I, without a doubt, wouldn’t have touched unless I had an obligation to. And amazingly, that’s a shame. I genuinely feel like I understand the appeal of the genre more. So long as it’s shameless, go wild ecchi! Be yourself! Don’t let anyone tell you what to do!

Thank you very much for reading

What are your opinions on ecchi anime? One of the more controversial genres out there, that’s for sure.