The creepy teachers are always creepy, but sometimes they have to have a win too.
What They Say:
Every man has his limits…
Professor Kayama could have been happy with his job, except that all of the students on campus hate him, and he hates them back. Miki Watase is a dark-haired vixen who will do anything to raise her grades, but when Professor Kayama refuses play along, she’s determined to have revenge. She gathers her friends – the luscious Hinata, the slutty Arisa, and the beautiful but timid Sachie – and they mix drug-laced alcohol with a snap-shot camera to publicly humiliate Kayama.
However, these vivacious little co-eds are about to discover that even a wimpy professor like Kayama has his limits. Now he’s going to teach them a real lesson in humility that will have them each begging for forgiveness.
The Review:
Audio:
The audio presentation for this release is fairly standard in its design as it’s a stereo mix for both the Japanese and English tracks, but it’s all over the map in how it’s encoded, not that it makes all that much difference in the end. The Japanese track is encoded at 192kbps on the first episode and 448kbps on the second while the English track is at 128kbps for the first and 192kbps on the second. It makes no sense and just doesn’t seem like this one were done right, not that the show really does much different in any of them. The show is dialogue based to be sure and that comes across cleanly here without much in the way of placement of depth that you’ll notice. But it does work well for what the source is and there wasn’t anything that felt like it came across wrong even with the way it’s encoded. Dialogue is clean and clear throughout and we had no issues during regular playback.
Video:
Originally released to video in 2004, the transf for this two episode OVA series is presented in its original full frame aspect ratio. The show has a good looking transfer and helps the fairly average animation to good. There’s some variety to the colors though there are plenty of the usual drab colors you find in school grounds, and they all maintain a good level of solidity, even with the numerous partially colored walls throughout the show. Cross coloration is virtually non-existent and there is some slight moments of aliasing during some panning sequences. Much like a lot of other hentai, this show makes out well from large bands of vibrant colors and a low episode count on the disc letting more space go towards the video.
Packaging:
THe cover art for this release doesn’t leave much to the imagination as it gives us one of the girls from the show bent over and showing us her goods while in a couple of states of bondage. The character art looks good and there’s plenty of detail to it to make it stand out nicely. The back cover provides some character artwork including one amusing whipped cream piece that you’ll be hard pressed to find done as nicely elsewhere along with a good summary of the shows premise. Add in the usual array of features and production information and the minimal technical information. Hopefully the Critical Mass releases will adopt the technical grid that the Right Stuf releases have started to use as well. As is standard for Critical Mass releases, no insert is included.
Menu:
The menu design for this release is pretty simple and straightforward here as the Punishment logo from the front cover takes almost half of the screen it feels like while giving the bottom half to clips playing to some of the instrumental music from the show. Selections are lined along the left with easy episode access and fast and simple navigation. Submenus load quickly and easily with no problems but it’s not a menu you spend a lot of time in even with the bit of animation it has from the episodes.
Extras:
The only extra included is an art video gallery that shows off various scenes from the two episodes here.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
There’s always something about “college” shows in how it tries to make it feel like something a bit older than it is. Using a high school based show as a college show always has its abnormalities as teachers become professors and school uniforms are everywhere, but they’ve always done the scripts just enough to make it work. Punishment plays in that field well enough and the way the characters interact are mild enough in some ways that you don’t really get caught up in it like you can with some shows. As is the case with a lot of school based shows, either the students are involved in something and you never see an adult, a teacher is being dominated or the only adults are this hideous old men running around. Punishment goes the other route and has a teacher that’s fully in control, eventually, and metes out some justice in his own twisted way.
The two episodes focus around Professor Kayama, one of the smarter professors at the school but also one that has a bad reputation and is mocked by students in general. A small circle of girls in particular continue to pick on him and generally cause him trouble. These girls are also part of a little circle of lesbian sex that gets done at the school and Kayama accidentally ends up in a bad position about it when he stops some other students from peeping and gets blamed as being the peeping person himself. This only hurts his reputation even more but one of the girls continues to lightly defend him since she’s got a huge crush on him.
Things take a different turn when he’s eventually offered a job at a University Lab as a researcher and accepts since it will take him away from all the kids he considers brats. Knowing this, the girls decide that they’re going to teach him a lesson but he manages to take advantage of it by photographing it all and using it as blackmail on them. One by one, he starts bringing them into his lair and uses a concoction of his to make them feel especially aroused and open to suggestion so that he’s able to take complete advantage of them. One by one he takes them down a peg or two in their social standing, something that’s very important in the little cliques that have formed.
The series has some decent looking designs for the characters, though some of the girls feel a bit too angular in their design to my tastes, but overall they’re well designed and nicely animated. The female characters in general hit some of the usual stereotypes, such as the glasses and long hair, but they’re fairly attractive and the actual sex scenes for them are where the bulk of the animation budget went. On the plus side, the male characters aren’t completely hideous so there isn’t a cringe factor involved their like there is with some titles. Add in some light scat material that’s standard fare for titles like this these days and you’ve got a typical school hentai show.
In Summary:
Not unlike other genres, there’s a whole range of quality when it comes to hentai shows and within the subgenres. Punishment is one from the Vanilla Series that kind of sits in the middle with what it does in that it has some decent characters, some decent domination moments but nothing that really feels like it goes so far as to put you off from it. It’s not a mild introduction to the genre either though. It’s pretty much what you’d consider one of their average titles with some good material but nothing that you run out and recommend or run out and scream to stay away from. Good character designs, average plot to tie it all together and some decent sex scenes lets Punishment work as something of an escalator title to more serious and nastier hentai shows for the newbie.
Features:
Japanese 2.0 Language, English 2.0 Language, English Subtitles, Art Gallery
Content Grade: C+
Audio Grade: B+
Video Grade: B-
Packaging Grade: B-
Menu Grade: B-
Extras Grade: C+
Released By: Critical Mass Video
Release Date: October 1st, 2013
MSRP: $14.99
Running Time: 60 Minutes
Video Encoding: 480i/p MPEG-2
Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
Review Equipment:
Sony KDL70R550A 70″ LED 1080P HDTV, Sony PlayStation3 Blu-ray player via HDMI set to 1080p, Onkyo TX-SR605 Receiver and Panasonic SB-TP20S Multi-Channel Speaker System With 100-Watt Subwoofer.