It all started so sweetly: all I wanted was to find the source for a clip I’ve seen online for a while now: A purple-haired, tanned busty woman devours a dude’s wang like it were a popsicle on a hot summer day. I mean, what is it about tanned women with colorful hair that gets me going? Turns out the clip belongs to a four-part OVA series called Witch of Steel Annerose and for the most part, it’s a pretty great watch if you’re looking for extended sex scenes involving all sorts of carnal activities. The story gets more than a little muddled and off-kilter but the sheer amount of intercourse that’s packed into each episode might just be enough to forgive most of its crimes. what starts as a fun romp focusing on a slave-mistress relationship goes nuts, where the main female characters suddenly find themselves caught up by devious and somewhat uncomfortable sexual tortured that’s so out of the blue, this hentai might as well be School Days. 

It’s hard to point out what Steel Rose is ultimately about. Taking place in the city of Amidahara, a once bustling area that has since become known as “The Dark Neighborhood” after an unknown event broke apart the barrier that separated humans and demons. It has become a slum, a breeding ground of violence as murderers and criminal organizations on both sides sprung up to take advantage of the chaos. In a seedy bar, a young woman named Miki Otonashi seeks assistance in finding her lost brother. After being groped by one of the barflies, she lets loose with a torrent of machine-gun bullets, firing wildly out of fear for her person. She is stopped by Riku, an unassuming man who offers to take Miki’s case to Annerose, who has a reputation in town as a great detective. 

And then a completely different story picks up. At no real point is Annerose ever presented as being a detective nor is she ever shown doing such work. Instead, she is mentioned to be a former battle demon living her life as a woman of some leisure, supported by her personal assistant Michiko. Riku has been integrated into her circle after being rescued from demons and for some reason, Annerose took a liking to him and turned him undead by chopping off his head and cementing the partnership with a kiss. Honestly, it comes off like a real bad retread of similar high school comedy animes like Highschool DxD. Annerose keeps Riku around much to Michiko’s annoyance, responding to her rage by brutally murdering him in a graphic fashion. Don’t worry, though, because Riku’s body regenerates so that he can be bossed around, beaten, and chopped up all over again. The relationship between the characters doesn’t go anywhere or develops in any meaningful way because what really takes up most of Witch of Steel Annerose’s time are vignettes in which Riku has lots of messy, gooey sex with the women in his life. Any semblance of a story is hand waved away in favor of extended love scenes where Riku plays the dominant role during sex with women who just moments ago slapped him around.

I think the series has an identity crisis because it doesn’t know what it wants to be. Is it a comedy, action, horror? Or all three? It sprinkles a bunch of different genres and cards little for supporting them enough. The first episode makes for a great porno: in the span of twenty-five moments or so, there’s plenty to get off to, from deepthroating to light bondage. Later episodes try to inject character interaction that comes off as a poor attempt to imitate the group character dynamics mostly seen in harem comedies. The show’s second episode begins with the vibe of a serial anime series, complete with an elaborate intro, before turning hard to an extended group sex scene involving an uncomfortable use of needles to enhance a character’s pleasure senses. The episode spends so much time following Annerose’s sex scenes that when Riku and Michiko actually show up to help, it’s super jarring. Even more so is Riku’s sudden ability to literally turn into a Super Saiyan. No joke: he actually powers up enough that his hair stands up straight and turns gold. If you think that this reveal holds the promise of something special, I’m here to tell you to don’t hold your breath because you never end up seeing it again for the rest of the series. 

And just when I was about to grasp for one thing to keep me afloat through this erratic and inconsistent show, things took a dark turn. Episode four introduces a proper antagonist, a sorcerer searching for a magical stone that may or may not have been the true reason Miki sought help to find a missing brother. Honestly, I couldn’t tell which because I was so confused and had checked out at this point. The show’s mostly jaunty and “let’s have some sexy hijinks” tone is replaced with horror elements as Annerose and her lady retinue are subjected to various sexual tortures that are so thoroughly out of place. Aiyasha is captured by a tentacle monster and eaten after a toothy appendage devours her insides, Annerose is forced fed cum through a tube strapped to her face like a beer bong before thrown into a cage with a monster that fucks her mind blank, and Michiko is forced to endure poisoned leeches and needles (WHY ALL THE NEEDLES?!). And where is Riku? He is left to wander the streets Amidahara in a confused daze, vowing to find and rescue everyone. Why doesn’t he use his super sex Saiyan powers? Who knows? 

The animated hentai of Witch of Steel Annerose feels like an extremely loose adaptation of a pre-existing version of the story. A quick dive online shows that a manga of the series exists which makes me think that the animated version is just a bad, truncated adaptation. For all it’s faults, the series does have a nice collection of scenes involving busty demon girls. I really enjoyed them, in fact, because the animation does a good job of making these scenes feel wonderfully erotic. I thought it was goofy at first but after the fourth time watching a character grab and fondle a woman’s tongue ended up turning me on. And the scenes with Aiyasha were great because she’s a really sexy character who’s introduction became the best scene of the series for me. I only wish there were more oral scenes like the one that debuts her character in the first episode, especially since the animators went out of their way to bless Riku with a large dick. What’s the point in packing something huge if it isn’t going to be stuffed in someone’s face, hmm? 

Witch of Steel Annerose is a story of demons fighting demons and the undead human caught in the middle. You wouldn’t necessarily know that watching the hentai but there you have it. Even for a porno it’s pretty uneven and the length of the sex scenes feels deliberately padded so that the producers could get away with a meandering plot so long as the viewers are distracted by big boobs, sadomasochism, and the gallons of male fluids that spill out onto bedsheets. I could have done without the needless deigned dog the final episode—I could also do without the weak ending that never got resolved. I wouldn’t go far enough to say that you shouldn’t watch the thing. The first episode is the best of the set, cramming in a lot of fun stuff in its meager runtime. Just temper your expectations.