9 O’Clock Woman tells the tale of a news anchor who just has to fulfill her fantasies while at work. Maybe this is how CNN can boost their ratings.
What They Say
Miki Katsuragi has finally landed her dream job, as an anchorwoman for the nine o’clock news. Unfortunately, this pretty reporter with a spotless reputation has a very dark secret. She’s addicted to masturbation, and she can’t stop for even a second! When she is caught using a vibrator on the air by the cue-card holder, she’s in real trouble. He’s not above a little blackmail, so she’s completely under his power. Not only does he show her what the real thing is like, but he also installs a remote-control vibrator into her panties for fun on the air!
The Review:
Audio:
The audio presentation for this release brings us the original Japanese language track in stereo along with an English language dub, both of which are encoded at 192kbps. Since this is a hentai release, you can pretty much expect a basic stereo soundtrack with hardly anything in the way of directionality to either the rear speakers or along the forward soundstage. It’s a decent serviceable track, but pretty much everything feels center channel based outside of the rare bits of music.
Video:
Originally released throughout 2001, the transfer for this show is presented in its original full frame aspect ratio. At the time, with hentai being one of the first genres to really move heavily into the CG anime style, the show has a lush look to it with some really rich coloring that stood out back then but feels a bit dated in some ways now. This shows through well in general here here and provides a great looking image to view for the sixty minute running time. With no cross coloration, jaggies or other issues, it was nice to see a good clean hentai transfer.
Packaging:
A rather good looking cover that highlights the shows main feature, the very well done character design for the news anchor, shown here in a partially undressed position. The back cover provides a number of screenshots and a decent summary of the show as well as the discs features and various production information. The insert provides a nice piece of artwork along with the chapter stops while the reverse side is just boxart adverts.
Menus:
The menus are pretty basic but nicely done and fairly well in style with the show itself. There’s little to see here beyond the show itself and some trailers, so moving around the menus is nice and fast and access times are good.
Extras:
None.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
Originally known as 21-ji no Onna: Newscaster Katsuragi Miki, the story of 9 O’Clock Woman is pretty straightforward. The lead character is the very attractive Miki Katsuragi. After having a pretty successful career in general in the broadcast world, she’s finally becoming the lead anchor of the News at 9. The station owners are definitely happy about this as she’s bound to deliver huge ratings due to both her great looks and her very sharp intelligence.
And much as expected, she does. Ratings continue to go up and people around the country tune in at 9 every night to see her. But, as you would guess since this is a hentai show, she does have a dark secret. She loves her vibrator, and she loves having it in her while she’s on the air. She’s fought against doing it because she knows she’ll eventually be caught and it’ll just become a mess, but for some people, you just can’t win with logic in situations like these. You just have to do what feels right.
So night after night she goes out like this, until one of the production people on the TV set realizes what’s going on. And being male, he’s decided to take advantage of it by in essence blackmailing her into doing what he wants. And he manages to pull it off and gets his way, which means with her. He also continues to provide new ways for her to be “plugged in” while on the air and while around the station in general, causing her to have all sorts of small problems and the constant need to take care of what’s in her.
The show pretty much follows this premise through the two episodes, though the second episode introduces another young guy who comes into the picture with a puppy love for Katsuragi and ends up entangled in Satake’s continual blackmailing of her. The main problem with this set is that the second episode talks of what’s to come and there is a third episode, but it wasn’t licensed at the time and the show is essentially considered incomplete. Personally, I found these two episodes more than enough and hope it’s left at that.
These two episodes were fairly decent overall, and the interactions were kept primarily to two or three characters instead of roping in whole subsets of people for fun and games. The character designs are just great and look quite good with the style of animation used here, though I’m sure some will dislike the cel shading technique that at times might remind them of some of the latest video games. The only real drawback was the inconsistency in design of the “lower halves” of the cast, which changed from scene to scene, and in several of them just looked goofy.
In Summary:
9 O’Clock Woman is an interesting little hentai tale, not one that will leave a long impact, but just another one along the road while waiting for the next big thing to come along.
Features:
Japanese Language, English Language, English Subtitles
Content Grade: C
Audio Grade: B+
Video Grade: B+
Packaging Grade: B+
Menu Grade: B
Extras Grade: N/A
Released By: Kitty Media
Release Date: February 26th, 2002
MSRP: $29.95
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.
