Nightmare Campus is a hentai title with demons, tentacles,
violence and rape. So it's pretty bad right? Actually it's quite good. The animation
is decent for being hentai. The artwork is rather odd at first. Character designs
range from realistic (bad guys, some demons), to cartoonish (the main characters),
to simple caricatures (supporting secondary characters, most background characters),
even though there are hardly any comedic moments. It takes a while getting used
to the style. It's not bad, it's just... different. What makes this above average
is the interesting story where the demons are actually the good guys, and the
main characters aren't one-dimensional. They're by no means *complex* characters,
but it's nice to find hentai characters (including demons no less) with emotional
anguish, angst, and non-sexual feelings for each other. This show would work even
without the sex. The sex parts aren't quite necessary except as a domination device
(a lot of it is rape, but not all). There's also plenty of violence and gore although
I wouldn't categorize Nightmare Campus as dark, and I've seen worse (or
better depending on your viewpoint) in mainstream titles like 3x3 Eyes.
And it's not the demons doing the killing either except in a few occasions when
they're driven to it. The bad part is that the show has no conclusion. That's
right, the story doesn't end with this 5-episode ova, and there were no follow-ups
made. I still recommend watching Nightmare Campus though.
(3.5)
