Comic: "Hentai Kamen"
Published by: Other
Written by: Keishuu Ando
Artist: Keishuu Ando

Reviewer: Dr. Boogie
Posted: 5/13/2009

Plot: Kyousuke Shikijou is a normal high school student. However, when he dons a pair of women’s panties over his face, the hidden potential in his perverted blood (from his mother’s side of the family) is unlocked. He strips down to his tighty whities and a pair of mesh stockings, and becomes Hentai Kamen, aka the Masked Pervert! With the strength of 10 men and the perverted sensibilities of 100, he is determined to put an end to crime, one pelvic thrust at a time.

Review: Since the advent of comic books, there have been a lot of teenage crime fighters. Yet in spite of their struggles with great responsibilities, living a normal life, and all that other crap, none are quite as compelling as Hentai Kamen.

Sure, gaining superhuman strength and agility from wearing underwear on your head sounds strange at first, but is it really any weirder than a teenager getting superpowers from a spider bite, or a grown man dressing like a bat and working as a detective? The answer is yes. Is it still fun to read? Again, the answer is yes. Admittedly, there isn’t much story to each episode: Kyousuke is engaged in some kind of normal high school fare when suddenly, a gang of vicious toughs appear and start harassing people, prompting Kyousuke to put on some panties and humiliate them into submission.

Nevertheless, it’s entertaining to see Kyousuke’s deviant persona horrifying both friend and foe alike with his perverted antics. In the first chapter alone, he confounds his enemies by twisting his briefs into an improvised mankini before taking out the leader by thrusting his crotch into the thug’s face with such force that the two of them go flying through a plate glass window. Later, Hentai Kamen discovers that he can use ropes, whips, and even a nice pair of gloves to add a little more versatility to his crime-fighting. Better still is the realization that the kind of panty he throws over his face determines how much extra strength he can tap into, with the panties of his would-be girlfriend, Aiko, being the ultimate pair.

The only disappointing bit for me is that after a while, the emphasis of the story shifts away from crime-fighting in favor of full-on teen comedy. Don’t get me wrong; I wasn’t hoping that this story of an underwear-clad superhero would be a gritty, Frank Miller kind of story. The problem is that the story eventually starts to bear a stronger resemblance to Ranma 1/2, particularly when Kyousuke encounters a Chinese exchange student who is determined to marry him after he defeats her in a fight. Granted, that particular IP has covered an awful lot of ground, but why borrow from it so obviously?

In spite of all that, what’s most disappointing to me is that no one has released a Hentai Kamen game. To me, it sounds like the perfect formula for a video game: open-ended crime fighting coupled with the discovery of perverse new abilities and the ability to gain additional strength by obtaining different pairs of panties. Of course, all it would take is one irresponsible parent to completely ruin it for everyone else, but really, you could say the same for any game, movie, comic, or TV show. Plus it’s not as though there’s any real nudity in the comic, apart from Hentai Kamen’s thong-cleft buttocks. This could be just the sort of innovation the industry needs to get it out of the crapper.

Overall rating:
(Scored on a 0.5 - 5 pickles rating: 0.5 being the worst and 5 being the best)