Perversion in the New World.

Tomoki Sakurai is just an average teenage boy with average teenage boy lusts and a dream to lead the most average, peaceful life possible. Anything else is far too complicated, such as recurring dreams about a winged girl begging him for help since childhood, his childhood best friend always beating the crap out of him, and an Angeloid named Ikaros falling from the sky. At first, Ikaros's appearance is like a blessing to his immature side and he quickly abuses her odd technological powers to grant him whatever his heart desires. This can run the gamut from stealing all the panties in his school or world domination via making the rest of the world disappear. (“I have done the research and found that no living person in the world would accept you as their ruler.”) But, Tomoki is really a good guy and quickly matters are put right again. With Ikaros around and the power of Tomoki's perversion, it doesn't take long for insane things like flocks of migrating panties to start happening. Meanwhile, Tomoki's classmate Eichiro Sugata is subtly trying to figure out the mystery of the black hole anomaly that delivered Ikaros, and what exactly she is, other than being a “pet-class Angeloid.” For instance, who sent her to Tomoki in the first place? And why do more Angeloids start popping up? Is this all part of the New World that only Sugata thinks exists? Whatever it is, Tomoki is living anything but a quiet, peaceful life now.

My mind was quickly blown on several scores by this show. Heaven's Lost Property, based on the manga of the same name,is full-blown perverted gags and shamelessly exploited (or, perhaps, parodied) anime tropes that have been in existence since the creation of the harem anime genre. I was gearing up for a groaner. But, surprisingly, the jokes are so inventively executed that I found myself laughing from the get-go. HLP is also full of interesting visual metaphors, such as every time Sohara hit's Tomoki particularly hard, it cuts to a scene of a karate master chopping through glass bottles, bricks, stones, etc. Then, there's the deployment of parodied tropes, which are so blatant that it's hilarious. At one point, Tomoki is fighting his panty robot and the scene is so remarkably like any giant robot/sentai action anime that I was rolling.

Another thing that blew me away about HLP is the animation quality. It is absolutely gorgeous animation, from the serious scenes to the silly super-deformed ones. The colors are vibrant and the animation is very smooth and detailed. Some of the characters (lookin' at you, Ikaros) do have that annoying “sad moe girl” feel in terms of their design, but that's something you don't get too much time to dwell on as the show just plows onward toward its wayward goal. And the music is pretty top-notch, with a different ending song to close out each episode with animation that is usually played out as either silly parody or side-story to the episode. This part is particularly entertaining. The English dub is also so good, I found myself forgetting there was another track. Greg Ayres as Tomoki couldn't be a more perfect fit, and Eric Vale for Sugata is priceless type-casting. And the script for the English dub is so much more hilarious and lively than the original Japanese version, something I don't get to say very often.

As to extra content, I'm sad to say this 3-disc set falls short. Funimation included a disc for extra content alone, but the only things on it are a host of trailers for other shows and textless songs. The songs are a nice feature, because, as I said earlier, every single ending song is different. However, while it's nice to see opening/ending songs put on a DVD without the text, the songs aren't truly textless because you still get the subtitles and that's important. Every ending song, as I said earlier, is different and if they didn't have the subtitles you lose the context with the animation that make most of them so darn funny (the “Senshi no Kyusoku” ending is a personal fave). And the trailers available are the same previews they slap on any Funimation DVD that's released in the same time frame, so they really are of little account.

Heaven's Lost Property has shot for the moon in terms of pure absurdity and perversion. It's not quite on the level with Excel Saga, but it's in the ballpark for silly times. However, this is a show that's MA rated for good reason because ho-crap is there a lot of panty shots and boobs going around, not to mention that pervy antics is a main theme in the series. If you think this would get tiresome and dumb, I assure you I thought the same thing. If you give this one a chance, I promise there's laughter in store. You just have to turn your brain off and accept HLP for the insane, unassuming comedy that it is.