A Night Worth Harvesting?

The next title up in my small stack of Adult Source Media sample DVDs to review is The Harvest Night volume 1; a title that turned out to be a qualified positive, but puzzling show.

Like the previous ASM titles I’ve watched, Harvest Night volume 1 is dubtitled. (I’m beginning to apprehend a characteristic trend here.) However, since Harvest Night is a former NuTech title that was “license rescued” and re-released by ASM, the translation served up seems to fall a bit below the standards of ASM’s original work. Obvious liberties were taken with the translation of the Japanese script into English, including a lengthy English narration and periodic dialogue that appear in the English dub, and consequently the subtitles, but not in the original Japanese audio track. Furthermore, since the subtitles transcribe the spoken English dialogue, occasional subtitles don’t precisely match the timing of the spoken Japanese dialogue. Viewers watching the OVA in English probably won’t notice any discrepancies. The differences may be enough to perturb some viewers watching the original audio version, but shouldn’t totally ruin the viewing experience.

The video footage is totally unaltered, which is both a blessing and a curse. While American consumers do get the original Japanese title card and ending credits, the DVD includes no English translated credits or credits for the localization. The disc includes the same 28 minute bonus short included on the first Dyogrammaton DVD, but unlike the version included with Dyogrammaton, the version on the Harvest Night DVD has no English translation.

Harvest Night feels like a very conflicted anime. In some respects it’s admirable. In other areas it’s, well, not so much bad as simply mystifying. The first of two episodes is a literally and figuratively dark story. Set in a dilapidated metropolitan slum, Harvest Night is a story about young thugs acting like young thugs. Apart from some distractingly obvious digital background pans used early in the episode, the background art throughout is more evocative and detailed than average for adult anime. And the character designs are a step above the norm for erotic anime. The first episode is grim and violent, including scenes of rape, sexual torture and sexual violence along with conventional brutal violence. Inexplicably, the OVA creates the distinct feeling that important parts of its story development are missing. The episode includes numerous allusions to unexplained events, and seemingly important characters that aren’t introduced or given any context. Astute viewers can piece together the outline of the story, but many of the details remain unclear.

A similar sense of ambiguity affects the video. While viewers typically expect adult movies to linger on their most explicit shots, the first episode of Harvest Night seems to take care to keep its most graphic shots brief or partially obscured, as if the anime is embarrassed about being too graphic. Sex occurs frequently throughout the first episode in variations including rape, consensual, and girl on girl, but the sex scenes are consistently brief.

The first episode of Harvest Night feels very conflicted because it seems hesitant to marry its gang conflict story with graphic sex, but the gang conflict story seems very incomplete, and the sex is too plentiful and organic to the story to feel superfluous. The first Harvest Night OVA isn’t ideal for viewers hoping for quick titillation. It’s much more of a dark and disturbing sexually explicit drama than cheap thrill. Viewers interested in challenging and possibly shocking adult entertainment may find Harvest Night satisfying, although a bit confusing.