Boku No Pico

Boku No Pico

Boku No Pico is a series of 3 anime OVAs which has a rather infamous reputation online. For this reason, I thought that I should explore this series to see what it had to offer, and if that reputation was earned.

CONTENT WARNING – NOT SAFE FOR WORK

This paragraph is a very important one. This series has scenes of a sexual nature. If this is liable to upset, disturb or cause offence to you, then I highly recommend that you STOP READING NOW. There are no pictures of explicit content in this blog post, but just in case you read something you don’t want to, here’s a picture of a cute kitten as a content buffer.

 

Have another one for good measure. Final Warning – If you scroll past this kitten picture, the review will begin. Please do not continue unless you are absolutely sure you want to.

Still here? In that case, let’s go.

Episode 1 of the series stars Tamotsu, or Mokkun as Pico calls him (It is unknown who the Boku in the title refers to, an element of mystery that lends greater substance to the show.) The episode begins with a scene of Mokkun and Pico engaging in sexual foreplay involving ice cubes, which immediately serves the purpose of shocking the viewer and demonstrating that this is a show that will test their preconceived expectations. After this prologue, the scene flashes back to Mokkun looking through a pair of binoculars and witnessing a person swimming naked. He is entranced by their beauty, but the binoculars run out and the person leaves before Mokkun can find more money. Depressed, Mokkun heads for a bar, where he is unexpectedly reunited with the swimmer. The bartender introduces the swimmer as his grandson Pico, who is visiting him over the summer, and asks Mokkun to keep him company. Mokkun agrees to befriend Pico, although he is surprised that Pico is a boy, as he had initially thought he was a girl. Pico has an effeminate appearance, as the picture at the top will show. This could have been a conscious decision made to challenge notions of masculinity, as well as serving the narrative purpose of confusing Mokkun.

Mokkun and Pico bond over the binoculars and then get ice cream before going home. On the way home, Pico offers some ice cream to Mokkun, but accidentally spills it over Mokkun’s shirt. Mokkun asks Pico to lick it off instead of using a tissue to clean it, and kisses Pico while he’s occupied. The surprise causes Pico to spill the rest of the ice cream over himself, and the two become ever closer as they experiment sexually. Eventually, Pico runs away, feeling that Mokkun only wants him for sex, but he returns once he realises that Mokkun cares about him emotionally as well as physically.

In episode 2, Pico makes a new friend his age, Chico, who lives in a house in the countryside with his older sister. The two play together naked, revelling in their innocence as children who have their whole lives ahead of them. One day, Chico shows Pico his den in the attic, where he sees his sister masturbating through a crack between the floorboards. Pico explains to Chico what is happening, and the two take their friendship to the next level. Just like Mokkun taught Pico about sexual experience in episode 1, Pico is passing his knowledge on to Chico, after witnessing Chico’s sister fuels his curiosity. Finally, in episode 3, Pico and Chico’s friendship is strained when their new friend Coco comes between them, but they set aside their differences and have a threesome, which stands testament to both the strength of Pico and Chico’s bond, and also a stern rebuttal to society’s traditional idea of monogamous relationships.

The notoriety of the series comes from its depiction of sexual intercourse and experimentation between minors, and this aspect is indeed the most obviously recognisable part of the work. What should also be noted is that the series uses this concept in a number of interesting ways, holding up a mirror to modern society’s ideas about children. Boku No Pico’s use of children having sex shatters our perceptions in the same way South Park did by having children use profane language. Sex is typically associated with adults, so children partaking is considered shocking, and yet Pico and his friends retain their innocence in the childlike way they approach it. Pico speaks of a funny feeling in his ochinchin, a Japanese slang term for penis commonly used by children. Likewise, many of his sexual interactions begin with him expressing curiosity in his own body or those of his friends. For Pico, sex is about widening his understanding of the world on an emotional level, more than it is any kind of physical satisfaction he derives from the act itself.

Additionally, the series has an intriguing attitude towards gender identity. Pico is a boy, yet he can be mistaken for a girl at first glance, as Mokkun did, due to his long hair, soft face and slender body. However, Pico seems comfortable with the idea of being a girl, as he wears girl’s clothing on several occasions. Some of these instances are in a playful manner, such as when and Chico play dress up in Chico’s sister’s bedroom, but other times, he wears girl’s clothing in public by choice. Genderfluidity is not something that I had seen in media before, so I was pleasantly surprised by its inclusion here. Coco is even more surprising as for most of episode 3, I believed him to be a girl, as his hair is even longer than Pico’s, he is introduced wearing a dress and the name Coco has a feminine association. Even after it was revealed that he had a penis, I simply assumed that Coco was transgender or a hermaphrodite until near the end of the episode where Pico and Chico refer to Coco using male pronouns, making it clear that he is male. Although Coco’s outfit was the most masculine of the trio’s on their visit to a theme park (He wore a tank top, saggy brown pants, military boots and an orange beany hat, while Pico was dressed as a J-Pop star and Chico was dressed as a gothic Lolita), I assumed that Coco was merely a tomboy to contrast with the more feminine Pico and Chico. The character of Coco was one who made me face up to my own prejudices and ingrained ideas, and I have been able to grown as a person following the realisation of my stereotyping, which comes with the knowledge that I can actively try to prevent myself from thinking in such restrictive, insensitive ways in future.

This is my evidence for the argument that Coco is a feminine name. It’s airtight!

Boku No Pico is a series that is not afraid to tackle all of modern life’s taboos and question them in an intense, but also insightful way. Behind the provocative subject matter lies a subversive, transgressive masterpiece.

Score: 69/10

…

I am so sorry about this. In case you haven’t figured it out yet, this is my April Fool’s Day prank for this year. I thought it would be funny to apply a critical analysis of society to porn, but I’ve probably gone way too far into the realm of tastelessness here. Anyway, Boku No Pico is a popular prank suggestion whenever someone asks to be recommended an anime to watch, and if you’ve made it this far, the reasons for why that is should be obvious. It’s essentially the anime equivalent of a shock site.

Here’s the real review: Boku No Pico is the least sexy thing that tries to be sexy I have ever seen. I guess the bit about the taboo breaking is true, but sex involving children is taboo for a very good reason. Episode 1 is particularly disgusting in this regard, as Mokkun is a paedophile who behaves extremely inappropriately towards Pico, seducing him into performing acts he doesn’t understand. The whole scenario comes off as cringe inducing, especially the end of the episode in which Mokkun finds Pico after he ran away and convinces him to come back, which feels too much like a domestic abuser convincing their battered spouse to stay in a clearly harmful relationship. Interestingly, both Mokkun and Pico’s grandfather only appear in the first episode. I like to think that this is because Pico ran to the police to tell them about Mokkun, leading to him being sent to prison offscreen, and Pico’s grandfather committing seppuku shortly afterwards for handing his grandson over to a sexual predator. Pico interacting with children his age instead of an older man in the other episodes makes them less somewhat less creepy, in that the playing field is more even and it seems more consensual, but it’s still children having sex. It’s like being stabbed by a mugger, then being thankful that the mugger only stabbed you twice when he could have stabbed you three times then urinated into the open wounds so that you would die of infection and blood loss before an ambulance reached you.

At least the animation is legitimately good, even if what’s being animated is repulsive, and that the genitals are blurred. Thank goodness for small mercies, I guess.

I do intend to do more blogs after this one, but if you don’t hear from me, assume that I didn’t erase my internet search history quickly enough, and because of that I’ve been sent to prison for watching this. I really don’t want that, since I’d have to share a cell with Mokkun, and he isn’t a gentle lover.

Real Score: