Review: Rinkan Club

Lilith is a large company producing goods for the adult market encompassing an array of sub labels such as Black Lilith, ZIZ Entertainment and more. With years and years in the business they have expanded from VNs into, novels, manga, art books, drama CDs, live action and anime. In this review I will be looking at one of their many one off series: Rinkan Club.

For thousands of years the people of the town of Rinin have held a dark and twisted tradition. The towns deity Hime Iwanaga has cursed the town and the only way to stop the city from diseases and danger is to appease this deity through a ritual. This ritual involves having a woman dressed as a maiden and gangraped. There are rules to this though and the only to appease Hime Iwanaga is to either impregnate the girl or cover her in semen and sacrifice her.

This tradition has long since ended but lives on secretly in the Rinkan Club at Rinin High School. Generation after generation of Student President has ruled over this and numerous girls are selected to be raped by students, teachers and anyone associated with this club. This is the story of that club and teacher Suzukos attempt to investigate it.

I like that it gives a thorough backstory to why this is happening, that the rituals of the past tie into what is happening in the current day in the story really makes it feel connected, that there is, however ridiculous, some degree of reasoning outside of pure sadism and cruelty. It doesn’t happen just for the sake of it happening. The actual club raping part may not be original but the execution elevates it above your run of the mill ero anime, the girls and the scenes are naturally the main reason for this.

There are 5 main girls in the series, each one effectively the focus of an episode with the expected overlapping. There are no main male characters of real note which is good; it puts the focus on the girls as they fall foul to these unnamed men of all shapes and sizes. By real note I mean no singular guys we follow, we get a few teachers names but ultimately they become forgettable.

Aiko Katsuragi is the school nurse, Suzuko Yamazaki is a teacher, Shiori Nakamura is a teachers wife and Tomomi Yamanaka is an admired student. These four girls take the brunt of the club activities. They are nice and innocent enough and seeing all of them put up some resistance only to see them fall is delightful. Lastly but certainly not least there is Motoko Tamura who is effectively the ring leader of the Rinkan Club, she feels nothing for the girls chose and takes pleasure in seeing them be abused and raped. More on her a bit later.

Design wise they all look stunning. It goes without saying that they’re voluptuous, beautiful girls, this is par for the course for an ero anime, they all have near perfect proportions which makes them ripe for disgracing. They contrast well with each other as well, be it Suzuko with the bright pink hair, the ideal looking student Tomomi or Aiko with her curves all the way down to the petit Mokoto, there is something for everyone and it they stick in your mind because of it.

If you hadn’t guessed from the title (rinkan meaning rape) then this series does contain a lot of hardcore elements that will not settle well with some. Obviously there is a lot of rape, the one consistent element throughout as you’d expect and these scenes work well. They make you feel (well, a bit) for these innocent girls who had no idea what was to hit them. They also make you feel a lot of hate towards the girl orchestrating this Motoko which I’ll get onto later.

But rape is not the be-all and end-all for this series, oh no. There are a lot of other fetishes sure to cater to most. There is electric play, bondage, bdsm, exhibitionism, sexual humiliation, slavery, abuse and even scat. Me being me I enjoyed all of them, the humiliation aspects the most because that is my main fetish.

One particular case of this and one of my highlights of the series is when the club members are leading Shiori through the school. She is tied up, completely naked, has body writing on her and has what we come to see an unholy massive dildo / vibrator in her ass and vibes in her pussy. Seeing her tears, her shame and humiliation as she defecates in the school being led round to then clean up with her mouth is, in my eyes, perfection. The final scenes in particular I liked as Motoko finally got what was coming to her, it built up over the previous 3 episodes to the point where it was impossible not to hate her and then it delivers in the most satisfying of ways.

Now I haven’t played the game but have looked over the CGs and what I liked about the finale was the added scenes, to truly humiliate Motoko. I liked this, it helped punish this girl even more and boy did she deserve it, she’s the type of girl above everyone, who makes lesser people do her bidding and seeing her comeuppance was joyous. It may be a cliché that girls like her in ero series do get put down eventually but it is beyond satisfying nevertheless. It’s rare for me to praise something that alters the source material but it takes it to the level that was needed.

This also brings me to one of the few negatives I can think of and it is minor. Yes the above scene with Motoko was beautiful and seeing her get her comeuppance was joyous but it I do feel that is should have gone further as it was, in a way, a tad lacking. After everything she put the girls through it does feel like she was let off a bit. Another episode dedicated solely to degrading her in the worst way slowly would have been the icing on the cake.

On the animation front it’s a bit better than your standard ero anime and is fairly smooth throughout, Pixy are masters of ero anime so that should come as no surprise. There were a few occasions where the animation went a bit wonky with missing devices or an extra leg appearing out of nowhere. Enough to ruin the series it is not and not worth docking any points either. Whether this was fixed on the DVD box I am not sure as I have yet to get said box.

This is a series that does exactly what is says on the tin. It features a bevy of girls all going through hell in the Rinkan Club. It features a cult-esque plotline, caters to plenty of fetishes and other than my one grievance above finishes satisfyingly. I would certainly recommend watching this if you like this kind of content as it always finds a way to entice you.

Studio: Pixy

Episodes: 4

Release: DVD Singles and DVD Box

Available at: J-List, Amazon

9/10