World’s End Harem First Impressions (Volumes 1-5)

The year 2020 will go down in history as the year that the coronavirus happened, where mankind barely avoided complete decimation when historians unearthed the ancient, arcane arts of Good Hygiene. But as much as the media hyped it up to apocalyptic proportions, the coronavirus is mere peas and carrots compared to the virus that’s going to ravage mankind in the next twenty years, at least according to World’s End Harem, published in English by Seven Seas.

In the year 2040, a college student named Reito Mizuhara enters cryogenic sleep, in hopes that scientists can treat him of his cellular sclerosis. He promises to meet the love of his life, Elisa Tachibana, when he wakes up. Five years pass, and he wakes up cured just fine. But in that time, the world was ravaged by a pandemic called the Man-Killer Virus, which has killed every man in the world… except for a handful that entered cryogenic sleep (including Reito). In order to save mankind, Reito needs to have a lot of sex.

But of course, this is a harem manga. And if there’s any law that governs harem manga, it is as follows: the main character is morally correct, and doesn’t want baseless, carnal sex, even though the reader is meant to want exactly that. Reito loves Elisa, but when he awakens, she turns out to be missing. The manga wastes no time turning into a sci-fi mystery series as he tries to figure out what happened to her. It, naturally, ends up being something much bigger- and more political- than expected. There’s also the moral conundrum of how much sex etiquette can be disregarded in the face of desperation for survival. Is it good enough that all women involved have given consent? I don’t know; that’s for you to debate.

But in the end, it’s still a harem at its core; it’s called World’s End Harem, after all. Reito is allowed to try and track down Elisa, but what’s left of mankind can’t gamble on something like that. As a result, he has a number of women live with him, just to “tempt” him. This results in your usual ecchi antics… or hentai, rather. Since this is serialized in Jump Plus, and these are adults in this manga, there are many showcases of “coitus”. This isn’t your “accidental” boob grab crap. The women in this World’s End Harem are paid professionals.

So, who are these women anyway? Well, first off, we have Reito’s caretaker, Mira Suou. She’s the most… er… level-headed of all of them, and is basically in charge of exposition and stuff. There’s also the nurse and bodyguard- Akane Ryuzoji and Sui-  who get hired to live with him. I admit… they’re pretty uninteresting in terms of their personalities (but Akane is the best of all of them because she’s tall and spunky).

Reito isn’t mankind’s only hope, however. In addition to him, there’s Hino Kyoji and Shota Doi among the surviving men, both of which greatly increase the controversy of the manga. Hino is totally into the wish fulfillment-ness of the whole situation, which means he gladly has sex with as many women as possible. But even more divisive is Shota, an emotionally insecure high school student with feelings for his teacher. He ends up getting to live a perfect recreation of his high school career, where all the female students- and… er… his teacher- love him. These two seem to not serve any purpose in the overarching narrative, and thus their-especially Shota’s- scenes are the least enjoyable parts of the manga to me thus far.

Hoo boy, though, the art. The artwork is pretty standard-looking, but the… stuff… is drawn exquisitely. The sex scenes are full-on extreme, to the point where even I- as “level-headed” as I was- felt a bit uncomfortable. Fortunately, I am an adult. Just keep in mind that there is much nudity, complete with “nips.”  I personally don’t find a lot of the… activities in World’s End Harem to be very attractive (even though they should be I guess? I practically have “virgin” written on my profile by now…). I always preferred sexy clothes over nudity, and there wasn’t enough of that here, which sucks because sci-fi clothes can be pretty sexy.

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Current Verdict: 7.6/10

I don’t know if the following statement means that I’m blessed or cursed, but World’s End Harem is perhaps the lewdest manga I’ve ever read. Sure, Prison School and Interspecies Reviewers are technically just as controversial (and the former has lewd scenes with teens), but those two manga have a bit more finesse than this one. The narrative is legitimately interesting, but there’s a lot of excess lewd you have to sift through. I ONLY recommend World’s End Harem to ecchi and hentai fans.