We are entering a brave new era of fanservice. No longer can the fans simply be sated by boys walking in on girls changing, or tripping and falling face-first into boobs, or watching girls splash each other in swimsuits. No, to please today's discerning fanservice connoisseur, something more is needed - something dark and inhuman, something premodern fanservicologists could never have conceived. The stakes of fanservice have been raised, and the cartoon titillation game may never be the same.

Monster Musume is a very strange show. Its premise tells you virtually everything you need to know about it, at least on a superficial level. Hell, its title tells you everything you need to know about it - like the mecha musume trend before it, Monster Musume is about monsters that are also girls. It stars an all-but-nameless male protagonist who the rest of the cast alternately refer to as “darling” or “master,” and a wide assortment of girls who are also (from first introduction to last) snakes, birds, horses, fish, slimes, or spiders. In twelve episodes of madcap comedy, vague romance, and raunchy shenanigans, these girls and more characters besides attempt to coexist with Darling and also occasionally get in his pants.

The show wastes no time establishing this premise. Within the first episode we've already learned everything we're going to know: monsters exist, most of them are apparently also cute girls, and exchange programs are now underway to integrate monster-people into human homes for better cultural understanding. And so Darling ends up hosting the lamia Miia, whose feelings of affection towards her host range from possessive to occasionally spine-crushing. Miia is followed by the ditzy harpy Papi and honor-obsessed centaur Cerea, at which point the host coordinator Smith drops the bombshell that Darling is supposed to eventually marry one of his housemates. That never really goes anywhere, though - the show is more interested in throwing in ridiculous monstergirl gags and new monstergirls to facilitate them than getting to any actual romance, and so the cast is quickly filled out with slime girl Suu, mermaid Mero, and bondage-happy spider girl Rachnera (Rachnee-san to her friends, reflecting which harem archetype she slots into).

Each new character in Monster Musume gets their own focus episode, where we learn their shtick and mess around with gags involving their specific monster-related eccentricities, and then the rest of the show's airtime is filled up with small half-episode adventures like “Miia and Darling go on a date,” “Darling is threatened by a mysterious stalker,” etcetera. The cast is just strong enough to carry these adventures - not all of the characters are particularly interesting, but most of them grow on you over time, and nearly the whole cast gets a couple endearing or at least cute moments.

The main appeal of this show, unsurprisingly, is the basic twist of the premise; Monster Musume rides very, very heavily on its “standard harem, but with girls who have lots of inconvenient animal parts” concept. Many of the jokes here are classic harem gags twisted with the monster girl conceit, which actually work out pretty well. Jokes like Cerea feeling embarrassed about having Darling brush her horse butt, or Rachnea mocking him for his spider-happy leg fetish, breath new, weird life into tired dirty jokes and embarrassment gags. Many segments, particularly later on when the whole cast is introduced, ride entirely on exploring one of the more bizarre eccentricities of the characters. There's one half-episode segment dedicated to Miia shedding in the most weirdly sexual way possible, and another where Suu absorbs toxic chemicals to fight a giant forest dryad while Darling and Papi cling desperately to her giant slime-boobs. Not all of these sequences work, and in fact a couple of the episodes in the middle stretch are clunkers in both their first and second halves, but the overall mix comes out in Monster Musume's favor. The show is so dang weird that even if you don't find it appealing as a harem fantasy, it still works just fine as a pure comedy.

Monster Musume is also heavy on gropey humor, which is unfortunately where a lot of the fanservice comes from. A fair amount of the time, the characters are perfectly willing to get into weirdly sexy situations, which is honestly a welcomely sex-positive choice - but there's also plenty of times, particularly later in the season, where the fanservice comes more from “this character's in a gropey situation and feels violated/embarrassed.” This is often played as too ridiculous to come off as deeply uncomfortable, and the characters are treated lightly enough in general that it's not some kind of investment dealbreaker, but your appreciation/tolerance for that kind of stuff will definitely influence your feelings on a lot of the material.

On the other hand, as I said, Monster Musume is generally a show you can enjoy even if you're not watching it for sexy monster times. The weirdness of its premise means a whole bunch of material that would come off as mundane or exploitative in another harem comes off as inherently ludicrous and endearing here. The factors that make it inherently weird and distancing are also what make it work, and the show leans into this, embracing the absurd consequences of its conceit whenever possible. There's little here beyond the immediate comedy - no strong character work, no overarching storytelling, no serious wit to speak of - but succeeding reasonably well in modest goals is a fine thing. There's probably only so much humor you can plumb out of “what if the girls in a harem were also potentially life-threatening monsters,” but Monster Musume successfully scavenges that well straight through the end.

Monster Musume's aesthetics are generally a notch in its favor. The show has a bright and vibrant visual palette, distinctive character designs, and a wide array of wonderfully silly faces. Half of the personality of these characters comes purely from the ways they inhabit space and react to each other, and Monster Musume really sells the physicality of its monster girls. The show's animation is more impressive than its base visual style, but less consistent. The first and last couple episodes of Monster Musume are absolute buffets of animation, with consistent and well-used motion really bringing the show's wild characters to life. Many gags in these episodes ride entirely on the humor inherent in how the characters are animated, and standout sequences like the introduction of Cerea or Papi dragging Darling down the street are worth checking out even if you don't have much interest in the actual series. The show's animation stutters for a while around the halfway point, relying much more heavily on stills and cutting out the consistent monster-body movement, but there's enough good work here that this is definitely a show worth recommending animation-wise.

Monster Musume's music is less of a standout than its visuals, and falls more into “getting the job done” territory than anything else. There are some cute genre riffs for when the show occasionally dips into genre parody (like the rollicking songs used when Darling's getting carried on Cerea), but overall the music more unobtrusively facilitates the action than stands out on its own. Overall, I found myself surprised by how much I enjoyed Monster Musume - I don't really have any base interest in harems, but this show combines a fairly endearing cast, a very bizarre premise, and a bunch of creative gags with some well-animated setpieces to offer a reasonable comedy. It's not a life-changing show, but it's a pretty fun time.