DVD Review: Mysterious Girlfriend X – The Complete Series

How far would you go to become closer to a girl? well with Mikoto Urabe it seems that swallowing the saliva (drool) of Akira Tsubaki is more than enough; but where will this relationship take them? Well we’ll leave that blank for now but what did we think of the series and this DVD Release by MVM Entertainment? Find out in our DVD Review of Mysertious Girlfriend X – a series that is not X-Rated for adultery purproses.

Synopsis:

When the oddly peculiar Mikoto Urabe transfers into Akira Tsubaki’s class, he finds that life has thrown him the weirdest curve ball ever. While Urabe may be an anti-social loner who sleeps on her desk, carries a pair of scissors in her underwear, and breaks out in sudden fits of insane laughter, there’s something about her that Tsubaki just can’t quite put his finger on. …Until he accidentally puts his finger in it, and suddenly the phrase “sharing spit with a girl” takes on an entirely new meaning!

Before he can wipe her drool off his face, Tsubaki is mysteriously addicted to Urabe, which isn’t half as strange as the fact that she not only finds this normal, but already seems to have plans for her new drooling boyfriend. So, can a girl spitting in your face ever be a GOOD thing? Is this relationship bound for disaster or great expectorations? Find out as Urabe puts a spittle love in Tsubaki’s heart and things get REALLY bizarre!

Our View:

Mysterious Girlfriend X is probably the creepiest, most awkward but direct to the point love story I have ever come-across yet at the same time I can’t help but be compelled to watch more of it. Confused? Well you should be; Mysterious Girlfriend X focuses on the slice of life styled love-story between regular junior high-school student Akira Tsubaki and oddball newcomer Mikoto Urabe as they explore their relationship and make new friends along the way.

It sounds simple enough right? A story between two characters as they both share their love for one another through various different means; but how is this love expressed and explored? Through the art of sucking salvia (drool). Creepy. Ok, let’s start at the beginning; upon waking up Urabe in class Tsubaki noticed some remenants of her savlia on the table and in an attempt to get ‘sexually’ closer to this girl Tsubaki eats the salvia and as a result becomes ill. Once Urabe learns of this fact she comes round to Tsubaki’s house and offers a ‘partial’ explanation to his situation; You are attracted to me and you cannot survive without my drool. Because of this Urabe agrees to give Tsubaki some of her salvia (drool) every day by getting him to suck on her finger. As time progresses a stronger bond between them grows and eventually through the power of salvia they discover amazing new feelings which further enhance their relationship.

In some aspects Mysertious Girlfriend X is your traditional love-struck anime series, whereby the characters don’t know how to react amongst each other, but in some ways this series offers an entirely new perspective. For instance Tsubaki is capable of being around Urabe but is unsure what to do with her (and not in the sexually way either); and as such we see multiple episodes whereby they hang out in the park, visit the beach or engage with other characters – each of which builds the relationship between them. Of course the major attraction for Tsubaki is trying to find out who (or what) Urabe is; as while he maybe secretly dating her he doesn’t really know anything about her other than the mysterious scissors she hides in her underwear.

It really does put a whole new spin on a relatively stale genre but be warned there are a fair amount of creepy and awkward scenes involved; and that’s before you mention the Naked scenes or Bikini content. For instance at the beginning we see Urabe and Tsubaki quite often sharing salvia with each other (with sucking sounds) but as the series progresses and the bond becomes stronger this emotion intensifies which causes sexual urges in both characters. That’s not all as in later episodes Ayuko Oka, who is Kouhei Ueno (Tsubaki’s best friend) girlfriend, also begins to share saliva with Urabe and as such they begin to share their experiences of their boyfriends with each other; much to the reluctance of Urabe. Of course this is only ‘part of the creepiness’ experienced within Mysterious Girlfriend X, as the mystery of Urabe’s hidden scissors (and panty flashing) will surely boggle a few minds until the very end.

Extras:

In terms of an MVM Entertainment release its business as usual with the inclusion of textless opening and closing songs as well as an extensive list of trailers for other shows, most of which have already been released by MVM in the UK.

There is one disappointing factor to be had though; this set does not contain any Japanese promotional material – content that was available in the American (Sentai Filmworks) release of the set – or the bonus OVA Episode. To be clear the Bonus OVA Episode wasn’t included on the American release either, but the American release did receive the Japanese promotional materials so its abit disappointing that we didn’t get them either.

This ‘alteration in bonus content’ is probably due to the fact that Hanabee (Australian Distributor) authored the discs and had to the remove content so that the episodes would fit on to two DVD discs as opposed to the American (Sentai Filmworks) release which came on three DVD discs.

Specs:

Media: DVD 9 x2
Region: 2
Running Time: 2:11:24 (Disc 1), 2:24:04 (Disc 2)
Video: MPEG-2
Audio: Dolby Digital 2.0 224kbps (English & Japanese)
Subtitles: English (Yellow)
Resolution: 720 x 576 (576i)
Aspect Ratio: 16:9 Widescreen
Frame Rate: 25 fps

Overall:

How far will you go down the rabbit hole to find love? Well when it comes to Akira Tsubaki it involves sucking (and swallowing) the saliva (drool) of the girl you love in order to maintain the relationship. This is pretty much Mysterious Girlfriend X in a nut-shell, a story that sees a love-story evolve through the sharing of saliva-swapping while in the process making new friends. It’s creepy, it’s awkward, it’s entertaining and it can be a lot of fun if it’s not taking out of context.

Basically Mysterious Girlfriend X is one of those series that you would never (unless you liked odd love stories such as this) watch without someone recommending it and despite my ‘mediocre’ experience I do recommend giving this show a try – even if it’s just to understand what’s going off. Of course there is more on offer than just a love story; as a few cameo appearences from movie posters and mangas will no doubt bring a few smiles to viewers faces.

When it comes to the DVD then everything is just as you’d expect it to be with both adequate picture and audio quality as well as clear presentable subtitles. As always the audio is only available in 2.0 Stereo; but since there is no action or explosions a 5.1 audio mix is not need need. Speaking of audio the English Dub, which has been produced by Sentai Filmworks, is easily one of their better dubs with both lead characters being voiced by respectable voice actors (Josh Grelle as Tsubaki and Genevieve Simmons as Urabe) who actually show some emotion in their voice work. Basically it’s a complete opposite to older Sentai filmwork dubs, but Sentai regular Brittney Karbowski does make an appearance as a support character for the latter half of the series.

So did we enjoy Mysterious Girlfriend X? Well despite its rather supernatural styled start the series eventually calms down to become a comical coming-of-age story that deptics an ‘alternate’ way of finding and expressing love; a story that ‘anyone’ could relate to if they were just to open their mind to it. Basically we didn’t want to enjoy the series, but we ultimately ended up liking it. In terms of this DVD Release by MVM Entertainment then its another solid performance although it is disappointing to see that bonus content (Japanese promotional materials) were removed; but this was due to disc authoring by Hanabee and not MVM directly.

Score:

Mysterious Girlfriend X will be available on DVD from the 18th August 2014.