Show Time!: Mixing erotica, sex positivity, and TV idols

Spoilers for Show Time!

Shows like Oshi no Ko and The Many Sides of Voice Actor Radio expose some of the dark underbelly of the Japanese entertainment industry—I hadn’t expected a goofy desire to earn the title of Hentai Master to lead me into finding a series with similarly hard-hitting themes. Declaring Show Time! as part of an entertainment criticism pantheon may overstate its importance in the anime sphere. However, this hentai uses its erotic elements to explore issues and humanize actresses in a way those other shows for general audiences cannot. Its surprisingly progressive critiques of idol and purity culture dished out alongside a rich course of fantasy has caused it to quickly become a personal problematic favorite.

Show Time! is based on the manga Even Miss Minami Wants to Have Sex whose title explains the basics of where its plot, in both a literal and memetic sense, comes from. The series begins with widower Shouji and his daughter Kana struggling emotionally after the death of his wife, her mother. Then “The Sing Along! Show” comes on the air and the adorable antics of Miss Minami and Pao helps brighten up both Kana and her father’s life. An unlikely set of circumstances revolving around a canceled live performance and Shouji trying to soothe a reasonably upset Kana by getting her a parfait in a crowded restaurant, leads the duo to meet the woman behind the TV character, Takasaki Minami. Then in an unsurprising hentai twist, the two protagonists end up boinking like bunny rabbits.

There’s far more than a surface level fantasy of horizontally tangoing with a famous TV actress occurring here though. The anime discusses the difficult obligations Minami faces as a children’s television performer. She’s forbidden from having romantic relationships. Her dreams of making children happy compelled her to pursue a career where she is forced to perform for happy families while being unable to pursue the kind of relationships necessary to have a family of her own.

Even just having a boyfriend has destroyed idol’s careers and these bans have been enforced in Japanese courts as legally binding. In the United States, all it takes is being in a video satirizing abstinence only sex education to get fired as a TV host for kids. So just imagine the kind of media storm getting caught having actual sex would cause, in either country! 

These unfair societal standards force Minami into a situation where her needs aren’t being met and she’s unable to work towards her goals to have a family of her own. While it can be annoying seeing stories, especially in hentai, assume pregnancy and child rearing are the ultimate goals of all women, it does feel like it suits this particular story well considering Minami’s profession and characterization. These standards also tend to be unfairly enforced on women vs men in the real world, with a singer-songwriter like Yuuri able to keep his career going mostly unchanged after being caught dating while one of the three women he was dating at the same time, former Juice=Juice singer Takagi Sayuki, had to change talent agencies to continue her career.

As Justin Survekis so eloquently put it when discussing the backlash faced by another Minami— Minami Kuribayashi—revealing she had a child in 2015, “Idols are, in fact, human beings, who have love lives, sex drives, bad habits, and body odors just like the rest of us.” In this case, even Miss Minami wants to have sex! While it’s easy to focus on a loving widower father getting to have lots of hot sex, the more compelling story comes from focusing on Minami’s perspective and how sexual empowerment allows her to recover her sense of self.

The first big conflict of the series comes not just from Minami’s fears of the terrible consequences the restrictions on her life could cause her, but also from how those restrictions have psychologically dehumanized her until she feels like more of a product than a person. 

She’s conflicted about even having sex at all after her first liaison with Shouji. In Episode 2, she shares how it was refreshing to be seen as a woman instead of just a children’s singer after quite some time. Her inner turmoil continues to torment her into Episode 3, where the two end up at a love hotel to avoid catching cold after being soaked in the rain. She disparages herself for having sexual desires and thinks she has to be better as a childrens’ singer. Shouji presents a radical proposal to her: She doesn’t always have to be “Miss Minami”—she can just be Minami. 

Shouji seemingly wasn’t able to drive the point hard enough into her as she’s still concerned in the next episode, conflicted over him confessing he loves her as it isn’t appropriate for Miss Minami to be falling in love. It can be challenging to pack much emotional growth into a short-form anime that requires a full sex scene every episode due to genre conventions, which ends up reinforcing these repetitive storylines a bit. However, this allows the show to mimic how we see cycles of growth in the real world, where we emotionally grow in the moment but face setbacks before growing again. Thankfully in this case, Shouji contributes to Minami’s positive growth by making it extremely clear he wants to know what she personally thinks, not what Miss Minami would think. He cares about their shared values and he finds her beautiful even when she’s messy and crying in Episode 5. He clearly would be into her whether she was famous or not.

But trauma is a hard thing to overcome. Even as Minami is untangling the knots her heart has been tied into by her time as Miss Minami, she has even more work to do as she grapples with if she’s good enough as a person to be a “replacement” to Shouji’s deceased wife. This is made worse as she can’t ask her friends or coworkers for advice without risking destroying her career. When the two meet in Episode 6, he makes it as clear as possible: Shouji wants to be with Minami and he finds her perfect as she is. He reaches out his hand to Minami who finally takes it fully in hers, embracing the worthwhile challenge of growing their relationship together.

Rolling our eyes and saying “wow, another story where a man’s pipe game solves all of a women’s problems” is far easier than digging deep to see how Shouji unabashedly supporting and loving every part of Minami, including her sexual side, is what finally inspires her to find happiness. When it seems like she’s feeling pressure to not use a condom, Shouji reassures her that it isn’t necessary and he’s perfectly happy to have sex with one on. While Shouji begins as the more assertive partner in the bedroom, Minami starts to take the reins more often as her confidence increases. Shouji getting to enjoy episodic sexual romps with her is just a side effect of how he continues to work to earn her love by supporting her over time.

Season 2 presents the greatest possible enemy to their budding relationship so far: the paparazzi. A scandal surrounding another actress already had Minami tense. She’s reminded how it’s not just her job on the line either, but everyone else who works on the show as well. The livelihoods of so many people hanging on the balance of one woman who just wants to find love and have some sex is inexcusable in a fair society. It’s made even worse by the glee of the reporter, a man who takes joy in, and will make a profit off of, Minami’s suffering. This enforcer of these cruel societal expectations is the ultimate villain of the second season of Show Time! which helps drive home its themes well.

This leads to a difficult situation where Minami finally has no choice but to tell her boss and co-star what is going on. They don’t blame her or try to be harsh over what has happened, but the boss tries to do the correct business move she needs to in this situation and asks Shouji to stop seeing Minami. It would be easy for Shouji to agree, in order to avoid potentially ending the program that brought his daughter Kana out of her dark place. 

Shouji instead sees this injustice for what it is: he knows Miss Minami is replaceable, while his relationship with Minami is not. He refuses and his support gives Minami the confidence she needs to ask her boss to try and find another way to resolve this conflict. While it would have been preferable to see Minami take the lead fully on this one, it’s understandable that dealing with the trauma of her life being commodified results in her needing more support. Her co-star offers help too, saying that if Miss Minami is sad, how will she be able to make the children smile? 

One of the easiest criticisms of Show Time! is that someone worried about the scandal of their relationship being exposed isn’t likely to have sex at the studio before rehearsals, in a public changing room, a parked car, on a Ferris wheel… well, you get the picture. And yes, some of this still happens mid-paparazzi scandal which is certainly an eyebrow-raising risk. While it’s easy to say this just comes with the territory of Show Time! being a hentai, I would argue that this actually helps enforce the themes of the work even more. 

In his book Cruising: An Intimate History of a Radical Pastime, author Alex Espioza discussed how public sex has been an integral part of queer liberation historically. One line in particular is striking: “When your identity is forbidden, there is a need beyond physical desire, a human need to be who we truly are if only for a moment.” This straight couple certainly doesn’t face the kinds of dangers that queer men cruising do by any capacity, but the parallels between these two sexual acts are still noticeable. Reading Minami’s public sex as a radical protest against the societal pressures that stripped her identity as a woman with sexual needs and desires adds a lot to the show.

Show Time! is absolutely full of messy hentai nonsense that’s hard to completely handwave away, but it served as a wake up call to me. It was a reminder that lust is an emotion equally impactful to the human experience as any other and art that focuses on it isn’t inferior for doing so. Hentai, like any other porn, has been a medium used to make political and societal commentaries since its inception.

We live in a world where school teachers are forced to resign over running an OnlyFans page they needed to supplement their meager income, of which much goes into buying supplies to teach the students in the first place. We live in a world where trying to start a sexy side hustle just to manage home ownership can get a woman fired too. A world where queer judges are removed from benches for expressing their sexual sides while making some cash. Sex work is not shameful and neither is sex. No one should be afraid that the sex they want to have could cost them their livelihood. No one should be forced to be sexless just to exist in public spaces.

Show Time! has an important lesson to teach about how the hazards of purity culture hurts us all. It teaches it in a humanizing way that offers a rare glimpse at the joy adult women can find in their sexuality that other “safe for work” anime cannot. Sure the show has issues, and the manga is able to present the story far better without seven minute episodes and titillation limitations, but I can’t hate on ways to learn important lessons and become more empowered all while getting our jollies at the same time. So while it still might not be fair to compare Show Time! to Oshi no Ko or The Many Sides of Voice Actor Radio, I would personally still recommend it just as earnestly as either of those series to others.