Summary: >

Things are looking good in the life of Mokoto. He's got a decent job, and just recently he married a beautiful woman named Yuna. They were paired in an arranged meeting, and it turns they're both virgins and have no idea about sex. Both worry that perhaps their inexperience is unsatisfying for the other and start to learn about the world of sex, and romance.

Thoughts: >

I'd never heard of Step Up Love Story, but it sounded like a cute romance so I decided to give it a try. Later I noticed the alternate title "Futari H", which is a manga I've heard of but never read. Futari H is a popular soft-core hentai manga that combines sex how-to's, and statistics with a "cute" romance between a pair of newlyweds. Step Up Love Story has sex, and top end nudity so this qualifies as a (tame) hentai title. I don't review hentai, but since it's rentable from places that don't feature porn (which is how I got it), and the fact that late night TV in Japan can show stuff more sexual than this, I decided to review it anyway. If that's not your thing, then you can skip this one. You won't be missing much.

Step Up Love Story, like many titles of this sort; attempts to be cute coupled with sexy stuff, but ends up a little too trashy to really be cute (although it occasionally succeeds). The manga being popular, it must have some good stuff that makes it worth reading, but the anime fails to capitalize on whatever that is. It follows Mokoto and Yuna around in their daily lives (with occasional intervention by Yuna's nympho sister) as they wonder about sex stuff, and their nightly lives where they try to implement it. That however is actually pretty boring.

Other characters are introduced like they are regulars in a series, but the show isn't long enough for that to work, so it feels a like they keep dumping people into the story. One side story started to interest me: a girl Mokoto used to tutor years ago, starts working at his office, turned out to be quite the hottie, and then proceeds to throw herself at him. It ends in a way that I couldn't help but say "aww... that's cute!", but I have to admit that it basically stumbled through that entire story. With a little more effort it would have been much better, but the same be said about this everything else in this anime. Step Up Love Story fails to have any tension, drama, or comedy. The sex isn't erotic it just exists. Yet the show isn't edgy enough in tantalizing way either. By the second set (of two episodes), it devolved into just another hentai title... with lame sex.

In a nutshell Step Up Love Story shows a little potential, but doesn't go anywhere. At all. It's cute on occasion, but only sometimes. Other than that, it's not enough of anything to make it worth watching. It's mostly boring and without direction, so better to skip this one.

Screen Caps: >