Joseph Luster
April 10, 2012 
Do you like girls with guns? Great! Do you like girls who are guns? Because that’s what you get with Upotte!!, a new series that takes moe and gun fetishism and pops then in a blender free of any sense of shame. This is anime in 2012.
The premise of Upotte!! is pretty simple if you don’t think about it too deeply, allowing it to stack itself multiple times upon your mind just for the fact that it even exists. Genkoku is appointed as homeroom teacher at Seishou Academy, a school full of sharpshooting young girls. These girls aren’t just aces at handling guns, though, they’re guns themselves, each representing a different firearm type from various countries. Imagine girls with gun parts in place of organs, or… organs that act as gun parts, or… I don’t know. Just imagine it.
Genkoku quickly discovers the danger inherent to being the only human at Seishou Academy when he makes an offhand remark about Funco—the series’ leading lady, a Belgian FNC assault rifle—wearing a thong. The resulting spray of furious, embarrassed bullets lands him in the school’s hospital, where he’s able to read up more on the gun types and their various… parts. Here are some choice quotes from his studies:
“The hand-guard, their chest… If you accidentally touch it, you’ll be burned, so be careful.” Cut to an exposed bra, hand creeping ever closer. Oh, I’m burning up!
“The stock, her buttocks. The FNC has a skeleton stock…”
“So that’s why she wears a thong.”
Yeah, you get the picture. Something about Upotte!!—ok, almost everything about Upotte!!—kind of grosses me out. Funco’s loins are constantly burning just imagining Genkoku’s firm, strong grip pulling her trigger and firing her. She nearly has an orgasm just thinking about it. It’s perverse but not funny, which is kind of the point if it’s not entirely played for titillation, right? The jokes fall flat, unlike the rack on Eru, a British L85A1 heavy assault rifle whose bountiful boobs serve to shock and awe.
This original net animation is based on Kitsune Tennouji’s manga, which has been serialized since 2009. Upotte!! certainly has its own special, very specific fanbase in mind—one that falls somewhere in a bizarre Bermuda Triangle swirl of interests. It’s about as subtle as a brick to the head and that’s what I felt like I’d been hit with after watching the first episode.
