It’s a brave new world in the distant future as humanity sails the stars to colonize the cosmos. Political tensions are high, however with a divide growing between Earth-born humans known as Neo Terras and ‘alien’ humans born on foreign colony planets rallying as the New Solars. The United Federation binds these two classes of humanity together, but that link is slipping. How long can two attractive New Solar women survive on a ship full of New Terran operatives before being brought to their knees through one mean or another?

Kangoku Senkan ~Hidou no Sennou Kaizou Koukai~, better known as simply Kangoku Senkan, is a 2007 eroge visual novel by industry heavyweight Anime Lilith. Following up on the success of Taimanin Asagi, the studio introduces us to a nukige space drama involving political sabotage and a tug-of-war power play. New Solar representatives Lieri Bishop and Naomi Evans must endure a week on a battle cruiser commanded by the sly Neo Terran Donny Bohgan, as he, along with his crew, deliver them to Earth. I’m running the Dark Translations English patch for the game, which does a serviceable job at translating the game, with only a few minor hiccups like “Neo Terrans” being titled “Neo Terrors”, but it’s smooth sailing otherwise. Unfortunately, a DMCA notice from Lillith-Soft has since taken down the Dark Translations English patches. Members of the translation team actually formed a new group in 2010 by the name of Sanity Ends! to continue working on VN translations, so be sure to keep an eye out for them.

Anime Lilith paints a detailed picture of a Star Trek-esque space-faring humanity, with a quirk of interplanetary human tensions through Kangoku Senkan. It’s a solid backdrop for the actual plot following Major Donny Bohgan and his rivals, Lieri and Naomi. Bohgan is an expert at manipulation, so it’s fitting his time as commander the battleship Jasant is spent working on altering Lieri and Naomi with a mind control device hidden in the bowels of the starship. As a nukige, most of the game revolves around Lieri and Naomi falling into erotic and degrading situations when Bohgan and crew take advantage of them to train their newly implanted personalities. The plot context makes the scenes a lot more enjoyable, as you know the girls are being brainwashed and are struggling with an internal conflict that eventually gets phased out by slutty personas. There’s a lot of vacuity in the descriptions of the brainwashing procedures, likely to avoid lengthy explanations about how two busty officers are being turned into sex slaves. The game still retains a lot of mystery though, as Bohgan is never 100% sure what the buxom duo are up to and there is a bad end present, so you – the player – can never be sure as well (until you play through it a couple times, of course). The suspense present in Bohgan is a nice touch that keeps the plot enjoyable, holding the game back from just giving up and being a long run of victory fucking for Bohgan and his crew. Even when brainwashed, Lieri and Naomi are a threat to Bohgan’s plans, as Lieri is upfront and verbally commanding whenever she has a discussion with Bohgan; he never has the upper hand until the lights dim.

Lieri and Naomi have an enviable military bond; Naomi looks up to her superior Lieri as a leading figure and is, at times, overly defensive of her. She’s intense and angry, focused on her position as a federation soldier and supporter of Lieri, with contempt and arrogant superiority over anyone else, men especially. Lieri herself is an intelligent and cunning woman, as seen by her initial interaction with Bohgan on the Jasant. In the space of a single conversation, she corners Bohgan on his own ship with an ultimatum: interfere and have his secrets leaked or aid her and be overlooked. Both are attractive women, with Naomi being younger and inexperienced while Lieri possesses a mature allure. Bohgan himself is tied to these two women; he was once on a black op Neo Terran mission when things go sour as Naomi, piloting a floating turret known as a gun turtle, captures him. He manages to talk his way out of capture, however, claiming to be an oblivious nobody in search for some local prostitutes. Lieri has him imprisoned regardless, as using prostitution is illegal, leaving Bohgan to fester and grow his hatred of the two heroines while he sits in jail. This flashback sequence is perfect, as it quickly establishes later plot devices like the gun turtle and creates a reason for Bohgan wanting to mentally and physically abuse Naomi and Lieri. Mindless evil is boring evil, and it just goes to show how a little bit of character insight can go a long way.

Kangoku Senkan has some lovely character and background artwork, helped further with the addition of animations during some of the sex scenes. The whole game has a nice sci-fi art direction, though it’s very obvious what some of the influences were; the Jasant itself, for example, looks noticeably familiar to the Sulaco from Aliens, with its large, rectangular stern. When the Jasant reaches Earth, you’re greeted with a space station that looks rather similar to Deep Space Nine. Everything from the uniform designs to the room interiors has a consistent optimistic, futuristic look about it, prominently featuring smooth, clean surfaces. There is an overabundance of blue though, most scenes have it as the focal color, though this does tie into the plot somewhat: when the lighting switches over to a darker blue for night cycles, it activates the brainwashing triggers in Lieri and Naomi. I can reason it as a thematic decision to highlight that this is in fact their mental prison, but that might be overanalyzing it for some. The prominence of the blue isn’t overbearing, but it is noticeable throughout the game.

The characters all look great, Naomi and Lieri especially; both attractive women with enticing expressions through their selection of poses and faces. You don’t get to see much of Major Bohgan, as he is the male insert for the sex scenes, but when his face does show up, it’s creepy and appropriately serpent-like for a deceiver such as him. Lieri and Naomi look gorgeous in the sex scenes though that may be obfuscated a bit by the copious volumes of cum splattering them constantly. Seriously, there’s so much semen in this game, someone must have had fun drawing it everywhere. The animations for a couple of the scenes are usually a nice addition that help bring the scenes to life, though there’s one or two that are a bit awkward, as they are basically just flash animation. Overall, it’s a welcome design decision and one that I feel could have been utilized slightly more often; having it downplayed to add into more scenes would’ve been nice. The best use of the animation in that respect is the transitions when you see the Jasant traveling through space, adding a nice visual to look at while remaining nice and subdued.

When it comes to audio, Kangoku Senkan doesn’t drop the ball: our two heroines may be the only voiced characters in the game, but their performances are expert. Lieri and Naomi are voiced by Serizono Miya and Mizusawa Kei respectively, with both women having done voice work since the 90s; Miya since ’95 and Kei since ’99. The character performances are top notch, both inside and outside of sex scenes. There’s perhaps a bit too much on the slurping and gulping side of things when there’s a dick being sucked, but that’s mostly personal preference on how much of those noises you can tolerate. The game features an electronic soundtrack fitting for a space voyage theme, though outside of that it’s passable. The soundtrack for Kangoku Senkan, being an eroge and all, really just needs to be thematically sound and not be too overbearing, which it achieves.

One can only pack so much sex into a short game like this, but Kangoku Senkan manages to fill it up in all the right places. The scenes are lengthy without going on too long, as they generally switch between what Naomi and Lieri are doing to double down on how much is going on. There isn’t too much to worry about if you’re not into more extreme stuff, as the sexual content is mostly tame besides the “drenched in liters of semen” thing. The worst you have to deal with is a little bit of scat and piss near the end, but it’s quite brief and more for the humiliation aspect than actual shit play. The best part of the sex is the juxtaposition between Lieri and Naomi’s normal personalities and the absurdity of their brainwashed selves, as they act in complete compliance with Bohgan’s made-up comforting duties. There are some interesting scenarios, like Lieri in a video chat with her husband while being fucked or Naomi wearing a maid outfit while serving the crew, but as I said earlier, you’re not diving into anything really crazy here. The scenarios are great, though; I especially enjoy the mental anguish Naomi experiences while brainwashed, as she constantly feels like something isn’t right.

There’s a reason Kangoku Senkan is such a well-regarded eroge visual novel: it has a cool science fiction aesthetic with interesting characters to go with it. There’s good quality art, with the sex being sadistic and vulgar without being too off-putting for more vanilla fans though it can still have some satisfying, hard-hitting moments. The animations give the scenes some nice fluidity and personality as well. Everything is just the right length; Anime Lilith knew the scope of Kangoku Senkan and never tried to push it beyond what it could handle. The resulting product is a very short, solid nukige that comes highly recommended.

You can pick up Kangoku Senkan ~Hidou no Sennou Kaizou Koukai~ along with other quality eroge visual novels from Lilith Soft‘s website. Unfortunately, the Dark Translations English patch was claimed by Lilith in a DMCA and Dark Translations themselves have since disbanded, but I know how smart you guys are. After all, nothing really leaves the internet. As far as I can find, Sanity Ends! don’t have a web page, so all I can say is keep an eye out. Godspeed, readers.

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