Recently, Shueisha announced that LINK's World’s End Harem will receive a TV anime in 2021. The series is a popular sci-fi manga illustrated by Kotaro Shono and serialized in the Shonen Jump+ digital magazine and Young Jump! app. Set in a dystopian future, the manga follows the story of Mizuhara Reito, a young man waking to a world where the "Man-Killer Virus" has eradicated 99.9% of the world's male population. Reito, being a guy, is treated as a god-like figure and tasked with literally repopulating the world. All in all, a crazy premise, and one that has sparked controversy since the manga's TV anime greenlight.
Following the announcement, people began looking into the content of World's End Harem and criticizing plans to make this possibly pornographic series into a TV anime. A quick look at just the first few chapters reveals very explicit NSFW series befitting its absurd premise. Considering this, it seems hard to imagine censorship will not pose an issue on TV. For mainstream anime, there are limitations when it comes to sexual content. Series like World's End Harem risk being censored to oblivion. There is also controversy to do with promoting such content on a mainstream platform. Most people wouldn't label World's End Harem as full-on hentai, but it certainly comes close.
The harem genre has long been controversial. Criticism ranges from trashy and repetitive right down to damnable and misogynistic. World's End Harem doesn't do a whole lot to counter these criticisms, but it does have some deceptive depth. In fact, the protagonist's whole deal is that he refuses to take advantage of the many women thrown before him. Instead of embracing the harem, he pushes it away, holding out for his childhood friend. Unfortunately, this friend went missing three years ago, and the protagonist must resist temptation until he finds her.
As the manga goes on, it becomes increasingly psychological, exploring the dystopian ramifications of a female-only future instead of simply glorifying it as a male paradise. This doesn't change the fact that the majority of the manga's appeal is, of course, in the fanservice. There is a huge market for strange, erotic anime, and this is another series in that spirit.
Threatened by censorship and criticized for its erotic elements, it's unclear what will become of World's End Harem. A good indicator might be what happened a similar NSFW anime adaptation. Early 2020 saw Interspecies Reviewers take the anime world by storm -- a comedic ecchi where the main characters "review" monster girl escorts. Interspecies Reviewers would brew up quite the controversy. It pulled no punches when it came to adapting some very explicit material, and this led to the anime being pulled from Funimation's streaming service and multiple Japanese broadcasting networks. Apparently, broadcasters and distributors didn't get the memo as to how lewd Interspecies Reviewers really was. The situation was an unprecedented one, but it happened recently, and people are already speculating something similar could happen to World's End Harem.
Before it was pulled, Interspecies Reviewers handled its censorship problems in a comedic spirit, which worked well for the goofy, cartoonish show. World's End Harem is more serious and has a different art style, so it remains to be seen what will happen to the upcoming anime. It could tweak the manga to be less explicit or accept its fate to be lathered in censorship. On the bright side for fans, Interspecies Reviewers skyrocketed in popularity following its controversy. If World's End Harem is also deemed too lewd for TV, it might actually prove a blessing in disguise for the anime's notoriety.