Gakusen Toshi Asterisk

[Spoiler Warning] I'm not mad. I have only myself to blame for this, really. I tend to be more selective with what I watch. Something will be recommended, I'll hear about something popular, or it's just on my mind a lot. I've never watched anything expecting it to be bad; usually I have no expectations at all, but often I at least think it'll be something that's enjoyable enough to pass the time and get a 5 or 6. The Asterisk War is my first exception. I didn't watch this because I knew it'd be good. I watched it because I heard it was almost identical to Rakudai Kishi no Cavalry, which I'd just finished, and all I wanted to do was see which is worse. Yes, WORSE. Not better. I mean, that's not to say it couldn’t have been surprisingly good, but of course that couldn't happen. Of course, this review won’t be spent comparing the two anime together, but I will give a verdict as to which is better at the end. Because that’s what everyone asked me to do! Also, so the mods won’t be unhappy, I must inform you that I will spoil the first episode almost entirely, but spoilers will be toned down to a minor level beyond that episode. Asterisk starts off extremely rocky; honestly just about everything in the first episode is horrible, whether it's immediately evident or not. The opening scene is a fight with awkward choreography and absolutely no context at all, even as the scene comes to a close. It sets the tone, I guess, but the reason why this fight was shown at all just seems unclear after watching the whole season, as way too little is revealed in this opening, and its potential context doesn't have much weight on the following episodes. But I'm sure it'll be explained later... in another season... that I won't watch... Some exposition is given, which is fine I guess, but one very interesting thing stuck with me. "The people gradually began to alter their sense of morality." This is apparently due to some event called "Invertia", and you really have to give the writer(s) props for making a new term for "shitty writing". It's a shame they couldn't follow up on it, though. There might be some stupid actions, but nothing horrible enough to make you really think that these people are really fucked in the head; these things instead feel forced so that the "story" (read: too little) and fanservice (read: too much) can keep going. The first example of characters being idiots instead of morally questionable comes quickly. Icky--oh, sorry, wrong review—Ayato (the main character) catches a falling handkerchief, sees and open window (and/or hears someone's voice from it), and sums up the obvious. He jumps into the window to return the handkerchief, only to see a female student only partially dressed. Here's everything wrong with this scene: 1. He acts apologetic, knowing that it was an accident, despite not considering that he would've been obviously invading someone's privacy by jumping through their FUCKING WINDOW, MULTIPLE STORIES HIGH. If some awareness to the obviously horrible idea were present, even if it results in the MC being a massive douchenozzle, it could at least be pinned to people having fucked up morals. Nope, instead he tries playing this off like it’s not just a prank, bro. 2. We get a glimpse of someone’s ass before knowing whose ass it even is. But don’t worry, it’s not that important, this is only the female fucking lead. Where are the Japanese tumblrvists when you need them? If the fanservice wasn’t so forced, this could’ve been an OK scene, but god forbid someone has to go three minutes without popping a boner over their new waifu. By the way, you can stop taking the show seriously at this point. 3. If your handkerchief is so important, why did you carelessly leave it sitting loosely near an open window? How the hell did the wind even suck a cloth out of a room, anyway? Why was Ayato surprised by seeing a girl in the room when he heard her talking? If he didn’t hear her talking, why did WE hear her talking? This goes into a very laughable fight scene that only exists because Julis’s personality makes absolutely no sense, if she even has one. She thinks Ayato should die or something because he saw her naked (apparently wearing underwear = naked, k), despite being soooo grateful for getting a super-special piece of linen back. Maybe this could be some inverted moral bullshit like the story wants me to believe, but you’ll later see how much of a clusterfuck this character is as the show goes on. The fight itself is full of weird technology and magic we know nothing about, plot armor, and overall poor direction. (Why did Ayato jump through an explosion unharmed? And why did the soundtrack suddenly stop just when a character is thinking, only to go to some mysterious-sounding tune? It’s weird.) It ends with Ayato glomping Julis to avoid some assassination or something, and he later gropes her somehow because fanservice, or awkward comedy, or… I don’t know. Oh, did I say something about an assassination? Who cares? No one else does, so that’s obviously not important. Let’s move on. I could pick apart every scene, but I’d just retrace the same points and conclusions the above have made, more or less: Characters are incredibly stupid, whether the writer made them do stupid things or the writer leaked his stupidity into the plot’s scenarios at various points, and not because of some global event. The art is pretty generic and obviously tries to compensate by being flashy, the music is mostly uninspiring, and just the overall direction seems to be mediocre. All of this is taken from the first ten minutes of the first episode. That’s all. In short, the show quickly establishes how fuckin’ bad it is. So, I’ve been mentioning this “Invertia” thing a few times. It IS pretty important, and you should really pay attention to that scene, because it’s the only time in the whole show that you’ll hear about it! …Wait… oh. Yeah, Invertia is mentioned once, or something. No one talks about it, and there’s no noticeable impact from it (as far as morals go). Why did they bother mentioning this part of it? And you know that fight in the beginning? That kinda hints at some other “major” plot element that gets totally forgotten about after it’s brought up. The first episode is basically spent teaching you things you will never need to know. It’s high school algebra all over again! Beyond this façade of a setup, there’s some sort of plot, or at least there should be. Basically, Ayato comes to this school to kinda learn about his sister and mostly to find some path for himself, so he starts training for these fighting events, and wow I am REALLY bored right now. Along the way, he meets various girls who do all but tear out their reproductive organs and install them into exuberantly-colored fleshlights for his personal satisfaction. It’s honestly hilarious how frequent the fanservice is, and how few reasons the girls have to each fall in love with the MC. Asterisk’s girls come in different shapes so that everyone’s tastes are satisfied, and they’re exploited so commonly that I wonder if Asterisk is trying to trying to appeal to the hentai artists or if the creators are bragging that they have girls in their series. I’m sure you’re all very satisfied with yourselves. If you need to be reminded again that the characters are bad, this is your lucky day! The characters are bad! So here’s my favorite part, the character roast section: Ayato – Things worth saying/making fun of are as follows: Julis – Independent black woman who don’t need no bodyguard. If you ignore the fact that she’s a figure of royalty, a high-ranking student, and that your IQ is lower than that of an earthworm, then it makes a lot of sense. Claudia – You know what? This is the best character in the whole show, and all who disagree can fucking fight me. She’s the most direct with her affection for Ayato to the point where she flat-out says she wants to fuck. At least there’s no bullshit a…

Gakusen Toshi Asterisk is a series which starts off as one of the most uninspiring anime I've ever seen throughout its first few episodes, but past a certain point it starts improving quite rapidly. Granted that doesn't really say very much given how mediocre the opening is, but despite the lackluster start it manages to make a quite impressive comeback and eventually become a pretty enjoyable anime. First things first though, episodes 1-4 of Asterisk didn't exactly give me a very good first impression because they are *painfully* generic. Like if you've seen any typical action/fantasy/ecchi/harem magic academy anime before, you should know roughly what clichés to expect, and I'll just say that initially Asterisk has effectively all of them. Our protagonist Ayato transfers into a new school and walks in on the tsundere female lead Julis in her underwear within 3 minutes of the first episode and 'accidentally' grabs her breasts, he meets his new classmates and immediately becomes surrounded by a bunch of girls who fall in love with him for whatever reason, he's given a powerful magic sword which he just so happened to be the 'chosen one' to wield and thus becomes super overpowered... you get the idea. Basically it's all been done countless times before and I'm really getting sick of it at this point. As a side note there's also this one scene which blatantly rips off the light sabers from Star Wars for some reason, even the sound effects were completely the same... well whatever. Anyway, then starting from episode 5 (what I presume is the beginning of the second volume of the light novel), something happens to this anime which slowly but surely turns it into something different. And it comes with the introduction of a girl named Kirin; a very shy and nervous girl, yet also the top-ranked student in the school in terms of fighting prowess. The story starts putting a surprising amount of focus on her character and backstory, and in the process it downright sneakily goes *away* from the abundance of overused clichés it had in the first few episodes. Suddenly the amount of fanservice and romcom shenanigans is severely toned down, and instead we actually get some real depth and character development. Sure, it only really involves Kirin herself and our protagonist Ayato, but it was still a breath of fresh air compared to just having content I've already seen a hundred times before in other anime. And plot progression aside, I personally found Kirin to be by far and wide the most likeable girl in Asterisk's character cast anyway so I guess it was a win-win scenario in that sense. Now I haven't read the light novels of Asterisk, but based on the contents of the anime I'm presuming it's covering every volume in 4 episodes each. And thus I was a bit worried that it'd start to get worse again after the anime had finished up on the contents of volume 2 which seemed to be the Kirin-focused one. Fortunately however that didn't turn out to be the case, as starting with episode 9 we finally get into what I guess can be called the 'main' story of this series. Introducing the Festa: a grand series of tournaments where the students of the six different magic academies in the city of Asterisk fight each other to showcase their talent and technological development. The price they're all fighting for is the opportunity to have any one wish of theirs granted. Naturally, Ayato and the girls are competing as well. Normally I'm not a fan of action in ecchi anime since it tends to end up rather incompatible with its own fanservice, but Asterisk does a respectable job at keeping the two sides separate from one another. As a result, the duels in the Festa are actually not that bad, and A-1 Pictures' are not exactly newbies when it comes to creating fancy special effects in shounen battles, so the visuals are pretty decent too. When Gakusen Toshi Asterisk started airing, I considered it one of my least favorite shows of the season. Not that it's finished however; I'd say it's a perfectly acceptable show. Not anything amazing by any means of course, but if you just want an easily enjoyable way to spend 20 minutes every weekend... then this anime pulls it off very well. Discounting the generic and unimpressive opening, it has pretty decent fight scenes and production value, as well as good characterization for at least part of its cast. Oh and for you pervs out there who are just intending to watch this for the ecchi tag, I'd recommend you to look somewhere else; Asterisk really doesn't have very much of that at all. I cannot make a proper evaluation of the story as a whole though for the simple reason that... well this is a split-cour. At the time of writing this we've still only gotten to see half of what the anime has to offer, with the second season airing in Spring 2016. However the Festa is a huge event, and there's plenty of action left to showcase on that front, so the second cour might very well be even better than the first. Fingers crossed.

I have a long-standing fascination with The Asterisk War. To most people, the series has been laid to rest these days, but I was new to anime and the anime community when it came out and was the spicy new topic to discuss. It was one of the first times I got to take a side on a hot-button topic of the day - and the *very* first time I got to take a side on a specific series. I liked The Asterisk War. I was team AssWar > Rakudai. I was all in. We got absolutely annihilated in that battle, mind you. Rakudai picked up a decisive victory in the war of public perception, but to this day I'm still that guy in whatever Discord server the topic manages to come up in, sitting in my rocking chair and ranting about how Rakudai wasn't all that and how much better The Asterisk War was. It's reached a point where people just a few years younger than me don’t know what I'm talking about anymore. I have become an old coot. So, let's rewind. To talk about The Asterisk War in a way that means something, we have to put it in the context of 2015. The landscape was different back then - everything was in the process of changing to resemble the anime community we know today, but the new ways of the community were still in their formative stages and the old ways of the community were just beginning to die off. Conversations surrounding non-seasonal anime were declining but still prominent, and the platforms where most people discussed anime were less centralized compared to 2023. MAL, YouTube comments and r/anime were legitimately the most centralized platforms of the time. AniTwit wasn't even a term yet, and Discord hadn't taken off yet to become the behemoth that it'd become. This setup lent itself very well towards one form of anime-centric fan content - reviews. Written and video-form reviews benefitted from the less centralized environment, where it was more common to have to seek out other people's opinions to engage with your hobby rather than be bombarded with those opinions on your Twitter feed whenever you weren't soliciting them or wanting to hear them. It was billboarding an opinion for other people to read and discuss. They still had to be sought out, but it made it much easier to find and seek out opinions on whatever series they were wanting to read or hear more about. The largest platform with the widest possible audience for reviews was - and is - video-form reviews on YouTube. In the early to mid-'10s, we had content creators like Digibro, Mother's Basement and Gigguk that were making content that - for better or worse - had a visible impact on the discourse surrounding a series outside of the anitube bubble. Threads over the latest videos were getting pages and pages worth of discussion and argument on some nook and cranny subreddit, on anime threads on off-topic boards on My Little Pony fansites, and, most importantly to me, over on MAL's Anime Discussion board. I'm not lying when I said the most engaging and heated discussion you could find in this era was in follow-up threads about the latest Digibro video. This anitubing shit mattered back then. People talked about it, and they talked about it with passion. With visible success creating video-form anime reviews came the flood of high school and uni kids who wanted to eschew having to grow up to work a shitty corporate nine-to-five in favor of chasing a dream of making a living by making videos talking about their favorite hobby. The prime garbage people were eating at the time was Sword Art Online videos. It was a worldwide phenomenon back then that came with a loud fanbase and a loud hatebase alike. This made it into a cash cow for creators wanting to rake in easy numbers. However, the market on SAO content was cornered by 2015. Digibro and Mother's Basement talked about it enough by themselves to cover for thousands of up-and-coming anitubers. The SAO video review economy was being flooded by a very select few people, and the people doing so were the ones who already had all of the resources and visibility that came along with having an established platform. Nobody was making themselves off of making reviews on that series anymore outside of the people who had reached the top early. Then the Fall 2015 season hits, and with it comes The Asterisk War. A new property with a lot of traits that made it seem like a marketing dream to some production committee at the time. It was part of the newest domestic LN trend of magic high schools, it had a largely international cast that foreign audiences might be able to relate to and enjoy, and it came with a similar-but-safer writing formula that a lot of people had identified about SAO. If the production committee pulling the strings was going to make the next LN global phenomenon in 2015, they saw AssWar as their ticket. The production committee ran with it. It was made a split-cour before the term "split-cour" was even a term seeing common use. To folks at the time, it looked like it was an anime that came with a second season announced before the first one had even aired. It came with a gacha game before AL and FGO had made gacha games a massive thing. It had its own shitty PS Vita arena fighter, again, as part of the marketing package. The light novels were speedran for international release by the standards of the day, the valuable marketing tools of OPs and EDs were not skimped on in the slightest, and the production values behind the bulk of the anime were very strong for a 2015 LN harem anime - albeit they just took a much a less creative form of the Ufotable approach by relying heavily on filters and whatnot to make the visuals pop. It even got its own spinoff series about some girls who attended the doofy idol school that always comes in last place. It got shitcanned pretty fast, but I like to imagine that there's an alternate timeline where The Asterisk War Cinematic Universe became a thing. Nobody seemed to consider how audiences would react to writing quality. Maybe they saw SAO selling like hotcakes in spite of the critical backlash, maybe they weren't even aware of the critical backlash since that was mainly a foreign thing, or maybe they just didn't think that quality was important for these kinds of series. I don't know. I just know that the Asterisk War and all of its marketing efforts were absolutely torpedoed by flopping with critics and audiences alike on this front. It just wasn't good. It didn't have the qualities it needed to make fans of this medium latch onto it and care about it. People didn't defend it, they didn't buy the LNs or play the gacha, and they didn't feel pressed to support it even if they did like it. The character writing and storytelling created a series where the standard reaction to it was the series itself being routinely mocked. These elements combined to create a very visible low-hanging fruit, and every young anituber and reviewer looking for their big break 8 years ago made shitty content on this series where they tried way too hard to make this their Sword Art Online. It was open season, too. This was people's chance to break out. This was the next bad LN series getting a big marketing push for its anime adaptation. Standards of quality seemed to collapse, and anything and everything that could be mocked was being grasped at. I'm still haunted by the audio of some kid laughing for about 20 seconds straight because a character in the series is named "MacPhail," since that kind of sounds like "McFail." I don’t know how to follow that up. It happened, it’s out there, and it can never be undone. Yet, the greatest failure of The Asterisk War is that the series made nobody. The series never became the next LN phenomenon, so the production committee wasted a bunch of resources in marketing a failed product. Yuu Miyazaki wasn't made into the next Reki Kawahara, let alone made into somebody with more meaning than that. I don't know of any content creator who made it - let alone sustained any success - by br…

It's totally okay to watch a show with low expectations. Sometimes to balance a great anime, you gotta watch a bad one just to put you back in your place. It's a requirement to have watched poorly done shows so you know where your tastes are and also broaden your horizons. The Asterisk War serves as one of those shows that will give you appreciation of shows like High School of The Dead and other shows that have poorly written stories and brick wall characters. This is a must watch if you need to remember that there are really uninspiring anime. Storywise, not much to say. Gary Stu comes to new school, all the ladies fall for him the end. Sounds like the typical harem anime because it IS a typical harem anime. The whole thing is a tease and shows snippets that relate to the protagonist indirectly, but fails to establish a basis for it. What I mean if that sounded pretentious, is the lack of an overarching conflict. We follow young Ayato, but for what? All we see is him turning red at every little female physical contact. Deus Ex Machina phenomena is arguably always going to break a show. I think it works in this show's favor just because there weren't really any upsides to begin with. It gives a little more excitement in what was a lackluster show. Arguably it isn't phenomena but foreshadowed. Ayato's power makes zero sense considering the circumstances revolved around him and that the whole show seemed to have miss the point was just bad writing on many levels. But hey, what more to look forward to in a show then a guy's head in between breasts? The chemistry between the characters is awful and blame the story telling for that. None of the characters mesh well and there isn't any positive to get out of observing their actions and motives. They all suck. If gary stu didn't fit the description of the main protagonist, then I don't know what to believe. This guy is the most uninteresting (for lack of a better word) fuckboy. Something that works against the show is that it was really trying to take Ayato's circumstances seriously. The tropes are quite abundant and make all the female characters seem like cut outs of cariactures placed in an anime. And to munch the very uninteresting main protagonist at that. The Asterisk War really is a tease when it comes to scenes of sexualizing the females. Cuz boobs and butts sell right? I'm losing brain cells trying to think of anything to write for this show. VOICE ACTING IS VERY BAD. My ear was bleeding due too Saya and Kirin's voices oh my goodness. It is awful and to hear baby squeals and "jealous" grumbles is reason enough to AVOID this show. I say it's a must watch because this might set the bar low enough for anything to come after seem like a masterpiece. We're all masochists when it comes to anime though so it's okay. Sound is underwhelming but the EDM is a good twist in action scenes. As for animation, it is the Irregular of magic high school esque. Flashy colors and CG stuff. Considering how little action there is, animation isn't really great. Lot more exposition than there is fighting and we know how that works out in a harem. I came into this show knowing it was going to be bad so I didn't really think of it as anything I haven't seen before. It brings nothing new to the table, nothing inspiring, no noteworthy scenes. It's just a letdown in all aspects besides I guess teasing if that has any credibility. I'd surf the internet if I wanted to be uninspired but I guess the one thing the show has going for it is it's opening. Its pretty cool, not that cool but its okay. A typical harem that lacks a resolution is what can best describe The Asterisk War.

Towards the end of 2015, two light novel adaptations became notable for sharing startling similarities between them. Chivalry of a Failed Knight was considered somewhat refreshing, occasionally playing around with awful tropes and channeling the power of competent screenplays and exciting directing to turn a school battle LN adaptation into something worth watching. Conversely, The Asterisk War failed to meet even the basic requirements to function as a generic work of fiction. It's barely worth the effort it takes to write about it, let alone animate it. Before we start, I dare one of you to make a thread or a blog showcasing the exact amount of problems each episode has. Don't make a drinking game out of it, or you'll die of alcohol poisoning by episode 8. The show literally starts with the main puss ass lead walking into our Tsundere in the middle of undress, under the pretenses that she dropped something important to her. After she claims to owe him one, she tries to incinerate him out of nowhere, resenting him for the rest of the episode in the process. This sets a precedent as to how badly this show will execute and contradict everything, like being low enough to over-sexualize a 13-year-old who regularly gets slapped by her uncle and saved by Ayato, whilst simultaneously acting like her asking for a sparring match the main character she fought of her own volition before is in any way indicator of her strength as a person. Just to provide the illusion that broke as hell Ayato isn't obscenely powerful, they provide flimsy limiters that only work when he uses a specific weapon for too long, despite that he often goes past the time limit of the limiters with no problem until the match finishes. The show breaks its rules so often that its ravaged narrative arcs become that much worse. Even the interesting ideas this dreck presents aren't capitalized, let alone worth capitalizing on in the first place. The world-building is easily the most fractured part of this dumpster fire. The tournament arc has been hinted to be a tournament in which things can get deadly and bloody for competitors, but no one gets remotely injured or killed, aside from that one pointless and awkwardly done flashback scene at the very beginning., if students can summon hovering screens with their hands for no reason, then why do they need to hold them, and why is there actual paper involved? The world-building of this show is some of the worst I've ever seen, as if the narrative wasn't already cheap enough with its trite nonsense, missed opportunities, and romantic mood killers designed to preserve a terrible harem. Speaking of which, Ayato is as horribly characterized and intolerable as his harem, which is one of the worst in the mainstream anime hemisphere. Julis is a trash tier Tsundere who plays up that trope to obnoxious degrees, especially when she retardedly blows up her room in an attempt to scorch him alive for the crime of accidentally seeing her in her underwear. Saya is an obnoxiously possessive loli with all the intolerable tropes you'd expect. Kirin is an annoyingly squeaky pushover with a ridiculously lousy character arc As for Claudia, anything she has going for her can be boiled down to sass, sex appeal, and an insidious and mysterious nature that I guarantee this show won't capitalize on. The other characters are either stupid or wasted, with almost no middle ground beyond just being "there". Easily the most crushing case of the latter is Irene, who is a dangerous punk with a heart of gold and an interesting design. They go out of their way to do nothing interesting with her when it's time for her to fight our unbearable main lead in the finale, and the closest we ever get is how her younger sister keeps her in check, which has also been done a million times. When a character like her is the best character in the show, it speaks volumes of just how worthless this cast is. Visually speaking, this show isn't much better. The colors are certainly bright, and some of the character designs can actually be pretty neat and sexy but the artwork is pretty miserable. It's a low-budget SAO and Aldnoah.Zero style with even shittier and more incomprehensible choreography, and even more all-encompassing fugly CGI. Much like the show itself, the visuals are bad at even pulling off being generic and mediocre, barring a few relatively dazzling environments. Even the aesthetics are gaudy and nonsensical, and the cuts of actually good animation are few and far between. At least Andloah.Zero had some flourish to make up for generic style and cheap CGI. The OST is a mixed bag of vanilla background noise, awful dubstep, and ill-fitting emotional pieces. Even the OP is a milquetoast pop song, in spite of it being catchy. The ED titled "Waiting for the rain" by Maaya Sakamoto and Ramsus Faber is the only stellar bit of music in the show, as it's a pretty stellar emotional track to close out each episode with. Even the visuals are interesting, with the show swapping the positions of a bunch of color-coded silhouettes of each harem member, which are accompanied by some actually pleasant techno melodies and Maaya Sakamoto's warm, even uplifting voice. Still, if having one good track is all the audio needs to be unquestionably better than every other aspect of this show combined, then I really can't find a better way to call this show dogshit. People put themselves through hell slaving away at this, and no one did a remotely good job beyond the musicians. That's as sad as the show itself. This anime isn't even infuriating or laughable, just annoying and lifeless, which is one of the purest tells that this has no value I can assign to it, let alone any reason to be watched enough to garner a second season. It even fails to live up to its title in any way, shape or form. How this got popular is beyond me, and I'm glad it's dead.

Warning, this review might have some spoilers! It is a great story after all, but something is missing in it. This anime was really great and i can say that there was some missings in the episode that might just would fit in there, but its not much to complain about that. I really did love that he was powerful (i guess not spoil). It does reminds me of SAO (Sword Art Online). Swords there and swords here. There is season 2 now and i expect that he (spoil) will get away that thing that holds him back from using hes true 100% power in fights and duels. Thats it for now.

Dual Cour Format: An anime meant to be 24 episodes as fitting of Trimmed Format but because of limited TV Slot booking often airs at different points in time. Often announced simultaneously for example: Shinmai Maou no Testament, Gate Story 8 / 10 The story begins with Amagiri Ayato a transfer student to the Seidoukan Academy and progresses as ground work for what's to come for the future of a student that does not care about the combat called festas that surely but slowly is getting himself riddled on something darker. Since this is a dual cour series I won't go into detail until I've seen 2nd cour but it's well executed giving the serious moments their bubbles and good portrayal of character bonding on an Academy where everyone it's everyone enemy. Art + Animation 8.5 / 10 Gakusen Toshi Asterisk has great animation and above average art that combined are way more than decent. It's objectively good with no problems. Sound 8 / 10 I caught myself singing the OP of this series and goes without saying that the choice of BGM and OST are very good. The voice actors are very good as well and the ED does not disappoint. Characters 8 / 10 On the first cour the character are very well developed and their dynamics are quite entertaining. The chemistry of the female lead Julis-Alexia is reminiscing of normally black haired heroines that are usually portrayed as very confident and proud (Kanzaki Kaori from A Certain Magical Index). Enjoyment 8 / 10 I thoroughly enjoyed this first cour and I'm looking forward to the second cour. Mostly from the choice of visuals that seem to be a mixture from (Strike the Blood and A Certain Magical Index). Overall 8 / 10 I recommend this to someone who doesn't get bothered by extended groundwork and light hearted comedy, romance with the bonus of spectacular short battle sequences. Do not watch if you're illiterate (Using the Term loosely) and couldn't or don't know airing formats nor like Harem oriented anime.

This anime is definitely an interesting one when it comes to my overall enjoyment and whether I think its a quality title so far or not. Story: 6 - The story is fairly intresting and each episodes make me want to watch the next episode so i'd say it has a good story development. Of all the animes watched I can think of three animes namely Absolute Duo,Freezing and Infinite Stratos which has a similiar story and development. And this season (Fall 2015) an another similiar anime 'Rakudai Kishi no Cavalry' have been airing as well. Although both of them are good and intresting it makes me wonder if if the money could have been used for a more creative and unique project. Art: 8 - The art is great. Contains a lot of great scenery and special effects were good , not to mention battle art is cool as well. Sound: 8 - Opening song is phenomenal, sound track fits well and sounds good. Not much else to say at this point. Character: 5 - Characters are pretty basic and its nothing new. I have seen same type of character many times. Enjoyment: 7 - I am without a doubt enjoying the anime, I look forward to the day each episode is released for the fun 22 minutes of each episode. Overall: 7 - It is a good anime without a DOUBT and have a lot of room for character development so it is one reason to watch it. So overall 'Gakusen Toshi Asterisk' is a good anime pick for the season.

This anime is terrible. It's just another one of those SAO lookalikes that A1 is trying to pass as an original anime. The story is nothing special: Super strong boy meets somewhat strong tsundere hot girl that after only TWO episodes falls completely in love with him. Oh yeah, there's also something about a magical school and a competition. The world in not very well presented. The characters are simply walking, talking stereotypes. You probably won't even remember their names, only the character tropes. There's the very naive and powerful main character who doesn't get that ALL the girls are in love with him. There's the main female lead who's a tsundere (not even a good one at that), there is the loli dandere (she is also not very well made cause she looks and sounds like the supercritical dandere, but she's very active and not at all shy nor quiet), there's the big boob loli girl who is completely depended on the main character and etc. The only reason why i'm not giving this the worst score is because the animation and the look isn't all that bad, even if the fight scenes are terrible. Ah yes, the fight scenes. The genre of this anime is ACTION! But the creators idea of action/fights is apparently flashing colourful lights really, really fast and hoping that you won't notice. But I must give credit where credit is due: the music isn't all that bad. This actually makes me even more angry because I believe that it's wasted on this terrible anime.

My Gakusen Toshi Asterisk review. Story: Mediocre 5. Art: Fair 6. Sound: Fair 6. Character: Good 7. Enjoyment: Fair 6. Overall: Decent 4. Ok, so this anime has ended , so what can I say? Well, one can't make a review of this anime without compering to another anime namely "Rakudai Kishi no Cavalry" or at least on the story (up) side, since it both features the same plot where it involves the female MC who met the male MC in a very awkward situation and plot wise, both partners have to compete in a contest that would pit their skills against another opponent . I mean if one where watching both animes their is at 70% similarities, where I rather not discuss anymore details and both climaxes where focus on fighting the strongest female contender, which is why I gave this anime's category a 5. About this anime's art(up) thought there where some fanservice involve, it didn't focus much on it to sell, thought they did made Claudia and Violet's bikini fanservice a little bit bitchy, but the good thing was that it only appeared briefly, so that is why I gave it a 6 for this anime's art. Sound (up), actually I just have nothing much to comment on this anime's sound pertaiting to the VA who did the character's voices, but I don't have much love for both the opening and closing themes of this anime, so I just limit it to a 6. Charcter (up) ok, the relationship between Ayato and Julis maybe a bit in the ambiguous side given that Julis was just too pridish to admit that she like Ayato and Ayato was just this garden variety harem guy , it was still good enough to see the two being together and supporting one another so for that this category should be "GOOD enough. Unfortunately this anime has introduced too many support characters that they're not given enough aired time let alone that those from diffrent school weren't that much of climatic when it comes to the competition, but still, it's "Good." Enjoyment (up), since this is the season were I've been watching 3 animes with a harem genre, my enjoyment was just limited as to how it will end and that's as "FAIR as it can be, so overall (up)this anime was decent enough to such level that it didn't rely on the fanservice to sell, but it lacks it's own identity that it can be compared to "Rakudai Kishi no Cavalry" , so season 2??????? Why not?

WARNING: Review contains minor spoilers, as the show has almost no story and some one off events need to be discussed to get across the show's quality. Asterisk Wars is a series which has been derided by many and lauded by few, although the most common consensus to this show is likely "average". In my opinion, though, the people who pointed out all of this show's flaws are pretty much perfectly on track: This show has an unlikeable and generic cast set in an ill-concieved setting with no plot to drive it and poor fights. Lets take it from the top. Our show begins when Ayato Amagiri, your standard flatbread hero, arrives at one of the six elite fighting schools, Seidoukan Academy, so he can be a fighter, as he is a Genestella which is basically a superhuman. The first action we get to see is him returning a handkerchief to a girl...by leaping through her open window?! What rational person does this, even if they can superjump places? It is a total invasion of privacy and instead of just, say, getting to her door and knocking, or shouting to her, or hell going to the window and saying she dropped it or any number of things, he just leaps into the open window of a total stranger's house. Inside is our female lead, Julis, and naturally since this is a harem series, that means we need to walk in on her dressing. Don't ask why a beautiful princess would decide to undress with an open, undrawn window where anyone can see, take pictures or so on of her. Unsurprisingly, Julis is upset about this! She is one of the top ranked fighters in the school and so you can guess her reply to this problem. The first few episodes are dedicated to showing off some of the main characters and exposition. Lots and lots of exposition, most of which isn't even true exposition, like Claudia telling the main character a bunch of terms and things about the city that the viewer will have no idea about. Right, on that note, the two other main girls introduced now are Claudia and Saya: Saya is one of Ayato's old friends and therefor has the hots for him, but we don't really get a lot of their history together, and she is your general emotionless girl or "Dandere" type. Claudia is the hot, very forwardly sexual student council president who flatout prepositions Ayato for sex multiple times (the first time, in episode 3, being a hilariously bad scene for Ayato's reply) and liking him for...really no well explained reason, she just kind of shows up to exposit at him and then wants to fuck him after giving him a strong weapon. A big issue is that all of these characters are pretty generic and have very little chemistry with each other: In fact, they very rarely even interact with people unless Ayato is directly involved and the focus, making them feel like they're just gone from the show when not existing, and we get very little insight to anyone's private lives aside from Claudia. Ayato is your generically overpowered main character, whose power seems to mostly be hitting really hard and his sword cutting things really well, with a cardboard attitude of "I don't really care but I do". I should also note that most shows in this fight involve Ayato aaaaand are boring, with most of the first season's tournament arc ending dedicated to Ayato/Julis and the other MC teams casually curb stomping their opponents in under a minute. This is NOT how you write an overpowered main character. Overpowered main characters can work fine: For an example of that, Josuke from Part 4 of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure would usually be considered pretty OP, with his stand Crazy Diamond being very physically powerful, pretty dang fast and having a potent ability to fix things. In fact, Josuke's stand for most of the Part 4, would be considered a lot stronger than the main antagonist's, but by giving the antagonist actual guile he becomes a menacing threat, and giving minor villains powers which can exploit Crazy Diamond through actual weaknesses, for example its short range, or having specialized abilities, ends up making some pretty great fights. Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann is practically based around the idea of the heroes being overpowered and weaves it nicely into the plot, taking a weakness and turning it into a plot strength. Ayato is just...generically overpowered. He can move faster than everyone and hit harder to everyone and generically power himself up with yells and special effects to be even strongerer and then he beats up his opponents! Not once does Ayato display any battlefield tactics, special skills (the special attacks he calls are almost all literally a sword slash that doesn't seem to be any different than normal) or abilities of note to make his fighting interesting. Its the worst way to write an overpowered MC, especially since naturally in a harem series this means things like beating up the highly ranked female harem members because they are generically not as strong as the AMAZING Ayato Amagiri and now they will fall for him or he will carry them in his arm because they totally couldn't do it themselves. Julis is your generic Tsundere girl who will probably be the harem winner. She has very few motivations and is one of the most blush heavy Tsunderes I have ever seen, even when she is going through the heavy Tsun parts, and her power is to control fire, which is never used beyond "circle of fire trap", "shoot fire" or "fiery explosion", and most of the time she shoots fire at people and they just get owned. Saya is small girl with a huge gun, which is only used to fire generic laser blasts. Claudia actually has some neat powers, dual wielding triangle lightsaber blades with an ability to see the future, but she doesn't actually get any fight scenes so. Kirin's power is "has a sword" and gets paired with Saya for some quite boring fights. Oh, right, Kirin. She's another main character introduced in a latter pair of episodes, which I hesitate to call a "mini-arc" given its anemic lack of plot or advancement, and is a 13 year old with large boobs which get way too much emphasis for her age and is also somewhat weird to have in Ayato's harem in the first place. She largely comes off as a superflous character who exists to give Saya a partner but since she is a female on this show she MUST also be added to Ayato's harem. Her voice also is very annoying even for the usual archetype and she has the spine of a jellyfish without actually acting abused enough to fit her supposed backstory. Also, she is somehow ranked #1 in the school when Claudia is #2. Kirin wields a normal, non-laser sword, one of the only people to do so in the show. Claudia dual wields lightsabers and can SEE THE FLIPPING FUTURE. The only possible explanation is Claudia does not give a shit. I also want to talk about a character who you would think is minor but frankly feels like he recurs as much, if not more, than Saya and Kirin: Lester MacPhail, whose name is quite literally pronounced MacFail. MacFail here is one of the most anemic attempts at a "bully" character I have seen in quite some time, being established as a loser who has lost to Julis 3 times but is itching to fight her and lose again. He is never displayed as a competent threat and nearly gets killed by one of the laser swords getting upset at him and flying around trying to murder him in a...hilariously awkward scene. He loses every fight he gets into, although SOMEHOW he is the one who gets the "valiantly fights but loses" fight scene to Irene, which if anything makes Irene look weaker by having to expend any effort on this failure. Its also hilarious because this guy is supposed to be kinda badass, like having built up muscle when Genestella are supposed to have trouble doing so, but he is basically a total loser in the show and one of the most pathetic strong man/bully types I've ever watched. This makes him more endearing than most of the main cast! Finally for characters, I will mention Irene, the only decent character on the entire show: Pretty ge…

Ah, harem. The genre that I mostly find myself gravitating towards is the one that has to do with lots of girls and only one guy. (Don't judge me. We all have our favorite genre.) So, with Fall 2015 coming to a close, we have Asterisk, a show that...really isn't much different from the rest of the harem shows out there to be honest. Story: The age of Genestella came when meteors rained down and sent the world into near extinction, but surprisingly, not as many people as you think died. As a result of the fallout, a new society was formed, one where people now possessed magical powers and were able to wield weapons made from the stones in these meteors called 'Luxes'. And here, we follow the story of Amagiri Ayato, a boy who enters one of 6 schools (Seidoukan specifically) and enters the Phoenix Festa in order to find out what happened to his missing sister several years back. Then he comes across a girl named Julis who starts to snap at him because of no fault of his own and well, you get the idea. Asterisk is generic. There's no way around that fact. The show focuses on Ayato as he progresses through his life at Seidoukan, entering the Festa, and coming across various characters along the way. Most notably, harem members. And really, that's about it. He meets someone new (or old, since Saya is childhood friend), helps them, moves on. Even during the fighting festival, he manages to help other girls in that. Because of this, there really isn't much to say about the show. The fact that it's generic makes it so that a lot of the plot points are very predictable, a lot of what happens doesn't really add much tension, and nothing really stands out as extraordinary or noteworthy to talk about. It's not really bad, but at the same time it's not really good. It's rather bland and I really can't express that any more. Overview: - Generic - Nothing really noteworthy to say about this show - This is just filler text. Because there's nothing interesting to really say about Asterisk's story, I thought just add in this little bit so I could have three things in this section of the review. Characters: The characters in Asterisk reflect its story, by being as uninteresting as they can be. (Because we all love anime tropes, right?) Amagiri Ayato is...well, what'd you expect in an anime like this. He's a harem protag who's entire purpose in this show is to seek vengeance (or something) and help out any female human he possibly can before converting them to the Ayato religion where they worship his holy D. (Sigh. We've seen this a million times.) As such, he doesn't really have anything unique about him to talk about. Maybe the fact that he's not as OP as other harem protags that fit this category, but I don't think that deserves mention. Then the girls. Let me line them up for you. Julis = Token Tsundere Saya = Kuudere Osananajimi (childhood friend) Kirin = Dandere Imouto Claudia = Sexy Onee-san I don't think I really need to elaborate more, do I? Ok. Moving on then. As for other characters, well, they're not really all that important, according to the plot. Most of the characters really serve to be plot-based and move what is happening in this series behind the scenes. Others on the other hand are meant to be the main focus of the show, (aka, the harem girls), and as such are treated with a little bit more screentime. Don't expect a lot from these people. Most of them aren't really that interesting aside from a tiny handful. Overview: - Bland characters - Most of the side cast is meant to move along the plot - So, how's your day going? (I ran out of things to talk about again.) Art: The art for Asterisk is something that I would say has more worth on it than its story and characters combined, and then some. While the artstyle isn't really all that fantastic in terms of originality since it all pretty much looks the same as a lot of anime these days, the fighting scenes and its effects look pretty, so I'll give it that much. Everything else, pretty standard. Overview: + Nice fight scenes +/- Pretty standard animation Sound: The sound for Asterisk is also something that has a little bit more worth to the show as a whole. Its OP "Brave New World" has a very techno and fast-paced feel that actually sounds rather good and fits with the show. The ED on the other hand is another track that is rather nice to listen to. It's quite somber and has a mellow tone to it that's relaxing and calm to listen to. It's a good set of tracks to a not so very good show. Overview: + Good tracks Personal Enjoyment: It's a harem; I tolerated it because of that, so there. I'm not going to do my usual stuff because there really isn't anything good or bad to say about this show. It's generic, and that enough should say enough about it. It's a rather bland experience that doesn't leave too much to think about, and as such, isn't really worth talking about. I don't hate it, I don't love it, I'm just indifferent to it. If you want to watch a generic harem...well, you can watch this one. A lot others are honestly crappier than this one.

Who could believe I gave Asterisk War an 8 six years ago? That's character development for you, I guess. I didn't exactly expect this anime to be any good. There are many red flags before getting into this, and the first episode alone is a good indicator of what's about to come: nice guy transfer student, tsundere second lead, obligatory ecchi scene, 99% female cast, A-1 studios... yep, they're all there. Asterisk War can force a light smile here and there, but otherwise, it's such a smudge. Painful to watch at times. This review takes into consideration the second season too, I watched a couple of its episodes. It's basically the same show. Asterisk War generally suffers from bad writing, but the one factor really standing out is our MC, Kazuto Kirig- I mean, Amagiri Ayato. This man is so empty that dirt and gravel would shine with more personality in his place than he does. In fact, I believe most of the main cast has more to offer than this guy. Even by the end of this show, the only goal in Ayato's life is literally being a simp, and not a good one at that. Whoever wrote this, though, believed it'd be pretty cool for him to be the most overpowered bozo on the planet, reaching rank #1 in his academy only after two or three duels. This anime doesn't even hide the silliness of trying to present his strength as something genuine, so it can be unintentionally funny watching him at times... The rest of the characters are fine at best. Saya is best girl. I also kind of liked Julis in that, in spite of being leagues inferior to Mr. MC, she was nonetheless a fighter, had a purpose unlike him, made crucial contributions to their fights, and really took it like a champ at times. Basically what SAO Asuna ever wanted to be. But well, she isn't acknowledged at all, because despite being the poster girl, the spotlight shines solely for Ayato. It's criminal having the two of them come out of a hard duel, where they both gave their absolute best, only for Ayato to receive all the praise and pussy. In fact, Julis too is obligated by her writing to ignore this, unconditionally fall in love with him, and say "baka" every three minutes. It is what it is, lol. As for the ecchi scenes in Asterisk War: they render this anime unwatchable. Horribly forced and cringe-worthy. And when I mean cringe-worthy, I mean putting away your headphones and running outside your room screaming in horror levels of cringe. Moreover unnecessary; nothing changes without them. They stick out so much in their idiocy that it becomes obvious: they're aggressively lodged inside character interactions to appease the fourteen year-olds, there just to be there, to fill the screen with boobs, red faces, and childish comedy - it's free fan service, so why not take it? Oh, and yes, one of them is a thirteen year-old. Enjoy yourself. Considering that the entire plot of Asterisk War is the Phoenix Festa (2vs2 arena duels), and its world is... well, shaped with that and that alone in mind, it would be wiser to watch this show just for the action and the fillers that predominate it. Question being, are they worthwhile? Not really. Action in Asterisk War is uninspiring and emanating with boredom. There are some exceptions, but action choreography, especially for Ayato, is just... plain nothingness. Supposedly powerful attacks never happen on screen. One frame is Ayato charging, with the next one screaming "quickly! Everyone fall to the ground or get chopped in half!" Julis casting flame spells is seriously more satisfying than watching Ayato. His action scenes are ridiculous. I could go on ranting about how flawed dialogue, characters, and the world are in Asterisk War, but honestly, who cares. All in all, it's a mediocre anime with poor presentation. There is some tiny value to it, some effort to adhere to logic in story decisions, some "meh, that's awfully nice" moments, in light of how underwhelming everything else is. For a newcomer in anime or media in general, this could even be enjoyable. Still, the matter of the fact is, there are better shows out there. Asterisk War is twenty four episodes long, and believe me, it is not worth that much of your time. In conclusion: Asterisk War might be watchable without sound. Rejoice, oh deaf ones!

Well...Gakusen Toshi Asterisk started off pretty good like any other harem-ecchi anime series but went the episode went by, it became garbage and it does have a common plot that can be found in other animes. Story : 6 Actually I'm not too sure about the plot but I'm sure it revolves around some random Magical Fantasy Schools participating in a competition and the main character finding the truth about his older sister. The competition is about some Magical Fantasy Fighting Competition which up till now I still do not understand their powers and stuff relating to it. With the anime being completed, the ending ends off with a fight and some unnecessary fan-service. Which I think is a bad ending considering that I did not understand it Art : 9 That art was pretty good as it shows the vibrant colours and the Art Directors must have spent large amount of time reviewing the art and improving it. And this is one of the good things and maybe its the ONLY GOOD THING about this show. Sound : 8 The opening and ending was pretty good and the voice actors and actresses have played their roles perfectly. Character : 3 Just like any other harem shows, there are unnecessary fan-service and annoying characters that always ruin the good moments of the show. It is very disturbing to find that it is also wasting screen-time. Although I'm a Fan of harem animes, the rating of 3 is mainly because of the annoying characters trying to act cute but got rejected by the main characters Enjoyment : 4 This show was not enjoyable and I'm not even expecting myself to be watching Season 2 which would be airing next year Overall : 4 Overall, The only good thing about this show is the Art and Sound but the rest is really terrible and horrible. And Therefore I Warn Everyone Who Is Interested In This Show To Not Watch It.

Well, this anime came up at the same time as a certain anime, on its firsts episodes i thought they all have the same plot (i dont read the light novel) but since i watched more and more i started liking it, Amagiri Ayato seems to be a great character, characters like Toudou Kirin are cute but i hate that she blushes like everytime, but well, at the beginning i found clichés in the series. I liked this anime because i think they animated the battles in a great way, some characters are funny but i must say that some of its characters are awkward. The opening and ending theme are just amazing, favorites of this season. Great anime, im waiting for the 2nd season.

I'll start of by saying that this was one of my first anime ever which is why I have somewhat of a soft spot for it, although i didn't finish it until a year later haha. Story 6/10 The story is alright nothing special really, just a basic school with powers or magic. Art 7/10 The art is good but nothing special, I really like the effects of the blades and all but for the rest its nothing I havent seen before Sound 10/10 This is the first anime I watched the full credits for on every episode (now a days I do it for most anime but back then I always skipped it) and it's because I loooove the song it's so beautiful and stuck in my head. Characters 6/10 I'll admit I like most of the female characters but I always sigh because everything is so typical it really gets on my nerves. Enjoyment 9/10 Okay I'll admit this anime is not super good but since its one of the first anime I ever watched I get a special feeling when I see the characters or hear the OP & ED, I guess you could say its a guilty pleasure. Overall 8/10 Look I like this because I'm very biased but I actually don't recommend this anime unless if you want a anime centered around waifu material.

Well, here is my honest opinion about Gaskusen Toshi Asterisk. It's to short for it's own good. It tries to give a good and a little complicated story and plot, but because of it's short run time (will change when the new season comes out in april 2016 hopefully) the goal of the plot becomes unknow. I mean sure, so far its about a group of magical warriors who fight in a tag team fight tournament and the winner(s? not sure) can make their/his or her wish come true if it is in the power of the current world to fulfilll. In the end of the season they teaser that something might have happend to the protagonist his sister and that we might know the villian. I am looking forward to the second season to find out what will happen, but thats also the problem. The first season doesn't make much sense without the storyline yet to come and thats why i can only give it a 6 for now (might review this season again after next season has aired)

If you are a big fan of DxD or Rakudai then this is for you. The plot has some rather interesting elements to it students from multiple schools are competing it a tournament in pairs, it appears that a number of them have some end goal for doing so and this will and has lead to some heated exchanges. The story has a few mysteries to it a few shady characters or an incomplete back story leaving you wonder what will happen next by no means is it mind blowingly good but it's also not completely irrelevant it's about a 6-7 for now but looks to be heating up for the next series. By no means is this the best Anime in this category but by no means is it the worse, if you are a fan of shows like Rakudai or even DxD then you most likely will enjoy this show, it's not as the same standard of those two shows the characters in this are rather bleak the more interesting characters are the one's who make very few appearances in the show, but as the second cour is coming soon i would only assume they will be a big part of that meaning that there is something to look forward to. The show has a good visual and audio element to it the art style is well done and both the OP and ED are rather good and in general the sounds throughout the show are just crisp. At the moment i would rate this show probably what it's MAL score is of about 7.2-7.3 as someone who likes these show's it's certainly enjoyable but nothing really stands out Rakudai bettered it in almost every category.

WARNING THIS REVIEW MAY CONTAIN SLIGHT SPOILERS. I TRIED TO REVEAL AS LITTLE AS POSSIBLE, WHILE STILL COMMENTING ON CERTAIN PARTS OF THE SHOW I don't write many reviews. When I finish a show I usually just give it a score and move on to the next one. HOWEVER Sometimes a show comes up that I just need to rant about, for good or bad reasons. I would consider the scores I give out very generous. I have seen complaints about "inflated" scores on MAL where people give out scores on a scale similar to a school grading system where a 5 or 6 is the lowest they will give a show, however I consider my scores generous because I rate them on the 1-10 scale but tend to give a lot of shows an extra point or two. I don't like giving out low scores and I try to find something good or something I liked in everything I watch. So naturally if give out a score of 1, it means I wasn't able to find anything I enjoyed in it. I rarely give out a score like this and I really just wanted rant about this show and why I gave it this score. Now after this really long introduction I present the meaningless opinion of a random anime fan on the internet about The Asterisk War. Story : 1 This is probably one of the reasons I tend to be generous with scores. I usually don't notice any problems with the story of a show unless I find it confusing, boring, or has very obvious flaws. The Asterisk War was all three of these for me. I was confused, because I had no clue what the point of this show was. Ayato shows up at the school for no good reason and with no objective in mind. The show introduces a huge upcoming tournament between the other schools in Asterisk, so we are made to assume that the point is going to be to win this tournament BUT WHY. Ayato did not know about this tournament before coming to the school so he was not planning on participating in it at all, and also we don't know what winning this tournament will do for any of the characters or what the consequences of them losing are. There are also parts in the show where these "antagonists" say ambiguous things about needing to win the tournament (which it is still not clear what winning accomplishes) and about how Ayato needs to be eliminated. Why does Ayato (I will talk about what I think of his character later) have to be eliminated? He is shown to be completely overpowered, but he is also shown to know just as much about what is going on in this story as we do. How is Ayato going to get in their way if he has no goal he is trying to accomplish, and has no clue who you even are. We don't know why Ayoto is even here or why he does anything he does, we don't know what these "antagonists" are trying to accomplish, so basically THERE IS NO STORY. Over the course of an entire series we learn NOTHING about the goals of any of the characters, or what the point of story is. I also found this story very boring as well. I am a sucker for good action and you would think that one of the generic school battle light novel adaptations would at least have some good action, but many of the action scenes were boring and unmemorable. The only fight I really remember is the fight between Ayato and Harem Girl #4, because it was one of the only even fights in the entire show. Characters in this show are so overpowered a lot of fights tend to be completely one sided and will either end in a matter of seconds, or feature characters getting the shit beaten out of them for way too long. There are also a plethora of plot holes and contrivances that I noticed on my own, and noticed even more of after reading some other reviews of the show. I don' want to get into spoiler territory so I'll only mention the stupid moment from the first episode where Ayato saves Harem Girl #1 from being shot and HER ATTEMPTED MURDER IS COMPLETELY IGNORED. I wish I was joking, Harem Girl #1 was SHOT AT and after a cringeworthy boob grab the incident is never brought up again. The story (if you can even call it a story) is so bad I can't even think of a word that can describe how bad I think it is. There does not seem to be any point to this story, combined with the fact that it is just plain boring for 90% of the show, and all the blatant plot holes that are ever present I award the story with a score of 1. I honestly would give it a 0 if I could, because in my opinion a show needs to actually have a story to be given a score for one. Art & Sound : 7 This show was done by A-1 Pictures, and A-1 Pictures shows tend to be 50-50 with me. Half of the things A-1 releases I will like and the other half I will despise, however one thing I always usually like about A-1 shows is the Art and Sound. I found the art in this show to be at their usual quality, the show was very colorful and had some decent animation. The only complaint I have is that there wasn't really anything that stood out to me, it was just the A-1 Pictures standard which isn't bad, but nothing worthy of praise. I feel the same way about the sound as well. The only track from the show that really stood out was the ending. (The ending song is one of my favorite endings of all time) Aside from the ending there wasn't really anything to praise about the sound. Even if I did find the Art and Sound to be okay it is not enough to save the show, and had very little impact on my overall score. Characters : 1 I forgive bad characters in shows a lot, because some of the shows I enjoyed the most didn't have the best characters, but I have never come across a show where I hated EVERY SINGLE CHARACTER. Earlier I said I would talk about what I think of Ayato, but it is hard to talk about Ayatos character, as he has almost no character traits. Does he have likes, dislikes, goals, motivation, strengths, weaknesses, emotions, or anything that makes it seem like he has a fraction of a personality? NO! I thought I had seen the rock bottom of generic protagonists, because I didn't think it was possible to make a "character" without any character traits whatsoever. I would mention the rest of the main cast one by one, but I honestly don' think I can write more than a sentence about each of them. So the rest of the main cast or as I like to call them "Harem Girls 1-4" are nothing more than than the standard harem cast. They at least have some personality, unlike the protagonist, however only Harem Girl #1 and Harem Girl #2 seem like they are going to be important. Many of the characters just feel pointless, even members of the main cast. I just plain hated every character in the show and I don't know what else to say, because there isn't much character to talk about for the character section. Enjoyment : 1 What can I say that I didn't already say? I found no entertainment in this show, I don't know I didn't drop this show. The only reason I decided to write this review is because this was the only anime I have ever felt contains no entertainment value at all. Conclusion Unless you are looking to watch something bad, I would not recommend this to anybody. Even if you are a fan of school battle light novels I wouldn't recommend this. This show is just plain bad, its not even the type of bad where its unintentionally funny, it has no redeeming qualities or anything that makes it worth watching. If you want to see just how bad a show can be then you can force yourself to suffer through this show, if you want entertainment then you are in the wrong place. To sum up my opinion of this show in one word "DON'T"

Story: 4/10 Story focuses on students who are wielders of some kind of Light Sabers thanks to some kind of super powers they posses (they didn't explained them at all). Eventually they take part in big tournament where they fight 2 vs 2 with other students. They dreams may come true as a prize cause everyone have some kind of desire. In reality it's another, typical harem with story focused on grand tournament where our MC's have to win! There's nothing special, the romance is bad, ecchi is bad, harem ain't good at all.. Characters: 3/10 Well.. It's even worse than story. Our Protagonist-Kun is typical, boring MC who doesn't have "eggs" at all. Literally, hot girl invites him to stay a night and he refuses.. Other than him we have mentioned by me Princess-kun who is tsundere and is also typical harem character. We also have little, no booby childhood friend who lacks expressions and is jealous of booby-one girl our Protagonist-Kun met during his school time. For real I enjoyed side characters way more.. even If they air time is like 10 minutes in total. Music: 5/10 It's nothing special but it's not that bad. Voice acting is just okay, altho i don't like Princess-kun voice. Sounds are meh, BGM is meh. Techno-like music during fight is okay. Overall music is just decent, okay? Art: 6/10 Basically this is the strongest part of the show.. Animations and fights are good.. of course i've seen way better animations but I'm gonna let it be. Art is pretty standard, nothing special. Character design is not good, standard harem set. I liked side characters design more, for instance our Vampire. Enjoyment: 6/10 The score is high because i like that kind of shows when I am kinda bored and some fight and story of Vampire is quite good for me but that's just my opinion. Overall: 5/10 Tl;Dr: It's standard harem story with bad romances and nothing special in it. Literally everything is just okay and nothing more. It's decent anime which you can try when you are bored or you're really out of other titles.