Wednesday, October 9, 2013

Isekai no Seikishi Monogatari

Oh joy, another harem series. Read that as sarcastically as possible. I still have no idea why people ask me to review these things. But this one is part of the Tenchi Muyo franchise, which I don't like, from the admittedly little of it I've seen, but at least it's not Sekirei. Although it could very well turn out to be just as bad. I suppose I should say something along the lines of "it could also surprise me and be good" but I very much doubt it. Yes, it could be, but the probability is so heavily against it that it hardly bears mentioning. This is Isekai no Seikishi Monogatari, written by Shirane Hideki and produced by AIC spirits and BeSTACK.



Our story begins with the inauguration ceremony of princess Lashara which is shortly followed up by an assassination attempt while on her way to the "Holy Land." Her guards manage to prevent the attempt and capture Masaki Kenshi, a boy from another world who was involved in the attempt because he was promised a way home. His efforts get side-tracked as he becomes Lashara's servant, gets involved in random harem nonsense at her academy and becomes embroiled in a major conflict. In all fairness, there are some ideas that have potential with the conflict. The problem is the execution. The potentially interesting parts get pushed to the side in favour of the horrible harem elements and "humour." As you've probably guessed, the humour is terribleNo, it's beyond terrible. It moves beyond the realm of terrible taste and into the realm of abhorrent. Expect a lot of jokes about sexual assault. BecauseShirane Hideki is a braying jackass. There's no other explanation. Another problem with the series is that it's very predictable. You could watch the first few episodes and guess pretty much exactly what's going to happen. Then there's the issue of impact. Any given moment that would have impact in a well written series doesn't in this one. They'll give it a minute or two of screen time and then never mention it again unless the plot requires them to. There are also a lot of minor moments of stupidity and they add up. To give an example, there's a point where the characters are discussing what they should compress into a powerful weapon. When scrap metal is suggested it's dismissed as not being strong enough. After that, gold is brought up as ideal. Gold. For those of you who don't know, gold (even as an alloy or in ingots) is a very weak, malleable substance. So, in addition to being a terrible person, Shirane doesn't even science.




That brings us to the cast of characters. They range from incredibly bland to extremely annoying. The one thing they do with them that's slightly different from the usual harem formula is that Kenshi isn't a hero who's just average in every respect but the girls fall all over because he's generically good. Rather, he's super-humanly good at everything except understanding people. By far the worst characters are Lashara, who is a spoiled brat, Mexiah, Ulyte and Flora (those three are all sexual predators, which is played up as being funny.)



the art is pretty decent in a lot of respects. The giant robots are well designed, there are some good nature scenes as well. Unfortunately, there are a lot of issues here as well. The character faces are just awful. A lot of the time they'll randomly look super elongated or the expressions will just look really off. A bigger issue is the level of fan-service. Here's the thing, most of us know what the female body looks like and most of us can agree that there's nothing wrong with the human form. The problem is when a series like this objectifies its characters with a bunch of ass and breast shots for the sole purpose of titillating hormonal, heterosexual men. A perfect example is the flight suits. Only the female pilots wear them (which indicates that they aren't even necessary so why the hell bother changing out of your regular, comfortable clothes) and they're cut to show as much as possible. Because why bother with things like consistency and making sense when you can show boobs?



The acting in this is meh. Most of the characters don't have much in terms of emotional range and the voice acting reflects that. Which is a pity since they did get some good actors like Tsunematsu Ayumi, Noda Junko and Yonezawa Madoka, to name a few. The sound is a bit grating. It's fine when they leave it in the background, but there are times when the effects get way too loud for no good reason. The opening and ending music is just annoying.



The Ho-yay factor is a 4/10. And that is for yuri. Mexiah openly sleeps with her female students because Shirane apparently cares more about using lesbianism as a fetish than having a world with sensical ethical standards.



This anime is awful. It has some good ideas, but they're buried under a deluge of unpleasantness, stupidity and misogyny (which could fall under unpleasantness, but I feel it merits mention as its own category.) My final rating is a 2/10. next week I'll finally be free of harem anime for a while, horror anime month begins with a look at La Portrait de Petit Cosette.
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