Much Ado About Everything

When I first started watching this anime back in January, I didn’t know anything about its background. Apparently, it is based on a role-playing game. But it’s a hentai (perverse, or more accurately, with sexual content) game – and if I’m guessing it right, it has harem and dating sim elements in it. That might not sound so strange, until you realize that the game actually has considerable depth – as much as any average japanese RPG!

I have only seen the anime, of course, but apparently it is a well-developed story with multiple endings (though for a dating sim /harem it’s a given), a number of well-developed characters, and a large amount of battles between those characters, which are all unique thanks to a plethora of special finishing moves (called noble phatasms) – which is a given for a RPG. As I said, just like any decent RPG. But it has sex in it! That’s not very common at all, is it (it’s not a rhetorical question, I really don’t know anything about japanese games
that are not available in North america)?

But you should ask, how’s the anime? After all, how many people outside of japan will play this game?

The anime is very good. Entertaining to watch, with great character design, good soundtrack and music, usually excellent animation – and there’s plenty of battles to animate. It grabs you right from the start with a mysterious setting and plenty of information to digest: unusual magic, cool and cute characters (after seeing Rin Toshaka, if you’re a guy, you know you’ll keep on watching!), some comedy to spice it up, awesome battles. And plenty of destruction of property going on.

As it keeps going on, the anime does lose some of its edge. It starts as a 4.5 star anime, and falls as low as 3.5 or even 3.0 on occasion due to missteps in pacing and drop in animation quality and plot quality (as well as plot quantity in those wekaer episodes). It has its ups and downs, but final episodes are all good, and the ending itself is great. In the end, I’ll give it 4 stars overall.

Now, people who have played the game – mostly people blogging around the web, as I persnoally know not a single person that plays original japanese games) – were somewhat disappointed with many aspects of anime, including ending. I’d say it is their curse. Remember Lord of the Rings: the Two Towers? If you’re a book fan, I bet you walked out of the theatre at least partially unhappy. This is the same phenomenon – if you haven’t played or read much about the game, but you do enjoy the likes of japanese RPGs, you’ll enjoy this anime.