First of all lets establish the baseline real quick. This anime is awful. The plot is very generic and filled to the brim with cop outs. The characters are uninteresting with their prominent personality trait being wanting to sleep with the MC. The animation is terrible especially during the action scenes that are supposed to be the payoff for much of the plot and just leaves the entire show unsatisfying. Even the ecchi part gets repetitive as the only ecchi scenes to ever appear is the girls stripping nude or wearing lingerie with absolutely no further development ever. Hence the 1/10 rating. Most hentai would be a better viewing experience than this.
What I do want to rave about in this review though is this animes incredible insistence in destroying everything that could be interesting about it. Lets start with the premise:
wikipedia synopsis:
Satou pines for his childhood friend Hime. One day she says she is moving away so he follows her into a portal where she is about to be married to a prince. When a demon attacks Hime gives Satou her ring granting him lightbased powers he uses to defeat the demon. She explains she is a princess from another world who lived on Earth for her own safety. Her world is under attack by demons and she was destined to marry a hero and pass her ring to grant him power.
The prince was supposed to be the hero but Satou usurped his position. The ring is one out of a set of five. To become powerful enough to save the world he must marry four other princesses and gain their rings to get power over four of the elements: earth fire air and water.
Now the premise is already extremely lame. An isekai featuring a generic highschool protagonist with a god given harem destined to become extremely overpowered to save the world. However we do have some ideas that could be interesting to see:
1. For the MC its an isekai but for the main heroine its an reverse isekai maybe theyd have different perspectives to share about this situation?
2. Since he has to pick up five princesses of five different nations we would be picking up five people of differing expertise and differing perspectives who can provide their own contribution to the party.
3. We would also be traveling across the world to see these nations as well which would be a great opportunity for some worldbuilding and for the MC to actually see the world hes fated to defend.
4. The power of the rings is apparently dependent on the relationship he shares with the princesses so we could get some good character building and relationship building here.
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So whats the actual execution you ask?
1: Not addressed for the first 10 episodes.
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By Episode 11 Hime reveals that shes okay with her homeworld being destroyed and all her friends and family being killed as long as she and MC can be safe in this one. Yeah.
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2: The first two princesses we pick up are complete deadweights. Neither of them are capable of any physical fighting or any magic and neither have any other expertise to offer. They dont even throw around their political weight as princesses. The third princess is a physical fighter and actually contributes. Unfortunately she cant contribute much as the fights quickly escalates to giant monsters and demon armies that are way out of her range. The fourth princess is a huge powerhouse that can transform into a dragon but isnt allowed to transform because plot magic so shes a deadweight as well.
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The fifth princess is a deus ex machina used to plot convenience the MC. Once her plot device expires her biggest contribution is being a flashlight.
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This is despite the fact that each of the princesses carries a magic ring as well since they are meant to be wedding rings and thus in pairs. So the rings on the MC are able to conjure fireballs and tornadoes but the rings on the princesses only function as lightning cables plugging the MC into his princess batteries.
Thats right in a premise where the main hero is entirely reliant on his partys support his party is either completely useless or rendered useless by the plot. Despite the fact there are already mechanisms in place that would allow them to keep up.
3: Most of the partys interactions with the rest of the world takes the form of incredibly idiotic isekai politics. Some highlights includes: the elf kingdom willing to allow the rest of the world be destroyed because they are allegedly protected by a magic barrier it does not actually work
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The show straight up lying to the viewer and pretending a country was being occupied by a foreign force
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they are here only to help fight off the demons and leaves peacefully the next episode
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One of the nations sending their princess and the ring to a whole another world that has demonstrably only been accessible by like two people in the entire show without ever informing anyone. The ring that if they didnt have would result in the world being destroyed.
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Honestly its almost like this world actively wants to get itself destroyed. Why are we saving it again?
4: Similar to how the princesss power sets gets sabotaged once they join the party their characters also completely deteriorate once they join the party. Pretty much all they do is try to get into the MCs pants and get into pointless harem drama. I say pointless because the MC constantly makes it very clear that he likes Hime the most and that hes not planning to do anything to any of them until they save the world. In other words there is already a winner at episode 2 and they are already announced that there will be no physical advancement of their relationships until basically the end of the series.
But thats fine. Its not like the MC is here only for their bodies. So what do the girls do?
The answer is nothing. None of the girls have any hobbies or anything interesting to say. Most of them do not contribute anything outside of plot required exposition dumps or trying to get into his pants. Hime in particular spends almost every single episode only ever talking about how she feels bad that other girls are being close to her man. You know putting aside the fact that if they dont then the world ends. In fact in the one episode where the party gets a break instead of going off to rest or do their own thing the party just stalks the MC for the episode.
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pictured: the only sensible person the whole show
The lack of effort on these characters slips into their character designs as well. For every character despite the rapid shifts in the environment they travel through none of them ever change their clothing unless its into a swimsuit or lingerie. MC and Hime are particularly awful as both of them wear their highschool uniform. For the entire season. Through a desert at one point. The exception is episode 11 where they get changed for about 5 minutes before Hime goes back into her highschool uniform and everyone else is shoved offscreen. These characters arent allowed to express any personality through their design and the personality they express through their speech and actions is about as much.
Premises can be really lame but ultimately the thing that matters for writing prompts is the execution. While I certainly was not expecting an show that puts isekai and ecchi and harem in its premise to have some kind of award winning story I also was expecting the show not to take all of its premises and run them straight into the ground. Honestly speaking Im quite looking forward to Season 2 just to see how much they wont let the girls do.
10
/100