Maken-Ki!

so good so good, almost enough tits for me personally. I had exciting expirience watchin it with my bestie while feelin myself. It made me feel so dirty it made me feel so naked. I highly recommend this 4 evrybody who likes less words and more actions, other recommendation is to NOT watch it alone.

• story is absolutely unique and totally unpredictable, i enjoyed it anyway bcs i like this genre/set-up
• the artstyle perfectly fits for the story
• the characters where well-rounded. they had flaws and strengths, or were unusually strong/smart/stupid
• the characters react to situations and events in a realistic way
• think others ... will enjoy/dislike this series, even if I did

I'm done 4 now!!!
see ya
dg4life
=D

"Mom, can we have High School DxD?"
"No, we have High School DxD at home."
The High School DxD at home: Maken-ki

(Mild spoilers incoming)
Yeah...this is, um, an anime for sure. I'll start off by saying that I don't think the story of this is all that bad, I just don't think it's conveyed all that well here in the adaptation. A faithful adaptation, this is not, here they took quite a few creative liberties in the script, granted I've yet to read the manga but I hope I'm not wrong in saying that I'm sure the mangaka was handling the story better than here - but ... it doesn't take much to tell by episode 6 that a massive quality drop has happened. According to the fan wiki the writers generally only used parts of the source material to write the story and 2/4 arcs adapted here even had major areas re-written, which was incredibly disappointing to find out (but credit where credit's due, they hide it somewhat well).

It doesn't really take much to tell when the episodes have abandoned the source material as it's whenever the tone of the events and the actions of the characters seem to not line up with the first five episodes; that and the fanservice panty-shots suddenly disappear, whereas scenes concerning major story beats feature them overtly. There is an irony to the fact that it's episodes 6-9 where this blatant creative liberty is most egregious. For whatever reason one of the side-characters suddenly has moral layers that then disappear and ultimately added nothing to his character, stakes of events are suddenly way watered down, and it goes from slight political thriller to slice-of-life for four episodes. This out of twelve might not sound too bad but back-to-back eps of this really soured my enjoyment of the show. The series is about a martial-arts academy where fighters bolster this with elemental magic channeled through devices called Maken, which seems interesting on the surface alone, it even adds some mystery aspects like MC Takeru's strange inability to be given a Maken and his weird power, why love interest Inaho already has one because of "where she came from", and a third student who has a twist reveal.

Yet for all of this interesting set up, the anime is not the least bit concerned with that and just goofs off for four episodes. Granted, ep 7 is semi-important because it introduces a cast of new characters who aid in the worldbuilding, but the episode itself seems to embody this utterly astounding disinterest the adapters have in making the viewer interested in the source material. Lemme tell you how it does this: So earlier in the series the school tried to give Takeru a Maken but the special device used (it's like the Harry Potter Sorting Hat) for that couldn't identify a trait. This seems to be an important mystery to solve, and in ep7 the device's maker finally comes up with a Maken for our hero. Yet the whole reveal of this new device is disturbed by the new characters' arrival AND THEN the series has the audacity to hold off this reveal until episode 10. COME ON, it's a constant kicking of the can with this series; it sets its McGuffin's up and then never follows up on them, and if they do, take an excruciatingly long time to pay it off. The total opposite of the series I compared it to, High School DxD, both are as raunchy as each other but whereas DxD actually focuses on its worldbuilding and politics, this one seems more than happy to disregard them and just go for some underwhelming slice-of-life nonsense.

Reading the manga seems a better use of time. This is NOT BAD as far as adaptations go, but it is lackluster.

Recommendation: Not even worth it for the fanservice.

Maken-ki is deeply experimental at its core. The experiment being performed is whether an anime that consists entirely of the most well-worn harem cliches in the industry can somehow be far more loathsome than the sum of its parts, and in that way, and only that way, Maken-ki is a success.

This is a show without a single redeeming quality. The worst part, as it so often is with these kinds of shows, is the main character. Takeru is a pathetic creep that reeks of loser so badly that no one could get laid within 500 yards ... of him if he were a person in real life. Of course, since this is a childish wish fulfillment fantasy for virgins, the ladies are instead inexplicably drawn to his utter lack of social skills, his creepy behavior and his blank slate personality and all fall in love with him instantly. Once again I have to ask why this type of show always insists on making the designated audience self-insert a cringeworthy incel that no one could possibly tolerate, let alone fall in love with. Why would anyone want to self-insert as a loser with a room temperature IQ?

The other characters are no better of course. Every female character in Takeru's harem is some sort of stereotype that you've seen in a million other shows, such as the flat-chested tsundere with twintails or the airhead with enormous tits that declares herself Takeru's fiancee within seconds of meeting him. You will groan as every subsequent character introduction is more uninspired than the last, from their character designs to their personality to even the exact dialogue they use. Once again this series manages to be extremely generic while also being abnormally unwatchable.

If you're watching it for the fanservice, more power to you I guess. There are a lot of bare breasts, but you'd be better off watching porn if that's what you're here for. Then at least you wouldn't have to sit through this aggressively dull and recycled story, which might actually have worse writing than most pornography.