While this produces a very unique twist to the slice-of-life school series, it's overly light-hearted for my taste, with too much focus on trivial comedy, trading off character development and plot line progression. With the mini-battles, it almost feels like a strange incarnation of Pokemon in a school, you even get squeaky voices with the avatars.
If you're looking for yet another light series with low-level comedy and a lot of random ecchi scenes or a series about underdogs trying to work their way up, this is your series.
Animation:
This show is fairly average in terms of drawing style. You get lots of vivid colors and quite a bit of CG. You also get a lot of battle scenes where each mini-character has a hit point counter (think Pokemon, the games not the show), and a lot of Who Wants to be a Millionaire as there is a lot of trivia. The actual characters are fairly average, if a bit simplistic. The backgrounds are also not as vivid as I'd like but I guess it fits the light-hearted mood of the series. Be warned that this is ecchi, one of the class males is always armed with a camera, trying to sneak pictures at certain "angles".
Sound:
The OP is a bit technoish, which fits with the "electronic" battles, and is light, which fits in with the tone of the series. It isn't particularly good though (contrast with ED of Ladies vs Butlers). ED is a guy song, which means insta-avoid for me. The VAs are very vibrant in this series, especially the male leads in the class, and they are pretty much all that keeps the series moving along through antics and over-dramatizing circumstances.
Story:
Well I pretty much summed it up in the intro. A flunking class tries to out-play less-flunking classes through using a very smart pink-haired girl (who also happens to cook death). The plot is pretty linear but doesn't draw too much drama (focusing on light-heartedness) so even when the climax is reached the viewer is just like meh. There are some comedic moments but the majority are actually from Akihisa being taken advantage of (due to his unbelievable stupidity).
Character:
The point of the series is really that guts and willpower can be an equal match for just pure brain power. Behind this premise, you have a really dim-witted main character who happens to have the hearts of two girls in the class. Unfortunately, due to the light-hearted nature of the series, they don't really make use of this tension, instead forcing the girls into "accidental" ecchi situations resulting typically with Akihisa getting beaten up.
Value:
Overall, Baka to Test brings along one or two good chuckles and showing the spirit of an underdog. Perhaps this is enough for people as they're working on a second series. If you can't yet tell from this review, that is one series that I will not be reporting on, as one season was already one too many. The ratio of ecchi + pointless comedy to plot progression and character development was just too unbalanced.
