Gakusen Toshi Asterisk (The Asterisk War)

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Alternative Titles

English: The Asterisk War

Synonyms: Academy Battle City Asterisk

Japanese: 学戦都市アスタリスク

Information

Type: TV

Episodes: 12

Status: Finished Airing

Aired: Oct 3, 2015 to Dec 19, 2015

Premiered: Fall 2015

Broadcast: Saturdays at 20:30 (JST)

Producers: Aniplex, Animax, Movic, DAX Production, flying DOG, Bandai Namco Entertainment, Asahi Broadcasting

Licensors: Aniplex of America

Studios: A-1 Pictures

Source: Light novel

Genres: Action, Comedy, Ecchi, Fantasy, Harem, Romance, School, Sci-Fi, Supernatural

Duration: 23 min. per ep.

Rating: PG-13 - Teens 13 or older

Statistics

Score: 6.87¹ (scored by 294,236 users)

¹ indicates a weighted score.

Ranked: #4181²

² based on the top anime page. Please note that 'Not yet aired' and 'R18+' titles are excluded.

Popularity: #265

Members: 526,056

Favorites: 1,895

6.87

Ranked #4181Popularity #265Members 526,056

Fall 2015TVA-1 Pictures

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Synopsis

In the previous century, an unprecedented disaster known as the Invertia drastically reformed the world. The powers of existing nations declined significantly, paving the way for a conglomerate called the Integrated Empire Foundation to assume control. But more importantly, the Invertia led to the emergence of a new species of humans who are born with phenomenal physical capabilities—the Genestella. Its elite are hand-picked across the globe to attend the top six schools, and they duel amongst themselves in entertainment battles called Festas.

Ayato Amagiri is a scholarship transfer student at the prestigious Seidoukan Academy, which has recently been suffering from declining performances. Through a series of events, he accidentally sees the popular Witch of Resplendent Flames, Julis-Alexia von Riessfeld, half-dressed! Enraged, Julis challenges him to a duel for intruding on her privacy. After said duel is voided by the student council president, Ayato reveals that he has no interest in Festas. Instead, he has enrolled in the academy to investigate the whereabouts of his missing elder sister. But when a more devious plot unravels, Ayato sets out to achieve victory, while being surrounded by some of the most talented Genestella on the planet.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

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Background

The release of the Gakusen Toshi Asterisk anime series was first announced at an American anime convention called SakuraCon. It adapts the first three volumes of its light novel source material. Gakusen Toshi Asterisk was simulcast in North America by Crunchyroll and Funimation.

Episode Videos

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Related Anime

Adaptation:	Gakusen Toshi Asterisk
Sequel:	Gakusen Toshi Asterisk 2nd Season

Nakahara, Mai
Japanese

More staff

Staff

Ono, Manabu

Director

Setou, Kenji

Director

Motoyama, Satoshi

Sound Director

Iwata, Kazuya

Episode Director

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Opening Theme

"Brand-new World" by Shiena Nishizawa (eps 2-11)

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Ending Theme

#1: "Brand-new World" by Shiena Nishizawa (ep 1)
#2: "Waiting for the rain" by Maaya Sakamoto (eps 2-12)

More reviews

Reviews

Jan 10, 2016

12 of 12 episodes seen

Overall Rating: 1

MozillaFennekin (All reviews)

141 people found this review helpful

[Spoiler Warning]

I'm not mad. I have only myself to blame for this, really. I tend to be more selective with what I watch. Something will be recommended, I'll hear about something popular, or it's just on my mind a lot. I've never watched anything expecting it to be bad; usually I have no expectations at all, but often I at least think it'll be something that's enjoyable enough to pass the time and get a 5 or 6.

The Asterisk War is my first exception.

I didn't watch this because I knew it'd be good. I watched it because I heard it was almost identical to Rakudai read more

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Dec 19, 2015

12 of 12 episodes seen

Overall Rating: 6

HaXXspetten (All reviews)

125 people found this review helpful

Gakusen Toshi Asterisk is a series which starts off as one of the most uninspiring anime I've ever seen throughout its first few episodes, but past a certain point it starts improving quite rapidly. Granted that doesn't really say very much given how mediocre the opening is, but despite the lackluster start it manages to make a quite impressive comeback and eventually become a pretty enjoyable anime.

First things first though, episodes 1-4 of Asterisk didn't exactly give me a very good first impression because they are *painfully* generic. Like if you've seen any typical action/fantasy/ecchi/harem magic academy anime before, you should know roughly what clichés to expect, and I'll just say that initially Asterisk has effectively all of them. Our protagonist Ayato transfers into a new school and walks in on the tsundere female lead Julis in her underwear within 3 minutes of the first episode and 'accidentally' grabs her breasts, he meets his new classmates and immediately becomes surrounded by a bunch of girls who fall in love with him for whatever reason, he's given a powerful magic sword which he just so happened to be the 'chosen one' to wield and thus becomes super overpowered... you get the idea. Basically it's all been done countless times before and I'm really getting sick of it at this point. As a side note there's also this one scene which blatantly rips off the light sabers from Star Wars for some reason, even the sound effects were completely the same... well whatever.

Anyway, then starting from episode 5 (what I presume is the beginning of the second volume of the light novel), something happens to this anime which slowly but surely turns it into something different. And it comes with the introduction of a girl named Kirin; a very shy and nervous girl, yet also the top-ranked student in the school in terms of fighting prowess. The story starts putting a surprising amount of focus on her character and backstory, and in the process it downright sneakily goes *away* from the abundance of overused clichés it had in the first few episodes. Suddenly the amount of fanservice and romcom shenanigans is severely toned down, and instead we actually get some real depth and character development. Sure, it only really involves Kirin herself and our protagonist Ayato, but it was still a breath of fresh air compared to just having content I've already seen a hundred times before in other anime. And plot progression aside, I personally found Kirin to be by far and wide the most likeable girl in Asterisk's character cast anyway so I guess it was a win-win scenario in that sense.

Now I haven't read the light novels of Asterisk, but based on the contents of the anime I'm presuming it's covering every volume in 4 episodes each. And thus I was a bit worried that it'd start to get worse again after the anime had finished up on the contents of volume 2 which seemed to be the Kirin-focused one. Fortunately however that didn't turn out to be the case, as starting with episode 9 we finally get into what I guess can be called the 'main' story of this series. Introducing the Festa: a grand series of tournaments where the students of the six different magic academies in the city of Asterisk fight each other to showcase their talent and technological development. The price they're all fighting for is the opportunity to have any one wish of theirs granted. Naturally, Ayato and the girls are competing as well. Normally I'm not a fan of action in ecchi anime since it tends to end up rather incompatible with its own fanservice, but Asterisk does a respectable job at keeping the two sides separate from one another. As a result, the duels in the Festa are actually not that bad, and A-1 Pictures' are not exactly newbies when it comes to creating fancy special effects in shounen battles, so the visuals are pretty decent too.

When Gakusen Toshi Asterisk started airing, I considered it one of my least favorite shows of the season. Not that it's finished however; I'd say it's a perfectly acceptable show. Not anything amazing by any means of course, but if you just want an easily enjoyable way to spend 20 minutes every weekend... then this anime pulls it off very well. Discounting the generic and unimpressive opening, it has pretty decent fight scenes and production value, as well as good characterization for at least part of its cast. Oh and for you pervs out there who are just intending to watch this for the ecchi tag, I'd recommend you to look somewhere else; Asterisk really doesn't have very much of that at all.

I cannot make a proper evaluation of the story as a whole though for the simple reason that... well this is a split-cour. At the time of writing this we've still only gotten to see half of what the anime has to offer, with the second season airing in Spring 2016. However the Festa is a huge event, and there's plenty of action left to showcase on that front, so the second cour might very well be even better than the first. Fingers crossed.

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Feb 15, 2019

12 of 12 episodes seen

Overall Rating: 2

CodeBlazeFate (All reviews)

26 people found this review helpful

Towards the end of 2015, two light novel adaptations became notable for sharing startling similarities between them. Chivalry of a Failed Knight was considered somewhat refreshing, occasionally playing around with awful tropes and channeling the power of competent screenplays and exciting directing to turn a school battle LN adaptation into something worth watching. Conversely, The Asterisk War failed to meet even the basic requirements to function as a generic work of fiction. It's barely worth the effort it takes to write about it, let alone animate it.

Before we start, I dare one of you to make a thread or a blog showcasing the exact amount of problems each episode has. Don't make a drinking game out of it, or you'll die of alcohol poisoning by episode 8. The show literally starts with the main puss ass lead walking into our Tsundere in the middle of undress, under the pretenses that she dropped something important to her. After she claims to owe him one, she tries to incinerate him out of nowhere, resenting him for the rest of the episode in the process. This sets a precedent as to how badly this show will execute and contradict everything, like being low enough to over-sexualize a 13-year-old who regularly gets slapped by her uncle and saved by Ayato, whilst simultaneously acting like her asking for a sparring match the main character she fought of her own volition before is in any way indicator of her strength as a person. Just to provide the illusion that broke as hell Ayato isn't obscenely powerful, they provide flimsy limiters that only work when he uses a specific weapon for too long, despite that he often goes past the time limit of the limiters with no problem until the match finishes. The show breaks its rules so often that its ravaged narrative arcs become that much worse. Even the interesting ideas this dreck presents aren't capitalized, let alone worth capitalizing on in the first place.

The world-building is easily the most fractured part of this dumpster fire. The tournament arc has been hinted to be a tournament in which things can get deadly and bloody for competitors, but no one gets remotely injured or killed, aside from that one pointless and awkwardly done flashback scene at the very beginning., if students can summon hovering screens with their hands for no reason, then why do they need to hold them, and why is there actual paper involved? The world-building of this show is some of the worst I've ever seen, as if the narrative wasn't already cheap enough with its trite nonsense, missed opportunities, and romantic mood killers designed to preserve a terrible harem.

Speaking of which, Ayato is as horribly characterized and intolerable as his harem, which is one of the worst in the mainstream anime hemisphere. Julis is a trash tier Tsundere who plays up that trope to obnoxious degrees, especially when she retardedly blows up her room in an attempt to scorch him alive for the crime of accidentally seeing her in her underwear. Saya is an obnoxiously possessive loli with all the intolerable tropes you'd expect. Kirin is an annoyingly squeaky pushover with a ridiculously lousy character arc As for Claudia, anything she has going for her can be boiled down to sass, sex appeal, and an insidious and mysterious nature that I guarantee this show won't capitalize on. The other characters are either stupid or wasted, with almost no middle ground beyond just being "there". Easily the most crushing case of the latter is Irene, who is a dangerous punk with a heart of gold and an interesting design. They go out of their way to do nothing interesting with her when it's time for her to fight our unbearable main lead in the finale, and the closest we ever get is how her younger sister keeps her in check, which has also been done a million times. When a character like her is the best character in the show, it speaks volumes of just how worthless this cast is.

Visually speaking, this show isn't much better. The colors are certainly bright, and some of the character designs can actually be pretty neat and sexy but the artwork is pretty miserable. It's a low-budget SAO and Aldnoah.Zero style with even shittier and more incomprehensible choreography, and even more all-encompassing fugly CGI. Much like the show itself, the visuals are bad at even pulling off being generic and mediocre, barring a few relatively dazzling environments. Even the aesthetics are gaudy and nonsensical, and the cuts of actually good animation are few and far between. At least Andloah.Zero had some flourish to make up for generic style and cheap CGI.

The OST is a mixed bag of vanilla background noise, awful dubstep, and ill-fitting emotional pieces. Even the OP is a milquetoast pop song, in spite of it being catchy. The ED titled "Waiting for the rain" by Maaya Sakamoto and Ramsus Faber is the only stellar bit of music in the show, as it's a pretty stellar emotional track to close out each episode with. Even the visuals are interesting, with the show swapping the positions of a bunch of color-coded silhouettes of each harem member, which are accompanied by some actually pleasant techno melodies and Maaya Sakamoto's warm, even uplifting voice. Still, if having one good track is all the audio needs to be unquestionably better than every other aspect of this show combined, then I really can't find a better way to call this show dogshit.

People put themselves through hell slaving away at this, and no one did a remotely good job beyond the musicians. That's as sad as the show itself. This anime isn't even infuriating or laughable, just annoying and lifeless, which is one of the purest tells that this has no value I can assign to it, let alone any reason to be watched enough to garner a second season. It even fails to live up to its title in any way, shape or form. How this got popular is beyond me, and I'm glad it's dead.

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Jan 14, 2016

12 of 12 episodes seen

Overall Rating: 2

TzKal-Zuk (All reviews)

29 people found this review helpful

It's totally okay to watch a show with low expectations. Sometimes to balance a great anime, you gotta watch a bad one just to put you back in your place. It's a requirement to have watched poorly done shows so you know where your tastes are and also broaden your horizons. The Asterisk War serves as one of those shows that will give you appreciation of shows like High School of The Dead and other shows that have poorly written stories and brick wall characters. This is a must watch if you need to remember that there are really uninspiring anime.

Storywise, not much to say. Gary Stu comes to new school, all the ladies fall for him the end. Sounds like the typical harem anime because it IS a typical harem anime. The whole thing is a tease and shows snippets that relate to the protagonist indirectly, but fails to establish a basis for it. What I mean if that sounded pretentious, is the lack of an overarching conflict. We follow young Ayato, but for what? All we see is him turning red at every little female physical contact.
Deus Ex Machina phenomena is arguably always going to break a show. I think it works in this show's favor just because there weren't really any upsides to begin with. It gives a little more excitement in what was a lackluster show. Arguably it isn't phenomena but foreshadowed. Ayato's power makes zero sense considering the circumstances revolved around him and that the whole show seemed to have miss the point was just bad writing on many levels. But hey, what more to look forward to in a show then a guy's head in between breasts?

The chemistry between the characters is awful and blame the story telling for that. None of the characters mesh well and there isn't any positive to get out of observing their actions and motives. They all suck. If gary stu didn't fit the description of the main protagonist, then I don't know what to believe. This guy is the most uninteresting (for lack of a better word) fuckboy. Something that works against the show is that it was really trying to take Ayato's circumstances seriously. The tropes are quite abundant and make all the female characters seem like cut outs of cariactures placed in an anime. And to munch the very uninteresting main protagonist at that. The Asterisk War really is a tease when it comes to scenes of sexualizing the females. Cuz boobs and butts sell right? I'm losing brain cells trying to think of anything to write for this show.

VOICE ACTING IS VERY BAD. My ear was bleeding due too Saya and Kirin's voices oh my goodness. It is awful and to hear baby squeals and "jealous" grumbles is reason enough to AVOID this show. I say it's a must watch because this might set the bar low enough for anything to come after seem like a masterpiece. We're all masochists when it comes to anime though so it's okay. Sound is underwhelming but the EDM is a good twist in action scenes.
As for animation, it is the Irregular of magic high school esque. Flashy colors and CG stuff. Considering how little action there is, animation isn't really great. Lot more exposition than there is fighting and we know how that works out in a harem.

I came into this show knowing it was going to be bad so I didn't really think of it as anything I haven't seen before. It brings nothing new to the table, nothing inspiring, no noteworthy scenes. It's just a letdown in all aspects besides I guess teasing if that has any credibility. I'd surf the internet if I wanted to be uninspired but I guess the one thing the show has going for it is it's opening. Its pretty cool, not that cool but its okay. A typical harem that lacks a resolution is what can best describe The Asterisk War.

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