Gakusen Toshi Asterisk

I have a long-standing fascination with The Asterisk War. To most people, the series has been laid to rest these days, but I was new to anime and the anime community when it came out and was the spicy new topic to discuss. It was one of the first times I got to take a side on a hot-button topic of the day - and the *very* first time I got to take a side on a specific series. I liked The Asterisk War. I was team AssWar > Rakudai. I was all in. We got absolutely annihilated in that battle, mind you. Rakudai picked ... up a decisive victory in the war of public perception, but to this day I'm still that guy in whatever Discord server the topic manages to come up in, sitting in my rocking chair and ranting about how Rakudai wasn't all that and how much better The Asterisk War was. It's reached a point where people just a few years younger than me don’t know what I'm talking about anymore. I have become an old coot.

So, let's rewind. To talk about The Asterisk War in a way that means something, we have to put it in the context of 2015. The landscape was different back then - everything was in the process of changing to resemble the anime community we know today, but the new ways of the community were still in their formative stages and the old ways of the community were just beginning to die off. Conversations surrounding non-seasonal anime were declining but still prominent, and the platforms where most people discussed anime were less centralized compared to 2023. MAL, YouTube comments and r/anime were legitimately the most centralized platforms of the time. AniTwit wasn't even a term yet, and Discord hadn't taken off yet to become the behemoth that it'd become.

This setup lent itself very well towards one form of anime-centric fan content - reviews. Written and video-form reviews benefitted from the less centralized environment, where it was more common to have to seek out other people's opinions to engage with your hobby rather than be bombarded with those opinions on your Twitter feed whenever you weren't soliciting them or wanting to hear them. It was billboarding an opinion for other people to read and discuss. They still had to be sought out, but it made it much easier to find and seek out opinions on whatever series they were wanting to read or hear more about.

The largest platform with the widest possible audience for reviews was - and is - video-form reviews on YouTube. In the early to mid-'10s, we had content creators like Digibro, Mother's Basement and Gigguk that were making content that - for better or worse - had a visible impact on the discourse surrounding a series outside of the anitube bubble. Threads over the latest videos were getting pages and pages worth of discussion and argument on some nook and cranny subreddit, on anime threads on off-topic boards on My Little Pony fansites, and, most importantly to me, over on MAL's Anime Discussion board. I'm not lying when I said the most engaging and heated discussion you could find in this era was in follow-up threads about the latest Digibro video. This anitubing shit mattered back then. People talked about it, and they talked about it with passion.

With visible success creating video-form anime reviews came the flood of high school and uni kids who wanted to eschew having to grow up to work a shitty corporate nine-to-five in favor of chasing a dream of making a living by making videos talking about their favorite hobby. The prime garbage people were eating at the time was Sword Art Online videos. It was a worldwide phenomenon back then that came with a loud fanbase and a loud hatebase alike. This made it into a cash cow for creators wanting to rake in easy numbers.

However, the market on SAO content was cornered by 2015. Digibro and Mother's Basement talked about it enough by themselves to cover for thousands of up-and-coming anitubers. The SAO video review economy was being flooded by a very select few people, and the people doing so were the ones who already had all of the resources and visibility that came along with having an established platform. Nobody was making themselves off of making reviews on that series anymore outside of the people who had reached the top early.

Then the Fall 2015 season hits, and with it comes The Asterisk War. A new property with a lot of traits that made it seem like a marketing dream to some production committee at the time. It was part of the newest domestic LN trend of magic high schools, it had a largely international cast that foreign audiences might be able to relate to and enjoy, and it came with a similar-but-safer writing formula that a lot of people had identified about SAO. If the production committee pulling the strings was going to make the next LN global phenomenon in 2015, they saw AssWar as their ticket.

The production committee ran with it. It was made a split-cour before the term "split-cour" was even a term seeing common use. To folks at the time, it looked like it was an anime that came with a second season announced before the first one had even aired. It came with a gacha game before AL and FGO had made gacha games a massive thing. It had its own shitty PS Vita arena fighter, again, as part of the marketing package. The light novels were speedran for international release by the standards of the day, the valuable marketing tools of OPs and EDs were not skimped on in the slightest, and the production values behind the bulk of the anime were very strong for a 2015 LN harem anime - albeit they just took a much a less creative form of the Ufotable approach by relying heavily on filters and whatnot to make the visuals pop. It even got its own spinoff series about some girls who attended the doofy idol school that always comes in last place. It got shitcanned pretty fast, but I like to imagine that there's an alternate timeline where The Asterisk War Cinematic Universe became a thing.

Nobody seemed to consider how audiences would react to writing quality. Maybe they saw SAO selling like hotcakes in spite of the critical backlash, maybe they weren't even aware of the critical backlash since that was mainly a foreign thing, or maybe they just didn't think that quality was important for these kinds of series. I don't know. I just know that the Asterisk War and all of its marketing efforts were absolutely torpedoed by flopping with critics and audiences alike on this front. It just wasn't good. It didn't have the qualities it needed to make fans of this medium latch onto it and care about it. People didn't defend it, they didn't buy the LNs or play the gacha, and they didn't feel pressed to support it even if they did like it. The character writing and storytelling created a series where the standard reaction to it was the series itself being routinely mocked.

These elements combined to create a very visible low-hanging fruit, and every young anituber and reviewer looking for their big break 8 years ago made shitty content on this series where they tried way too hard to make this their Sword Art Online. It was open season, too. This was people's chance to break out. This was the next bad LN series getting a big marketing push for its anime adaptation. Standards of quality seemed to collapse, and anything and everything that could be mocked was being grasped at. I'm still haunted by the audio of some kid laughing for about 20 seconds straight because a character in the series is named "MacPhail," since that kind of sounds like "McFail." I don’t know how to follow that up. It happened, it’s out there, and it can never be undone.

Yet, the greatest failure of The Asterisk War is that the series made nobody. The series never became the next LN phenomenon, so the production committee wasted a bunch of resources in marketing a failed product. Yuu Miyazaki wasn't made into the next Reki Kawahara, let alone made into somebody with more meaning than that. I don't know of any content creator who made it - let alone sustained any success - by breaking through with their AssWar content. Unlike SAO, it didn't generate enough devotion from its few fans to at least elevate it to "divisive" status, meaning the loud hatred it received tended to be met with echoes, causing even the hatred to fall off fast due to a lack of interest. It managed to be lost in the void in a way that's not much different than the way some dinky OVAs get lost in the void. It inspired a tsunami of hatred that tapered off after a single wave.

To the people who even remember it, this series' legacy is defined either by an already-established content creator making a 13 video series called "The Asterisk War Sucks," or by making Rakudai Kishi no Calvary seem much better than it was when they both came out. Sword Art Online was a divisive success that just fell off with time. The Asterisk War was never anything more than a resounding failure. It's gifted kid burnout: the anime. When it was forming up, it looked like it had all of the marketing tools needed to be a massive success, only to fall apart fast and fall apart hard when it went out on its own.

Yet, here I am. I'm still here, 8 years later. I'm sitting in a room by myself with what's now the dead body of a series. Everyone else has left it to rot to the passing of time, whether they hated it or loved it. I was the one who stayed and watched it die. It’s not an exceptional death to have witnessed - the LN series wound up living as a corpse for several years following a sharp decline in sales after the anime adaptation was panned by pretty much everyone, and it got put out of its misery before reaching the intended conclusion because of said low sales. I entered this room in 2015 and I've never left, though. Eulogizing it to an audience of nobody through a review might be my way of stepping out of the room after all this time.

Let's get something straight - the storytelling of the Asterisk War is hard to talk about because of how little happens. It begins with a couple of small arcs centered around Ayato building his harem by being Mr. helpful nice guy person, followed by a series of tourney arcs, which start later on in the first season of the anime and run all the way through, until the very end of the LNs. The anime ends on the conclusion of the Phoenix Festa tourney arc, but pretty much everything that happens after the anime ends is different tourney arcs. There's all of the politics and intrigue surrounding the tourney arcs that every tourney arc in the history of tourney arcs has ever had in their tourney arcs, but at the end of the day they're all fairly routine tourney arcs. I hope I've said tourney arcs enough to drill in the point that this whole fucking series is a bunch of different tourney arcs, storywise. I'm not being hyperbolic with that.

They at least have decisive winners, but that decisive winner is always the protagonists, so whatever. It's not interesting, and it gets very repetitive the longer the series goes on. What you see in the anime is pretty much AssWar's peak in terms of storytelling quality, and it has the added bonus of featuring the very few and far between non-tourney-based storylines at the start.

And in a series defined by being nothing except tourney arcs, the fights are very weak. They're not ugly and they don't skimp on special effects - instead, they're just too clean. It's the same logic about why the lightsaber duels in the Star Wars prequels fell short of the ones from the original trilogy. In what's supposed to be an emotional fight, it's so much more human when a character just starts wailing on someone. You don't scream in rage or overcome some obstacle and just go into some beautiful exhibition-style swordplay. There's emotion in a fight. A fight is its own story inside of a story. At their best, they're bloody and raw, not a fucking well done dance routine. The pristine way that AssWar handles its fights furthers a sense of detachment from the characters on the screen, and the main cast's characterization already had been doing enough of that by itself to not need the extra help.

Which, yes, there's a lot more to be said about the characters, albeit that's because they tend to have paper-thin personalities and motivations. They are so bad that without proper context being given they could be misinterpreted as a parody of shitty writing. Julis wants to save an orphanage. She starts off as a tsun, is tsundere for like, a teensy bit, then becomes dere noble mchero mcgoodguy and not a totally McFail mcbadguy. She is disgusting in how pure of heart she is. She is like that dorky '80s teen movie trope of wanting to save the rec center from the evil big money boss and his douchey son who want to bulldoze it to build...something, except even dumber because instead of a rec center, it's a fucking orphanage. Orphans are sad and they are being abused, and Julis wants to save the orphans because she is good. Please like Julis.

Any good story manipulates your emotions to some extent to make you feel something genuine for the fictional characters involved, but proper manipulation isn't hamfisted. This might sound crazy, but saving the orphanage as a motivation to get you to root for a character might just be a little too hamfisted.

Now, Ayato is different. It's easy to miss if you don't think about it because the series itself treats all of this like it's normal, but Ayato is a fucking weirdo. He meets Julis, they have a misunderstanding, then a fight, and then he listens to her sob story about wanting to save the orphanage. Following this incredible reveal, he decides to devote pretty much his entire life and being to supporting this girl he barely knows. Do not try this in actual dating. It is less effective than unsolicited dick pics.

It works here in fantasyland, though, and in the end it winds up undermining the closest thing we have to a driving motivation in Julis wanting to save the orphanage. During the last tourney arc in the LNs, we get the epic final showdown of Ayato versus Julis. Ayato throws the fight he was winning to her to prove how much he cares or some shit. It doesn't say he intentionally loses to her because he wants to go spelunking in the cavern between her legs, but you know he's desperate enough based on his character motivations that this has to be his reason. In the biggest tragedy of the entire series, Ayato still does not get laid after losing the fight for a million billion dollars on purpose to impress the girl he's not actually dating.

Dude really based his whole life around a girl he barely knew, for fuck's sake. Just go watch porn or some shit if you just need to get it out of your system. Have some self-respect. He *does* have like, this quest to find his sister who went missing in Rikka or some shit, but it goes on the back burner for most of the series in favor of orphan-saving, and it winds up resolving itself like, oh hey we found her she was trapped by big evil master racist bad man but she's fine now and we have her. Boom. Problem solved.

Listen, harems are a sex fantasy at the end of the day, even if they're not often outright pornographic. Fantasization is normal and healthy. I also don't think the guy in the harem tends to matter a whole lot, because I'm way more worried about the girls. I don't care if he's weak or lame. I don't care if he's massively overpowered. I will get annoyed if his story overtakes that of the girls, but that's usually the extent of a response a harem MC can elicit from me. Different genres have different sources of appeal to draw an audience in, and the main draw of harem series is in the genre's one word, five letter name. However, the best possible interpretations people could make of Ayato's character were the ones during the flood of dull review content from 2015 where they complained about how bland and nothing his character was. If you think about him for too long, though, Ayato just becomes depressing to look at.

In a bold stylistic decision to completely misunderstand romance and relationships, Ayato comes across like he's some sort of dude who has no confidence with women, and thinks that he can win them over them by making them his everything when in reality their relationship is only at a stage of talking and maybe flirting a bit. This somehow works out for him, sort of. I don't really think depression and sex fantasies make a good cocktail, and the way Ayato handles his relationship is very representative of a lot of awkward and unfortunate guys out there who totally jump the gun and think they have to act this way to prove themselves to someone. I kind of just want him to get better, but not in a way that has me rooting for him as much as pitying him.

Kirin is the closest thing we have to a main character with a functioning ongoing story rather than just being a tagalong at best or having a lame-ass motivation at worst. Kirin's story is a bit about breaking out of a controlling/abusive power dynamic. I'm glad the abuser is framed as an actual abuser and not as a well-intentioned dickhead like I feel I've seen far too often with dickhead parental figures in anime, but the fact that this is my highest praise for her character story isn't a good thing. "Hey portraying a serious problem normally and without being offensive" isn't a strong statement - it’s the bare minimum. Following her little coming-out-of-her-shell arc, she becomes something closer to a small, cute animal rather than a human in behavior and mannerisms, so it was all for nothing because she goes right into the rubbish bin long term. I also find her gross to look at. Don't like the loli-big boobs combo. Never have.

The villains are all like, setting-based Nazis or some shit. Racial supremacists, but the race are the people with the super powers. It's not interesting. There's one dude you see in the anime, Dirk, who doesn't have any powers but is still a powers-based racial supremacist. He's also ugly but in a way that seems intentional to make you dislike him on a shallow level as well as because he's such a rat bastard, but I find him more physically attractive than Kirin. I'm not into men and I say that with absolute certainty.

Other than that, my favorite characters are ones I tend to enjoy for very strong reasons in an ecchi anime, i.e. I usually like them for their tits. However, do not be fooled - AssWar is not an ecchi. It's tagged as an ecchi here on MAL, but in implementation it just has a fanservice bit every few episodes during the first season, and by the second season the fanservice gets phased out almost entirely. You cannot watch AssWar as an ecchi. It will disappoint.

I want to end the character talk on a good note, though. I think Saya Sasamiya is the high point of characterization in the series, and not just relative to a weak cast, either. She's not the hottest character ever - too loli for my taste - but I'd place her on the strong side of kuudere characters in anime as a whole. The archetype isn't my cup of tea, but Saya is the comic relief of the cast in a way that comes off per the character's intent rather than as a byproduct of her dull tone and demeanor.

The best joke in the series is when this arrogant idol-school chick is talking herself up prior to a duel with Saya, and Saya just blasts her away before she finishes her speech. The second best joke is when Ayato walks in all of them changing, and everyone is flustered, as per the norm. 'Cept Saya, who just takes the most casual, "yo waddup ayato how's it going" reaction to the situation, seeming to be aware of how this should be an embarrassing situation for everyone involved but instead just treating it like it's as normal as bumping into your friend in the hallway. It manages to both defuse the situation and set it apart from other uses of the scenario to have the joke come across as fresh, without coming across like it's trying to be self-aware. I can buy into the idea that it's just Saya being Saya, and that's why she's is the bright spot in this cast.

It's not a type/role match that's unique to her, but it's the best I've seen it handled in the details. Kuudere humor tends to be either laughing at them for their awkwardness and finding it cute, or them making sarcastic remarks about the absurd situations the rest of the cast is in, but in the glory of monotone. Saya is just a silly, fun person who happens to speak in monotone. She's animated, she's emotive (for her archetype), her style of humor is hers, and her being a kuudere is just pretty much the way she speaks and the fact she has a thing for Ayato to make her -dere. Her archetype is additive to her comedy as a character and gives her flavor, but it doesn't dominate her entire existence. This culminates in making her feel less like the butt of the jokes or like she cannot stand being around these people, but more like she's the life of the group and a great enhancement to what's otherwise a pretty weak cast dynamic. Sometimes, even writers who cannot write for shit manage to do stuff right. Good job, Yuu Miyazaki.

As a whole, though, AssWar doesn't understand that heroes need something to make an audience want to cheer for them. The heroes are so strictly good that they feel intangible. I do believe you can get away with bland heroes whenever they go against memorable and interesting villains for an audience to enjoy hating, but AssWar's villains are as hardtack as its heroes. The only people I felt any form of investment in were Saya - because Saya is just cool as shit - and any girl with nice tits not named Kirin. I don't care about anything else with these characters.

Now, this should all seem weird. I'm ripping on AssWar quite a bit. I opened up talking about how much I like this series and now I'm mocking the writing. I do like this series, though. I promise. It's not an ironic enjoyment, either - I love it.

I do think the character writing and storytelling are awful, and because of this it's easy to see why it was such a flop. People want great characters and strong stories in this medium. It's why they're here, and if a story and its characters fail to deliver there is nothing wrong with expressing your dislike for having wasted your time with it. Asterisk War tries to tell a story that it places front and center so you can't really argue that the intent isn't as much.

I am an ecchi fan, though. If my existence as a fan was defined by basing my views on any given series by having a rigid need to weigh those two aspects of a series above everything else, I couldn't be an ecchi fan. I'm very open to disregarding them entirely if there's stuff I like a lot more, and AssWar redeems itself to me through the one strength it has - the setting concept.

Follow along with me here. If you played videogames when you were younger, did you ever do dumb shit like try to walk around like your character was just one of the people who lived in the setting? I remember when I was a kid and playing Wild Arms on the first Playstation, I'd stop and do that in the starting village all the time. I'd stop at bales of hay and act like my character was gathering them and then I'd take them over to the area with the horses, like I was giving the horses their hay for the day. Then I'd walk around, talk to people who said the same lines, then head up to the bedroom where it let me save. The sleep song would play, and I'd get my character out of bed and repeat my task of feeding the village horses the next day. When I revisited Wild Arms as an adult I found that it isn't an exceptional game, but when you're a little kid everything seems so magical about this fantasy and fiction stuff that you just want to get lost in it all.

As people get older, that sense of mysticism and excitement in everything begins to wear off. We get bags under our eyes, we experience a lot more of the negative parts of the world and life, and we deal with bullshit we'd rather not have to but are forced to just to be able to function on a day-to-day basis. Those feelings fade into this memory that we call nostalgia. It's a powerful thing when it gets combined with the stresses of life as an adult. This sense of longing for things to feel that way again, for everything to be exciting and to capture your imagination like it used to.

I feel like it's very rare, but as adults, I believe we can still interact with media that manages to recreate that sense of wonder and excitement that we felt when we were kids. Media that captures our imagination to the point where we're getting caught up in minutiae, not just wondering what'll happen next in the story. To date, the only media I've experienced as an adult that has managed to capture my imagination to this extent was The Asterisk War and its worldbuilding.

So, a long ass time ago in-setting but well into the future for us real-life lads, Earth was struck with some magical meteor shower or some shit, and these magical meteors caused the next generation to begin experiencing births of super people who could do magic and shit. Blah blah blah, the city of Rikka was built in one of the meteor impact craters to house them and hold super-powered magic techno-fighting tournaments that the rest of the world could watch as a sport.

Now, Rikka has six schools that run from middle school through university, and these schools have different ethos attached to them that they expect their students to uphold, kind of like the D&D alignment system or the fucking weird ass Harry Potter Hat with a face - the student's personal values being reflected by which school they attend.

To give a runthrough of each one, there's Seidoukan, which is more or less the protagonist syndrome school for the neutral good characters. This is where the heroes of the main story all attend. There's Le Wolfe, which believes in Social Darwinism, and it's as edgy as you'd expect upon hearing that as their ethos. No teamwork, advance at all costs, prove you’re the strongest because survival of the fittest, yadda yadda. This is the school for all of the Shadow the Hedgehog and Sephiroth fans out there.

Then there’s St. Galahadsworth, which is the lawful good school where the students are forbidden from dueling and are expected to uphold a strict code of chivalry. Arlequint - my personal favorite - is the mad scientist, always playing-with-syringes school where the students are expected to always foster innovation and stand at the forefront of weapons development, complete with a student section comprising of human guinea pigs to test out the experiments on and do the actual fighting for the nerds in the lab coats. Jie Long, which is somewhat similar to Galahadsworth but without the focus on Western-style chivalry and instead a greater focus on things like self-improvement and martial arts, kind of like the Bruce Lee school or some shit. Jie Long is not as demanding to be lawful good, either, it’s chaotic and all over the spectrum. Last and least there's Queensvail, which is an all-girls school focused on producing idols and entertainers above all else, so if you’re a pretty girl who wants to sing or something I guess you can go there and get last in every event.

In these schools, they have different disciplines of magic unique to them that students can learn like Jie Long's Taoist style magic, and various weapons called Orga Luxes that have mystical properties that can interact with the user that the weapon itself will choose, for better or for worse depending on what weapon it is. It can grant the user new abilities they previously didn't have access to, it can damage the users psychological state, so on and so forth - each being different and giving different boons or maluses depending on the weapon’s temperament.

It is game world worldbuilding, and that's not super distinct in of itself in the world of light novels. What sets it apart is in the details - it's not JRPG videogame worldbuilding. It's a magic sci-fi city, complete with its own values systems stemming from the strange society that's been built up through the lore of the land the series actually takes place in and treats as real, with its own list of things like legendary weapons that's left open-ended enough for the viewers to get creative with on their own, rather than having a set of in-game rules that the worldbuilding itself is forced to abide by. Underlying the trite story the series tells is a setting with the potential for a lot to be done, ranging from ideological and ethical conflicts, to treasure seeking, to magical fantasy shit, to sci-fi techno shit. The worldbuilding made a point of incorporating things like personal values and beliefs in tandem with all of this rather than just being another demon king story or something just fucking fascist like Mahouka, too. I felt invited to make my own characters with their own values and come up with special weapons that had unique properties for them to use.

The series itself - anime and LNs - does a good job at showcasing its worldbuilding. It doesn’t drop into textbook exposition too often and will take time and care to show certain facets of the worldbuilding through actions. A good example is when we see McFail try to use the Orga Luxe that winds up going to piss boy MC. It’s such a simple sequence - characters are going into the vault to try out Seidoukan’s collection of legendary weapons. Señor McFail walks up and try to use one, but the weapon itself rejects him. Later it becomes piss boy MC’s legendary weapon, but this small sequence showcases the idea that the main weapons all the top folks in this system use accept or reject those who try to wield them. We also get droplets of it through the main storyline, such as when they were trying to deduce which school sent in a spy to infiltrate them. They break it down in ways like “No, it’s not likely that St. Galahadsworth would result to these kinds of tactics, they have a certain image to maintain” to give a rudimentary idea of which schools of magic lie where on the values and ethics spectrum.

It’s not some impressive feat of writing as much as it is just good execution, but it does a good job of drip-feeding this kind of info to the viewer without relying *too* much on exposition - it’s not perfect, but relative to the norm in anime it’s a cut above. This is what caused me to get so wrapped up in this series. I wanted to have my own character in this world, and when I watched it for the first time when I was 18, I made one. He was going to be a student at the Renaissance Europe-styled school of St. Galahadsworth whose characterization was going to be inspired by Galileo Galilei's conflicts with the church over his contributions to astronomy conflicting with religious doctrine, E pur si muove style. He was going to be so fucking cool and rebellious inside of a heavily controlled and legalistic environment, and he was going to get to bang Shenhua and be a bit of a villain who strays from the path of the super good guy school, and it was going to be awesome. I was so engrossed with thoughts like this that I kept watching the series so I could learn more and more so I could incorporate it into my own little story I was coming up with that'd use the setting. I'm not going to pretend like I think it would've been good with the power of hindsight, but give me a break. I was having a lot of fun coming up with this shit.

Dorky. Cringey. Fucking awesome. I love how much the Asterisk War was able to engage me on this level. This is one of the best ways to get wrapped up in something to me, where you're imagining your own characters and stories and getting to thinking about dumbass little details about what weapons they'd use, how they'd look, what their room and social life would be like, so on and so forth. That feeling of imagination and wonderment is a powerful connection to make with a series, and I kept paying attention to little details that were just so inviting to that sense of wonder that I found myself falling into this weird rabbit hole of AssWar lore. I even own physical copies of the volumes of the LNs that’ve been released. I bought them for fucking research at first. I didn't sit down and read the LNs until half a decade later. When I was so into this series, I used them for the comprehensive glossary of terms and concepts about the setting the first volume came with, or I skimmed through them to pick up lore tidbits, or just to look at the map of Rikka they came with where it described the schools and their various facets and guiding principles. To me, that’s appreciating something on a level that not many things can succeed in evoking. The Asterisk War, somehow, was the series that did for me.

When I did sit down to actually read the LNs cover to cover, I was a proper adult with 5 years of experience in the workforce. This is when it all clicked together. I came to understand that this husk of a series wasn't a failed franchise, but someone’s dead dream. The anime was very corporate in its presentation and marketing, sure, and the LNs became a total lazy mess later on in their run before receiving what I can only describe as a mercy-killing cancellation, but what’s stuck with me more than anything about this series is the author’s note in the very first volume of the light novels.

In it, Yuu Miyazaki doesn't talk about how much he loves animation and storytelling and what anime and manga he was a fan of that inspired him to make AssWar. Instead, he expresses his love of tabletop RPGs. When he was younger and didn't have a friend group to play them with yet, he'd have his parents buy him RPG manuals he could read. He used to love reading Dungeons & Dragons and Warhammer game manuals for the setting details in them, to get lost in their worlds and lore and history, to let his imagination take over and see where things guided him. In this note, Miyazaki claims a wide variety of these game manuals as his inspirations, and states that his goal with Asterisk War was to create a series that people could create their own characters for and become its own tabletop RPG someday.

The Asterisk War was never meant to be a light novel. It was meant to be a setting for an RPG people could make their own stories with and go on adventures with their friends in. This is a stated intent dating from before the anime’s release. Yet, somehow - and I don't know how - it wound up as a light novel series instead, and a light novel series and its fans demand some sort of a story to get engrossed in rather than one they make themselves. In this case, the story they received was a story written by someone who didn't care about and wasn't interested writing a story to begin with. Even if effort is expended, if the intent and desire isn't there, it'll fail to connect with the audience. This was its undoing, and yet aspects about the setting that Yuu Miyazaki had created made it appear to some suits on a production committee like the next big thing they could market to create the next Sword Art Online.

This opened its shortcomings up to widespread attention, and those shortcomings caused the series to be met with intense mockery. People online would rip this series apart tooth and nail. They themselves were out for blood in trying to create their own next SAO. I remember back when people still talked about AssWar, I'd watch randos in threads stoop to petty things like berating the author's appearance and ascribing personal faults to him as a human being for having the audacity to write an inoffensive, if dull, story as a vessel for his setting to be published. Years later, I remember thinking about how much Miyazaki was attacked as a person for writing AssWar when I was following the Ruroni Kenshin drama. People were far more accepting of an actual pedophile in Ruroni Kenshin's mangaka than they were of some dude who just wrote a bad story that it seems like he didn't even want to write, and that's just...heartbreaking, really.

As the LNs continued beyond the anime, they became less and less energetic. Even if the writing before wasn't great, I think it at least tried to highlight the setting as best it could before even that fell away as the series went on deeper into its neverending tourney arcs, and there was even some good character writing at points like I saw with Saya. Hell, even Kirin's story with her Uncle tried to do something with familial abuse and pushing children too hard, and even if it wasn't much, it at least handled it far more tactfully than I'd have expected. It was bad, but it wasn't lazy.

With time, the starry-eyed excitement of that first author's note that was hoping it'd become the tabletop RPG it was always meant to be was depleted, with the author’s notes becoming more and more brief with each passing volume before they stopped all together at a certain point. The story and art inside of the LNs derailed, better exemplifying a lack of motivation in creativity than anything that was adapted into the anime could. It wasn’t good. It wasn’t trying to achieve anything anymore. It was going through the motions as much as that could entail.

The Asterisk War died quietly, to no fanfare or mourning, just a little under a year ago as of this review. It was a bad story with bad characters, but it was this way because this wasn't what it was supposed to be in the first place. It was in the wrong medium. I don't know how it got here and how things wound up this way, but I'm convinced the AssWar would be better if it was never LN or an anime to begin with. Maybe there's a timeline out there where it managed to spread its wings and be the tabletop RPG it was always meant to be, and there’s groups of friends going on adventures with their characters in their little anime magic school game. In our universe, though, it all failed with a short drop and a sudden stop. I can't escape the feeling I'm the last person leaving the room where we watched someone's dream die in real time, and that's a bitter taste to have to swallow.

With that, I leave this room and close the door behind me. For better or worse, I had fun. Shine on, you crazy diamond. I mean it when I say that I wish that it had all gone differently for you.

[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 ... Kishi no Cavalry, which I'd just finished, and all I wanted to do was see which is worse. Yes, WORSE. Not better. I mean, that's not to say it couldn’t have been surprisingly good, but of course that couldn't happen. Of course, this review won’t be spent comparing the two anime together, but I will give a verdict as to which is better at the end. Because that’s what everyone asked me to do!

Also, so the mods won’t be unhappy, I must inform you that I will spoil the first episode almost entirely, but spoilers will be toned down to a minor level beyond that episode.

Asterisk starts off extremely rocky; honestly just about everything in the first episode is horrible, whether it's immediately evident or not. The opening scene is a fight with awkward choreography and absolutely no context at all, even as the scene comes to a close. It sets the tone, I guess, but the reason why this fight was shown at all just seems unclear after watching the whole season, as way too little is revealed in this opening, and its potential context doesn't have much weight on the following episodes. But I'm sure it'll be explained later... in another season... that I won't watch...

Some exposition is given, which is fine I guess, but one very interesting thing stuck with me. "The people gradually began to alter their sense of morality." This is apparently due to some event called "Invertia", and you really have to give the writer(s) props for making a new term for "shitty writing". It's a shame they couldn't follow up on it, though. There might be some stupid actions, but nothing horrible enough to make you really think that these people are really fucked in the head; these things instead feel forced so that the "story" (read: too little) and fanservice (read: too much) can keep going.

The first example of characters being idiots instead of morally questionable comes quickly. Icky--oh, sorry, wrong review—Ayato (the main character) catches a falling handkerchief, sees and open window (and/or hears someone's voice from it), and sums up the obvious. He jumps into the window to return the handkerchief, only to see a female student only partially dressed. Here's everything wrong with this scene:

1. He acts apologetic, knowing that it was an accident, despite not considering that he would've been obviously invading someone's privacy by jumping through their FUCKING WINDOW, MULTIPLE STORIES HIGH. If some awareness to the obviously horrible idea were present, even if it results in the MC being a massive douchenozzle, it could at least be pinned to people having fucked up morals. Nope, instead he tries playing this off like it’s not just a prank, bro.

2. We get a glimpse of someone’s ass before knowing whose ass it even is. But don’t worry, it’s not that important, this is only the female fucking lead. Where are the Japanese tumblrvists when you need them? If the fanservice wasn’t so forced, this could’ve been an OK scene, but god forbid someone has to go three minutes without popping a boner over their new waifu. By the way, you can stop taking the show seriously at this point.

3. If your handkerchief is so important, why did you carelessly leave it sitting loosely near an open window? How the hell did the wind even suck a cloth out of a room, anyway? Why was Ayato surprised by seeing a girl in the room when he heard her talking? If he didn’t hear her talking, why did WE hear her talking?

This goes into a very laughable fight scene that only exists because Julis’s personality makes absolutely no sense, if she even has one. She thinks Ayato should die or something because he saw her naked (apparently wearing underwear = naked, k), despite being soooo grateful for getting a super-special piece of linen back. Maybe this could be some inverted moral bullshit like the story wants me to believe, but you’ll later see how much of a clusterfuck this character is as the show goes on. The fight itself is full of weird technology and magic we know nothing about, plot armor, and overall poor direction. (Why did Ayato jump through an explosion unharmed? And why did the soundtrack suddenly stop just when a character is thinking, only to go to some mysterious-sounding tune? It’s weird.) It ends with Ayato glomping Julis to avoid some assassination or something, and he later gropes her somehow because fanservice, or awkward comedy, or… I don’t know. Oh, did I say something about an assassination? Who cares? No one else does, so that’s obviously not important. Let’s move on.

I could pick apart every scene, but I’d just retrace the same points and conclusions the above have made, more or less: Characters are incredibly stupid, whether the writer made them do stupid things or the writer leaked his stupidity into the plot’s scenarios at various points, and not because of some global event. The art is pretty generic and obviously tries to compensate by being flashy, the music is mostly uninspiring, and just the overall direction seems to be mediocre. All of this is taken from the first ten minutes of the first episode. That’s all.

In short, the show quickly establishes how fuckin’ bad it is.

So, I’ve been mentioning this “Invertia” thing a few times. It IS pretty important, and you should really pay attention to that scene, because it’s the only time in the whole show that you’ll hear about it! …Wait… oh. Yeah, Invertia is mentioned once, or something. No one talks about it, and there’s no noticeable impact from it (as far as morals go). Why did they bother mentioning this part of it? And you know that fight in the beginning? That kinda hints at some other “major” plot element that gets totally forgotten about after it’s brought up. The first episode is basically spent teaching you things you will never need to know. It’s high school algebra all over again!

Beyond this façade of a setup, there’s some sort of plot, or at least there should be. Basically, Ayato comes to this school to kinda learn about his sister and mostly to find some path for himself, so he starts training for these fighting events, and wow I am REALLY bored right now. Along the way, he meets various girls who do all but tear out their reproductive organs and install them into exuberantly-colored fleshlights for his personal satisfaction. It’s honestly hilarious how frequent the fanservice is, and how few reasons the girls have to each fall in love with the MC. Asterisk’s girls come in different shapes so that everyone’s tastes are satisfied, and they’re exploited so commonly that I wonder if Asterisk is trying to trying to appeal to the hentai artists or if the creators are bragging that they have girls in their series. I’m sure you’re all very satisfied with yourselves.

If you need to be reminded again that the characters are bad, this is your lucky day! The characters are bad! So here’s my favorite part, the character roast section:

Ayato – Things worth saying/making fun of are as follows:

Julis – Independent black woman who don’t need no bodyguard. If you ignore the fact that she’s a figure of royalty, a high-ranking student, and that your IQ is lower than that of an earthworm, then it makes a lot of sense.

Claudia – You know what? This is the best character in the whole show, and all who disagree can fucking fight me. She’s the most direct with her affection for Ayato to the point where she flat-out says she wants to fuck. At least there’s no bullshit about it, other than her having no reason to like Ayato and Ayato being a scrubmaster about it. (Do I need to bring up Cavalry again? WHAT SIXTEEN-YEAR-OLD KID IS GOING TO BE EMBARRASSED BY THIS? DON’T LET YOUR DREAMS BE DREAMS, ASSHOLE.) Also, please note that her ending scenes to preview the next episode literally do not exist. Nope.

Saya – Hi, I’m a deadpan loli with no real reason for being in this show other than to be the loli in this harem. If the point of her personality was to match the audience’s evident opinion of her, they nailed it on the fucking head.

Kirin – Kinda younger-looking girl with big tits. Apparently her dad’s in jail, so she and her big tits need to win these festival things or something, and follow the guidance of her uncle who’s abusive as hell for no reason. So, I guess at least this character and her big tits have some sort of conflict??? And then we can waste a couple episodes on her and her big tits?????? No need to thank A-1, I’m sure they do it because they care. And for the record, the anime tells you at every waking moment that this character has big tits because we can’t shove Claudia into every scene.

Lester – I’M A DOUCHEBAG WITH MUSCLES. DISLIKE ME!

Irene – Wincest.

Did I miss anyone? Probably. Do I care? Probably not.
Did I have too much fun with that? Probably. Do I care? Probably not.

Kinda going into my next point, what the fuck is with everyone’s hair in this thing? What sort of insane products are these people using that allow their hair to suspend in midair? Like holy hell, does their lack of personality somehow expel a gravitational field from their heads? It’s insane, dude. They also have that wonderful, classic “spot the major character” look; if their hair is the color of something not really found in nature, they’re important. If not, they might exist, but you won’t remember them. Everyone below this line is some overly-generic CG filler person or something.

Overall, the art might be dazzling to some, but I only see A-1 trying to compensate for their overall weak animation, and no amount of ass shots will redeem it. Even if you don’t agree that the first episode is bad, you can’t possibly tell me that, say, episode 4 looks good. Beyond the animation, the CG is the compensation part, as I couldn’t ever get behind the flashiness and vibrancy of the magic and weapons. I mean, they’re not bad… but they’re certainly nothing special, especially since fights are so reliant on them.

By the way, there’s a lot of this CG technology that’s omnipresent even outside of the fights, so it’s not just a bunch of magic and glowing plastic weapons making lightsaber noises. This might’ve been better to bring up in the setting/plot parts of this review, but whatever. Anyway, what the hell is all of this shit? All this technology and shit is literally omnipresent; everywhere you go, you see holograms of various functions. Where do these things even come from? How do they work? What can you do with this amazing technology besides open doors from across a room and use them as replacements for what we know as computers? Why am I asking questions that I know will NEVER be answered?

Last thing about the art; who the FUCK is responsible for the next episode previews? You know, that shit at the very end of each episode where Claudia looks like she’s in some visual novel but is animated like a 5-year-old edited it? Jesus Christ, I don’t think I’ve ever cringed so hard after watching something in an anime. I only watched one of these before deciding that I’d never do it again, so please watch at your own risk.

Now, the soundtrack is… actually good. Some of it. I believe just one person (Rasmus Faber) did the entire score (my apologies if this is incorrect), and if that’s the case, his electronic pieces are easily his strong point. (Which makes sense; I hear he’s a DJ or something.) The OP and ED are pretty good as well. But unfortunately, the rest is mediocre at best. The more orchestral pieces don’t quite stand out or are as memorable as the electronic pieces, but I don’t want to seem more negative than positive in this section. I’ll actually admit something was good in this anime.

But all those negatives aside, at least it wasn’t as bad as Rakudai Kishi no Cavalry.

…Or was it?

You know, it’s hard to decide on which is worse. I couldn’t take either anime seriously, but Cavalry still made some attempt at being serious at one point. At least there’s some sort of reason for the shit that’s happening. Asterisk has nothing going on at all! But even if Asterisk did nothing, playing it safe worked to its advantage, because Cavalry’s serious moments are heavily weighed down by the sheer awful, cringe-inducing scenes that infest it. I mean, Asterisk is bad, but it never made me uncomfortable. But Cavalry still did a couple things right, such as the art (mostly) and the romance (to a small extent). Asterisk has a few good songs, and that’s about it. So my overall verdict as to which is worse…

Surprising myself a bit, I’m giving that honor to The Asterisk War, mainly based on the fact that it did fuck all to help itself, while Cavalry at least made some legitimate attempt somewhere. And with that settled, I can walk away from this anime with a strange sense of satisfaction: that I was looking for a good match between two terrible anime, and I walked away with an unexpected, but satisfying result. Great job, Asterisk, you actually succeeded in something, by being the Worst One!

And that’s all. Full score is below, thanks for… oh god… I just realized something. Invertia didn’t change the morals of the characters, it changed the morals of the writers! And the producers! And whoever the hell else is responsible for this! Oh man, I think it’s gotten to me as well! I went out of my way to watch a bad anime and I was just thankful for it being so terrible! Holy hell, this show is actually genius!

Story – 1/10
Art – 4/10
Sound – 7/10
Characters – 1/10
Enjoyment – 1/10
Overall – 1/10
Favorite character – Claudia
Favorite episode – none
Recommended to – people who want to lower their MAL average score

Congratulations are in order, for this is my very first 1/10 score. It was originally a 2/10, but after considering things more for this review, I can’t think of any reason to give this anything higher. What did I like? The art was okay but pretty boring, and the soundtrack was pretty nice, but they’re beside me for the most part. If they were actually great and really memorable, like, say, Guilty Crown, then that’d probably let me raise it to a 2 or a 3. But even if GC is a pile of shit beyond the production, at least it made an honest attempt at writing a story and had some legitimately interesting moments. Asterisk has NOTHING that is interesting, whether it’s due to a lack of explanations or just sheer unoriginality. I mean… well, I already wrote the review, so I won’t go back. I guess all that needs to be said is that this anime is pretty ass.

terisk.

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.

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.

One of the most generic and boring LN Harem adaptations I have ever seen.

Set in a vague, unexplained, and ultimatly uninteresting world filled with shallow, cliched characters, who lack even the most basic of decision making or logical ability.

The Main cast includes

1. Generic blank slate harem MC

2. Generic fiery Tsundere.

... 3. Childhood friend cliche & deadpan loli, wants MCs D.

4. Exposition character who I can not remember a single character trait of except that she wants the MC's D.

5. another loli introduced later

There is virtually no character development, the plot goes nowhere, MC is as generic as it gets.

There is no reason to watch this show, if you have seen any other generic Harem you have seen this.

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.

Warning, this review might have some spoilers!

It is a great story after all, but something is missing in it. This anime was really great and i can say that there was some missings in the episode that might just would fit in there, but its not much to complain about that. I really did love that he was powerful (i guess not spoil). It does reminds me of SAO (Sword Art Online). Swords there and swords here. There is season 2 now and i expect that he (spoil) will get away that thing that holds him back from using hes true 100% power in ... fights and duels. Thats it for now.

Dual Cour Format: An anime meant to be 24 episodes as fitting of Trimmed Format but because of limited TV Slot booking often airs at different points in time. Often announced simultaneously for example:

Shinmai Maou no Testament, Gate

Story 8 / 10

The story begins with Amagiri Ayato a transfer student to the Seidoukan Academy and progresses as ground work for what's to come for the future of a student that does not care about the combat called festas that surely but slowly is getting himself riddled on something darker.

Since this is a dual cour series I won't go into detail until I've seen 2nd cour ... but it's well executed giving the serious moments their bubbles and good portrayal of character bonding on an Academy where everyone it's everyone enemy.

Art + Animation 8.5 / 10

Gakusen Toshi Asterisk has great animation and above average art that combined are way more than decent. It's objectively good with no problems.

Sound 8 / 10

I caught myself singing the OP of this series and goes without saying that the choice of BGM and OST are very good. The voice actors are very good as well and the ED does not disappoint.

Characters 8 / 10

On the first cour the character are very well developed and their dynamics are quite entertaining. The chemistry of the female lead Julis-Alexia is reminiscing of normally black haired heroines that are usually portrayed as very confident and proud (Kanzaki Kaori from A Certain Magical Index).

Enjoyment 8 / 10

I thoroughly enjoyed this first cour and I'm looking forward to the second cour. Mostly from the choice of visuals that seem to be a mixture from (Strike the Blood and A Certain Magical Index).

Overall 8 / 10

I recommend this to someone who doesn't get bothered by extended groundwork and light hearted comedy, romance with the bonus of spectacular short battle sequences.

Do not watch if you're illiterate (Using the Term loosely) and couldn't or don't know airing formats nor like Harem oriented anime.

This anime is definitely an interesting one when it comes to my overall enjoyment and whether I think its a quality title so far or not.

Story: 6 - The story is fairly intresting and each episodes make me want to watch the next episode so i'd say it has a good story development. Of all the animes watched I can think of three animes namely Absolute Duo,Freezing and Infinite Stratos which has a similiar story and development. And this season (Fall 2015) an another similiar anime 'Rakudai Kishi no Cavalry' have been airing as well. Although both of them are good and intresting it ... makes me wonder if if the money could have been used for a more creative and unique project.

Art: 8 - The art is great. Contains a lot of great scenery and special effects were good , not to mention battle art is cool as well.

Sound: 8 - Opening song is phenomenal, sound track fits well and sounds good. Not much else to say at this point.

Character: 5 - Characters are pretty basic and its nothing new. I have seen same type of character many times.

Enjoyment: 7 - I am without a doubt enjoying the anime, I look forward to the day each episode is released for the fun 22 minutes of each episode.

Overall: 7 - It is a good anime without a DOUBT and have a lot of room for character development so it is one reason to watch it. So overall 'Gakusen Toshi Asterisk' is a good anime pick for the season.

WARNING: Review contains minor spoilers, as the show has almost no story and some one off events need to be discussed to get across the show's quality.

Asterisk Wars is a series which has been derided by many and lauded by few, although the most common consensus to this show is likely "average". In my opinion, though, the people who pointed out all of this show's flaws are pretty much perfectly on track: This show has an unlikeable and generic cast set in an ill-concieved setting with no plot to drive it and poor fights.

Lets take it from the top. Our show begins when Ayato Amagiri, ... your standard flatbread hero, arrives at one of the six elite fighting schools, Seidoukan Academy, so he can be a fighter, as he is a Genestella which is basically a superhuman. The first action we get to see is him returning a handkerchief to a girl...by leaping through her open window?! What rational person does this, even if they can superjump places? It is a total invasion of privacy and instead of just, say, getting to her door and knocking, or shouting to her, or hell going to the window and saying she dropped it or any number of things, he just leaps into the open window of a total stranger's house. Inside is our female lead, Julis, and naturally since this is a harem series, that means we need to walk in on her dressing. Don't ask why a beautiful princess would decide to undress with an open, undrawn window where anyone can see, take pictures or so on of her.

Unsurprisingly, Julis is upset about this! She is one of the top ranked fighters in the school and so you can guess her reply to this problem. The first few episodes are dedicated to showing off some of the main characters and exposition. Lots and lots of exposition, most of which isn't even true exposition, like Claudia telling the main character a bunch of terms and things about the city that the viewer will have no idea about. Right, on that note, the two other main girls introduced now are Claudia and Saya: Saya is one of Ayato's old friends and therefor has the hots for him, but we don't really get a lot of their history together, and she is your general emotionless girl or "Dandere" type. Claudia is the hot, very forwardly sexual student council president who flatout prepositions Ayato for sex multiple times (the first time, in episode 3, being a hilariously bad scene for Ayato's reply) and liking him for...really no well explained reason, she just kind of shows up to exposit at him and then wants to fuck him after giving him a strong weapon.

A big issue is that all of these characters are pretty generic and have very little chemistry with each other: In fact, they very rarely even interact with people unless Ayato is directly involved and the focus, making them feel like they're just gone from the show when not existing, and we get very little insight to anyone's private lives aside from Claudia. Ayato is your generically overpowered main character, whose power seems to mostly be hitting really hard and his sword cutting things really well, with a cardboard attitude of "I don't really care but I do". I should also note that most shows in this fight involve Ayato aaaaand are boring, with most of the first season's tournament arc ending dedicated to Ayato/Julis and the other MC teams casually curb stomping their opponents in under a minute.

This is NOT how you write an overpowered main character. Overpowered main characters can work fine: For an example of that, Josuke from Part 4 of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure would usually be considered pretty OP, with his stand Crazy Diamond being very physically powerful, pretty dang fast and having a potent ability to fix things. In fact, Josuke's stand for most of the Part 4, would be considered a lot stronger than the main antagonist's, but by giving the antagonist actual guile he becomes a menacing threat, and giving minor villains powers which can exploit Crazy Diamond through actual weaknesses, for example its short range, or having specialized abilities, ends up making some pretty great fights. Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann is practically based around the idea of the heroes being overpowered and weaves it nicely into the plot, taking a weakness and turning it into a plot strength.

Ayato is just...generically overpowered. He can move faster than everyone and hit harder to everyone and generically power himself up with yells and special effects to be even strongerer and then he beats up his opponents! Not once does Ayato display any battlefield tactics, special skills (the special attacks he calls are almost all literally a sword slash that doesn't seem to be any different than normal) or abilities of note to make his fighting interesting. Its the worst way to write an overpowered MC, especially since naturally in a harem series this means things like beating up the highly ranked female harem members because they are generically not as strong as the AMAZING Ayato Amagiri and now they will fall for him or he will carry them in his arm because they totally couldn't do it themselves.

Julis is your generic Tsundere girl who will probably be the harem winner. She has very few motivations and is one of the most blush heavy Tsunderes I have ever seen, even when she is going through the heavy Tsun parts, and her power is to control fire, which is never used beyond "circle of fire trap", "shoot fire" or "fiery explosion", and most of the time she shoots fire at people and they just get owned. Saya is small girl with a huge gun, which is only used to fire generic laser blasts. Claudia actually has some neat powers, dual wielding triangle lightsaber blades with an ability to see the future, but she doesn't actually get any fight scenes so. Kirin's power is "has a sword" and gets paired with Saya for some quite boring fights.

Oh, right, Kirin. She's another main character introduced in a latter pair of episodes, which I hesitate to call a "mini-arc" given its anemic lack of plot or advancement, and is a 13 year old with large boobs which get way too much emphasis for her age and is also somewhat weird to have in Ayato's harem in the first place. She largely comes off as a superflous character who exists to give Saya a partner but since she is a female on this show she MUST also be added to Ayato's harem. Her voice also is very annoying even for the usual archetype and she has the spine of a jellyfish without actually acting abused enough to fit her supposed backstory. Also, she is somehow ranked #1 in the school when Claudia is #2. Kirin wields a normal, non-laser sword, one of the only people to do so in the show. Claudia dual wields lightsabers and can SEE THE FLIPPING FUTURE. The only possible explanation is Claudia does not give a shit.

I also want to talk about a character who you would think is minor but frankly feels like he recurs as much, if not more, than Saya and Kirin: Lester MacPhail, whose name is quite literally pronounced MacFail. MacFail here is one of the most anemic attempts at a "bully" character I have seen in quite some time, being established as a loser who has lost to Julis 3 times but is itching to fight her and lose again. He is never displayed as a competent threat and nearly gets killed by one of the laser swords getting upset at him and flying around trying to murder him in a...hilariously awkward scene. He loses every fight he gets into, although SOMEHOW he is the one who gets the "valiantly fights but loses" fight scene to Irene, which if anything makes Irene look weaker by having to expend any effort on this failure. Its also hilarious because this guy is supposed to be kinda badass, like having built up muscle when Genestella are supposed to have trouble doing so, but he is basically a total loser in the show and one of the most pathetic strong man/bully types I've ever watched. This makes him more endearing than most of the main cast!

Finally for characters, I will mention Irene, the only decent character on the entire show: Pretty generic, sure, but her and her younger sister Priscilla are basically the only characters with actual energy or personality to them which helps makes any scenes in the show feel alive. She wields a laser-scyche (basically every weapon but Kirin's in the show is lightsaber-esque) which can control gravity and turns its user into a vampire because it requires blood to function. Since Priscilla can regenerate herself rapidly, Irene can feast on her blood to power up without worry, while she tries to just stay out of trouble, a somewhat interesting team dynamic. Their backstories are pretty generic and their powers are ill explained, but they are unique enough and Irene is the only character in the show who uses her power in a variety of interesting ways, making her basically the only character to be remotely competently done in this show, although her boss and essentially loan shark Dirk is decently set up, which naturally means she basically is put on a bus to end the season.

Story-wise, there just isn't much to comment on. Ayato gets to the school, acclimates to the school a little, gets into some fights, meets Kirin and has some more random fights, then they go to the tournament and fight some jobbers until Irene shows up for a mini-arc to close the season. Ayato gets some very, very light setup for plot involving his sister, Julis and Saya get some weak motivations (help an orphanage she did stuff in as a kid, she wasn't an orphan she just hung there, and advertise her father's guns respectively) aaaaaaaand that's pretty much it. Backstory for the series is vague, with Apocalyptic Event causing super people to show up and a really terrible Megacorp to take the place of nations, which doesn't really factor into the show at all. The tournaments are supposed to be gladiatorial, blood filled spectacles to satiate the populace, but less people die in them than the infamous "Hallway of Running" from Hunter x Hunter so it reeeally doesn't show up.

Sound-wise, most effects are dull and forgettable, with literal stock lightsaber sounds being used at times, and most background music is entirely forgettable. Not really good sound effects on the powers, either. The OP is fairly bad and that counts for a lot of the sound design, while the ED is okay, although stylistically even slice of life shows like K-On and Miss Kobayashi's Maid Dragon have done this ED style better. Art-wise the show actually usually isn't that bad, but it does suffer from not really having a very discernable style and bad looking effects in fights. The reason it goes down to a 2 is actually because of the horrible, Fates end of support style CGIs that are in the post-credits scene (usually involving Claudia), which already looked awkward in that, but here is done with way worse animation and ends up looking laughable and disturbing. This was so bad it dragged the animation score from a 4-5~ to a 2. Enjoyment is a 2 because it is a good show to talk to friends about the issues with and Irene's part was ever vaguely entertaining, but is a definitive 1 if you're not going to have anyone to go with.

Overall, Asterisk Wars has quite little to get people involved and was a pretty miserable experience, if you want a good harem show there are far better options out there and if you want an action show there are far better options out there. However, it can be worth watching if you want to form your own opinion on it (it has ANYONE who likes it, after all) or because of all the analysis done on it, or simply if you like to ocassionally watch bad shows and see what happens. I'm still going to watch Season Two, after all: I gotta see things through to the end.

I tried this just to see what a truly terrible anime is. I thought there might be some sort of sick enjoyment out of the complete shittiness.

And there is, but it's buried deep under an extremely thick layer of pure unabated rage.

I'll just say right now that I gave TAW exactly 4 minutes of my time. Because in 4 minutes everything was said. I watched Shinsekai Yori from the same studio, an anime I considered to have an excellent story and good characters but generally terrible production values and design. This is the same. Except the story and characters are shit too.

So why am I ... writing a "review" from 4 minutes of observation? Because it was, and I'm not being ironic, enough to be sure of a number of things:

-This anime is godawful stupid
-This anime is godawful lazy
-This anime is just godawful, but with a special taste for mixing pretentious hardcore with stupidly stupid(I would have said lighthearted but come on, it's more stupid than anything)

Story: A bunch of teenagers fight with swords because plot and the hero gets every girl on his penis. Think it's not enough? It's literally the entire plot of season 1. I checked. 1/10

Art: In less than 4 minutes I saw a bunch of random 3D models in a generic blurred background. More than that the art in general is generic and lazy, the characters look nothing fantastic, they have a pink-haired girl with long hair in there and they manage to make her look sort of ugly. Considering that long pink hair is pretty much my exact taste in anime girls, I don't even get how they managed that. 3/10

I was told the soundtrack is good and I want to believe it because less than 3 mins in I heard a super happy theme that was the most misfit and tone-shifting thing I heard in years. At 0:00 you're in a fight, at 0:05 the girl is crying in happiness and thankfulness, at 0:10 she's about to launch a fireball at the protagonist, and at 0:15 you're hearing the happiest theme there is. Was this even made by humans or computer generated by a first version AI attempting to appeal to us? So yeah it's a good soundtrack but if this is how they're going to use it, then 2/10 and holy god will anything about this not be completely lazy and sucky?

Characters: In 3 minutes I met:
-The teenager girl who is into a fight against a masked guy and says "sorry x" after she loses and dies
-The teenager guy who x was, who is the most generic here-to-help-all guy who's also crazy strong and is flustered everytime a boob is even hinted at
-Teenager tsundere girl with pink hair who manages to go from tsun to dere in less than 10 seconds then back to tsun then pulls a magic blast and destroys everything. And who could look a lot less shit.
-The teenager director(?) of the school who's as smily as her tits and sex drive are huge.
I would put 0/10 if possible, but I guess it'll be one. Pathetic is certainly a good definition, there is NO EFFORT at all. I won't even dignify this schlock with the word "characterisation", but at the very least, if your characters are shallow, make them fun. Here the production values are so low, the story is told in such a slingshot way, that even something as simple as a tsundere character comes off as false, and as not fun. I mean come on, could you get any lower for a professional studio? Actually don't answer that, I'm afraid of the answer.

Enjoyment: 10/10 without irony again. If I could swallow this inane schlock for more than a few minutes I would probably find an extremely powerful sick enjoyment out of hating this with every cell of my body. Unfortunately, or rather fortunately, I can't, and I have less terrible things to watch.

Overall: I didn't stop 3 minutes in because it was shit. If that was it, I'd have stood it to at least the end of the episode. No. My mind refused to carry along with this tremendous piece of lazy, barely shoved out crap, after two lines:
-After this event(the genostella children), the world was changed and a new order was made by [insert organisation whose name I can't even remember and who controls Asterisk Island]
-Due to the changes, a new morality was born in the world
-And now, panties

WHAT? ARE YOU ACTIVELY TRYING TO FUCK WITH MY REMAINING BRAIN CELLS?

You literally took 3 sentences to go from "a new world order" to "a new morality and set of social values" to "PANTIES"!

Do the people who put this mindless crap on the market even know that you can't throw stuff like "new world order/new morality" without actually showing how or what? That's like saying "and thus the greatest soldier ever was born". But then we don't see the soldier, we don't know how he fights, or even for whom.

I have never seen such a sharp, poorly done storytelling in my entire life. I literally dropped it right then and there, paused the video, tried some more but the damage was done. In less than 4 minutes I was convinced that this wasn't just generic and poor, it was also horribly told and had absolutely no idea of what it was talking about. And lots of shows are generic and mindless, but this one is lazy and veeeeery poorly made to boot.

If I ever want to hate anime, I'll be sure to come back to this.

This anime is terrible.
It's just another one of those SAO lookalikes that A1 is trying to pass as an original anime.
The story is nothing special: Super strong boy meets somewhat strong tsundere hot girl that after only TWO episodes falls completely in love with him. Oh yeah, there's also something about a magical school and a competition. The world in not very well presented.
The characters are simply walking, talking stereotypes. You probably won't even remember their names, only the character tropes. There's the very naive and powerful main character who doesn't get that ALL the girls are in love with him. There's the main ... female lead who's a tsundere (not even a good one at that), there is the loli dandere (she is also not very well made cause she looks and sounds like the supercritical dandere, but she's very active and not at all shy nor quiet), there's the big boob loli girl who is completely depended on the main character and etc.
The only reason why i'm not giving this the worst score is because the animation and the look isn't all that bad, even if the fight scenes are terrible. Ah yes, the fight scenes. The genre of this anime is ACTION! But the creators idea of action/fights is apparently flashing colourful lights really, really fast and hoping that you won't notice.
But I must give credit where credit is due: the music isn't all that bad. This actually makes me even more angry because I believe that it's wasted on this terrible anime.

Who could believe I gave Asterisk War an 8 six years ago? That's character development for you, I guess.

I didn't exactly expect this anime to be any good. There are many red flags before getting into this, and the first episode alone is a good indicator of what's about to come: nice guy transfer student, tsundere second lead, obligatory ecchi scene, 99% female cast, A-1 studios... yep, they're all there. Asterisk War can force a light smile here and there, but otherwise, it's such a smudge. Painful to watch at times. This review takes into consideration the second season too, I watched a couple ... of its episodes. It's basically the same show.

Asterisk War generally suffers from bad writing, but the one factor really standing out is our MC, Kazuto Kirig- I mean, Amagiri Ayato. This man is so empty that dirt and gravel would shine with more personality in his place than he does. In fact, I believe most of the main cast has more to offer than this guy. Even by the end of this show, the only goal in Ayato's life is literally being a simp, and not a good one at that. Whoever wrote this, though, believed it'd be pretty cool for him to be the most overpowered bozo on the planet, reaching rank #1 in his academy only after two or three duels. This anime doesn't even hide the silliness of trying to present his strength as something genuine, so it can be unintentionally funny watching him at times...

The rest of the characters are fine at best. Saya is best girl. I also kind of liked Julis in that, in spite of being leagues inferior to Mr. MC, she was nonetheless a fighter, had a purpose unlike him, made crucial contributions to their fights, and really took it like a champ at times. Basically what SAO Asuna ever wanted to be. But well, she isn't acknowledged at all, because despite being the poster girl, the spotlight shines solely for Ayato. It's criminal having the two of them come out of a hard duel, where they both gave their absolute best, only for Ayato to receive all the praise and pussy. In fact, Julis too is obligated by her writing to ignore this, unconditionally fall in love with him, and say "baka" every three minutes. It is what it is, lol.

As for the ecchi scenes in Asterisk War: they render this anime unwatchable. Horribly forced and cringe-worthy. And when I mean cringe-worthy, I mean putting away your headphones and running outside your room screaming in horror levels of cringe. Moreover unnecessary; nothing changes without them. They stick out so much in their idiocy that it becomes obvious: they're aggressively lodged inside character interactions to appease the fourteen year-olds, there just to be there, to fill the screen with boobs, red faces, and childish comedy - it's free fan service, so why not take it? Oh, and yes, one of them is a thirteen year-old. Enjoy yourself.

Considering that the entire plot of Asterisk War is the Phoenix Festa (2vs2 arena duels), and its world is... well, shaped with that and that alone in mind, it would be wiser to watch this show just for the action and the fillers that predominate it. Question being, are they worthwhile? Not really. Action in Asterisk War is uninspiring and emanating with boredom. There are some exceptions, but action choreography, especially for Ayato, is just... plain nothingness. Supposedly powerful attacks never happen on screen. One frame is Ayato charging, with the next one screaming "quickly! Everyone fall to the ground or get chopped in half!" Julis casting flame spells is seriously more satisfying than watching Ayato. His action scenes are ridiculous.

I could go on ranting about how flawed dialogue, characters, and the world are in Asterisk War, but honestly, who cares. All in all, it's a mediocre anime with poor presentation. There is some tiny value to it, some effort to adhere to logic in story decisions, some "meh, that's awfully nice" moments, in light of how underwhelming everything else is. For a newcomer in anime or media in general, this could even be enjoyable. Still, the matter of the fact is, there are better shows out there. Asterisk War is twenty four episodes long, and believe me, it is not worth that much of your time.

In conclusion: Asterisk War might be watchable without sound. Rejoice, oh deaf ones!

Ah, harem. The genre that I mostly find myself gravitating towards is the one that has to do with lots of girls and only one guy. (Don't judge me. We all have our favorite genre.) So, with Fall 2015 coming to a close, we have Asterisk, a show that...really isn't much different from the rest of the harem shows out there to be honest.

Story: The age of Genestella came when meteors rained down and sent the world into near extinction, but surprisingly, not as many people as you think died. As a result of the fallout, a new society was ... formed, one where people now possessed magical powers and were able to wield weapons made from the stones in these meteors called 'Luxes'. And here, we follow the story of Amagiri Ayato, a boy who enters one of 6 schools (Seidoukan specifically) and enters the Phoenix Festa in order to find out what happened to his missing sister several years back. Then he comes across a girl named Julis who starts to snap at him because of no fault of his own and well, you get the idea.

Asterisk is generic. There's no way around that fact. The show focuses on Ayato as he progresses through his life at Seidoukan, entering the Festa, and coming across various characters along the way. Most notably, harem members. And really, that's about it. He meets someone new (or old, since Saya is childhood friend), helps them, moves on. Even during the fighting festival, he manages to help other girls in that. Because of this, there really isn't much to say about the show. The fact that it's generic makes it so that a lot of the plot points are very predictable, a lot of what happens doesn't really add much tension, and nothing really stands out as extraordinary or noteworthy to talk about. It's not really bad, but at the same time it's not really good. It's rather bland and I really can't express that any more.

Overview:
- Generic
- Nothing really noteworthy to say about this show
- This is just filler text. Because there's nothing interesting to really say about Asterisk's story, I thought just add in this little bit so I could have three things in this section of the review.

Characters: The characters in Asterisk reflect its story, by being as uninteresting as they can be. (Because we all love anime tropes, right?)

Amagiri Ayato is...well, what'd you expect in an anime like this. He's a harem protag who's entire purpose in this show is to seek vengeance (or something) and help out any female human he possibly can before converting them to the Ayato religion where they worship his holy D. (Sigh. We've seen this a million times.) As such, he doesn't really have anything unique about him to talk about. Maybe the fact that he's not as OP as other harem protags that fit this category, but I don't think that deserves mention.

Then the girls. Let me line them up for you.

Julis = Token Tsundere
Saya = Kuudere Osananajimi (childhood friend)
Kirin = Dandere Imouto
Claudia = Sexy Onee-san

I don't think I really need to elaborate more, do I? Ok. Moving on then.

As for other characters, well, they're not really all that important, according to the plot. Most of the characters really serve to be plot-based and move what is happening in this series behind the scenes. Others on the other hand are meant to be the main focus of the show, (aka, the harem girls), and as such are treated with a little bit more screentime. Don't expect a lot from these people. Most of them aren't really that interesting aside from a tiny handful.

Overview:
- Bland characters
- Most of the side cast is meant to move along the plot
- So, how's your day going? (I ran out of things to talk about again.)

Art: The art for Asterisk is something that I would say has more worth on it than its story and characters combined, and then some. While the artstyle isn't really all that fantastic in terms of originality since it all pretty much looks the same as a lot of anime these days, the fighting scenes and its effects look pretty, so I'll give it that much. Everything else, pretty standard.

Overview:
+ Nice fight scenes
+/- Pretty standard animation

Sound: The sound for Asterisk is also something that has a little bit more worth to the show as a whole. Its OP "Brave New World" has a very techno and fast-paced feel that actually sounds rather good and fits with the show.

The ED on the other hand is another track that is rather nice to listen to. It's quite somber and has a mellow tone to it that's relaxing and calm to listen to. It's a good set of tracks to a not so very good show.

Overview:
+ Good tracks

Personal Enjoyment: It's a harem; I tolerated it because of that, so there. I'm not going to do my usual stuff because there really isn't anything good or bad to say about this show. It's generic, and that enough should say enough about it. It's a rather bland experience that doesn't leave too much to think about, and as such, isn't really worth talking about. I don't hate it, I don't love it, I'm just indifferent to it. If you want to watch a generic harem...well, you can watch this one. A lot others are honestly crappier than this one.

Well, here is my honest opinion about Gaskusen Toshi Asterisk. It's to short for it's own good. It tries to give a good and a little complicated story and plot, but because of it's short run time (will change when the new season comes out in april 2016 hopefully) the goal of the plot becomes unknow. I mean sure, so far its about a group of magical warriors who fight in a tag team fight tournament and the winner(s? not sure) can make their/his or her wish come true if it is in the power of the current world to fulfilll.

In the end of the ... season they teaser that something might have happend to the protagonist his sister and that we might know the villian. I am looking forward to the second season to find out what will happen, but thats also the problem. The first season doesn't make much sense without the storyline yet to come and thats why i can only give it a 6 for now (might review this season again after next season has aired)

I'll start of by saying that this was one of my first anime ever which is why I have somewhat of a soft spot for it, although i didn't finish it until a year later haha.

Story 6/10
The story is alright nothing special really, just a basic school with powers or magic.

Art 7/10
The art is good but nothing special, I really like the effects of the blades and all but for the rest its nothing I havent seen before

Sound 10/10
This is the first anime I watched the full credits for on every episode (now a days I do it for most anime but back then ... I always skipped it) and it's because I loooove the song it's so beautiful and stuck in my head.

Characters 6/10
I'll admit I like most of the female characters but I always sigh because everything is so typical it really gets on my nerves.

Enjoyment 9/10
Okay I'll admit this anime is not super good but since its one of the first anime I ever watched I get a special feeling when I see the characters or hear the OP & ED, I guess you could say its a guilty pleasure.

Overall 8/10
Look I like this because I'm very biased but I actually don't recommend this anime unless if you want a anime centered around waifu material.

My Gakusen Toshi Asterisk review.

Story: Mediocre 5.
Art: Fair 6.
Sound: Fair 6.
Character: Good 7.
Enjoyment: Fair 6.
Overall: Decent 4.

Ok, so this anime has ended , so what can I say? Well, one can't make a review of this anime without compering to another anime namely "Rakudai Kishi no Cavalry" or at least on the story (up) side, since it both features the same plot where it involves the female MC who met the male MC in a very awkward situation and plot wise, both partners have to compete in a contest that would pit their skills against another opponent . I mean if one where watching ... both animes their is at 70% similarities, where I rather not discuss anymore details and both climaxes where focus on fighting the strongest female contender, which is why I gave this anime's category a 5. About this anime's art(up) thought there where some fanservice involve, it didn't focus much on it to sell, thought they did made Claudia and Violet's bikini fanservice a little bit bitchy, but the good thing was that it only appeared briefly, so that is why I gave it a 6 for this anime's art. Sound (up), actually I just have nothing much to comment on this anime's sound pertaiting to the VA who did the character's voices, but I don't have much love for both the opening and closing themes of this anime, so I just limit it to a 6. Charcter (up) ok, the relationship between Ayato and Julis maybe a bit in the ambiguous side given that Julis was just too pridish to admit that she like Ayato and Ayato was just this garden variety harem guy , it was still good enough to see the two being together and supporting one another so for that this category should be "GOOD enough. Unfortunately this anime has introduced too many support characters that they're not given enough aired time let alone that those from diffrent school weren't that much of climatic when it comes to the competition, but still, it's "Good." Enjoyment (up), since this is the season were I've been watching 3 animes with a harem genre, my enjoyment was just limited as to how it will end and that's as "FAIR as it can be, so overall (up)this anime was decent enough to such level that it didn't rely on the fanservice to sell, but it lacks it's own identity that it can be compared to "Rakudai Kishi no Cavalry" , so season 2??????? Why not?

WARNING THIS REVIEW MAY CONTAIN SLIGHT SPOILERS. I TRIED TO REVEAL AS LITTLE AS POSSIBLE, WHILE STILL COMMENTING ON CERTAIN PARTS OF THE SHOW

I don't write many reviews. When I finish a show I usually just give it a score and move on to the next one.

HOWEVER

Sometimes a show comes up that I just need to rant about, for good or bad reasons. I would consider the scores I give out very generous. I have seen complaints about "inflated" scores on MAL where people give out scores on a scale similar to a school grading system where a 5 or 6 is the lowest they ... will give a show, however I consider my scores generous because I rate them on the 1-10 scale but tend to give a lot of shows an extra point or two. I don't like giving out low scores and I try to find something good or something I liked in everything I watch. So naturally if give out a score of 1, it means I wasn't able to find anything I enjoyed in it. I rarely give out a score like this and I really just wanted rant about this show and why I gave it this score. Now after this really long introduction I present the meaningless opinion of a random anime fan on the internet about The Asterisk War.

Story : 1
This is probably one of the reasons I tend to be generous with scores. I usually don't notice any problems with the story of a show unless I find it confusing, boring, or has very obvious flaws. The Asterisk War was all three of these for me. I was confused, because I had no clue what the point of this show was. Ayato shows up at the school for no good reason and with no objective in mind. The show introduces a huge upcoming tournament between the other schools in Asterisk, so we are made to assume that the point is going to be to win this tournament BUT WHY. Ayato did not know about this tournament before coming to the school so he was not planning on participating in it at all, and also we don't know what winning this tournament will do for any of the characters or what the consequences of them losing are. There are also parts in the show where these "antagonists" say ambiguous things about needing to win the tournament (which it is still not clear what winning accomplishes) and about how Ayato needs to be eliminated. Why does Ayato (I will talk about what I think of his character later) have to be eliminated? He is shown to be completely overpowered, but he is also shown to know just as much about what is going on in this story as we do. How is Ayato going to get in their way if he has no goal he is trying to accomplish, and has no clue who you even are. We don't know why Ayoto is even here or why he does anything he does, we don't know what these "antagonists" are trying to accomplish, so basically THERE IS NO STORY. Over the course of an entire series we learn NOTHING about the goals of any of the characters, or what the point of story is. I also found this story very boring as well. I am a sucker for good action and you would think that one of the generic school battle light novel adaptations would at least have some good action, but many of the action scenes were boring and unmemorable. The only fight I really remember is the fight between Ayato and Harem Girl #4, because it was one of the only even fights in the entire show. Characters in this show are so overpowered a lot of fights tend to be completely one sided and will either end in a matter of seconds, or feature characters getting the shit beaten out of them for way too long. There are also a plethora of plot holes and contrivances that I noticed on my own, and noticed even more of after reading some other reviews of the show. I don' want to get into spoiler territory so I'll only mention the stupid moment from the first episode where Ayato saves Harem Girl #1 from being shot and HER ATTEMPTED MURDER IS COMPLETELY IGNORED. I wish I was joking, Harem Girl #1 was SHOT AT and after a cringeworthy boob grab the incident is never brought up again. The story (if you can even call it a story) is so bad I can't even think of a word that can describe how bad I think it is. There does not seem to be any point to this story, combined with the fact that it is just plain boring for 90% of the show, and all the blatant plot holes that are ever present I award the story with a score of 1. I honestly would give it a 0 if I could, because in my opinion a show needs to actually have a story to be given a score for one.

Art & Sound : 7
This show was done by A-1 Pictures, and A-1 Pictures shows tend to be 50-50 with me. Half of the things A-1 releases I will like and the other half I will despise, however one thing I always usually like about A-1 shows is the Art and Sound. I found the art in this show to be at their usual quality, the show was very colorful and had some decent animation. The only complaint I have is that there wasn't really anything that stood out to me, it was just the A-1 Pictures standard which isn't bad, but nothing worthy of praise. I feel the same way about the sound as well. The only track from the show that really stood out was the ending. (The ending song is one of my favorite endings of all time) Aside from the ending there wasn't really anything to praise about the sound. Even if I did find the Art and Sound to be okay it is not enough to save the show, and had very little impact on my overall score.

Characters : 1
I forgive bad characters in shows a lot, because some of the shows I enjoyed the most didn't have the best characters, but I have never come across a show where I hated EVERY SINGLE CHARACTER. Earlier I said I would talk about what I think of Ayato, but it is hard to talk about Ayatos character, as he has almost no character traits. Does he have likes, dislikes, goals, motivation, strengths, weaknesses, emotions, or anything that makes it seem like he has a fraction of a personality? NO! I thought I had seen the rock bottom of generic protagonists, because I didn't think it was possible to make a "character" without any character traits whatsoever. I would mention the rest of the main cast one by one, but I honestly don' think I can write more than a sentence about each of them. So the rest of the main cast or as I like to call them "Harem Girls 1-4" are nothing more than than the standard harem cast. They at least have some personality, unlike the protagonist, however only Harem Girl #1 and Harem Girl #2 seem like they are going to be important. Many of the characters just feel pointless, even members of the main cast. I just plain hated every character in the show and I don't know what else to say, because there isn't much character to talk about for the character section.

Enjoyment : 1
What can I say that I didn't already say? I found no entertainment in this show, I don't know I didn't drop this show. The only reason I decided to write this review is because this was the only anime I have ever felt contains no entertainment value at all.

Conclusion
Unless you are looking to watch something bad, I would not recommend this to anybody. Even if you are a fan of school battle light novels I wouldn't recommend this. This show is just plain bad, its not even the type of bad where its unintentionally funny, it has no redeeming qualities or anything that makes it worth watching. If you want to see just how bad a show can be then you can force yourself to suffer through this show, if you want entertainment then you are in the wrong place. To sum up my opinion of this show in one word "DON'T"

If you are a big fan of DxD or Rakudai then this is for you.

The plot has some rather interesting elements to it students from multiple schools are competing it a tournament in pairs, it appears that a number of them have some end goal for doing so and this will and has lead to some heated exchanges. The story has a few mysteries to it a few shady characters or an incomplete back story leaving you wonder what will happen next by no means is it mind blowingly good but it's also not completely irrelevant it's about a 6-7 for now but looks to ... be heating up for the next series.

By no means is this the best Anime in this category but by no means is it the worse, if you are a fan of shows like Rakudai or even DxD then you most likely will enjoy this show, it's not as the same standard of those two shows the characters in this are rather bleak the more interesting characters are the one's who make very few appearances in the show, but as the second cour is coming soon i would only assume they will be a big part of that meaning that there is something to look forward to.

The show has a good visual and audio element to it the art style is well done and both the OP and ED are rather good and in general the sounds throughout the show are just crisp.


At the moment i would rate this show probably what it's MAL score is of about 7.2-7.3 as someone who likes these show's it's certainly enjoyable but nothing really stands out Rakudai bettered it in almost every category.

Well, this anime came up at the same time as a certain anime, on its firsts episodes i thought they all have the same plot (i dont read the light novel) but since i watched more and more i started liking it, Amagiri Ayato seems to be a great character, characters like Toudou Kirin are cute but i hate that she blushes like everytime, but well, at the beginning i found clichés in the series. I liked this anime because i think they animated the battles in a great way, some characters are funny but i must say that some of its characters are awkward. ... The opening and ending theme are just amazing, favorites of this season. Great anime, im waiting for the 2nd season.