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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I really liked the first few episodes of this anime but they filled the episodes during the feista with unneeded scenes or scenes that were unnecessarily long. The premise of the anime is nice if only the execution was better. I recommend watching the first season and the part of the second that has to do with the first season.

The production is fine, nothing special. The action scenes are nice and entertained me. None of the characters are overbearing and the character develop flows nicely. I just wish the plot plays faster than they portray it.

Overall its a good watch if you take the ... plot to seriously and just enjoy the what it is with its flaws.

The story centers on a guy who is secretly more powerful than he lets on and his harem of girls who use magical weapons to battle...wait, that describes three different shows from this & last season. This review is for The Asterisk War but there may be some comparison to the other two shows, Anti-Magic Academy: The 35th Test Platoon & Hundred. It's inevitable given all the similarities between all three shows. Of the three The Asterisk War is the best, because it lacks the cringe worthy flaws of the other two shows. Though it’s clear they all have feelings for Ayato it’s not to ... the point where they are throwing their panties at him. Or themselves. They actually take the time to build the relationships between the characters. Also the enemy is clearly defined, though there are some shadowy machinations behind the scenes. And the battles are energetic and entertaining. Something else praise worthy is the fact that Julis can stand on her own. She’s not dependent on Ayato to save the day. They are more of partners than anything else. It’s not truly a harem show, or a school show. In fact I’m not sure how to classify this show. It’s set in a high school, yet I don’t ever recall seeing them in a classroom. The thing is, it’s also quite cliche. The characters are...how you say cookie cutter, sure to remind you of characters from other series. Sure we take a moment to explore them and their motivations but these come straight out of the “How To Create Characters” textbook. And nothing relating to their powers their relation to their weapons is explained (NOTE: It might be and I’ve just forgotten, but that just means it’s unmemorable). It doesn’t excel in any department except the fight scenes. In all honesty it’s a mediocre show at best but it gets bonus points because it’s better than the other two aforementioned shows. Hence why it got a second season. Normally I review anime objectively, but the three shows are so similar I thought I’d mention the other two. So in conclusion I say watch The Asterisk War and skip the other two.

Really good entertainment, I usually prefer more Darker anime but some light hearted no brainers do make for good entertainment now and again, art was beautiful, character movement was good, love the whole "Dual" concept. Sound was excellent, no irritating voices. Also, Tsundere can usually get on my nerves, but Julis, I think she's adorable & that goes for all the others too, although Julis is my favourite.

Story wise, its sweet & simple and really ticks all the boxes from character types to the typical anime-ish embarrassing moments & luckily not 1 character that irritated me, don't expect any big twists or any OMG moments ... although it does hint at something unexpected at the end. Who knows?

Good FUN & I can't wait to check out Season 2!

I might remember Fall 15 as an unique season because of this anime and Rakudai Kishi no Cavalry. Many people have mentioned their obvious similarity, and the funny thing is I enjoyed both and watch almost the same time. Man.. I might have too much tolerance for this kind of anime. There's no outstanding aspect from this show. Almost everything is generic, some that I find interesting:
- various weapons (Ogre Lux) with it's own personality and ability, I'm itching to find more of them in 2nd season
- little "extra" they put at the end of each episode, and it's hosted by my favorite character, ... Claudia!! okay, sometimes she's interfered or replaced by someone..
- the OP and ED are great, the OP sets the mood, and the ED just.. beautiful
- and lastly, the story is not that bad, I want to find out how the MC overcome his "limitation" and where is the person he's seeking, hope they'll show it well in 2nd season

Asterisk War is an adventure that has barely gotta started, because of its slow pacing and no third season in sight. But none the less, it was a fun one to watch and what we have already is good enough to get your fill or thrilling action. Many of the characters though, are your basic archetypes put to the test, but isn't as heavy handed as other action harems like it. The show is more of the same thing we always see, but trust me, it feels different than the others. If you want to see my full review/discussion video, then copy the link down ... below.

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cBYGrulmwn0

The Asterisk War is one of those shows that at first glance seems like every other show but ends up being something special as far as battle harems are considered.
That's not to say that the show is unique because its not but at the same time its not as generic as its competition either.
It has just enough to stand out but not enough to be remembered as a masterpiece of the genre.
Sort of like when your in school and you get a passing grade but cant be arsed enough to do anything else.

The series takes place in a relatively advanced world with not only great ... advances in technology but advances in genetic modifications as well.
One thing i do like is how the genetic modifications are all subtle increases in our natural abilities such as speed and strength.
Its not flashy abilities like throwing fire balls, well some people can do that but not on their own they need special weapons for those kind of abilities.

In this setting are several schools who train students in ...... well to be honest we don't really know.
supposedly each school works differently but the purpose of the schools isn't really expanded on aside from it being there for plot purposes.
These schools however do compete with each other in a series of duels or atleast that's what we are led to believe seeing as how the big tournament the shows builds up isn't exactly a school event but all the schools have a stake in.

As you can tell the plot isn't all that thought out and we end up with several unanswered questions but hopefully we will get more explained in the upcoming 2nd season.

One thing that did stand out a little bit to me was the art-style that seemed reminiscent of the game "Phantasy Star Universe" which i wasted a unbelievable amount of hours on in the past so this was a good thing in my eyes.
The animation is actually alot better than you would think, now its not Ufotable tier animation but still pretty good.
Well aside from a section in the final episode that looked like they were trying to experiment on which i respect trying something new but it did feel unnatural.

What is probably the best part of this show is the soundtrack and it is certainly one of the better ones of winter 2015.
The background music does its job perfectly and gets the audience hyped up for the current and upcoming scenes and the opening/ending is probably my favorite part of each episode.

Now the characters on the other hand are fairly mediocre with a few exceptions.
Just like with the setting the characters arnt really expanded on too much and seem to be there just to push the story along.

Lets start off with the biggest complaint, that would be our protagonist Ayato who alot of people have referred to him as being worst than Kirito in terms of plot convenience.
I however don't really see it that way, i mean yes he is pretty generic and pulls his abilities out of his ass when he is losing however lets take a second and compare him to another battle harem protagonist from the same anime season.
Lets compare Ayato to Ikki from Rakudai Kishi no Cavalry, both are fairly generic and pull off random abilities when losing but i would like to give Ayato a little bit of credit from where Ikki falls painfully short.
First off Ayato has a reason to pull off his abilities when in trouble seeing as how his sister sealed most of his power away when he was a child making it painful for him to draw on it for fairly short periods of time.
In a tactical sense lets compare it to Ichigo's Vizard mask where he could only maintain it for 30 seconds to gain a slight advantage.
However with Ikki he pulls wins out of nowhere from pure determination because of sloppy writing, what i mean is that he should not be winning every single fight when prior to the series starting he had never won a fight in his entire life.
This is why i preferred Ayato over Ikki because it felt more realistic to have someone draw on hidden power and win than for someone to win because the plot called for it.
The other thing i prefer about Ayato is he has a goal to try to accomplish where as Ikki just wants to get stronger, and yes i know all characters want to get stronger but Ayato has a reason to get stronger where Ikki on the other hand does not.
Ikki just wants to be stronger because that's what the plot calls for not because he has some goal to achieve.

As for the rest of the cast most of it is just a bunch of anime tropes aside from one character in the end which serves to be the polar opposite of Ayato.
Where Ayato wants to get stronger in order to find and protect his sister while still being a good and honorable person, This character Also wants to protect her sister but is willing to go to any length to do this even if it means hurting people who probably didn't deserve it.

Overall the show is fairly generic but it was still enjoyable to watch each week and was far superior to that other battle harem we were introduced to in the same anime season.
Its not exactly something i would recommend of the top of my head but if i was asked what a good battle harem show would be then this would probably come to mind first......well this or highschool DxD.

Story - 5
Art - 10
Sound - 10
Character - 5
Enjoyment - 10
Overall - 8

This is one hell of an underrated anime. So firstly I know people tend to hate on it due to the severe lack of any real character progression or depth.

In my opinion the anime redeems itself:
... 1 - with its stellar visuals and sound,
2 - with its likeable, fun and caricatured (although often 2 -dimensional) characters
3 - by being fun to watch.

(keep in mind this is far from a masterpiece, but if you're looking for such, you are looking in the wrong place my friend)

However, it does leave the plot as an afterthought, but it is kinda there. I hope the second season addresses this.

It has great action and the premise/setting is quite interesting.

If you are an SAO fangirl/boy - bless your soul - this anime will probably fill that Kirito shaped whole in your heart if you're unable to find another anime that quenches your thirst for too nice OP harem dudes with swords and scruffy hair.

I think this review covered most of the bases... Feel free to disagree but I think this is worth watching for the demographic mentioned above.

"Gakusen Toshi Asterisk" is itself an amazing anime that I would recommend to those
who like me are picky about the type of genre.

The story of the anime starts out a bit unoriginal as there a huge amount of anime that have a very similar beginning, but then fixes all my rants about it within the first 15 minutes of the anime with an interesting plot line and characters. But one problem, at the end of the first season, something was gonna happen until.. just why. But that leaves suspence (But I was mad at that)

The ... art style is the most common but one of the most popular art styles, (And my favorite too)
Just beautiful.

The sound in this anime is just perfect, its studio quality, nothing else to say about it.

Characters in this anime are really well done, good back stories and just very comedic in all.
But slight spoiler (It shouldn't be anyways because of the tag Romance) is the harem is just at a perfect balance where it wouldn't make it cringe worthy.And for once, the hot girl is the winning the competition, *cough* (The Pet Girl of Sakura Sou)* to get the MC.

I really did enjoy the anime and hoping that if you are reading this review, just give it a chance, I really am enjoying this and hope for a third season. Soon.

I'l be to the point. This anime is filled with cliche. If you are looking for something original go else ware. If you are just here for the enjoyment of a decent battle harem, it is fine to watch. Story is slower paced, moving a bit at a time. The art works well for the theme. Sound is nothing special, but not annoying. Characters and romance are by far its weakest points. In truth, it is the people who we have yet to meat that have captivate our imagination the best. I.E Ayato's sister and the parents of Saya and Kirin. Myself, I would also ... like to learn more of cluadia. It does have a little problem with fan service.

If your not looking for something amazing or completely original, this is a fine anime to watch. I certainly enjoyed it.

Though it started with a unseen interest to my eyes at first, but as it goes along further in the story it was getting enjoyable though my ease for wanting to watching this anime was a little uninterested to say the least.

This anime was somewhat nice to watch to me, because it show self respect, team work, socialization which I lack the most and fighting which I love very much to see.....these things causes me seek interest in this anime which is to say that this anime was somewhat interested in a certain way to me since I could evaluate most of scenarios that ... took place in the anime.

A perfectly good example of "average". Nothing in particular felt bad, or even subpar. However, per a review online, it did feel like the studio took a "How To Make Popular Anime: 101" guide book and followed it to the T.

It did feel generic, and the main reason it scores below an 8 for me is that I was hard pressed to 'feel' anything for the characters. Sure, the harem was likeable. But that does not equal being able to really invest in their character designs or personalities. It didn't affect me the way ReLIFE, Toradora, or even Infinite Stratos did.

The show was good ... for sure, but in a very technical way. The animations were great, the music was good, the harem was good, but it all lacked a certain personality, uniqueness, or air about it. It could have improved much more by going deeper into relationship development or even deeper writing. The political aspects were very interesting to watch and I would like more of that backstory. The writing simply did not strike a particular chord with me, despite being decent. Still enjoyable but fell a bit short, especially compared to Chivalry of a Failed Knight which is shorter but emotionally holds together better.

I can see why people hate this show, and there are some valid points there. However, this anime wasn't particularly "horrible" at any aspect, and it gets most of its points of my rating from enjoyment as opposed to execution. It was a tad forgettable.

Step One of enjoying this anime... ignore the romance and harem tags.
Step Two ... watch in the now don't compare it to other anime especially Rakudai no Kishi
This doesn't have romance this doesn't really have a harem. Going into this anime for those will only lead to disappointment. What it does have however are well structured action scenes. Just make sure to treat the relationship of the MC with the female characters as girls who are friends and not much more than that. It does not really fall into the "so bad it's good" category just treat it as an enjoyable anime. It probably would ... have been received better if it had been released before Rakudai no Kishi and not at the same time the characters of the 2 anime are rather similar but the story itself is a completely different beast. Rakudai is all on the romance. Asterisk on the other hand is more about the action. The "Romance" doesn't exist. It wouldn't surprise anyone if it developed bit is doesn't make any real appearance in the anime.

Gakusen Toshi Asterisk/The Asterisk War's story setting reminds me of the Unreal Tournament video game franchise where a mega corporation took power after a certain tragedy that almost destroy Earth and all of the contestants are chosen to fight in the tournament as an entertainment spectacle albeit less blood sport and the contestants must be a special kind of human being or a metahuman than the Unreal Tournament series. The main character's personalities are diverse since it is a harem anime which gives you laughter that brings you good vibes when you're down. The fight scenes are awesome for an action-sci-fi, fantasy anime because of ... the lightsaber-esque weapons and big guns found in most sci-fi anime and FPS games. The animation is awesome a big thanks to A-1 Pictures, the animation studio that brings you Blue Exorcist and Sword Art Online. The series music is very catchy and great thanks to Rasmus Faber for providing the series music including the series opening music "Brand-New World" by Shiena Nishizawa who is notable for contributing the ending of music of KanColle "Fubuki".