Ichiban Ushiro no Daimaou

"That's why I decided not to think about anything anymore!"

That's a good one-line summary of this anime taken straight from the last episode. It's safe to say that the enjoyment of this anime is inversely proportional to the amount of plot stuffed into one episode. Simply, the more plot, the less fun. Ichiban is a harem anime. That means it doesn't exist to cater to the brain, and it doesn't. You should be aware that if you're going to watch this anime, then you're watching it for a good laugh, a small smirk, and moments where you can go "Oh Japan!" and laugh at what ... makes it onto millions of TV sets across seas. You will like the fight scenes, and you will never learn the characters names - you will refer to them by hair color.

Story: 5/10
The demon lord, 100 years ago, tried to destroy humanity. The demon lord was killed and peace resumed, and up until our story begins, nothing as terrible has happened since then. Here our protagonist is introduced, Sai Akuto. His goal is be someone of great authority who will lead people to lead righteous lives (the anime alludes to the Pope). He then meets Hattori Junko, or "the Blue one", and she and Sai hit it off and look like they're going to be great friends. Then a tweest. Sai Akuto is designated by the sorting hat, I mean, the Yata-Garasu, as the future demon lord! Oh no! Blue gets mad, challenges Sai to a duel, then tsundere love kicks into effect and then a robot (Green) comes out of nowhere and an invisible girl gets fingered (Red) all in one episode! Actually, the exposition was pretty awesome and I really enjoyed it... But... It is safe to say, that the plot of the anime was almost nil after the first episode. Eventually we have incestuous sibling love, the power rangers, ninja idols, time travel, pseudo-space and all other kinds of crazy stuff coming into the anime. I understand it's anime about magic where 'anything could happen because we are led into a mysterious world whose limits are not ever revealed' but I would like at least some boundaries. When the mysterious man who is awkwardly introduced tried to rape numerous protagonists with giant sea cucumbers, I could safely say that I no longer took the plot seriously. But that's okay. It's a harem.

Art: 8/10
Think Gurren Lagann fight scenes. Then turn it down a little bit and make sure that there is a lot more OVER 9000 and laser beams and is sped up about fourteen times. You now have a good idea about what fight scenes in Ichiban are like. Animation is superb, art is a little different. The art for me was a little too generic. It felt kind of like fluidity and motion were really nice but left more to desire when someone wasn't kicking ass. If you were to compare this to numerous other harem anime, it just doesn't seem to be much different visually. But that's okay. It has cool fight scenes.

Sound: 7/10
Aki Toysaki does a really awesome job as Soga Keena (Red), but if you don't like her then I recommend turning the volume off, she gets a LOT of screen time, and talks a crap load. Aoi Yuuki (who voiced Mina Tepes from Vampire Bund and Noel from Sora no Woto) had a great voice too. She voiced a monotone character, but did a really job making it sound "not as monotone." I really had no affection toward the OP or the ED. But that's okay. They suited a harem anime very well, and maybe you'll like them because music is a developed taste.

Character: 6/10
I don't know whether to give this a 1 for about a million bland characters, or a 10 for Peterhausen the dragon who shoots fiery drills. The main cast is a pallet of fun (rimshot). Everyone is a different hair color and a different "dere" so they're easy to tell apart! That's where the harem anime has the most trouble in my opinion. A harem has set archetypal characters and refuses to create an original endearing woman. I'm not saying that any woman in this anime is poorly written. Each one is written with her character in mind, but never strays from what the textbook says. Red is an airhead, Etou (Purple) is masochist, Blue is tsundere, and Green is emotionless. All of them can be summed up in one word.

Sai Akuto is on the other hand, a very interesting character. The setting continually sets him up to be a bad guy, but somehow he always manages to do the right thing, whether people know he's doing it or not. The typical male protagonist in a harem always tries to avoid temptation, but without a clear motive as to why. For example, for some craaaazy reason one of the beautiful ladies has appeared in front of our protagonist naked.Our protagonist, who very often envisions this event happening, suddenly has an over-powering urge to avoid any sexually conduct with this woman. BUT WHY? She's beautiful, naked, and right freaking in front of you! This creates character inconsistencies, but where our protagonist differs, is that when he refuses the woman (which alas he does), he is still in character. In summary, Sai Akuto is a good guy, and no one can tell him otherwise. I like that. As for the rest of the other characters, they're nothing special. But that's okay. Sai is a really cool character you'll love to see on screen, and to boot he isn't a sissy wimp like a lot of other harem protagonists!

Enjoyment: 7/10
Even with so many things working against this anime, there are so many moments where you'll seriously just laugh. I enjoyed a great portion of this anime. The only problem I really had was with the plot. But that's definitely okay! I remembered that it was a harem anime and anyone who forgets this key factor should try to understand that a little bit of mindless humor is good once in a while.

Overall: 6/10
Ichiban is not a memorable anime. It really has nothing worth remembering (except Peterhausen). It just follows a long line of other harem anime into oblivion. But hey, it's only 12 episodes, and it's a fun little anime. I'd say it's worth recommending, but not worth ask feedback on. The response you'll get will be "Well... It was a harem anime... I liked 'X female'" so on and etc.

But that's okay. Because it IS a harem anime and expecting anything more than that is just plain craziness.

Is it just me, or is the playback rate at 200%?

'Ichiban Ushiro no Daimaou (The Great Demon King in the Very Back)' is set in an elite magic school where aspiring magicians learn to control their mana. The initial setting is very similar to 'To Aru Majutsu no Index'. One day, a transfer student (Akuto Sai) arrives. New students are required to go through an analysis by the "artificial spirit", which predicts future occupation with 100% accuracy. Surprisingly, the artificial spirit predicts Akuto will become the next Demon King. Once dreamed of becoming the High Priest, Akuto must spend his school life with the burden ... of becoming the ultimate evil while his true powers awaken, going through one misunderstanding after another.

Story:
I actually found the original setting to be very intriguing. My impression after the first two episodes were... it's good enough that it didn't even have to be ecchi. The setting itself had the fantasy, opportunity for interesting story development, and possible obstacles all built in. It even had a super cool background where Akuto's self-introduction sounded like the real demon king that appeared 100 year ago.

I haven't read the light novel or the manga series, but from the anime, it seems like the title "The Great Demon King in the Very Back" comes from the fact that Akuto was given the seat in the very last row of his classroom. Sadly, the title of this anime series foreshadowed the pattern of story development... You would think Akuto will slowly become a dark presence in the back of his classroom while he tries to clear all the misunderstandings right? Think again. If I'm not mistaken, he hasn't sat in his seat since episode two. And so, the story jumped from one direction to another, random new organizations and villains appeared out of nowhere, and it eventually became mindless fights before the series ended, leaving me completely clueless. It actually got so bad at one point that Akuto threw a monster egg out of a window during breakfast, and the next cut was the crew outside at night in front of the monster egg, which grew exponentially. Really, it's one of those 突っ込み所が多すぎて "I don't know where I should begin pointing out the flaws".

Just like that monster egg, the story seemed to have an exponential acceleration in terms of pacing. The first two episodes had good pacing as introduction of the surroundings. Up until episode 7 was fast paced, but acceptable for slapstick comedy, but the final 5 episodes were packed with random events and explanations that seemed to go on and on without giving the audience time to absorb the story. The characters in the latter half actually started verbally describing the situation, and it wasn't even a deliberate slapstick joke.

I have to say the ecchi element was applied very effectively in this series though. Sometimes ecchi scenes were forced, like repetitive explosions stripping Junko or Keina getting naked every time she becomes transparent, but somehow they were funny every single time. Other ones happen more spontaneously, from skirts too short and creative camera angles that seem to focus on their panties. If there was a cameraman for this show, he was a major perv. This show is probably the closest to hentai category as an under-18 show can possibly get. It goes as far as giving a sea cucumber hand job until it squirts sticky white goo on another girl's face in a certain episode, and "classic tentacle hold" (you know the one I'm talking about if you've even seen an action hentai series) where one tentacle almost goes all the way in.

In the end, the story was a mess, and there were way too many loose ends and question marks unanswered.

Animation:
Extremely inconsistent.
The character designs are very good. Akuto has the obvious "mark of the Demon King" below his eye, but it keeps his appearance somewhat original, and he has that cool look and badass confidence that will eventually attract all the girls and create his harem. The girls are all hot, and there were abundance of fan service. Action scenes are pretty cool, and early episodes had really nice CG effects with magic circles and spectacular spells.

Unfortunately, they try to be "So bad it's actually good" with Brave and villains similar to something out of "Needless" or even "Scryed" about half way, and fails miserably. Monsters attracted by Akuto's powers looked like they're from late '90s demon hentai anime.
Perhaps it was caused by deadlines or budget, the animation quality noticeably degrades as the show go on.

Sound:
Voice acting is decent. All the characters sound like they should, and none particularly annoying. Considering the (presumably) low budget they had, they gathered a decent cast as voice actors.
Music score is disastrous. Although none of the pieces were out of place, the back ground music completely lack originality, and made absolutely no impact to the viewing experience.
OP/ED were average. They fit the series pretty well, but not especially catchy.

Character:
All the main characters were extremely likable, and had unique backgrounds. However, very few of them actually developed as the show had hazardous pacing problems. Junko remained an archetype tsundere to the end, and Fujiko was a SM queen who we don't know if she was a "S" personality who wanted to control Akuto or a "M" personality who wanted to serve under him. I feel Akuto and his henchman Hiroshi were somewhat well-developed, but the pacing made it impossible to pursue such deep issues such as responsibility, justice, morality, and all those things they wanted to explore.

I really liked Korone's character. An android with sense of humor done right is rare, and the character developed as much as an android could in a 12-episode-long series. She was also a very effective comedic device, and I liked how she gave Akuto the hardest time with her sexual approaches.

Enjoyment/Overall:
'Ichiban Ushiro no Daimaou' had a great potential to become something special. The show started out pretty strong, and had the slapstick comedy seemed to be working at first, but it was a downward spiral from there. As mentioned many times before, the pacing is far too fast, even for a slapstick comedy series. They tried to pack 20 episodes worth of material into a 12-episode, 1-season long series. Everything seemed to be twice as fast as they should be. I tend to read subtitle as future reference for fansubbing, but I gave up halfway because the characters were babbling nonsense at an absurd rate. Also, if you blank out for 3 seconds, chances are you missed an important explanation of the plot, a cool action scene, or even worse, a panchira.

Perhaps it would've been better if they added some more material and extended to a 2-season long series, but then again, it would've been even longer painful viewing experience unless they made major modifications to the story. Despite the worthless production value of this show, it's an enjoyable series if you shut down half of your brain because the characters had the charm and it offers good laughs from many ecchi jokes and misunderstandings Akuto had gone through in the first half of the series.

I feel the major problem was that 'Ichiban Ushiro no Daimaou' tried to be too many things. There was ecchi, comedy, drama, and tried to tackle the issue of right and wrong. The producers should've simply made it an 12-episode long ecchi-driven slapstick comedy, or 25-episode long action drama with a philosophical touch. Not both.

This is why I liked Ichiban Ushiro no Daimaou. It had the most "badass" protagonist I have ever seen (Sai Akuto). I loved how the characters, effects and environment were drawn. There was many turning points where I was amazed how the things turned out absolutely other way, what I first thought. :) Tiny little minus in the anime was that there could have been less ecchi scenes, but most of them were saved by they turning to funny or awkward moments. Which were a good things/parts because I got to laugh in those moments. :P If there is second season coming, Im certainly ... gonna watch it. If the anime intrests you even little, I recommend you to watch it!

I started watching this the first week it was aired, so I was following most of this as it was being subbed, apart from the last 4 episodes which I burst through this evening by force.

This anime starts off very strong in my opinion, it is funny, it is reasonably paced, the characters are interesting, and although there are hints of being slightly generic on occassion in the first few episodes, I dismissed them as everything else was great.
The intro hooks you as it starts out at a train station, the main protagonist Sai Akuto is getting on the train to his new school with ... hopes of becoming a priest, how wrong his hopes will turn out to be though.

Immediately he meets with one of the female heroines, and gets off to a rocky start, which is quickly remedied, and they quickly become friends, and from that introduction easing you in, it starts throwing scraps of the main plot at you, mixed in with interesting characters and lots of funny moments to keep you interested, it seemed so perfect at first, to me at least, as everything was right, everything fit, it seemed great and I couldn't say a bad word about it.

The main character was likeable, he wasn't a stale, brown haired with glasses "I want to always do the right thing nothing else matters I won't hurt people but I don't want to die" cliché piece of rubbish we've seen a million times. He was a unique character, interesting, likeable. He wasn't afraid to stand up, to get in a fight where necessary, but he tried to avoid it otherwise in a reasonable fashion, a simple first hurdle that so many protagonists in this kind of genre fail at and which anger me every time.

The female heroines had some generic stereotypes thrown in here and there, but overall were a solid set of characters, all unique and different, with different motives for being with the protagonist, different goals in mind, all drawn to him and all playing an important part to the main plot evenly, no girl is completely left out.
On a personal side note I absolutely adored the robot girl and student council president. Especially the president, my lord she was brilliant.
The other 'throwaway' side characters as I like to call them aren't annoying, they're reasonably likeable, they do their job well and don't feel forced.
Overall the cast was very solid and worked together well.

The main problem with this series though, is that it starts to rush things.
REALLY rush things, and it loses a lot of it's charm, especially around the middle sections to near the end.

Before you know it, everything has been introduced for a base to build the main plot on, then suddenly the main plot kicks into overdrive and you're left sitting with your head cocked to one side, confused as to where this all of a sudden came from, who these new people are, what is actually going on. Especially in the build up to the last few episodes.

It was obvious that they had to cram a lot together in the 12 episodes, and it would have been much better as a 24 episode series in my honest opinion, as a lot of it was explained in a rather backhanded manner, "Oh, by the way, x is now x of so and so and does this, this is what is the cause of that, understand what's going on now? no? me either.", at least that is how it felt to me at times.

One thing to note though, when the main serious plot does kick in, while the jokes don't completely dissipate; they are toned down. A lot.
There are probably more jokes and hilarious moments in a single early episode than there is in the last 5.

Another gripe is how it seems to almost change genre episode 5+, at times it suddenly gets rather cheesy, with fighting and action scenes that I can only describe as "a mix between dragonball z and naruto" in some cases, especially the sword in the stone bit, I won't spoil, but that seemed too ludicrous for me to handle.

It almost feels as if it can't decide what it would prefer to do, stick with the way it started in the first few episodes, or switch to a generic fighting anime style, it hovers in-between and it aggravated me somewhat.

Despite it's flaws, and in my opinion becoming very generic and average in the middle areas, the late areas redeemed themselves, with the final two episodes being genuinely enjoyable again, although the ending felt like a slight cop-out to me, it was still enjoyable, so if you do watch, be warned that you might have to force yourself to watch some episodes near the middle.


Anyways, enough with explaining the story, characters and my enjoyment of it, onto the art and sound.

The art was very good, the animation was done to a reasonably good standard, neither were anything to go crazy about, but they were good.
Most of the characters had unique visual properties (I say most) that define them and make them unique, so for the most part there are no copypasted characters, the main protagonist is definitely unique, and in a very good way.
I never found any glaring faults with things like anatomy or the way characters move, which is always a good thing, oh, and I watched it uncensored so I cannot comment on how the censorship was done, sorry there.


In regards to sound, the OP was very nice, I liked it a lot in terms of both the animation and the music, the ED was alright too, but I wasn't a huge fan.
The music in the actual anime wasn't really that memorable except in one or two sections, so it is a solid 5-6 on that front, but I liked the voice acting a lot, so that bumps it up to an 8.
The voice actors were very good in my opinion, they conveyed the emotions, reactions and feelings well, I can't say anything bad about them.


All in all, it gets a 7 in my opinion, it was honestly enjoyable, but it rushed too much and felt like it couldn't decide what it wanted to be as an anime.
It could have been so much more.

Still, I would recommend fans of the comedy/supernatural genre give it a try as it is a good all rounder still, I just don't see it getting any special mention or being considered "amazing" any time soon.

Ichiban Ushiro no Daimaou
This had the potential to be great, but they failed to bring a well paced story.

Story
The story was really interesting, Sai Akuto had a dream, and that dream was to be the Pope but little did he knew that he was destined to become the opposite of that, and that was to be the Demon King, every one in the Academy sees him as a treat and evil, when in reality he's not, he is a good person, who even wants to marry a woman and therefore he doesn't do anything with the girls that follows him, even when they try to ... seduce him, the problem with this, is that this was too short to rush the last episodes to be serious and throws you a lot of things that you didn't know and a lot of new factions and people, it was too much for just three or four episodes, it could have work with 24 episodes, but they failed with this, but that doesn't mean the story was bad, it was good, what i didn't get was if he hated god why did he wanted to become Pope, why don't just become the president of the country? if he wanted to help people or anything else related to help people and not something related with what he hates? and the ending was pointless seeing the last scene where he goes to see in which career he's good and following the story logic that can't happen but it did.

Art & Sound
The art was really good for being from 2010, sometimes was odd in some scenes but was good and the sound matched with the art style and the music background was good, the OP was great but the ED song was meh, the VA was fine.

Character
The characters were interesting at some point, but there's little back story for the majority of them they don't go nowhere, they don't have development but the characters are really good or at least Akuto was really interesting and this was because this just only had 12 episodes, they needed more to develop better the characters, Akuto was a badass, and i liked a lot Junko, she was my favorite girl.

Enjoyment
I really was enjoying it, but like i said i couldn't because everything felt too rushed and the ending logic was a little disappointing.

Usually, when I start up a harem/ecchi anime, I prepare myself for the onslaught of nonsensical breasts, sporadic panty shots, illogical physics and random facesitting. These are the basics, and anyone who has watched more than one ecchi knows that this is a common theme in all of them.

And of course, naturally, these people don't go too hard on the show because "it comes with the genre," and "you have to look at it as a harem/ecchi."

I disagree.

There is a fundamental problem with ecchi anime that goes overboard. For an anime to be considered a good work, it needs to accomplish things such ... as thematic development and effective symbolism, amongst other things, although there are a few exceptions. There are, for sure, aspects such as art and sound that come into play when judging an anime, but when we consider the big picture, that is, the overall score, art and sound comprise 40% of it, while another 40% goes to story and characters, and 20% to enjoyment. Ecchi comes short when trying to develop the story and characters because of its various sexual moments. When an anime uses up screen-time to show these scenes, it loses time to develop the story and characters. In moderate amounts, you could argue for character development, for example, by demonstrating a certain character to be attractive, which may be an integral part to his/her character, but in most cases, you do not need her to jiggle her breasts ten times within the first five minutes to get that point across. When you constantly do this, you lose out in certain areas, which inevitably makes the anime lose points overall.

That being said, Ichiban Ushiro no Daimaou is a stellar example of this phenomenon. The show is, and although I have no hard data to really prove this, half ecchi (and you might as well call some of that "ecchi," hentai). I mean, quite literally, if the show is twelve episodes, and we do the math, that's 4.6 hours. I would go as far as saying that a good 2.3 hours of that time is devoted to some sort of ecchi. When half of your show is ecchi, you will inevitably lose out on the story and character sections. Thus, my ratings for those sections are considerably low. The art and sound are not impacted by this, and that would explain my rather high score for the show's art (I'll explain my sound rating later). Enjoyment is entirely dependent on the individual, and I care quite a bit about story and characters so my score for that is quite low too.

Now for the specifics.
(I MAY HAVE SLIGHT SPOILERS)

STORY
Ichiban Ushiro no Daimaou's story is nothing to praise. To provide a light synopsis for use in this review, the protagonist is supposedly a demon king and the show attempts to produce some sort of message about free thought and goodness through some morally gray situations. However, it is clear that the writers did not understand what the color gray looks like, because what I saw was pure black and pure white. The story is plagued by a lot of typical shounen moments and decisions that have had clear "right," answers. I was not for a second challenged with a question that I found to be considerably controversial. Not to mention, the way the story ends so idyllically ends up toppling whatever the writers accomplished, so even giving points for their attempt is difficult.

The story also suffers from a lightweight feeling. For example, a lot of things in the story do not have much of a backstory to provide support. Why is the protagonist a demon lord again? Was there any meaning in his status as one? Or what about his rival? What about him? Where did his powers come from? And what is with the convenient arrival thereof? A lot of unexplained questions lead to a lack of weight and the story loses a lot of points in this regard. What about the mystical magic all-powerful sword? It is given, (along with a little trope-tag of "it'll work when you need it to) yet the weight of this particular weapon weighs more than the entire story.

The inclusion of random characters is also everpresent in Ichiban Ushiro no Daimaou, although it is to be expected from a typical harem that tries to squeeze in the entire world's population's C cup and above girls into a one mile radius within one day. However, compared to a show like Clannad, where the girls are actually people and not toys for the main character, Ichiban Ushiro no Daimaou prefers to toss all sorts of spices in hoping one of them tastes well to the viewer. The fanservice involving these randomly tossed in characters inundates the viewer. It seemed to me that if there was an explosion, it was ingeniously rigged to blow up in just the perfect manner so as to rip the girls' clothes to shreds but leave their perfect skin and breasts untouched. Can't have bad complexion, now can we?

There are also some aspects of the story that just seem absolutely childish and idiotic. And for a show like this, where it goes as far as showing off some of the characters nipples (and this is why some may consider this almost a hentai), it clearly is not aimed at children. An ancient slumbering dragon is actually a robotic machination that shoots missiles and hacks computers that the God(s) use to interact with reality is a blasphemous concept. A girl who likes to masturbate in front of her brother's still-alive, preserved head and fantasizing about an evil demon lord? Did they originally attempt for a hentai plot but then forget about it? This sort of consistent foolishness would be acceptable if the show was some sort parody but it is not, and it is simply unnecessary and takes away too much attention from the story's attempts at thematic development (of which there is so little I will not even expand).

The story is also plagued with a lot of outrageous ecchi elements and tools that become almost intrusive, and at best, laughable. Our little Meena can go invisible, but somehow she hasn't studied magic enough to apply it to her clothing, so she has to go naked. Junko has a habit of only ripping her torso clean off. And Korone has a cute little tail that you need to pull to turn her off. Make sure to get a firm grip boys!

Overall, combined with generic and overused characters, the story is one of the more unoriginal things I've seen. Especially speaking of the backstory elements.

There is a few merits though that I must give to the story. The attempt is something I consider to be worthy of some points, since I think it is something that isn't found very often in the show's genre. The story is also pretty decent at building up some sort of tension, which is also nice to have. But the merits here are few, and are overwhelmed by the many blemishes.

I give the story a 3.

ART
The art, which also includes animation for me, was actually pretty rock solid. The fighting scenes were well drawn and had great and flashy physics. The scenes also seemed to be running at a great frame rate or had some apt motion blur, or both. A lot of times I could really get into the fight scenes since they looked captivating. They were smooth, cool and sometimes just simply awesome. The characters were for the most part also well drawn (with the exclusion of Hiroshi, who I thought just looked ridiculous). And I'll even go far as saying that those breasts looked great. Really though, the few men there were in this show (as it is a harem) were pretty well drawn and the artists put apt attention to important details and aspects of them, like the protagonist's unique eyes and toned body, or the cocky hair of Bouichirou, the man who challenged the Gods. I would have given it something closer to a 9 if it weren't for some bad inconsistency and coarseness with casual scenes, and the usage of pretty generic and crazy anime hair (although this part is mostly a preference).

I give the art an 8.

SOUND
There's not much to say here since the sound didn't really catch me whatsoever. I was never really captured by moving music in highly emotional parts of the show, or drawn to the screen during a bass filled drum-crazy fight theme, nor was I ever relaxed as I watched characters being casual with a smooth walking theme playing in the background. I do not, for the life of me, actually remember anything slightly noteworthy about the sound. If anything, I remember the OP having awkward and nonsensical lyrics. Overall, nothing amazing here, and since the soundtrack of a show is designed to heighten moments and keep it alive, Ichiban Ushiro no Daimaou fails terribly.

I give the sound a 4.

CHARACTER
I have probably already developed on my critique of the characters in my story section, but regardless, there's much to say here.

Now, granted, since Ichiban Ushiro no Daimaou is a harem, the character quality would decline, and just because it is a harem does not mean all of a sudden you should give it a 6 (Fair). Ichiban Ushiro no Daimaou suffers from what I already described as the harem-character problem, where an interminable stream of characters (usually very attractive and sexualized girls) are shot into the show with little to no justification whatsoever, and this already destroys the score for the show. The characters become lifeless eye candy. You don't remember these characters by their names or by their achievements or by their struggles or their personality, but you remember them by their cup size, hip-waist ratio, and hair color. Oh, and I guess the sexually relevant traits are included too (I like the one who's all shy and doesn't want to have sex but clearly does!!!, etc.).

Ichiban Ushiro no Daimaou also has some of the most heavy trope-elements in it, regarding characters, that I've ever seen. Every character in the show is some clear manifestation of some trope. Here are some examples (mind the spoilers, or skip):

Korone: Silent and smart hot girl that doesn't understand the meaning of sexual tact. Also has a conveniently placed off switch in the form of a fuzzy bunny-ball tail.
Junko: Active, tough and independent woman with a soft side for protagonist.
Keena: Onii-chan!!!
Mitsuko: Hot teacher with a deep compassion for her students. You can interpret compassion in whatever way you want. Wink.
Hiroshi: Dependent young brother that fights for his big bro and becomes powerful. For the yaoi fans out there.
(By the way, I read somewhere that when they were auditioning for the characters, they demanded a cup size of C or above from the ladies.)

I don't particularly hate tropes, they will always be present and you could argue that without tropes there would be no such thing as genres. But tropes can become intrusive when used to such great extent and absolutely demolishes the originality factor. Ichiban Ushiro no Daimaou's cast is a chaotic blend of all sorts of harem/ecchi-suited tropes that provide no sort of unique or refreshing feel whatsoever.

The characters also are very two dimensional. Fujiko's little back-story for example is an overused vengeance plot and she overcomes this predicament with such ease and expediency that you really wonder if there was even a point of using that episode for that "development," when they could have just thrown more bare chested Junko at us. At least then, I could have used my imagination, and thus my brain, a bit more. Their back-stories are also, just like their character models, tropes.

Well, at least they look hot. Kind of.

I give the characters a 2.

ENJOYMENT
The enjoyment value for this show, for me was pretty low, but is subject to change depending on who is watching it, since I know some people who love ecchi, and others who despise it.

I personally am quite impartial with ecchi, and I am confident that my score for this area is unbiased, or at least, as unbiased as a score for a category named "enjoyment," can be. The enjoyment was low because of the low scores the show receives in all other areas. Simply speaking, I personally do not enjoy bad shows very much.

A lot of the enjoyment points were torn off due to ridiculous and outrageous scenes and unexplained and unanswered questions, all resulting in a slight bit of frustration and definitely a lack of joy. Such as the awkward and unjustified ecchi/almost hentai scenes that usually just made me uncomfortable and not enticed whatsoever. The characters were also too shallow for me to develop real connections and love for any of them, and the sound never heightened my feelings or emotions when watching so as to imprint a positive impression.

Also, the show is given the genre of "comedy," but it wasn't often that I laughed. There was one or two times where I did smile at a well written dialogue, but it wasn't nearly as often as I should have for my enjoyment factor to rise at all. The show also is classified under a handful of other genres that it all smashed into twelve episodes, leaving me unsatisfied and overstuffed.

However, the art did help the enjoyment factor a bit (and as expected, I gave it a very high score). The fight scenes, like I have said before, were well detailed and smooth, and I highly enjoyed watching a good punch in the antagonist's face or a vibrant ball of mana/energy being flung across the battlefield, or a dragon flying through the stratosphere.

OVERALL
4.4 --> 4.

LAST WORDS
Ichiban Ushiro no Daimaou is, well, a harem ecchi and you really shouldn't expect any more than just that, and this mentality should be used for essentially every harem/ecchi you run into. You shouldn't run into this show expecting glory, but you shouldn't raise its score just because it chose to give up 40% of the overall score's value.

Seeing my score, I wouldn't recommend this show to anyone unless someone was specifically asking for ecchi, in which case, this cool show shows you a girl masturbating, some fine breasts in their full glory at high resolution and many other unsavory/pleasurable (you decide) things.

As I like to say:

"Only in anime."

I have noticed, in recent years, the shift away from the straight ecchi harem, and I can't complain. The action-romance-harem is much more enjoyable, and is a far better investment when it comes to time spent watching anime. So, when I saw this series, I had hope. And, throughout the first six or seven episodes, I thought that my hope had been realized. But, by episode ten, I have realized that I was premature in that judgment. This anime does a lot right, and is probably worth of a watch, but it is no masterpiece, and suffers from some major flaws, particularly in regards to ... it's over structure and the way it's story plays out.

WARNING: There are some spoilers in this review. They aren't super huge, and you kinda see them coming in the series anyway, but whatever.

Story: 6 fair*
*Really it should be "story for eps 1-6 is an 8 or 9; story for episode 7 on is a 4"

This is a "magic functions along with science in and alternate modern day or near future" kind of universe, much like Zero no tsukaima or Maburaho. As I watched, I realized it was amongst the best of these type of anime. The characters work nice together and are consistent in their behavior, so that once you accept the premise you don't find yourself having to suspend your disbelief too much. Now, that's not to say there isn't some silliness, but it works. Also, the idea for the story is a very interesting one. THE MAJOR PROBLEM IS, it moves too fast. This is not a 12 episode series. This is a twenty four episode series crammed into twelve. As a result, they sacrifice character building (though they manage an admirable job within their limits) and world building (which is the one that really suffers) to fit everything in. Unfortunately, this means that there are characters, like the headmaster, or the teacher, who you don't really care much about and who don't seem to fit in the story. The central characters could really use more time together, letting us get to know them and invest in their well being.

Instead the story pacing is like that girl who you like, and have a good first and second date with, but now she is having some major financial problem and demands your aid even though you've only really known her a week and a half. You're torn, because you know it could have developed into something good if you'd have just had more time, but now she's asking too much too soon, and you really just wanna back off a bit.

SPOILER FOLLOWING
Also, I have major problems with the content of the story. Like the fact that it's an entirely unsubtle atheist rant, with some humanist overtones. The whole, "I'm going to destroy God" and the "God is just a system that human came up with to justify war and inequality they want to enforce, so it's bad and evil" and all that is just so unnecessary. In the story world, "God" is a giant evil computer that's not really well explained at all, and is somehow blamed for some of the bad stuff that is happening to the main characters. The story would be so much better if they had left that out, or at least not attached religious names and iconography to the computer system and the magic officials. The atheist message would have been an implicit, potential reading, but it would completely and suddenly alienate people of faith, like myself.
Also, it is so thematically weak because of what it does. In the story universe, there is no God literally is a created machine that people have illogically deified. In the real world, the existence of God is, at the very least, debatable. I don't want to make religious arguments here, but what I'm saying is, I want the God computer destroyed because it seems evil, but I've not been influenced in my opinions relating to God in the real world at all, because they are two totally different things that have only been connected by the author's choice to use the same name.

It's just dumb. I hate it when heavy handed, talentless hacks with an axe to grind ruin what was shaping up to be an interesting story with unnecessary, foundationally weak preaching, because they don't know how to show the audience something, only how to tell them.
END SPOILER

Additionally, there are some mild inconsistencies int he main character's actions, the background behind the major conflict, that is the "why are they even doing this" is never really discussed, the major villain appears with minimal warning and development, and the pacing goes from 0 to 60 and then back, so you're never sure whether it's a side story or the main story until you're already in it.

Also, the main character's powers develop a bit too fast. That's one of the reasons they should have spent longer on the series. He seems to spontaneously become the master of all magic, even though he is only barely learning and has minimal control at the beginning. They could have made him a super powerful badass, they should have just don so more gradually. Showing him fight some of the student as the disciplinary guy, or a learning montage of him in school getting better, would have easily satisfied this and made the passage of time feel a bit less rapid. Also, some time references, like "it's already been x months since you came!" and such.


Art: 9 great
Really well animated. The character designs are nothing ground breaking and new, but originality does not mean quality. These characters fit their voices and personalities, the combat (especially) is well done, and pretty well choreographed, there aren't that many continuity problems with the animation from cut to cut, and the even the fan-service is drawn particularly well. Usually I don't much care for fan service at all, especially when it distracts from the story, and there are some instances it does in this anime, but they are far fewer than is the standard for harem series, and it is well done when it occurs, so I don't over penalize it. So, yeah, for nothing something that's already been done really well, you still get a gold star.

Sound: 7 good
The opening is fitting and catchy, a good choice. The foley and background music is unobtrusive, doesn't really stand out. Once again, it's nothing amazing, like the full orchestral scores they do for one piece, or the edgy synthesized instrumental/industrial style stuff they use in Bleach, but it's well done enough that it contributes a bit to the story atmosphere rather than detracting.

Character: 8 very good
The main character, unlike in Zero no Tsukaima, is not such a ridiculous pervert that you hate him for it; nor is he weak, limited and indecisive, like in Maburaho. He's actually one of the few harem main characters that I really like. He's generally consistent and a good guy, if a bit on the ruthless side at times (which I don't have a problem with.) What bother me is the feeling of inconsistency I get from him.

SPOILER: A perfect example is that he is very willing to maim and torture the delinquents who attack him ruthlessly, but won't allow Brave to kill the creepy old man with the noise coat. This particular choice makes no sense. He should, frankly, not have a problem. In fact, the entire conflict constructed between him and Brave is a major story weakness, as it highlights major inconsistencies in their characters actions.
END SPOILER

Additionally, the female characters are fairly well developed, I felt, particularly the android observer and the blue haired ninja girl, who are the two I like best anyway. That's not to say it wouldn't have been better to get to know them a bit better, and to let the main character's relationship develop a bit further with the two primary potential love interests (blue haired ninja and red haired bimbo), but I was accepting.

(The red haired, airhead bimbo will hopefully not be the one chosen as the end of story romantic interest finally. I am so freakin tired of the dang japanese and their stupid "many girls, but who do I choose?"romance anime where the protagonist passes over the awesome, empowered, self sufficient, tsundere female for the retarded, airheaded, naive redheaded(or pink haired) idiot.)

Enjoyment: 6 fair
So, overall, my enjoyment was greatly lessened by the fact that it could have been such a better series if they'd have just let it go 24 episodes, and also hired a decent writer to reword the latter half of the series. A bit more character development, beefing up the story world early on so it doesn't fee like they are just making it up as they go to be able to create the final conflict, and a lack of atheist ranting would have greatly increased my enjoyment. I don't know what the final two episodes will hold, and hope that they can change my opinion, but I doubt they will.

Thus, overall it was good(7), but it could have been great. It didn't suffer some of the debilitating flaws that many other series like it did, but it still could have used tweaking and lengthening.

Hope this review was helpful, if not thought provoking.
Respectfully,
~Daemonblade1229

P.S.
Apologies for any spelling errors, but it is rather late. I'll likely tweak it someday, but I leave for 9 weeks of living in the forest soon (I work summers at a Boy Scout camp), so I won't have internet. That's also why i won't be able to see the last two eps until the fall. We all make sacrifices...

Only the first episode has come out as of when I am writing this review.

Most of the time I would tell people to watch the first few episodes to judge a series but the first episode in this case sets up everything perfectly. (I do hope the rest of the episodes will be similar to the first)

For those who love magic, superpowers, and battles (like me), this will be a great anime to watch as the first episode already shows the style and power of magic that is going to be used. (Energy large enough to destroy a small field)

Story & Character (9/10):
It is ... interesting how the main character tries to clear misunderstandings, but they just get worse off. He is labelled as the demon king by the system and he criticizes the system while trying to reject it and makes his own life worse. The same thing happens with a girl he is trying to impress. This adds the humor element to the story.

Art (10/10):
This anime does have some ecchi feature so be warned (If you hate ecchi please just don't rate it just on that. The introduction to the story line is great.) The scenery is very realistic and magic is imbued on top of weapons very nicely.

***May contain spoilers*** Usually I wouldnt do a review if I agree with the current reviews, but I just HAD to express my opinions on this anime.

To start, the anime was quite interesting for the first few episodes. I'm not really a fan of the harem genre, but i really liked that the MC seemed to be quite badass and have lots of power.

However, the entire concept of "Brave" felt super, super stupid and out of place. What a hypocrite. Weak, and given power just because of a suit created by someone else. The "Hero" was really lame - the suit looked stupid, and ... he was really going against his 'Aniki' all along. I dont get why the MC apologized to the 'Brave' guy at the end cause really it should be the other way around. Brave could've killed the MC and not only that, but went insane for a stupid girl who he barely knew/was an idol who wouldnt even give the Demon King a chance to explain himself or anything.

The last several episodes were wayyy to rushed. They escalated waayyyy to quickly. So many times I had no idea which side the characters were on, and it felt pretty stupid overall - like this anime tries to have too much going on and fails miserably with it.

So, overall, I think giving a rating of 5 is being extremely kind. Like i said, pretty decent and interesting beginning, only to get really lame in the middle and utterly stupid by the end. Waste of your time and wouldnt recommend watching it.

Ichiban Ushiro no Daimaou is a harem series written by Mizuki Shotaro. It was originally a light novel series, which is still going, and got an anime adaptation more recently. I have to say that I have a bad feeling about this one just from the harem and ecchi tags so let's get it over with.

Sai Akuto is a transfer student into a prestigious magic academy. He plans to work hard and make the world a better place. When he reports for his physical exam he's told that his future occupation is a demon lord and everyone wants him dead or to get into his ... pants because free will doesn't exist and he can't just choose a different career or some such nonsense. The plot moves at an absurdly slow pace for most of the series where they introduce minor sub-plots that go absolutely nowhere only to rush through the main story in the last episodes. The plot is cheesy, full of ridiculous cliches and, as if it wasn't bad enough, it gets a deus ex ending. The humour is another factor that utterly fails. How badly? They make a joke about tentacle rape. That's all you really need to know, but if you're curious about the rest of the humour it's mostly tasteless sex jokes.

The characters are flat, one-dimensional cliches. They're about as developed as the cast of Kingdom Hearts. That's how exceedingly bland they are. You can pretty easily predict what each character is going to do shortly after being introduced to them just by being passingly familiar with the tropes they embody. Making their interactions completely uninteresting.

The art could be well done, if not for one major issue. The fan-service. I know, I complain about fan-service frequently in my reviews, but this has such an excessive level of fan-service that it makes everything else I've reviewed look tame by comparison. It's so bad that it borders on soft-core porn. The fight scenes are dull. They're over far too quickly and, frequently, they're used as a thin excuse to strip the female characters. This anime wouldn't be able to understand how to keep things classy with four years of study under Gail Simone.

The voice acting and music are both pretty forgettable. They aren't bad but they aren't anything special either. They just get the job done.

The yuri factor is a 2/10. There's one scene involving Fujiko, unfortunately it's a rape joke. Most of the time the female characters can't even pass the Bechdel test, much less develop relationships with each other.

My final rating for Ichiban Ishiro no Daimaou is a 1/10. The series substitutes any kind of depth for ludicrous amounts of fan-service. Add the fact that the humour is repulsive and the characters flat and all you have left is the fan-service and, frankly, if that's what you're looking for you'd be better off just watching hentai.

"No, Blue is a thousand times better than Red!"

"Yellow is a pure maiden."

"Purple has sucked 20 dicks."

"Green is my waifu."

"Peterhausen is obviously the best girl."
...
I'll start by posing a question. What makes an anime good?

Are you perhaps, looking for a great story? One that hooks you from the beginning, and doesn't let your balls go until they're blue and screaming? Maybe characters that grow on you and feel like actual people, or how about stunning visuals that breathe life into the show, and an OST that kicks ass? A masterpiece, if you will?

Then stop reading here, because that's definitely not what the Color Wars is.

However the Color Wars is one thing. Infinitely entertaining. Explosions, panties, giant tentacle monsters, dragons fighting airships, ninja, pedophiles, and sexual innuendo that pass right over the main characters head, it's all right here. The Color Wars is like watching some of the best and worst things in anime come together and have an explosive tea party. It won't be like anything else you've ever seen, and it won't even make any fucking sense. But I can assure you, it'll be entreating to watch.

Why is it called the Color Wars? This is simple arithmetic my unobservant friend. Even after spending a substantial amount of time watching the Color Wars, you'll find it challenging to recall the names of the harem members. So how do we refer to these characters? Just call them by their abnormal hair color of course! You've got the rainbow at your disposal, all that's left is to pick your army, and fight with all you’ve got. Throw as much shit as you can at anyone who picks any girl besides your favorite, because they have a disorder my friend. A disorder called Shit Taste.

12 episodes isn't a very long period of time to tell a story. Adaptions seem to suffer from this minuet overlooked detail. The Color Wars doesn't have much of a story; well it does, but it doesn't make much sense. All the details are smashed together, especially in the final episodes, and explanations are locked up like a child who asks too many questions in the basement, never to be seen again. It doesn’t even matter that the pacing of events is wacked like a drugged hooker. If I have one piece (Shut up, that's not funny) of advice to offer, it's don't take anything anyone in the show says seriously. Decide not to think about anything anymore!

While the animation is fairly good, character designs completely lack in any sort of diversity. Green hair goes with green eyes, and blue hair with blue eyes. And just like colors, we've got all sorts of personalities too! Tsunderes, aloof types, lolis, and even a Rei; the fun never really stops. Characters never break out of these cookie cutter archetypes that chain them; not like I ever expected them to anyway. You need to constantly keep in mind that this is a bad harem. I'll reiterate the point, don't think about it.

However there is still a group of characters that really get my blood pumping, Primarily Peterhausen (Hah! An alliteration!) and the lead Sai Akuto. Peterhausen is a giant dragon that fights airships and fires drills from his mouth. His character is perfect, never requiring a second of development, by far the best part of the show. Sai Akuto hates the system called god, and would do anything to rebel against an oppressing force. He really keeps the show interesting, playing both the good guy, and the bad guy. While he seems to shy from girls like most harem leads, he also takes shit from no man. You might be surprised at some of his more daring actions.

So what is a good anime? I think that's mostly up to you to decide, but for me as a general rule, a good anime, is one that achieves what it strives for. The Colors Wars tried to force a horribly written plot down my throat, and I ended up just laughing in its face. By my logic, it isn't qualified to be classified as a good show.

Even though the show misses at its primary target, it still manages to impress me by how over the top and endearing it is. I found myself grinning at the corny lines and colorful fight scenes, even if the context of the situation didn’t quite make sense. In essence, it could be summed up as fun.

But I need to tell you something Yui. Fun doesn't mean good.

This is my first review and English is not my first language, so i'm sorry for every mistakes i'll do in this review.

First of all, i want to say that i choose this anime for my first review because i really loved it, i guess it's easier to write first about anime you enjoyed. This show is a comedy ecchi really funny, so if you can't stand a little bit of boobs, this anime is not for you. Here is a little introduction :

Sai Akuto is a teen who dream to become a Priest, a man with high qualities. He decide to enter a Magic ... Highschool. On the road in the train, he swear friendship with another student : Hattori Junko. Arrived at school, he passes a medical examination with a special bird which can predict his future occupation. It predicts a future to the exact opposite of what he dreamed, he is destined to become the King Demons.

Story - 7
That's the worst part of the anime, the first episode made me remind of Harry Potter, It felt like 'deja vu', that's why i gave a 7.
Art - 8
Great art, nothing to say more, i really liked it, but i think it depends on people.
Sound - 8
Sounds was Ok, the opening is good, ending ok. During the show it's not a masterwork, but good enough to keep you watching.
Character - 10
Every character have his own personnality, unusual personality, that's what i like ! Sai Akuto attracts lots of troubles because of the fact that he is destined to become a king demon.
Enjoyment - 10
That's just the funniest anime that i saw in my life ! Full of misunderstandings, embarrasing situation and comics scenes.

To conclude, I recommend this anime that will give you a huge enjoyment and a lot of laughs.

Welcome to a magic school that places you based on what you will be after graduating. One boy has been chosen one and was left on the doorstep to be token care of… welcome to the world of Harry Potter… er… I mean Demon King Daimao. But in all seriousness, this show starts out feeling much like a Harry Potter novel then its own thing.

Akudo Sai is a rather interesting character as he wants to be a real holy man with valor so he can be a high Priest but yet ends up in a lot of perverted scenes in seeing women have dressed ... and up their skirts. He has the feeling of a naïve little boy without being just like Alan from D.Gray Man which would be a little bit over the top. His storyline when he was little is just the same as Harry Potter in that he was left on a doorstep and is considered the hope of someone.

Junko Hattori is a very tomboyish character who at first starts out as a loving friend and then turns her back on him when he is seen as the demon king. Since she follows the Suhara religion, she pretty much is aloud to fight all the time. I don’t really understand why she wears a Fundoshi which looks like a really uncomfortable thing. They show her underwear all the time.

Kena Soga seems a bit annoying, and magical girlish. Even though she acts stupid, it seems she is rather smart and her feelings are always true. She may be annoying but I came to like her a little more after each episode. The only thing I don’t like is

Korone has the personality of Yuki from Haruhi Suzumiya and yet she act least jokes. I’m not sure weather or not I actually like her though she does make the show interesting at times. The perverted jokes though do get a bit overboard. For being an android, she seems to love to make fun of all the misunderstandings that happen.

Hiroshi Miwa is pretty much the wimpy boy who is always being picked on. He seems exactly like Youhei from Clannad in that he is always following around his ‘best friend’ for whatever reason. He never seems to think about what he is going to say which makes things even worse for Akudo because most of the misunderstandings are made because of him.

There are a lot of misunderstandings and the show ends up using them as a comedy skit, many times to the point that sometimes it feels old. Girls always end up in fights where their clothing gets ripped off but it’s not as though it’s as bad as Master of Martial Hearts. In this idea, there is actually a reasoning behind the clothing ripping, not because its tissue paper. The show moves rather fast actually and yet, sometimes it feels a little too fast (I know… gasp! An anime that goes to fast in its plot!) but still, it makes me feel like I’m missing something.

In the end, it leaves a few questions that I have had, not really explaining much of the full structure. They keep talking about god this and god that but it doesn’t explain much of what that really is. Also, it has some of the feeling from Air: 1000th Summer. Not going to explain how but you will understand when you watch more. They change so many things around and leave it open ended.

The animation is pretty nice and standard, looking a lot like D. Gray Man in how the characters move and the darkness it sometimes has. The ending animation doesn’t hide that this is all a harem in that the main character is seen being paired up with multiple girls at the same time and them all kissing.

I love Akudo’s voice in the English dub, giving him just enough naïve-ness to make him feel innocent but yet at the same time, shows a bit of strength in what he believes in. Chris Patton is pretty good at voicing characters like that well. Greg Ayres is also pretty good at the voice of Hiroshi who is pretty much a minion. This is a guy that does the best as a minion I’m not sold on a couple of the girls voices though since they seem like mostly a hit or miss. Even the music has an air of Harry Potter, making it really hard for me to take seriously. But yet it still has a rather hip and fun feel to it.

This actually has become one of my favorites.

I really wanted to like this show. The premise is great, the world has a lot of potential, and there are many things this show does really well. Despite its gratuitious action scenes which are violent without being overly gory, the show never quite takes itself too seriously, and there are plenty of things to laugh about. It also has a typical ecchi harem subplot to add a healthy dose of titillation.

Despite all its good points however, it suffers from a single, major flaw, from which all its weaknesses stem: this story is far too ambitious for 12 episodes.

All the problems of ... this show could have been solved if it extended the same story to two seasons. There would have been more time to develop the characters and learn the motivations behind the various factions. It would also give more room for a few filler episodes so that it would feel like there's a middle to this story and not just a beginning and end.

Story: 3

Honestly, it's way too confusing. Again, this has to do with the fact that there's not enough time in 12 episodes to develop the plot. Also, there are too many factions with various goals. It's not a simple good-guys-vs-bad-guys show (which, admittedly, is to be expected from a show where the hero is a demon lord). Instead, you have various groups vying for power. When they all come to a head in the final episodes, it's hard to know who to root for because you don't know their motivations. Heck, they even introduce some new factions right in the final battle who show up just to add confusion to an already confusing plot.

It all gets sorted out in the end, though. I must admit, I really like the resolution to the show. The hero fulfills his role as Demon Lord better than anyone could have hoped and worse than anyone could have feared, while somehow still managing to remain a good guy. The final resolution is good enough to counter a lot of the problems of the show. Not quite enough to break even though, so I give the whole thing a 3.

Art: 6

Nothing spectacular, but I can't really complain about anything. The character designs are fine. It has a great looking dragon.

Notes on fanservice: There's a little nudity, but too often they employ convenient censorship. I mean, how can you have a girl (Keena) whose magic depends upon her being nude, yet somehow limit her frontal nudity to one brief scene?

Sound: 10

I score it this high because of the theme song. This is the one thing the show does perfectly. Normally it takes me three or four times listening to the theme song of an anime show before I really like it, but this one hooked me right from the very first time.

Speaking of which, let me take just a moment to comment on the opening credits. Totally badass! Easily my favorite opening of any anime. The theme song is great, right from the beginning with the electric guitar introduction and especially where the mana gauge cranks up to max just as the bass starts playing. I like the nightmarish imagery of Akuto running through the city and encountering all the different characters in the show. I get chills when the dragon bursts out of the ground and at the brief closeup of Akuto's red eyes. This is the perfect opening credits for an action anime.

Characters: 5

There's no time to really develop the characters enough to make them particularly interesting. The result is some canned characters that don't have enough time to establish themselves before they're forced to make life-changing decisions in the final episodes. The result is that we don't really understand them, therefore we can't empathise with them, therefore their motivations are confusing. That's not to say the characters aren't likable; they are. They're just not developed.

One other note: Personally, if I were the hero, I would just run away with Keena (after investing in the world's biggest rice cooker). Forget destiny. I know she's a bit of an airhead, but she's the only one who accepts him just for who he is, and doesn't care that he's a demon lord. Can you tell who my favorite character is?

Enjoyment: 5

The show has some strengths and weaknesses. There are some great moments, like the battle between the dragon and the flying battleship, the most absurdly comical resolution to a battle I've ever seen in Episode 3, and "I'm going to betray you all" in Episode 11. If only these scenes were fit into a cohesive plot... sigh.

Overall: 4

Honestly, the confusing subplots ruined this for me. There were some great parts, but not enough to overcome its weaknesses.

I was very interested in this anime at first- it was a fantasy ecchi harem, and I have enjoyed shows like that in the past.

Story: At the beginning it looked promising. But then the story got so convoluted and over-complicated, and it kept tripping and falling all the way till the end.

The art: Wasn't the worst, but I have seen much better.

Sound: The opening theme is awesome, the dubbed voices are pretty good. I usually didn't watch the ending theme, so I cannot comment on that

Character: There was literally only 1 character I liked throughout, and that was Kena- I liked her fluffy ... personality, and it created a nice foil for the trying-to-be-really-dark story. Other than that, they were your typical harem bunch: the tsundere (and I normally don't mind tsundere characters, but this one was just...idk- all I know is I didn't care for her), the android-girl-with-no-emotion, etc. Even the main character Akuto Sai who starts off a pretty okay character (mildly curious, and a good-guy-who-is-thought-to-be-bad-by-everyone-but-is-actually-good) just gets boring after a while.

Demon King Daimao
Completed March 2023
TV, 12 episodes, dubbed
Not Recommended

>>>>>Let’s make this one quick, seeing as we both have better things to do than waste any more time on this extremely budget anime. It passed the three episode test, albeit barely, so I felt the need to power through and finish it to see if it goes anywhere. Yeah...

It doesn’t.


... VISUALS [ 3 / 10 ]

>>>>>While I was never personally offended by Daimao’s presentation, I was disappointed; often. The two major letdowns were the character designs and the fight scenes. Both were barely animated, consistently. While being budget doesn’t necessarily ruin a show, it does make it noticeably worse than it otherwise would have been; in the case of something like Daimao, massively so.
>>>>>Ecchi isn’t a genre known for its intelligence; quite the opposite, in fact. So when the viewer is presented with something that is neither eye candy nor food for thought, it kinda kills the anime before it even starts. Characters are off-model so often it’s hard to tell what they’re supposed to really look like. I used the OP for reference, and even then I was mildly disturbed at just how often someone was drawn either badly or outright wrong. A shame, really, as Daimao could have managed to look passable at the very least, going by the handful of good scenes that do exist.

SOUND [ 6 / 10 ]

>>>>>Another case of good voice actors being forced to run with a bad script. For a few of the later episodes, there practically was no script: the english VA’s were basically just reading direct translations off a used gas station napkin and praying the editors could clean it up in post; they couldn’t, of course. I don’t imagine the sub is much better, but at the very least I doubt they had to scrounge around in translation notes looking for usable words.
>>>>>All that said, the cast themselves were actually decent and the score was inoffensive. Decent song choice for the OP, which was weirdly better than anything else in the entire production. I still can’t believe that talented voice actors were wasted for multiple episodes in a row... but just judging the quality, it’s far above average when the scriptwriters actually decided to show up that morning.

SETTING AND PLOT [ 2 / 10 ]

>>>>>Welcome back to Generic Not-Really-Magical City, Japan. If not for a couple interesting dungeon locales featured in some of the middle episodes, this would have easily achieved absolute failure. The background artists knew how to set the tone, at the very least. That’s about as much credit as I can give them, given the extreme lack of originality, creativity, ingenuity... anything that makes a light novel adaptation palatable, really.

>>>>>The plot is your standard run-of-the-mill Deepest Darkest Web of Light Novel Conspiracies. In normal english, a convoluted mess of loose plot threads that tries to batter you with so many random side plots and pointless side characters that you get lost and confuse the writing for something actually deep and well thought out.
>>>>>With more effort from both the original author and studio Artland, something decently written seems possible. As you likely guessed, this isn’t it. The plot just kind of jumps around, throwing in random episodes dedicated to one particular character or just outright filler. Almost nothing of worth actually happens, and when it does it’s either at the beginning or the end of the viewing experience. Daimao could have been a comfy, goofy little OVA with better planning and far fewer episodes. Sadly, it was greenlit for a full twelve episode TV anime run. If this anime was toast, the butter would be stretched so thin you’d just be eating bread. What a nightmare.

CHARACTERS [ 5 / 10 ]

>>>>>For everything bad about this anime, at the very least the main cast isn’t a total trainwreck. About half the harem, including the demon king Akuto Sai himself are actually quite likable. These characters may not be well-written but at the very least they seem like alright versions of the archetypal cliche anime tropes every viewer is familiar with.
>>>>>Main guy Akuto actually has some decent motivations and really is just a standup kind of guy, which is nice to see in a genre plagued by sad, miserable helpless loser protagonists with no identity. If you’re the kind of viewer that likes deadpan loli characters, there’s a decent one here in the form of Korone, though I don’t think you should sit through this hot mess of an anime just for one side character. Everyone else is either one dimensional or zero dimensional; as in, the character does not in any way deviate from their tv tropes page. Wonderful. How did I even get here? Ah right, a power outage. Moving on.

PACING AND PRODUCTION [ 1 / 10 ]

>>>>>It would be quicker and easier to just beat your screen to death with a rock than it would be to sit through an episode of this godforsaken anime. The pacing moves at such a painfully slow crawl that at times you’ll be wondering if the animators just fell asleep at the keyboard, or if your friends are alright, or what the weather is like tomorrow; then you’ll snap back to reality and the same boring scene is still playing at the same boring locale. Then you’ll sit quietly for a moment wondering what the hell you’re doing with your life; maybe even get up and make yourself a sandwich. That is the true Daimao experience; and it is truly an unpleasant one.
>>>>>When the show isn’t wasting your time with elongated, nothing dialogue scenes, it’s aggressively cliche. When it’s not cliche, it’s disappointing you with a poorly animated action sequence. Sadly, there are few redeeming factors anywhere in this anime. It’s easy to see why studio Artland went bankrupt; it was undoubtedly lackluster productions such as this one. What a sorry state of affairs.

[ Analysis section redacted due to spoilers ]

OVERALL [ 3 / 10 ]
- Visuals are painfully budget.
- Characters are often off-model and rarely drawn well.
- Fight scenes are poorly done as well.
- English VA’s were good.
- The script ranged from terrible to nonexistent.
- Setting is almost completely barren.
- Plot is messy with many loose ends.
- Characters are a mixed bag; some likable, some not.
- Peter is best girl. Korone is second.
- Pacing and production were both appalling.
- Writing was so generic you could sell it on a shelf at Walmart.


For recommendations, you’re mainly looking at Campione, which is more or less leading the charge for good ecchi harem anime. Tenchi Muyo War on Geminar is another solid recommendation. Everyone will send you in the general direction of High School DxD, which you’ve probably already seen. In all honesty, it’s hard to recommend good fan service shows because there are so few of them. As always, good luck with your animu.

This spring's animes really gives a lot to think about.. I wonder if the parade of gags, parody and eros are medicine for those starting a new life, or just a sign that the industry is falling into an endless limbo.

Story: 6
Like many of the animes this season, the synopsis is catchy enough to attract many fans. It's hard to resist the temptation of an anti-hero who is labeled a demon king from the very start. Compared to the other animes this season, it isn't too bad either. The story is, although very questionable at times, very fast-paced and keeps your eyes on ... the screen and your mind on the next best thing this anime is going to slam in your face. In essence, the story has no seriousness and could have been better with a little more philosophical sense, but of course you can't expect an anime trying to appeal eroticism and comedy to have such depth. However, there is a lot of potential in the story nonetheless.

Art: 7
Compared to a lot of the visual headaches I have seen this season, at least this one stands out among the rest. It's not enough to go up against kyoani and key, but it's a real saviour.

Sound: 6
Unless you really want some good songs and bgms, it won't bother you much. As expected of a gag-filled harem anime, anyways.

Character: 7
The main character is the type i have absolutely no complains about. He's the perfect anti-hero who is able to stay calm while the whole world around him goes crazy. In contrast, the harem girls have so little character they're just good for the visual experience and unstoppable gags.

Enjoyment: 8
I've very much tired myself of harems which portray nothing but idiotic and shallow eroticism, but I must say this anime has introduced a different enjoyment to me. I still think that it would be a lot better if they scraped most of the eros and put more thought to the plot, though.

Overall: 6
Compared to the other spring animes, this one is probably a gem amongst them, but still not good enough to be a noticeable winner.

So we all have been the new kid at school, am I right? And we all have been the kid who had grand dreams for the future, also right? And we can all relate to when the future-telling spirit publicly announces that we're going to grow up to become the greatest threat civilization has ever known, right? No, wait . . . what?

Enter Sai Akuto, a boy who is going to start his first day as a transfer student at a prestigious magic academy. On the way, he befriends the beautiful Junko Hattori, and they share a vow of loyalty and friendship; her family has ... served the empire for generations, and his devotion to the goal of becoming a High Priest means they share a desire to serve mankind for the better.

At the start of his first day, Sai is informed by the Aptitude-Reading Spirit that his future occupation is Demon King, a title reserved for soulless monsters and genocidal warlords. Upon reaching his first class he is challenged to a duel and, in defending himself, accidentally demolishes the classroom and spurs on the rumors of his future-coming infamy. The male students cower in his presence while the girls whisper that his merest touch will impregnate them, and his homeroom teacher implores him that, before he does the inevitable and commits suicide, he calls her so that she can preserve him as one of the undead. After all, the opportunity to study a Demon King is the chance of a lifetime, and he IS right nearby and doomed to hate his life.

HARSH.

This show keeps the hits coming with comical circumstances, wonderful characters, and epic battles. The story has only just begun, but it smacks with all of the wondrous components that make our favorites, our favorites. I encourage anyone who loves harem comedies, awkward situational comedies, epic magic battles, and/or ecchi girls to tune in and turn on.

Very decent anime that i personally enjoyed. It leaves a lot to be desired in its 12 episodes and i think a second season should be somewhere in its future. I think it could have had a lot more success as a 24-26 episode series because the story seems too complicated to be explained in half that. Anyone who loves Zero No Tsukaima or similar anime should enjoy a bit more ecchi version of it or similar anime. Its character development was alright but i feel like the end of one episode didn't directly lead into the next and sometimes leaves you wondering what the ... hell happened in between.

Hillarious but pour excecution. That´s what i would say.

Ichiban Ushiro no Daimaou is one of these anime´s that isn´t serious. Making it funny at a lot of parts, also with the ecchi in it makes it even more unserious.
Also i this anime has some´nasty´things in this anime wich are pretty much hillarious with the reactions of the characters. If you dislike these ´wrong´ anime´s, please do not watch it. It´s supposed to be an funny anime with some serious moments in it.

Overall on of these anime who wont be rated highly bad at an avarage of a 6/7, i think it´s a 7 which ... is an honnest personal rating. I want to go over the parts which determine my conclusion about this anime.

The story is well yeay not unique but epic. the reactions and behaviour of this anime is pretty much in sync with the storyline which i like and also i think that this anime made the excecution decent enough but not as good as the more highly rated anime´s.

Art, uhh cute girls with a clumsy unknowing boy, that´s well yeay kinda the same as all echhi and romantic anime´s wich well yeay i like the idea and all but well yeay it´s getting old. the art in general is well produced but the small details could´ve gotten a bit more work.

Sound, bad excecuted standart sounds and kinda a lack of background sounds. but well yeay. that´s with all of these anime with a couple of exceptions ofcours. not something to look out for.

Character´s haha nice this is what i like about this, on of these anime who did something about this. all characters have a different role and a meaning in the future of the episodes. well produced and some unique extra material wich is awesome.

Enjoyment is kinda a personal question so watch it and give your own. i think it was extremely enjoyable but more to say isn´t there.

So?
A decent and unserious anime with a lot of funny moments and echhi.
would rate 7. not to special but if you feel like having a fun time, watch it. if you want to watch anime that are serious and want you to learn something. please dont watch.

Echhi, romance, action, harem style anime lovers, watch this anime please
People who want to laugh and dont mind echhi and such, watch this anime.
People who want an anime wich is serious and realistic, please dont.

Sorry about my English, it's not perfect. Sorry for that.