It started strong, but in the end just couldn’t overcome the gravity of its fantasy light novel origins. It never falls into the smelly pit of awfulness the pick-up artist title warns of, but it still introduces interesting female characters only to have them fall in love with the protagonist one by one, after which they’re never quite as interesting or relevant again. Lili perhaps comes out the least harmed by this, but nonetheless gets her share of “jealously clinging to Bell” scenes.

This affects Aiz worst of all, and Aiz affects Bell worst of all. Bell is a generic if generally charming lead, but around Aiz he descends to almost To Love-Ru levels of grating overreactions. He’s also bogged down by Most Generic Protagonist Power Ever, which is literally the ability to one-shot whatever the plot decides is the big threat at the time. Or, in a /shocking twist/, two-shot the final boss.

The story is among the most generic ever written, though it’s elevated somewhat by great character art, strong production values and scattered moments of really genuine emotional expression (Bell/Hestia in episode 3, parts of the conclusion to Lili’s arc, episode 8). I also give the anime credit (apparently the novels don’t share this virtue at all) for letting the worldbuilding come naturally, without lengthy explanations of mechanics or meaningless lore that does nothing to inform the show’s plot or characters.

It’s not quite enough to hold off the uninspired and entirely predictable progression of the story though, nor the uniformly bland, lifeless antagonists. And the less said about the ending, the better – the last boss /literally falls from the sky/ in the final episode and a rushed conclusion is thrown together with a “go read the novels” non-ending and very awkward foreshadowing.

This all probably sounds harsher than I feel, and 6/10 is a “it didn’t offend me and had some solid material with even a couple great highlights” rating. But I’m disappointed that in the end the well-constructed character moments were mixed in among so much uninspired harem/fantasy nonsense. It could have been much better if it dropped the romantic angle entirely from Lili, Aiz, and Syr, which would in turn have cut down on scenes of Hestia wasting her time being jealous. Ah well, it was still better than I expected.

All of the charm and warmth and comedy returns, though without the major set pieces of the first season’s flashback and musical. Karen and Alice’s relationship was a highlight this season, both via the flashback to their youth and their time visiting England. Ayaya is still my favorite of the girls and she became even more madly, adorably in love this season, but she didn’t make much progress with Youko – such is the inescapable fate of iyashikei yuribaiting, I guess.

Cast additions were kept rather minimal this season. Hello!! choose to expand screentime for characters we met in season one: Honoka in particular, but also Youko’s siblings, Mitsuki and Kouta. Couldn’t have chosen anyone better! With Alice/Shio and Ayaya/Youko pairings being set, I’ve been hoping for a long time to see Honoka get close to Karen and that’s exactly what we got. Meanwhile, Youko’s little brother and sister are pretty much the best siblings in anime.

The only major new character is Kuzehashi-sensei, a young new teacher who primarily interacts with Karen and Karasuma-sensei. She also leads the show off very strong by being a major focus of two episodes, letting us meet the characters again through a new character’s eyes.

Warrants a 9/10 without hesitation, for being a weekly beacon of warmth and happiness while Eupho has been beating me bloody with a nail-studded fishing rod.

May Kinpatsu conquer the earth!

Less ambitious than the other entries in the series, but very good at focusing on what it does: no larger plot (so far), just cute little (and not so little) girls beating each other silly as part of their species’ elaborate mating rituals.

Apart from more NanoFate and the adorable budding Vivio/Einhart relationship is how the series seems to exist purely to take the piss out of StrikerS. Lutecia’s hilarious personality shift and Garyuu fetching vegetables for dinner felt like a wonderful way of saying “StrikerS was kinda dumb wasn’t it, how about we do something fun?”

And while I don’t remember anything about most of the Numbers, Nove is really great in this! She continues the tradition of adopting cute little ass-kicking girls pioneered by Nanoha and Fate and becomes Einhart’s guardian and teacher, and she’s just excellent in the role.

A tournament setting is *perfect* for this series too, because it’s very good at introducing colorful new characters who we only need to pay attention to for a short time. The Saki model, you could say. We even got an ill-fated Arai Satomi character. Just run this with in the Saki model for a couple cour and I will be completely on board the whole way.

While the production quality is for the most part garbage (carrying on that TV Nanoha tradition!) the content of the tournament battles was rather excellent. Even battles between characters we’d not met until episode 9 were engaging and well paced and a ton of fun to watch.

But the highlight of the tournament so far is Einhart vs Corona, which was shockingly good considering how hideously out matched I assumed Corona would be. She was the quiet underachiever of the group, far inferior to her friends in raw strength and always on the verge of dropping out of competitive martial arts. Her battle with Einhart used this character premise to fantastic effect, integrating it into her battle style in very cool ways. That the fight had just over a full episode dedicated to it gives me a lot of hope that future battles will be just as good, particularly the, I assume, inevitable Einhart/Vivio clash.

Bring on season two.

An enjoyable if largely unremarkable (and often amateur-feeling) show about a special high school where students battle for prestige and club funding with club-themed superpowers. Not the most inspired setting, but it's great to see an open lesbian in the protagonist's spot. While her tendencies are played for laughs sometimes, it never comes off as malicious. When she gets push-back, it's because she's genuinely over-stepping her bounds and being a (lovable) nuisance. The fact that she's into girls is never itself the object of mockery, just her hyperactive and frankly annoying (in the cutest way!) personality.

For me, the show peaked in episode 8 when Eruna and Otone finally became close. They were by leaps and bounds my favorite characters and although Otone's acceptance of Eruna came rather quickly, it hit all the right notes. Episode 10 was probably the next best, as Otone's feelings for Eruna caused a clash with Seisa that took us into the final arc.

While the ending was rushed it wasn't a disaster because the story's scope was kept manageable. Some hand-waving is done at the very end to establish a backstory from a previous era but it hardly matters for the anime's purposes - it's just there to set up Eruna's impetus for saving Seisa.

I'm very much in camp Eruna/Otone due to their far better chemistry, even if the story sure makes Seisa Route look like True End. But it's not like the show is interested in saying anything definitive either way. So I'll stick to Eruna/Otone for life. I would be interested in seeing how everything plays out after Seisa joins the club but there's no real chance of getting more.