Seireitsukai no Blade Dance

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tl;dr: A not particularly exceptional but mostly well executed harem battle academy series.

This light novel series starts off as a pretty standard harem battle academy, where the protagonist Kamito due to being the only male that can wield the power of spirits ends up being the only boy attending a school for training Elementalists who use spirits in battle. It is clear from the outset that the goal is to assemble a team to take part in an international tournament known as the Blade Dance and obtain qualification to enter it, and thus plot wise the first phase of this series is mainly a means ... of introducing the main cast and for explaining the fundamentals around the various mechanics of the world.

The winners of the Blade Dance have the opportunity to have any wish granted, and thus this portion makes good use of that in order to explain the background and motivations of most of the main cast, which at this point is composed of Kamito, his human like spirit Est, and his fellow team members Claire, Fianna, Rinslet, and Ellis. Kamito’s goal in entering the Blade Dance is to find his missing former also human like spirit Restia, who isn’t fully a main character yet, but it does establish the bond between her and Kamito quite a bit which makes it clear she will be eventually. None of the cast especially stood out but overall they were likable enough.

The plot then dives straight into the tournament arc, where it continues fleshing out the world’s lore and adding some twists to what it had already established, though still leaving a lot mysterious. This arc also uses the international nature of the Blade Dance to do some world building regarding the various nations of the world and such. After that, the plot naturally flows into a phase that makes use of that world building by having the main cast get entangled in a political mess that’s centered around conflicts between factions within nations as well as how that ends up playing into power struggles between nations, wherein the twists relating to the lore also remain a constant in the background that slowly gain more emphasis.

During both of these phases, the series also goes through a lot of development in most of the main heroines. This development feels somewhat overtly dense at times, in that how it generally works is that there will be occasional short periods where a single heroine gets a lot of development with not much development outside of that. But it also introduces a lot of side characters that have solid character arcs of their own, mainly Rubia, Muir, Leonora, and Greyworth, so it’s not like there’s a lack of substance outside of when its heavily focusing on a main heroine and thus overall it feels mostly well-paced in terms of how it handles characters.

This follows into the final phase where the elements built up to throughout the series centered around the lore become crucial to the plot with all the mysteries quickly being resolved and the main cast squaring off against the true mastermind. This phase had the clear issue of being rushed. The mysteries essentially have four interconnected layers to them with each being centered around a different time period: 3 years ago, 1000 years ago, 7000 years ago, and the beginning of the universe, and the narrative essentially goes backwards in time to reveal them. As such, how it handles fleshing things out regarding the first three layers is handled reasonably well as it gives things room to breathe. The final layer though is almost entirely confined to the final three volumes, and it really doesn’t feel like its handled all that well, which makes the direct build up to the final battle and the climax itself somewhat disappointing.

Character arcs also feel pretty rushed, wherein for the main cast it does technically wrap things up for everyone, but in ways that mostly feel like they don’t have much substance. The same is true for the side characters with prominent character arcs as well. They reach conclusions, but it feels like the conclusions leave things hanging. Furthermore, there are side character that weren’t all that important, but it definitely felt they were being built up to have more important roles in the final phase, but that instead just drop out of the narrative completely or continue to have minor roles that feel really weak for all the buildup they got. Still, even with all that, the ending is pretty great even if it is essentially the standard ending for such stories, so I’d have to say I am satisfied with the conclusion overall.

In terms of action the overall mechanics are fleshed out well enough. There were issues in terms of ability growth though. Kamito’s growth is handled pretty well from beginning to end with battles that clearly show growth. It also feels for the first half or so like it’ll handle everyone else’s growth well too since it begins to do a decent job with Claire and Fianna. Unfortunately, the latter half then just throws around a bunch of power ups super quickly in a pretty random manner in the end without really dwelling on it.

In terms of romantic fluff and slice of life, what’s there is pretty solid from beginning to end with slow and steady progress that builds up well into the ending. It should be noted though that there was a decline in terms of quantity as the series went on and it became more focused on the overarching plot, though there was a side story volume released right in the middle of all that that was purely fluff.

In terms of art, this series I went through three artists. The first was great. The second was just okay. The third I think was also pretty good, though their illustrations were inconsistent at times with the illustrations of the first two which felt off. The fan translation in terms of the quality of its English prose is somewhat rough and has lots of clear mistakes, but it flows well enough so overall I consider it pretty good for a light novel fan translation.

This Light Novel is one of the few novels that I have enjoyed that involves a harem around the main character. This series has been a consistent hit for me while others may dislike it, the character development can be a bit slow or sometimes too fast even but I found that throughout the series all the questions I had were answered to some degree.

In terms of the overall presentation this series really delivers, after reading 18 volumes in english and attempting the last two in japanese I found this series to be story rich with an immersive world that the author builds up ... as the books go on. Along with some well built and developed characters that each have their own background explained and with a small ARCs for themselves. All of these things is what sold this novel series for me.

I would recommend this series to anyone who can deal with the harem situations that can be annoying and really look into the novel's rich story.

Seirei Tsukai no Blade Dance is your "retired badass returns to fight once more" story crossed with harem elements. As we all know, in a harem, there is a boy with lots of girls. The problem here is boys don't have these "elementalist" powers. Except for our main character.

The story follows our main protagonist after he was hauled out of retirement by the almighty headmistress of a girl's academy for elementalists. With the world "girls" being redundant because only girls can be elementalists. Our retired badass seems to have a history with the headmistress, and in his heyday, he crossdressed to avoid attracting attention as ... a male elementalist (which should not exist). The headmistress calls him back to participate in a tournament, and that's what the premise of the series is.

The story is full of an interesting plot mixed with various running jokes about our MC being the only guy, our MC being a sexual deviant, and our MC's crossdressing past. The jokes do get old sometimes, but there are many more times where one would read that chapter and smile on the inside.

Another point I like is how they bring back characters who you have long forgotten. Arc villains return after several books as anti-heroes. This is a good way to make side characters seem more significant, instead of seeming like weak one-book characters.

Story: 8/10

The art for this light novel is decent. The anime that was adapted from this however, is a huge upgrade. The biggest bone I have to pick is how the sword designs in the illustrations were incredibly simple. Est and Restia's sword forms are depicted as rectangular pieces of metal with a handle. Even though the novel is categorized as "ecchi", it still is called "Blade Dance," thus I would have expected more work to have been put in to drawing the weapons.

Art: 4/10

The cast for this light novel is somewhat lacking in depth in the earlier books.

We have a MC who, due to his upbringing, has little experience interacting with people. He vaguely shows attraction to the girls in the harem, but seems preoccupied with his long-lost partner.

Then we have the generic red-haired tsundere with abandonment issues, blonde rich girl, blue-haired brawn-over-brains, black-haired naughty girl who has some dirt on the MC.

I found the girl's personalities to be bland until they were fleshed out more in later books. Variety is also increased later on due to the foreshadowed Tournament Arc.

In terms of development, the girls are on the receiving end of major development as the series goes on. Some stop being brats and begin to pull their weight. Some make amends with rivals. However, our MC remains the same old person he was. Except he now has the power of love and friendship.

Yes, that's what our MC gets. He goes from solo fighter, to team player. Except it's evident that for the earlier half of the series so far (Vol 1-6) it feels like his team is holding him back. In fact, MC-kun is proven to be BS levels of strong. It's just that he's out of practice (another thing the book never lets you forget) and the big opponents he has to face are all people who were able to fight him on equal ground in his prime.

Characters: 6/10

Overall, I loved reading this. There is ecchi in the light novels, but its not as much as say, Highschool DxD. There is also an engaging plot within the series and the Tournament Arc is different from the tournament arcs we have seen in other series, but still gives the feeling of everyone competing for a common goal.

Enjoyment: 10/10

Your mileage may vary. Some people are okay with overused running jokes. Others are not. The overuseage of the "shy, pure, holy princesses" type of character is also a possible turn off for many people. However, I enjoyed the series very much.

Overall: 10/10