The show centers around Winford Academy, a school where knights come to joust in a semi-modern, renaissance-esque world. The main character is Mizuno Takahiro, a man currently working as a squire. A number of female knights want him as their squire for an upcoming joust tournament and the series begins from there as he begins to interact with these women and the harem genre starts to tune in.
The good part about Romanze is that it manages to explore the females well and makes them their own characters rather than just an addition to the MC's harem. Many harems have a problem with focusing too much on the MC and throwing the females around him as just another additional side character that wants to get in his pants. Instead, Romanze focuses on the struggles, the motivations, and the past of the female characters in a respectable way to make them well-written characters. They each have their own unique reason for jousting and begin to grow as knights as the show plays on. All of the main girls get their respectable character development and time, something that is typically not easily done in a 12-episode anime; especially one from a visual novel where each girls have their own routes for their story. The only problem here is that it takes a few episodes and around mid-way to the show to get to these character developments, while the early episodes are more fanservice and comedy.
With that said, Walkure Romanze comes off to be a mixed bag. Gratuitous fanservice goes around around the show; from a horse grabbing a female's undergarments to the MC doing the typical harem hijinks of accidentally grabbing a woman's breasts. From time to time, Romanze pulls off some funny and actual clever jokes that are certain to get a laugh or two. At other times, there is light drama focusing on the jousting aspects while at other times the show focuses on exploring the world. Jousting is lightly explored to get the general idea of it but does not go in-depth with the old sport. Romanze attempts to do everything in a single season of a show, for good or bad depending on just what a person wants from watching this. A person who comes just wanting massive fanservice might be disappointed, as well as another person who wanted a drama. I for one believe a delicate balance is achieved.
All around, the production values of the show are well done and one can see that the staff put a reasonable amount of effort in to making an enjoyable show. The art is fantastic and gorgeous, showing the beauty of the world Romanze with vibrant backgrounds of a renaissance city. Animation is fluid. The music scores are enjoyable to listen to and also fit well with the renaissance-theme of the show.
Walkure Romanze isn't a deep and top anime by any means. It's simply slightly above average; with a decent plot, characters, and fanservice aside good production values. It's more than what you can say about the typical harem cash cows that come out these days.
