Baka to Test to Shoukanjuu has a lot of ingredients that could have made it a favourite of mine. A colourful cast in a borderline parodist concept, overloaded to the brim with gags and absurd situations.
Despite that, there are some unfortunate detracting elements to this anime. First of all, the world and background art is one of those sketched reality type jobs you may have seen in for example Nisekoi. There are overlapping patterns, crazy shading and obscurement of detail, making the characters look like paper cutouts in contrast. The character art itself is also very simple, though definitely not without personality. In my opinion, while I'm sure many see this kind of art direction as a breath of fresh air or even "artistic license", I see it as nothing more than a shortcut. You can argue that because of the lightheartedness of the show, it is perfectly valid to make the art itself more basic and effective. While that wouldn't be wrong, in this case I don't feel that the art direction did anything to lift the focus onto other aspects of the anime. What it does do for me is distract. And more distractions is not what this anime needed.
This is because the pacing of this anime can not be described as anything but exasperating. In 20 minutes worth of airtime, Baka to Test to Shoukanjuu crams in more gags, jump shots, banal twists and ridiculousness than any other comedy anime I've seen. It seems the creators are desperate to rush through as many jokes and plot elements as is possible at all times. For a non-japanese speaker relying on subs, it's a very hard watch, and also a lot of jokes fall completely flat due to a lack of timing. Timing is one of the most important aspects of humor, and this is probably the main failure of Baka to Test.
All that aside, I still felt I had a blast with the anime. Despite leaning heavily on artistic shortcuts and unrelenting pacing, I did end up caring about the meager plot and loving the cast of characters, especially towards the end of the season.
Baka to Test is a hard anime to love, simply because there is so much to love but not enough time to fall in love with it. With proper pacing, all the jokes and gags would be funny instead of just half of them. With less artistic shortcuts, such as the tactical map trick used in every battle sequence, there would be more chances to see different sides of the characters. And despite the basic nature of the plot and setting, it could have done well for itself given more background and explanation.
How I rated:
Story - 5
Art - 6
Sound - 6
Character - 7
Enjoyment - 6
Overall - 6
