Initially the anime feels like something quite similar to Ouran Koukou Host Club as the protagonist is a girl (Tachibana Hotaru) crossdressing as a boy who ends up becoming indebted to a popular guy (Matsuoka Masamune) who works as a host in the city. This notion is then quickly proven highly inaccurate as Matsuoka forces Tachibana to come join his "survival game" team and participate alongside him in an upcoming tournament. I say survival game, but that in and of itself is completely wrong; it's actually just competitive airsoft that we're talking about here. I don't know if it's a mistranslation or whatnot but either way if you're expecting some sort of thrilling life-or-death drama here you're going to be sorely disappointed because there is absolutely nothing lethal in this anime.
So what exactly is it that makes Aoharu x Kikanjuu such a trainwreck then? Well there are many reasons but they can be roughly divided into three categories:
1. The plot
The writing for this anime is bad. Terribly bad. The games themselves make no sense whatsoever (more on that later), but even ignoring that part the overall plot progression is simply all over the place. Initially, Tachibana thinks the airsoft games are childish and stupid. Then after playing *one* game she suddenly thinks they're the greatest thing ever and has become a full-blown addict. Sounds believable, right? Oh and you know how she originally joined the team because of a debt? Yeah that plot element is just handwaved away in a split second as if it never existed to begin with, completely ruining the entire premise of the story, yet it just keeps on going as if nothing ever happened.
There are also all kinds of forced drama which feel completely unnecessary, totally out of place, and oftentimes insanely predictable. Time skips are pulled haphazardly which renders the pacing very inconsistent, and above all, there seems to be no semblance of coherence in the writing whatsoever. Let me just describe a certain scene from episode two here in order to make an example (minor spoilers I guess, but certainly nothing important): there is a segment where Tachibana is surrounded by her three opponents at only a few meters range. Then in the next second they're suddenly all standing on the same side of her, yelling "corner her!", as if implying that they hadn't already cornered her a second ago? Immediately thereafter, Tachibana's teammate suddenly appears next to her and they have a loud conversation for about two minutes. What happened to their opponents? They were standing right next to her just a moment ago! How could they possibly have lost track of her, let alone be outside hearing range? I mean seriously just what happened here, did the producers accidentally put the scenes in the wrong order or something? These kinds of elementary mistakes should be impossible to make. It's so blatantly illogical it feels like it was written by a 12-year-old.
2. The characters
Aoharu x Kikanjuu is pretty blatant fujoshi bait; that much is obvious from the get-go, but even so the character cast is still a disaster. First of all, we have our main character Tachibana Hotaru. Mother of god is she annoying. About once per minute she has to remind the audience that despite her appearance she's actually a girl, she's always referring to herself in third-person and her sole personality trait is seemingly that she firmly believes in "justice". Yeah justice; hence why she goes completely berserk when playing airsoft and behaves like an uncontrollable animal; sounds just like a knight in shining armor, doesn't she? In the first place what does justice have to do with playing games? Are your opponents supposed to be "evil" just because they're playing or something? In that case Tachibana is obviously equally guilty of that crime. There's also the obnoxious truth that despite being a really bad player, Tachibana always ends up spontaneously gaining super powers whenever the plot feels like it, solely for the sake of convenience. The anime never shuts up about her so-called "bloodlust" which is the ability she uses to magically paralyze her opponents just by looking at them and make them cower in fear, as well as enable her to run faster than a speeding bullet. But there's nothing supernatural about this or anything, it's just her "talent".
As far as the rest of the characters in this show goes (essentially all male), they're basically all cardboard cutouts as well. Matsuoka is the typical noble bishounen with a "dark past", Yukimura (the third team member) is quiet, depressive and honestly kind of creepy, and then there's the overly-generic villain Midori who's just an all-round douchebag that enjoys hurting people. They all feel like they're solely there for the sake of being there, but without much thought put into it whatsoever. And the way they behave towards each other is completely unnatural. At one moment Matsuoka is almost pissing himself with fear just by looking at Midori, and in the next he's being super cocky and confident. Again, consistency please. There are also quite a lot of soft Yaoi vibes every here and there throughout the show, which I guess is to be expected given the fujoshi pandering but it still feels very out of place story-wise.
3. The "survival games"
Everything I've stated above is certainly problematic, but without a doubt the nail in the coffin is the execution of the so-called "survival games" themselves. Honestly I don't think the author has ever played airsoft before, or even studied up on how it works properly. I'm going to be very direct here: airsoft is primarily a game of tactics, stealth and precision. It's a game where you attempt to predict the opposing team's moves ahead of time, try to hide and ambush them by sniping them from the shadows, etcetera. I don't even think you need to have played the game before to understand that much. So what does Aoharu x Kikanjuu do then? Well... it basically treats airsoft like a battle shounen.
Do you know what you do with guns? You shoot each other with them. Yeah right, not in this anime; here you avoid using them, charge straight down the barrel of your opponent's rifle, *paralyze* him with fear just by looking at him and thus render him incapable of pulling the trigger, then run into melee range and finally bludgeon the guy by using your submachine gun as a club. Excellent work Tachibana; you were even able to outplay the guy using a freaking minigun by using this incredible strategy! Truly a job well done. While we're at it we should start teaching the military that there's no need for guerilla warfare any longer; simply running up to your enemies and punching them in the face sounds like a much more humane way of fighting.
Of course that's far from the only problem when it comes to how these games play out. People refusing to shoot when they have their opponents in their sights for no apparent reason, people having to hold cliché speeches and punchlines before pulling the trigger, people revealing their positions completely needlessly in order to have a "fair fight" with their opponent instead of just shooting them from cover, etcetera. The list goes on. Even more disturbing though, these games are seemingly completely unmonitored. Despite playing in a high stakes tournament, there are no cameras or anything inside the woodland battlefield. In other words there's barely even any point of having rules for this game; you could basically cheat as much as you'd like and no one will ever know. But I guess that's just another plot hole which we shouldn't think too much about and instead just pretend it isn't there.
So with all that said, is there anything good thing about this show? Well if there's one thing it'd be that despite everything it at least isn't boring. Incredibly annoying yes, but twenty minutes of Aoharu x Kikanjuu per week was not really a problem. It's kind of like watching a very low level football game; even if the content itself is lackluster, you can still probably find some enjoyment in it just by being a football fan to begin with. In the same way, despite the cringeworthy execution, Aoharu x Kikanjuu is so far the only anime I've ever seen about airsoft, so it gets some plus points for originality and for having a fun concept at least. But even with that taken into account it doesn't change the fact that it is still a very sub-par anime at best, and not one I would particularly recommend to very many people.
