I started watching this show for two reasons: 1. I found the dub on Hulu and I like having something playing in the background while playing video games; 2. I was given the impression that this would be a show that was a straight 12 episodes of a tournament arc with cool fights. I was severely mislead and disappointed
Story 4/10: Where to begin? I already mentioned how I was set up for disappointment with this series, but I can't stress enough how this just turned out to be such a dumpster fire. We start by getting introduced to the male lead, Ikki, the "worst" student at the academy, and the female lead, Stella, who is a princess and top-ranked fighter. After a chance encounter in a dorm room, they settle a nudity-centered misunderstanding in a practice match. Worst guy vs. top girl? How unfair of a match up that they put her against an anime protagonist. This is where the series starts going downhill because out of the countless tournament matches that these two are put in after this, only maybe only three last more than a minute: first being Ikki's first match, second not even being a match in the tournament, and the third being fought by Ikki's sister (which turned out to be the greatest fight of the series and barely had plot relevance).
All of the time that should have been spent on the fights was instead given to the most awkward, horny, juvenile, poorly written romance between the two main characters. My biggest example of this would be what would normally be flagged as a spoiler for any other show, but not this one: in the middle of the series Ikki and Stella get assigned their next opponents at the same time and they are each given a member of the student council, followed by a vague introduction scene of the two members saying how Ikki and Stella won't stand a chance against them. Any other show would have this introduce the increasingly powerful student council member arc...instead the next episodes starts with the announcer saying how Ikki and Stella both just won their matches and the student council becomes irrelevant because they're all friends now since they're so strong.
Art 8/10: Here is the other major disappointment for this series, the art. The animation around the weapons and magic in this series is surprisingly wonderful, which only adds to how unfortunate it is that this show is mislabeled as an action series.
Sound 7/10: Never any real opinions on this category for shows that aren't music focused series. No outstanding soundtrack, but my ears didn't bleed, so seven.
Character 2/10: These characters might just be a little worse than generic anime characters. Ikki is flagged as a F-rank student because his hidden abilities are things that the school doesn't measure, so that's enough for every character to suddenly defer to him as the go-to for all problem solving and only hope for beating strong opponents. As for his actual character, it's almost as if the writers made him and said "look, our male lead drinks his respect women juice!" except behind the scenes they didn't actually want to buy the name brand juice and got the generic brand that's more sugar than anything else. Stella was being built-up to be this hard working, strong, A-rank student, so naturally she just starts thirsting after the person with the worst reputation in the school in the most virgin way because he beat her in their first fight. Throw in an almost as thirsty sister and you have a middle school level rivalry with equally as mature insults. Alice, an openly trans character, is probably the best of them and balances intelligence with just being around the main characters for a fun time.
Enjoyment: What I enjoyed most about this series was the extremely awkward dub. The lines for this show are so awkward in English that I'm motivated to make a compilation video of the best ones. Example: Stella being told that one reason she's high maintenance is because it probably takes a whole team of people to get her bra on in the morning.
Overall 4/10: Referring back to how I went in thinking this would be a show that was 90% tournament arc, my overall score for this isn't that surprising (unless you're surprised that I didn't give it a 1). But there's something more important, fan service is almost unavoidable in these kinds of series, but I'm able to look past that if the story and fight sequences can make up for it. This show did the opposite and gutted their fight scenes in favor of the aforementioned romance and fan service while teasing us throughout the series that they had the full capability to actually choreograph really good fight scenes.
