High School DxD is a staple within the anime community, becoming one of the most popular ecchi series of all time thanks to its raunchy ecchi, well-crafted English dub, funny cast of characters, and its story telling. I love the anime, and I decided that it would be best to start reading ahead in the novels in preparation of the fifth season; little did I know that picking up the novels was probably the best decision I've made all year. Let me explain why.
This is a story about growth and a journey toward one's goals, or more specifically, the growth of Issei Hyoudou, our main protagonist of the story. This series entails the rise of our perverted protagonist as he unfortunately gets murdered by his very first girlfriend as they’re about to finish their first date. It turned out that Issei's "girlfriend" happened to be a Fallen Angel on a mission with Issei in her crosshairs. Before he died, a crimson red beauty appeared before him and resurrected him. Issei wakes up lying next to her naked, revealing herself to be a devil; and thus begins Issei's journey as a devil and a pawn of Rias Gremory from the Gremory household.
The story is told from the perspective of the character in focus, as it's primarily from Issei's POV, but the story can also switch over to other characters like Kiba, Rias or Azazel. This can be put to good use as Issei is not always at the centre of attention, as the story can switch over to a completely different set of characters that can give context to certain events throughout the story. And given that the story is told in first person, we get to read Issei's thoughts and opinions on whatever scenario he's in, which provides us a lot of the comedy and important information that is presented throughout the series and not often translated into the anime.
The story takes aspects of religion ranging from Buddhism to Christian, Hindu, Norse, Greek, Japanese, Irish, Chinese, Egyptian, Celtic, and Persian mythologies, and incorporates them into the characters, world building, power structuring, race & identity, history, and politics in the DxD universe. This was done at such a great extent that Ishibumi created such a unique, intricate, and immersive world to study and explore, something you rarely see in most harem and ecchi series. The series' power system is based on magic and game pieces, such as Evil Pieces (chess pieces) and Brave Saints (set of cards). The chess pieces give the user special abilities or boost certain stats such as "Promotion" or "Speed" or "Strength" and can be either helpful or detrimental to the team depending on the match-up of users and their abilities. The set of cards can be used like poker where the King can use different combinations to output different levels of strength based on the strength of the set being played. Ishibumi had a lot of creativity with this power system as seen in the more recent arc, especially when you consider having people with Maou or God-level powers and abilities fighting against each other, and it's really fun to see teams of lower power and status being able to match up against much stronger opponents and giving them a hard time. It also gave the author the creative freedom to match characters up that you wouldn’t normally have seen or would have liked to, kind of like you’re watching an all-stars game of sorts.
If there was one genre tag I would like to add to this entry, I would add ‘Action’, as there is a lot of fighting in this series. One of the main themes is the Ratings Games, as that plays a large part in determining a person's power and political standing. Ratings Games are when two teams (with Evil Pieces or Brave Saints) fight against each other in a competitive event in different scenarios that are arranged beforehand.
Besides the storytelling and world building, the characters are another one of my favourite aspects of the series. Each of the main cast of characters have their own personalities, ambitions and goals and strive to work hard in order to achieve them, and after spending months reading the novels, I've grown to become very attached to them. You have the likes of Issei, one of the best male harem protagonists that you can find around, who strives to become the Harem-King as well as a high-ranking devil, you have Rias, whose goals are to become the head of the family and become the Ratings Games champion, and you have the rest of the main cast, including the likes of Akeno, Koneko, Xenovia, Asia, Irina, Rossweisse, Kiba, Ravel, and Gasper, who all aim to become strong in order to achieve their ambitions, as well as helping Rias and Issei achieve their own ambitions.
Just as important as the main cast of characters, we also have the side characters who either work alongside or against Issei and his friends. Out of all of the characters that I'd like to give a shout-out for being such cool, likeable and useful friends/rivals, we have the likes of Azazel, Sirzechs and the other leaders, we have Tannin, Ophis, Fafnir, and the Two Heavenly Dragons, we have Tobio the Slash Dog and the other guys in Heaven, we have Kuroka, Vali, Le Fay and Arthur Pendragon of the Vali Team, we have Saji and the rest of the Sitri Team, and finally, we have Sairaorg. Each one of these characters plays a pivotal role throughout the series, and the story wouldn't have been able to progress without them. So many of these characters, including the main cast, were able to do so much thanks to the 25+ volumes currently released.
This might surprise anime-only viewers, but in my opinion, as Issei is such an endearing and thoughtful person to all the girls he meets and befriend, regardless of all the sexual encounters he experiences and regrettably rejects throughout the series, he is one of the rare few characters that are deserved of their harem. There is purpose behind most of Issei's actions, even going as far as risking his life in scenarios where the odds are heavily stacked against him. He puts everyone's issues ahead of his own, as detrimental as that may seem, since all he wants is to live a peaceful life with his harem. He gives you the urge to make you want to root for him and hope that he eventually succeeds, and I believe that's one aspect of the LN that keeps you hooked until the very end.
Accompanying the novels, we have the artwork that feature throughout them. The artwork is very clean and well-polished, it improves as each volume gets released, so I have to give credit to Miyama-Zero. The closest the anime gets to the art style of the novels is when they changed studios for season 4, which in my opinion is a good thing; it means the anime will be more faithful to the source material. We got dozens of illustrations of ecchi scenes, character design reveal, and cool shots that happen in their volume, so if you'd like to give them a view (slight spoiler warning if you do so), then go onto the DxD Wiki.
Throughout my journey down the DxD rabbit hole, I discovered many new things, like my newfound enjoyment of this masterfully crafted series, as well as the fact that DxD Born got completely butchered by the previous studio. This series is an investment, because once you start getting in deeper and deeper and start investing more of your time and effort into understanding this series, you cannot stop. Like many people with this series, I came for the "plot", but ended up staying for the plot. And I'll keep on doing so until the day Ishibumi decides to wrap things up. When you look past the image of breasts and degeneracy the series has created for itself within the anime community, you'll find yourself stumbling across a genuine and fleshed out series created by a man who poured his heart and soul into trying to perfect it.
High School DxD is probably the least ordinary harem and ecchi series you could come across. The writing, world building, character development, heck, even the fighting and drama is better than what you can find in a lot of other series. This series will forever reign at the top of the harem and ecchi landscape, and if you're not really a fan of these types of series, you might be surprised at what you'll find. You will not regret reading this.
Solid 9/10 for this series.
