I think I'm on a watch list just for typing that, now.
Ulysses, which is all I'm going to call it from now on because that name is entirely too long, is what I personally like to call a "big tiddie anime." You are here to watch this show for, frankly, one reason and one reason only. It is full of waifu bait girls, most of them generously endowed as, in fact, the English end credits VA likes to point out. This show is not here to make any illusions about what it is, and what it's for. Sexual elements permeate it. The sloppy and often graphically detailed kissing to pass on "elixir" as power up; the wacky harem shenanigans; the generous jiggling; the outfits; the 'virginity test' episode; numerous threats of rape; I could go on. And to an extent, at this point in my life, it's the kind of thing that I largely find tacky more than titillating, and it's one of the reasons why, frankly, Ulysses is just not a good show.
Now, it can be an enjoyable show. If you want to look at cute waifubait in scandalous situations, having middling-tier action scenes against other waifus or setting up harem shenanigans, hey, you'll have a good time. And while the characters - painfully rendered actors in real French history aside - are pretty by-the-numbs trope fare, they are at least largely charming. Personally I preferred to watch the English dub on this one - I tried both but hte English VAs were actually good and I found some of the Japanese VAs a little too sqeauky for my tastes - and they certainly try their best to make the characters feel fun and alive, in spite of their largely two dimensional nature. And look, while I'm no longer a hormonal teenager who can entirely be satisfied with ecchi waifu action, I'm not going to lie to you: a lot of the character designs in this show are ones that are quite attractive and nice to look at. I use the term "big tiddie anime" derisively, but I'm not going to pretend I don't enjoy it for what it is at times, and La Hire and Charlotte in particular are welcome on my television any time. I love a badass gunslinger with a drinking problem and lesbian overtones, what can I say?
But when you peel away the nice visuals and the sometimes tiresome or outright unseemly goofiness, there's just not a lot here. The plot is about as paint by numbers as it gets, using the trappings of the Joan of Arc legend for a bland fantasy narrative about warring kingdoms and magic rocks. There's a little bit of attempted historical drama, between our main character - confessed child murderer Gilles de Rais turned into bishonen harem lead - having to deal with his affection for his saintly lady in arms, Joan of Arc, while also dealing with a political marriage to his cousin in order to gain military power, but most of these names could frankly be changed around to generic fantasy names and you'd be hard-pressed to tell the difference.
You have your energetic loli-esque lead who is naive and chipper and desperately in love with the lead. The childhood friend that he has to rescue. The somewhat temperamental princess. The gun-toting ladette. The sarcastic fairy mentor. A cast of harem characters you could find in a dozen shows, and I'm probably going to forget most everything about all of them within six months of now. And really, once the show moves on from its wacky harem shenanigans and virgin testing and the like in the first half, and turns into its dramatic, war-focused conclusion, it just loses itself in mediocrity and beats that I've seen a dozen times before, and a dozen better.
Like I said, this is not a good show. The writing is mediocre, the character designs are nice but the animation is nothing special, the characters are pretty but forgettable, and a lot of the themes and elements are outright tasteless and uncomfortable, like our main hero professing that he can't be in love with Joan because he's not a pedophile - and then ending up with her in the end game ship anyway, yikes. I realize that, sometimes, in fanservicey anime you just have to accept these things, but really, I shouldn't have to. Be less weird, Japan.
I guess that's the message of Ulysses. Hey, Japan, be less weird. Don't talk at length about how your sexualized lead, who is, again, supposed to be famed historical saint Joan of Arc, looks like a child. Hey, don't turn a child murderer into a pretty boy harem lead. Hey, maybe don't sell drinks that are supposed to taste like anime girl saliva.
Just. Please. Be less weird.
