Story & Characters (1/10)
In the near future Japan, teenagers learn to be a Butei, an elite force that specializes in arms and hand-to-hand combat, at Tokyo Butei High. Toyama Kinji is a Butei, but he doesn't want to be. Just as he makes up his mind to leave, however, he stumbles across an anti-Butei Killer and needs a rescue from the fiery, gun-toting Aria. She's tiny, she's skilled, yet she has the temper of a little brat, and after seeing Kinji "transforms" into his hysteria mode, which is a flirtatious, damsel-rescuing prince, to turn the table and rescue her, she wants him to be her partner. Together they battle the Butei Killer, go to school, and get tangled up with other forces who have evil plans.
A little hope can be a dangerous thing. Take Aria the Scarlet Ammo. Its first episode had a few glimmers of interest, so we spend the next six hoping that something will come of them, only to be crushed at every available opportunity by brainless fluff plots and excruciating harem capers. Genre tropes aren't bad by nature, but the way a few series carry and blow them into something unexpected is worth watching. Bad ones use tropes as crutches, to allow them to hobble without doing the work of manufacturing their own appeal. This anime is one of those. One minute Kinji declines Aria's offer of partnership, then a childhood friend who hopelessly mewls over him bursting in to create one of those must-have-harem-comedy, then the next Aria's spouting she's a direct descendant of some badass historical figure. Wow, talk about another facepalm. Wait a few moments and Kinji playing a center idiot in the harem, and suddenly he's a retro hero with the allergic cool look and professional womanizing skills. The entire anime is littered with the corpses of failed harem adaptations; Aria isn't making canny use of its tropes; it simply is them, blown up until they can't be ignored... or enjoyed.
And then there's the main characters; like any show that names itself after its main character, it's fair to say that everything should be laying on the shoulder of its main character. However, Aria isn't a tactical role. She has a frail moe look contrasts to the great skills she possesses, and is indeed indeed to any of Kugimiya Rie's many diminutive tsunderes, but only a resemblance. She has none of the genuine traits or any of the depth of Kugimiya's heartbreaking character; she's a parody, and not a funny one. Her anti-Kinji personality is a typical trait to reveal the insecure, cute and cuddly girl tacked onto the end like a particularly phony afterthought, and somewhere in there there's a few scenes in which she's desperately in need of rescuing despite she claims to be the best Butei at school helps absolute nothing.
Aria is clearly an action series mixed with harem, which itself should sound a warning bell. Kinji is a straightforward harem lead, who has the personalities of one and acts like one. His hysteria mode, though is a funny one, is still a cheap trick. The other two heroines are shy miko Shirayuki and lust-addled (gentlewoman?) thief Riko. They're all superior martial artists, and all hopelessly smitten with him. Turns out they're all descendants of some historical figures like Aria, and lousy ones, too. Each represents a superior harem trait, and they aren't just a string of pointless rumbles, but an oddball of tale.
Art (4/10)
It's the strategic focus of the fights, however, that really gives one hope. They're part of a battle, which despite its controlled nature and lethal weapons, still has many of the opportunities for strategy, betrayal and trickery that a real battle would have. Aria and Kinji's battles are good action showcases, pumped up with nice visuals to portrait the daily battle in the life of a Butei. Unfortunately it isn't all there is to the episode. There are characters to introduce, which generally involves a big dramatic entrance and a quick survey of each girl's loli-flavored character design.
The only sign of life is the show's dumb slight of gags, which is admittedly spotty but also contains hints of fanservice. When Riko makes her escape by using her own uniform as parachute, revealing her busty body, or a matter of concern about Aria's flat chest or screeching at Kinji for being a pervert, are all a silly joke and a mean to pique the interest of the people who would enjoy things like, well, small girls with big eyes.
Sound (6/10)
Tsundere specialist Kugimiya Rie returns to voice the character type that she specializes, but she was just simply reprising her role for Shana, and to be paired with Majima Junji, who she has chemistry since Toradora! and whose characters are just a mere copy of the old one proves to be weaker. They are veterans enough, however, to confine them mostly to invisible supporting roles, so you're unlikely to notice unless you're specifically listening for them. The music score does try its best to pump up the pace and energy, but it feels worn-out like a half-hearted effort.
Overall (3/10)
You hear it a lot, you watch it a lot, and you facepalm because of it a lot. It takes a while for the series' amusement at its own genre-pandering, trope-plundering ridiculousness to register, though. There's very little in the way of humor during the first episode, and the way it lunges from one cliche to the next, taking little care to properly connect them, makes it much easier to cringe at the towering derivation of it all than to laugh at it, much less laugh good-naturedly. Oh, and just to kill things a little more dead, the villains are both random and really, really annoying.
Some series fail because of a lack of anything fresh to work with; others fail because of deficiencies in execution. Aria the Scarlet Ammo squarely falls into the former category. It doesn't have any good ideas and does not do anything to make a new start, and is not sexy enough in the way it does them, to be entertaining as anything more than an ignorance.
