I'm not mad. I have only myself to blame for this, really. I tend to be more selective with what I watch. Something will be recommended, I'll hear about something popular, or it's just on my mind a lot. I've never watched anything expecting it to be bad; usually I have no expectations at all, but often I at least think it'll be something that's enjoyable enough to pass the time and get a 5 or 6.
The Asterisk War is my first exception.
I didn't watch this because I knew it'd be good. I watched it because I heard it was almost identical to Rakudai Kishi no Cavalry, which I'd just finished, and all I wanted to do was see which is worse. Yes, WORSE. Not better. I mean, that's not to say it couldn’t have been surprisingly good, but of course that couldn't happen. Of course, this review won’t be spent comparing the two anime together, but I will give a verdict as to which is better at the end. Because that’s what everyone asked me to do!
Also, so the mods won’t be unhappy, I must inform you that I will spoil the first episode almost entirely, but spoilers will be toned down to a minor level beyond that episode.
Asterisk starts off extremely rocky; honestly just about everything in the first episode is horrible, whether it's immediately evident or not. The opening scene is a fight with awkward choreography and absolutely no context at all, even as the scene comes to a close. It sets the tone, I guess, but the reason why this fight was shown at all just seems unclear after watching the whole season, as way too little is revealed in this opening, and its potential context doesn't have much weight on the following episodes. But I'm sure it'll be explained later... in another season... that I won't watch...
Some exposition is given, which is fine I guess, but one very interesting thing stuck with me. "The people gradually began to alter their sense of morality." This is apparently due to some event called "Invertia", and you really have to give the writer(s) props for making a new term for "shitty writing". It's a shame they couldn't follow up on it, though. There might be some stupid actions, but nothing horrible enough to make you really think that these people are really fucked in the head; these things instead feel forced so that the "story" (read: too little) and fanservice (read: too much) can keep going.
The first example of characters being idiots instead of morally questionable comes quickly. Icky--oh, sorry, wrong review—Ayato (the main character) catches a falling handkerchief, sees and open window (and/or hears someone's voice from it), and sums up the obvious. He jumps into the window to return the handkerchief, only to see a female student only partially dressed. Here's everything wrong with this scene:
1. He acts apologetic, knowing that it was an accident, despite not considering that he would've been obviously invading someone's privacy by jumping through their FUCKING WINDOW, MULTIPLE STORIES HIGH. If some awareness to the obviously horrible idea were present, even if it results in the MC being a massive douchenozzle, it could at least be pinned to people having fucked up morals. Nope, instead he tries playing this off like it’s not just a prank, bro.
2. We get a glimpse of someone’s ass before knowing whose ass it even is. But don’t worry, it’s not that important, this is only the female fucking lead. Where are the Japanese tumblrvists when you need them? If the fanservice wasn’t so forced, this could’ve been an OK scene, but god forbid someone has to go three minutes without popping a boner over their new waifu. By the way, you can stop taking the show seriously at this point.
3. If your handkerchief is so important, why did you carelessly leave it sitting loosely near an open window? How the hell did the wind even suck a cloth out of a room, anyway? Why was Ayato surprised by seeing a girl in the room when he heard her talking? If he didn’t hear her talking, why did WE hear her talking?
This goes into a very laughable fight scene that only exists because Julis’s personality makes absolutely no sense, if she even has one. She thinks Ayato should die or something because he saw her naked (apparently wearing underwear = naked, k), despite being soooo grateful for getting a super-special piece of linen back. Maybe this could be some inverted moral bullshit like the story wants me to believe, but you’ll later see how much of a clusterfuck this character is as the show goes on. The fight itself is full of weird technology and magic we know nothing about, plot armor, and overall poor direction. (Why did Ayato jump through an explosion unharmed? And why did the soundtrack suddenly stop just when a character is thinking, only to go to some mysterious-sounding tune? It’s weird.) It ends with Ayato glomping Julis to avoid some assassination or something, and he later gropes her somehow because fanservice, or awkward comedy, or… I don’t know. Oh, did I say something about an assassination? Who cares? No one else does, so that’s obviously not important. Let’s move on.
I could pick apart every scene, but I’d just retrace the same points and conclusions the above have made, more or less: Characters are incredibly stupid, whether the writer made them do stupid things or the writer leaked his stupidity into the plot’s scenarios at various points, and not because of some global event. The art is pretty generic and obviously tries to compensate by being flashy, the music is mostly uninspiring, and just the overall direction seems to be mediocre. All of this is taken from the first ten minutes of the first episode. That’s all.
In short, the show quickly establishes how fuckin’ bad it is.
So, I’ve been mentioning this “Invertia” thing a few times. It IS pretty important, and you should really pay attention to that scene, because it’s the only time in the whole show that you’ll hear about it! …Wait… oh. Yeah, Invertia is mentioned once, or something. No one talks about it, and there’s no noticeable impact from it (as far as morals go). Why did they bother mentioning this part of it? And you know that fight in the beginning? That kinda hints at some other “major” plot element that gets totally forgotten about after it’s brought up. The first episode is basically spent teaching you things you will never need to know. It’s high school algebra all over again!
Beyond this façade of a setup, there’s some sort of plot, or at least there should be. Basically, Ayato comes to this school to kinda learn about his sister and mostly to find some path for himself, so he starts training for these fighting events, and wow I am REALLY bored right now. Along the way, he meets various girls who do all but tear out their reproductive organs and install them into exuberantly-colored fleshlights for his personal satisfaction. It’s honestly hilarious how frequent the fanservice is, and how few reasons the girls have to each fall in love with the MC. Asterisk’s girls come in different shapes so that everyone’s tastes are satisfied, and they’re exploited so commonly that I wonder if Asterisk is trying to trying to appeal to the hentai artists or if the creators are bragging that they have girls in their series. I’m sure you’re all very satisfied with yourselves.
If you need to be reminded again that the characters are bad, this is your lucky day! The characters are bad! So here’s my favorite part, the character roast section:
Ayato – Things worth saying/making fun of are as follows:
Julis – Independent black woman who don’t need no bodyguard. If you ignore the fact that she’s a figure of royalty, a high-ranking student, and that your IQ is lower than that of an earthworm, then it makes a lot of sense.
Claudia – You know what? This is the best character in the whole show, and all who disagree can fucking fight me. She’s the most direct with her affection for Ayato to the point where she flat-out says she wants to fuck. At least there’s no bullshit about it, other than her having no reason to like Ayato and Ayato being a scrubmaster about it. (Do I need to bring up Cavalry again? WHAT SIXTEEN-YEAR-OLD KID IS GOING TO BE EMBARRASSED BY THIS? DON’T LET YOUR DREAMS BE DREAMS, ASSHOLE.) Also, please note that her ending scenes to preview the next episode literally do not exist. Nope.
Saya – Hi, I’m a deadpan loli with no real reason for being in this show other than to be the loli in this harem. If the point of her personality was to match the audience’s evident opinion of her, they nailed it on the fucking head.
Kirin – Kinda younger-looking girl with big tits. Apparently her dad’s in jail, so she and her big tits need to win these festival things or something, and follow the guidance of her uncle who’s abusive as hell for no reason. So, I guess at least this character and her big tits have some sort of conflict??? And then we can waste a couple episodes on her and her big tits?????? No need to thank A-1, I’m sure they do it because they care. And for the record, the anime tells you at every waking moment that this character has big tits because we can’t shove Claudia into every scene.
Lester – I’M A DOUCHEBAG WITH MUSCLES. DISLIKE ME!
Irene – Wincest.
Did I miss anyone? Probably. Do I care? Probably not.
Did I have too much fun with that? Probably. Do I care? Probably not.
Kinda going into my next point, what the fuck is with everyone’s hair in this thing? What sort of insane products are these people using that allow their hair to suspend in midair? Like holy hell, does their lack of personality somehow expel a gravitational field from their heads? It’s insane, dude. They also have that wonderful, classic “spot the major character” look; if their hair is the color of something not really found in nature, they’re important. If not, they might exist, but you won’t remember them. Everyone below this line is some overly-generic CG filler person or something.
Overall, the art might be dazzling to some, but I only see A-1 trying to compensate for their overall weak animation, and no amount of ass shots will redeem it. Even if you don’t agree that the first episode is bad, you can’t possibly tell me that, say, episode 4 looks good. Beyond the animation, the CG is the compensation part, as I couldn’t ever get behind the flashiness and vibrancy of the magic and weapons. I mean, they’re not bad… but they’re certainly nothing special, especially since fights are so reliant on them.
By the way, there’s a lot of this CG technology that’s omnipresent even outside of the fights, so it’s not just a bunch of magic and glowing plastic weapons making lightsaber noises. This might’ve been better to bring up in the setting/plot parts of this review, but whatever. Anyway, what the hell is all of this shit? All this technology and shit is literally omnipresent; everywhere you go, you see holograms of various functions. Where do these things even come from? How do they work? What can you do with this amazing technology besides open doors from across a room and use them as replacements for what we know as computers? Why am I asking questions that I know will NEVER be answered?
Last thing about the art; who the FUCK is responsible for the next episode previews? You know, that shit at the very end of each episode where Claudia looks like she’s in some visual novel but is animated like a 5-year-old edited it? Jesus Christ, I don’t think I’ve ever cringed so hard after watching something in an anime. I only watched one of these before deciding that I’d never do it again, so please watch at your own risk.
Now, the soundtrack is… actually good. Some of it. I believe just one person (Rasmus Faber) did the entire score (my apologies if this is incorrect), and if that’s the case, his electronic pieces are easily his strong point. (Which makes sense; I hear he’s a DJ or something.) The OP and ED are pretty good as well. But unfortunately, the rest is mediocre at best. The more orchestral pieces don’t quite stand out or are as memorable as the electronic pieces, but I don’t want to seem more negative than positive in this section. I’ll actually admit something was good in this anime.
But all those negatives aside, at least it wasn’t as bad as Rakudai Kishi no Cavalry.
…Or was it?
You know, it’s hard to decide on which is worse. I couldn’t take either anime seriously, but Cavalry still made some attempt at being serious at one point. At least there’s some sort of reason for the shit that’s happening. Asterisk has nothing going on at all! But even if Asterisk did nothing, playing it safe worked to its advantage, because Cavalry’s serious moments are heavily weighed down by the sheer awful, cringe-inducing scenes that infest it. I mean, Asterisk is bad, but it never made me uncomfortable. But Cavalry still did a couple things right, such as the art (mostly) and the romance (to a small extent). Asterisk has a few good songs, and that’s about it. So my overall verdict as to which is worse…
Surprising myself a bit, I’m giving that honor to The Asterisk War, mainly based on the fact that it did fuck all to help itself, while Cavalry at least made some legitimate attempt somewhere. And with that settled, I can walk away from this anime with a strange sense of satisfaction: that I was looking for a good match between two terrible anime, and I walked away with an unexpected, but satisfying result. Great job, Asterisk, you actually succeeded in something, by being the Worst One!
And that’s all. Full score is below, thanks for… oh god… I just realized something. Invertia didn’t change the morals of the characters, it changed the morals of the writers! And the producers! And whoever the hell else is responsible for this! Oh man, I think it’s gotten to me as well! I went out of my way to watch a bad anime and I was just thankful for it being so terrible! Holy hell, this show is actually genius!
Story – 1/10
Art – 4/10
Sound – 7/10
Characters – 1/10
Enjoyment – 1/10
Overall – 1/10
Favorite character – Claudia
Favorite episode – none
Recommended to – people who want to lower their MAL average score
Congratulations are in order, for this is my very first 1/10 score. It was originally a 2/10, but after considering things more for this review, I can’t think of any reason to give this anything higher. What did I like? The art was okay but pretty boring, and the soundtrack was pretty nice, but they’re beside me for the most part. If they were actually great and really memorable, like, say, Guilty Crown, then that’d probably let me raise it to a 2 or a 3. But even if GC is a pile of shit beyond the production, at least it made an honest attempt at writing a story and had some legitimately interesting moments. Asterisk has NOTHING that is interesting, whether it’s due to a lack of explanations or just sheer unoriginality. I mean… well, I already wrote the review, so I won’t go back. I guess all that needs to be said is that this anime is pretty ass.
terisk.