blog好き

Oct 06 2015

Categories: one shots
Tagged: chivalry of a failed knight, the asterisk war

7 Comments »

I can’t be the only one who sees some similarities between Chivalry of a Failed Knight and The Asterisk War.

Both shows start the same way. Both have the main male protagonist walking across the campus of a magical high school to visit a dorm. Then we cut to the generic anime pop opening for both shows. Right after the opening? The first thing you see are the melonpan of the female lead because the male lead stumbled into her changing. Yep, what are the fucking odds. Cue camera pan to show the female lead wearing sexy lingerie while the male lead is blushing and trying to avert his eyes in the least averting way possible.

Julis-Alexia van Riessfeld is a princess with long, pink hair. Stella Vermillion is a princess with long, red hair. Both, shockingly, command fire as their element of choice. Oharuhi-sama forbid we have a female protagonist who conducts electricity or something. It’s like the authors of these light novels grew up on Shakugan no Shana or something. This is why Shirayuki in Snow White with the Red Hair cut her long red hair. She doesn’t want to be associated with these girls.

What happens next is completely, 100% unexpected. Because the girls were peeped on, they feel a bit violated and challenge the sad sack male protagonist to a duel. Get this part also: the princesses are the head of the class. Whatever convoluted ranking system the school uses, they are at the top. They are also nobility. The guy, of course, is the weakest of the weak. The twist is that the male isn’t actually that weak but just a product of whatever idiotic ranking system they use. They are also commoners. Do you sense a trend? Of course, during the duel, the male protagonist displays his true power, which is some latent power that counters other powers. Fantastic. It’s totally not like Yuji’s ability in Shana or Touma’s ability in Index.

They way both male protagonists defeat the female protagonist? They ram their Japanese katanas through a fireball. They come out unscratched while managing to put a little love tap on either Julis-Alexia or Stella. We all know anime can be trope-tastic, but it’s fairly unprecedented for two shows in the same season to use the same storyboards. I know some seasons may have a lot of moe blob shows or magic high school shows, but two shows that are this similar? Both shows also have silly English names. Asterisk War doesn’t inspire me. It just tells me that you couldn’t come up with a title, stared at your phone, and realized you couldn’t spell “The Octothorpe War” properly. And what does chivalry have to do with a failed knight? Why can’t we just name the show, “Sexy Girl with Red Hair in Lingerie”?

After breakneck scenes of fanservice and a duel, because they need these scenes to hook the viewer, who only cares about highschool girls in lingerie getting beat up, we are given exposition. Instead of letting the story build naturally over a few episodes, we have a sexy school administrator or student council president or both fill us in on what the fuck is going on. The school is part of a league of schools that send their students to battle each other with magic and swords because somehow basketball, soccer, volleyball, Gunpla Battle, and Dota 2 were not invented in this alternate universe. The only way the schools can measure their e-penises against each other and get donations from their alumni is to send their students out on these battles. These schools make the NCAA look like saints.

There’s other similarities too, like the school being way too spacious and impractical, the other students don’t have anything better to do than watch the duel, and the something slightly weird that happens during the duel that no one mentions yet probably factors into a villain or a competing haremette in the future. All of this is totally original and not found in Gunslinger Stratos, Sky Wizard Academy, Dragonar Academy, Mahouka, Seirei Tsukai no Blade Dance, or Daitoshokan no Hitsujikai.

Also completely original: the princess gearing up for her duel by pulling up stockings.

(Best stocking scene? Toradora‘s first OP with Taiga. I would link it, but YouTube seemed to have taken all of them down. Sad day.)

(Both princesses wear black dresses with vertical piping and white sleeves. Totally not a coincidence. At least they wear different colored lingerie, which is the important thing here.)

Of course, in a totally unexpected twist that no one in the magic high school genre has done, the male lead and female lead pony up. They both also need to learn to fight together to win, and only through winning can they save the puppies feed the starving orphans balance StarCraft discover their love for each other sell more BDs than Gangsta.