Anime-BAW #3: Harem Genre (Part 2)

Harems.... So. Many. Harems. Anime has so many harem series that it's practically a harem of harems out there. That's why I'm doing a multi-part Best/Average/Worst (now officially titled Anime-BAW for short) on the genre. Today, we'll look at a few sci-fi harem series that I've seen recently.

Best: Hundred--This is your typical sci-fi/future school anime, wherein the protagonist becomes the only male student at an all-girls school because of his high "Hundred score," a compatibility statistic that determines whether or not someone can summon a magical girl/mecha-style battle armor called a "Hundred" and pilot it against mysterious alien creatures termed "Savages." Of course, the hero has the highest Hundred score ever recorded because as a child, he was infected with Savage blood and became a "Variant." That means that under times of extreme stress, his Hundred changes form and he loses control of himself against whatever he's fighting. The main focus is on school life and harem shenanigans, such as his becoming the romantic target of every girl in the school, his forgotten childhood friend disguising herself as a boy so she can stay in his room with him, the richest, most popular girl in school wanting to either kill him or marry him (ergo: tsundere), accidental disrobing and/or groping and/or kissing of the female cast, the hot springs episode, the beach episode, etc. It's basically average on paper, but slightly edges out many other harem series of its kind because nearly equal focus is placed on the show's action elements, including student duels and battles with Savages and evil Variants. There is a measure of serialized plotting at one point that leads the show to a satisfying final battle, and the protagonist actually picks a girlfriend by the end. I wouldn't place it on the level of Lord Marksman or Spice & Wolf, but Hundred certainly aims to be unique among harem series, and hits the mark solidly enough to land far above the two titles that I'll cover next.

Average: Date A Live (II)--This series is what Cat Planet Cuties should have been. Instead of alien cat girls, there are extradimensional beings (scantily armored, super-powered female warriors, of course) called "Spirits," whose presence and energy output on Earth cause highly destructive "spatial quakes." The series protagonist is a common high school boy named Shido who just happens to have the power to neutralize Spirit energy by getting the Spirits to fall in love with him and kiss him. Similar to Cat Planet Cuties, the protagonist's sister and classmate are (of course) secret government agents tasked with protecting the city from spatial quakes. And similar to Cat Planet Cuties, the series' logic and physics are laughably insane, but more tolerably so simply because Date A Live has better character development, a stronger harem element, better writing, better humor, and better just about everything else. There is an OVA (Original Video Animation) that I haven't seen yet, but given what I've read about it, this series still needs a third season to wrap up the loose ends with Kurumi. Because of the series mechanics, Shido cannot choose a girl or he risks alienating the other Spirits and destroying the world when they all invert from sadness, and is therefore perpetually stuck in a speed-dating loop of harem tropes until he dies. At least it's clear who he would choose if he could, and his choice not to choose is a consequence of the series' structure, not because he's a noncommittal asshole.

Worst: Infinite Stratos (II)--The inferior precursor to Hundred, Infinite Stratos manages to do everything less successfully in two seasons than Hundred got solidly right in just one. It's another "male student enrolls in all-girls mecha piloting school" series, with a rich, stuck-up tsundere girl, a French girl pretending to be a boy, and evil behind-the-scenes plotting. The fighting is decent, but not as prominent or satisfying as it was in Hundred, the protagonist doesn't choose a girlfriend by the end, and the lackluster finale just kind of stops with a bunch of loose plot threads dangling like exposed wires on some smashed and powerless piece of machinery. Infinite Stratos wasn't necessarily a bad series overall. I sort of liked it, and thought it did a couple of things right (the serialized storytelling, for one). But compared to Hundred and Date A Live, it was too ambitious and too lacking in a payoff for those ambitions to grade it any other way. Perhaps if there had been a third season of IS, something else might have ended up in this slot.

Stay Tuned for another selection from my collection of TicketVerse Trades, and following that, Anime-BAW gets down and dirty with the fan service in Part 3 of my Harem Genre series.