Anime - Best/Average/Worst #2: Harem Genre (Part 1)

Greetings, Anime-niacs! The time has come for another edition of Best/Average/Worst, where I pick three anime in a given genre and tell you as briefly as I can why each one is the best, the worst, or just average. Today's genre (and the genre up for discussion for at least the next three Anime-BAW posts) is the Harem genre. The Harem genre is one of those that can cross over with other common anime genres, most commonly the isekai, fantasy, school life, sci-fi, and supernatural genres. It typically centers around a boring, generic, timid, indecisive, horny, male virgin who either finds himself as the only male student in an all-girls school for some conveniently biology-related world-saving reason, or wakes up to find that some supernatural creature, alien, monster, or other non-human humanoid girl has literally fallen into his lap. There are other harem contrivances, too, such as the return of an old childhood friend or the almost-incest scenario of "meet your new stepsister!," and there are rare instances of harem anime with female leads or same-sex harems out there, but the most common in anime series are male-led female harems, so that's what we'll cover.

Best: Lord Marksman & Vanadis--A medieval fantasy-harem series that actually does something interesting with the genre. It centers around Lord Tigre, an archer with a magical bow that he inherited from his father, heavily tropish heroic optimism, diehard loyalty, and a keen eye for battle strategy. Right off the bat, Tigre is not your average anime protagonist. He's heroically single-minded without being blindly stupid (like most shonen protagonists are), and fiercely loyal (unlike most male harem leads). The harem here is composed of the Vanadis (dubbed "War Maidens" in the, um, dub), eight Amazon-type warriors with magical weapons called Dragon Gear (because every anime fighter has to have an energy attack or a half-spiritual magical weapon they can shout the name of before blowing up shit), one of whom defeats and takes possession of Lord Tigre at the beginning of the series. The rest of the plot revolves around Tigre and his War Maiden master, Eleonora, developing their relationship and attempting to recruit the other seven War Maidens to protect their acquired lands. There's also something in there about Tigre's black bow and the ancient, evil spirit inside it that grants him the power to, well, blow shit up. The CGI-rendered war strategy expositions detract a bit from the overall feel of the show, but when it comes to character development and the actual depiction of the battle scenes themselves, Lord Marksman is a solid harem series that rightly chooses to be a fantasy series first and, like I said before, has a male lead with decisiveness and loyalty for once. My only real gripe about Lord Marksman is that I wanted more. I don't mean that in the sense that I use when describing Average or Worst-class anime, which are missing elements or entire seasons that would have fleshed them out. I mean that Lord Marksman was so nearly a perfect anime that I wanted to see the rest of the manga get adapted into another season so I could see the rest of the villains' conquest schemes, the payoff to Lord Tigre's Black Bow mystery, and the recruitment of the rest of the War Maidens play out. It's such a good anime that I don't want more from the series, I just want more of the series.

Average: Is This A Zombie? (Of the Dead)--This is more of a slice of life/supernatural/magical girl/comedy series than a straight-up harem anime. The main character gets mysteriously murdered and is resurrected as a zombie by a necromancer. His unusual circumstances lead him to also inadvertently steal the powers of a tsundere (angry harem trope who secretly loves or respects the protagonist) magical girl. He has to daily deal with the fallout of his creepy best friend finding out that he has a necromancer, a magical girl, and a ninja vampire living in his house, shriveling up whenever he's exposed to sunlight, and being publicly accused of being a cross-dressing pervert any time he has to transform into Card Captor Sakura: Chainsaw Massacre to fight monsters. There is a halfway interesting arc in the middle where the hero discovers who killed him, and an epic fight ensues, but the rest of the show is just episodic filler with predictable jokes, lukewarm romantic references, and the occasional requisite fan-service episode (eg: hot springs, idol concert, the beach, etc). So, Is This A Zombie? Yes, and it's kind of just there.

Worst: Cat Planet Cuties/Bombshells From the Sky--Alien cat girls, alien dog girls, annoyingly cute robots, annoyingly cute high school girls who are secretly government agents or alien fanatics, giant breasts, predictable animal puns, weak Hanna-Barbera references, ludicrously written episodic nonsense. And at the center of it all, a boring, annoying, clueless, indecisive virgin named Kio who just accepts everything as normal because why not? So much of substance could have been done with this series of inconsequential animal droppings, and I am highly disappointed in it. There could have been a second series where Kio decides to remain half-cat and tour the galaxy, taking things in a Vandread kind of direction. The worst offense for me, I think, was how the series handled Lawry (the first model of Catian Assist-roids). Kio learns that Lawry is running out of power and will die unless someone chooses to be her new master. But instead of being compassionate (as he is weakly characterized), offering to be her new master, injecting some measure of interest into the barely-there harem dynamic, and (most importantly, lest we not forget ourselves) saving her life!!!, he just accepts this small bit of exposition and lets the episode end with her dying offscreen like an asshole. Cat Planet Cuties is superficial, lazily written nothingness with flat, bad, annoying characters, a porno-ready title, and doesn't even bother to let you know the last episode is the last episode. It sucks, and it's the Worst.

Another issue of Anime-BAW is soon to come, but first, another Grimm Fairy Tales TicketVerse Trade is headed your way, so Stay Tuned.