Anime-BAW #4: Harem Genre (Part 3)

Greetings, Anime-niacs!
As I talked about in my last status update, the list is complete, the reviews are written, and the yatus is over, so it's time to put out yet a third issue on the harem genre. This time, supernatural fan-service harem series are the order of the day. Prepare to be turned on and underwhelmed....

Best: High School DxD (New/BorN/HERO)--When proud high school pervert Issei is murdered by his fallen angel girlfriend, a demon girl named Rias resurrects him so he can get his revenge, but also help her out with Occult Research Club activities, like exorcising evil spirits and killing fallen angels, demons, angels, and pagan gods. Of course, Issei is usually more interested in Rias and engaging the club in…other activities. Things never get to pure hentai territory, but High School DxD is definitely not a family-friendly anime, as a ridiculous (but not entirely unwelcome) amount of the series is focused on breasts of such size as to make a chiropractor quit his job out of hopelessness. That being said (for better or worse, depending on your viewpoint), High School DxD is so far one of the only harem series to do a harem right, and it all starts with the protagonist. Not only is Issei fiercely loyal to Rias and on favorable terms with the rest of the club’s members, he is unlike any other harem protagonist in that he embraces his perverted nature to such a degree that his anime protagonist’s dream is to have his own harem, and he is actually not afraid to express his feelings for the female cast when the moment presents itself. Yes, it’s obvious that he’s chosen Rias and she’s chosen him, but it doesn’t come off as an entirely bad thing that he wants their relationship to be an open one. And even though it comes in at a distant third place to the left and right Bazonga Sisters, the action that HS DxD’s thin plotlines culminate in each season is interdimensionally spectacular.

(Below) Average: Maken-Ki!--I was drawn into this series because of my familiarity with its terminology and premise, since I am a huge King Of Fighters fan. Some time prior to the events of Maken-Ki!, the demon Orochi was sealed away near the grounds of Tenbi Academy (your typical anime training school), and the energy of his eight heads was forged into eight powerful, mystical weapons called Maken (this is similar to the San Shingi wielded by Kyo, Iori, and Chizuru in the KOF storyline), the most prominent here being the Murakumo sword. There is also a ki-like energy, called Element, that the students and staff of Tenbi can use or channel through their Maken to fight duels with one another, or even to craft Maken “reproductions” for new Tenbi students. And of course, there is also a mysterious evil organization that is trying to revive Orochi (KOF had a couple of those, too). But none of this amounts to much beyond a middling first season finale, some creative (if fan service-oriented) student duels, and frequent, explosive tsundere gags. That’s right, I said tsundere; that means that all of the cool, supernatural/action anime stuff is shoved to the background in favor of turning Maken-Ki! into a generic, big-chested harem series. It tries at many times to have interesting plots, such as figuring out who is pulling the strings behind the Orochi revival, and the protagonist (who is openly perverted and does not have dark hair for once) trying to remember a promise he made to a childhood friend he doesn’t remember having. There are even a few standout episodes (“I Love Takeru!,” “Begging Teacher,” and “His Name Is Rudolf!” come to mind) that provide touching moments and slight character development. But the series has so many undeveloped (and overdeveloped, if you grasp my meaning) characters that none of the many romantic threads get a payoff, the overall plot gets lost in an overabundance of dimensionless tropes and “stop the pervert of the week” episodes, and rather than an epic, two-part series finale where the bad guys succeed, the heroes defeat Orochi with the power of friendship, and the protagonist admits his feelings for one or more of the girls, we get…a flashback to how the student council met? I was originally going to  make this series a Worst selection in a future issue, but there was so much that I enjoyed about Maken-Ki! despite its poor handling (and there's the fact that I couldn't find any other harem anime I had watched that came anywhere near being Average) that I upgraded it slightly to fill this slot on today's list.

Worst: Rosario+Vampire--A human boy finds himself enrolled at a high school for monsters and at the mercy of a steadily growing harem that includes a vampire with a split personality, a succubus, a literal ice princess, and a young witch who dresses far too provocatively for her age. The series does a decent job with fourth wall breaks and adhering to the harem genre mechanics, but that’s all the good I can really say about it. Rosario+Vampire seems too focused on underwear fetishism, repetitive episode structure that is targeted to a much lower age than the series itself, stupid character names, annoying voice work (including probably the worst Todd Haberkorn performance I’ve ever heard), and a harem protagonist who’s so much of a dick that he can’t choose between the two personalities of the one girl you think he might pick, except he’s such an infuriatingly noncommittal pussy about the whole thing that he won’t even pick her, either. Asshole.

With that out of the way, I'll break the harem monotony in the next Anime-BAW by following my King Of Fighters reference with a look at video game promotional series. Then, there are so many obscure series and bad harem efforts that I thought I'd do a limited spinoff called Anime-WTF? to give them the coverage they barely deserve.