Juuou Mujin no Fafnir

Midgar, all-girl academy, would have been notable just for the action of accepting its first and only male student, Yuu Mononobe. But Midgar stands out for much more than that: it's a school exclusive to a group of girls known as D's. Each of them have extremely powerful abilities in generating dark matter and manipulating it into powerful weaponry.

The D's didn't exist twenty-five years ago, and only appeared after a number of mysterious, destructive monsters known as "Dragons" started appearing around the world. Strangely, just as suddenly as they appeared, they vanished. In their destructive wake, some girls started being born with symbols on their bodies and powers similar in nature to those wielded by the Dragons themselves.

Now the D's attend this school, hoping to harness and utilize their powers against the Dragons. Yuu is their latest member and is extraordinary for being the only known male D in existence. Now he must forge relationships with the girls around him, including his long separated sister who attends the school as well, and work with them to investigate and eliminate the threat of the powerful Dragons.

Freyja, Iris Main

Hidaka, Rina Japanese

Mononobe, Yuu Main

Matsuoka, Yoshitsugu Japanese

Mononobe, Mitsuki Main

Numakura, Manami Japanese

Muspelheim, Kili Surtr Supporting

Inoue, Marina Japanese

Crest, Firill Supporting

Hanazawa, Kana Japanese

Highwalker, Lisa Supporting

Kanemoto, Hisako Japanese

Lightning, Tear Supporting

Sakura, Ayane Japanese

Miyazawa, Ren Supporting

Uchimura, Fumiko Japanese

Shinomiya, Haruka Supporting

Yamaguchi, Rikako Japanese

Tachikawa, Honoka Supporting

Hayami, Saori Japanese

Yoshikawa, Atsushi Producer

Uemura, Shunichi Producer

Hidaka, Isao Assistant Producer

Kusakawa, Keizou Director

Reviews

May 24, 2019

Confirmed_Otaku

Recommended

Okay this anime was Decent..

From watching this anime 12 episodes i don't seems to enjoy it and not just that it made me want to sleep cause the story is not that interested.

So here is the thing, Mononobe Yuu has the power of the Leviathan but in exchange of strength is his Memories, from that point "oh this might be interesting" crossed my find... And not what i though, using his strength does not affect his current state of mind ( I would like the anime if his sanity/humanity or forget who he was or who the girls are ) but no, he just forgets ... something not interested in..

He uses the Power 2-3 times i think ( i don't remember since it's sleepy ) but hardly flinch or just you know.. put into a coma

And what hurts the most is the animated style or CG of the Red Basilisk is just too plain and i also saw some boxes ( when doing a 3d or CG edges are common ). The thing is that when they are Charging they're dark matter.. the screen also gets dark i thought that was just an automatic brightness from my computer but nope, getting too dark.

So is this a typical Harem? no i don't think so, yeah is has the 'One Boy in a all-girls school' type, but the thing is.. it is just not working out for me or you

In overall it peeks my interest but lose it half way.

Do i recommend this? No, i don't think so unless i don't have anymore suggestion

Do i enjoy this? Half-way cause of reasons

Is this anime Good enough? in my opinion not in the Good nor Bad side but something in between.

Reviewer’s Rating: 7

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Jan 23, 2022

hexashadow13

Mixed Feelings

tl;dr: A pretty generic battle academy harem anime that shows some light hints of potential but is largely a miss in terms of execution.

Juuou Mujin no Fafnir is a pretty typical harem battle academy. The type where some mysterious threat suddenly attacks the world and the only thing that can stop them are a group of high school students with special powers gathered at a special boarding school who are all girls except for the protagonist who somehow also has powers despite being male. I’m perfectly fine with the archetype and trope set used and in general don’t mind generic anime, though in such cases ... it come down entirely to execution which I don’t think this particularly excelled at.

As is often the case with the anime adaptations for such light novel series, the first season is primarily focused on the essential world building required for the narrative while introducing the characters and showing the development of initial bonds between them with all this being centered around a series of major battles. As such, while the plot is important as a vehicle, what’s far more important is the world and characters showcased.

The world and it’s mechanics I think were mostly solid enough. The core enemy are monsters known as Dragons, though they mostly look nothing like traditional dragons, and the ones that fight them are called Ds. Each D has a Dragon that corresponds to them wherein eventually each Dragon will hunt their respective D, at which point a crest on the Ds body begins glowing. If after this the Dragon and D meet, the D also turns into a Dragon. Thus, there is some complexity to things, in that while it would obviously be for the best to defeat the Dragon before it encounters the D, killing the D before it can encounter the Dragon is also something that is considered in order to avoid the creation of more Dragons.

This results in some level of conflict between the organizations Midgard and NIFL, wherein both are under the umbrella of the international Dragon fighting organization Asgard, Midgard primarily has the goal of protecting Ds while NIFL has the goal of defeating Dragons, and thus NIFL is far more willing to kill Ds to avoid the creation of more Dragons as compared to Midgard. While there’s still a lot that needs to be fleshed out around this regarding the lore behind the dragons and where the story will ultimately go regarding that, I think that this is a pretty solid start to world building and builds a good foundation to tell a character focused story on.

The majority of character development is centered around the aforementioned issues. The protagonist, Yuu, was originally a part of NIFL, but after his powers as a D become apparent he is transferred into Midgard, but with his superior in NIFL, Loki, staying in contact and pushing him to get rid of Ds at times, which was something that was difficult for him to deal with at first. It’s also mentioned that him using his powers results in him losing memories, but that’s basically only been touched in passing without really explaining it and not really delved into and thus hasn’t really had much of an effect so far. Thus, the protagonist’s development has been pretty minimal so far.

Going back to the theme surrounding Ds turning into Dragons, the fact that a D can turn into a dragon also presents issues in regards to Ds having to struggle with whether they should just let themselves die as humans rather than risk turning into Dragons that go onto kill their fellow Ds, as well as presents an issue for Ds who have to struggle with the guilt of killing a Dragon that was a former comrade, which lies at the center of the heroines Iris and Mitsuki’s character development. This as a concept is also really solid, but the writing surrounding this wasn’t all that great, and for the most part it felt like things were being glossed over to the point that the related narrative doesn’t really hit any particularly good emotional beats.

Unfortunately, this is still better than the development any of the other characters got. There’s some sort of character arc surrounding another heroine named Tear that is centered around whether she wants to be a human or Dragon, but it felt pretty weak in that it essentially just involved her overcoming being brainwashed than any sort of actual development. Also in Tears arc, there’s another character showcased, Kili, an antagonist that will likely become a heroine eventually, who wants Tear to choose to become a Dragon, and seems to be quite a bit more complex and interesting than any of the other heroines, though the season ends before really doing much with her. The rest of the cast so far is pretty much entirely flat. As a result of the weak character arcs so far, relationship development is also pretty weak, and in the end the cast just isn’t that interesting and is hard to get invested in.

On top of that, there are bunch of strange choices in how the anime was made that further contribute to the previously mentioned and issues and the anime in general often being not that enjoyable. The pacing is overtly fast, and thus character’s and their bonds don’t get fleshed out properly before reaching events that require said fleshing out. This actually isn’t that rare with light novel adaptations, but was especially bad here. For example, it’s brought up multiple times by other characters how Yuu seems to care for Iris so much, but literally all the viewer had seen of them together so far at that point was them making some small talk, so it definitely felt that some key parts were skipped over or improperly adapted.

I suppose the abruptness to things did help in terms of comedy though, in that it definitely added to the comedic timing of certain scenes. Still, the comedy overall felt less prominent than it usually is in the genre, and thus not all that strong overall. Also, this is a harem anime, but it doesn’t have all that much fanservice or romantic fluff, which are pretty much staples for the genre, though it has enough to put off people that are put off by such content so I have no idea what they were trying to do. I think this is part of why it’s hard to get as invested in the characters and their relationships, but it also results in the pacing in general feeling slow because there’s a lot less content of substance essentially.

The combat wasn’t that great, but wasn’t that bad either. There’s very little explanation given to characters powers, but most characters powers are incredibly simple so this isn’t that much of an issue, with the exception being the protagonist Yuu who seems to have a much more complicated power set, which it seems strange that no one really seems to want to question or explore in depth. The powers are also mostly just used for simple plans, but a lot of the fights being about executing plans made in advance made things somewhat interesting. There’s often some scientific explanation accompanying this, but it’s either completely wrong, or the explanation isn’t conveyed properly, though I don’t think anyone expects accurate science from such media so that’s not much of a demerit. And if it wasn’t already obvious, a lot of Nordic mythology related terms and named are used throughout, and I thought that was decently well implemented though whether it’ll go more in depth or just use them superficially remains to be seen.

In terms of art, the art style and designs I thought were pretty solid, but the art and animation quality was a mixed bag. The art used for backgrounds and such was pretty good throughout, but the art and animation used on the characters felt lacking pretty often. There were also some really weird repeated sequences, like shots that were kind of like character transformations where they change into new outfits, but they didn’t actually change clothes and it’s not like they were good as fanservice either so they felt completely pointless. The main enemies, the Dragons, are essentially entirely CG, but felt like they fit in decently enough to not be an issue. The OP has a pretty good song and decent visuals and the ED is decent enough in terms of both audio and visuals. The soundtrack had a lot of noticeably great tracks surprisingly enough, both of the epic and softer type.

Reviewer’s Rating: 6

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Jul 26, 2021

Upset_Nimbus

Not Recommended

Imagine being stuffed into a crate and sent to an island of cute anime girls. Alright the cute girls part doesn't sound so bad but that's really the only likeable quality of Juuou Mujin no Fafnir. I tried grasping at straws but this anime for is something I cant really recommend for fans of any genre... Do you like action? Well they do have cool lasers and explosions but the thing is everyone almost the same move over and over again and it gets stale fast, spear shoots yellow beam, bow shoots blue beam, etc. They can call it different moves (which in of itself ... is rare) but the way its executed is exactly the same. The exception is the MC which hard carries the ladies, the only way they were able to take down a leviathan was with his direct intervention of either his pistol or the dobonhonkeros sized cannon he can summon. The whole formula for fights is Yuu puts enemy at disadvantage (either floating or seriously wounded) then the girls go in to perform an all out RGB colored attack. Yes technically the last fight Yuu was not present but it still followed the barebones formula, just replace the MC with a bomb. Into character interactions? Well there is a bit of drama here but most of the characters are one note. Now there is nothing wrong with playing their respective roles but aside from his imoutou and bridal loli they don't interact with Yuu unless he saves something or directly assists the girls. Like the previous example there are rare exceptions but they are also variants of that formula unless you are quite literally the antagonist. Also everyone loves Yuu, even the bad guys even the lesbians (to be fair that's less love interest and more skirt chasing partner in crime but that doesn't stop her from tasting his hand with her tongue) Speaking of skirt chasing the horni folks surely have something to take home right? Well yes but actually no, most of the fanservice is relatively tame. For a harem genre you pervs get no panties, one obligatory hot spring episode, another obligatory beach episode, a few misunderstandings that follow the same formula as the very first episode curtsy of Yuu and Iris. As a desperation gambit ill throw in art and sound as a ""genre"" (well some people do look for it) but its all for naught, again the special effects are heavily recycled laser blasts used again and again, the CGI for the leviathans was choppy (The turtle's leg movements on the salt platform look like an ATAT in the worst ways) but I guess it succeeds in making the leviathans look alien. The sound is also sadly recycled often, now being a fan of moe high pitched voices doesn't bother me all that much (I'm used to it) but the incessant screaming of a few of the characters may bother others as it annoyed me a bit. Maybe there is something I missed, or its me scrutinizing the anime a bit unfairly.Do check out other reviews as well but as of now I cant with good heart recommend this be watched.

Reviewer’s Rating: 2

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