Baka to Test to Shoukanjuu

Fumizuki Academy isn't a typical Japanese high school. This unique institution has implemented a new and innovative system to sort its students. At the end of their freshman year, students take a test that divides up the student body. The highest scorers are placed into A class, all the way down until F class, for the lowest of the low.

Unfortunately for Akihisa Yoshii, his supposedly "great" intellect wasn't quite enough for such a test, and he's now stuck at the bottom of F class. Naturally, F class has the worst facilities: not only rotten tatami mats and broken tables, but also outdated equipment and worn out furniture. On the bright side, his friend Yuuji Sakamoto is in the same class, and to everyone's surprise, the genius girl Mizuki Himeji has also ended up in the same class due to an unforeseen fever on the day of the test.

Unsatisfied with their perquisites, F class rallies behind Yuuji, determined to take on the higher-tiered classes in order to seize their perks by using the school's Examinations Summon Battle system. The participants can summon fantasy characters—whose power levels are equal to their student's test scores—in an all-out battle. Will F class be able to rise to the top, or will they live up to everyone's expectations and fail?

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Kinoshita, Hideyoshi Main

Katou, Emiri Japanese

Yoshii, Akihisa Main

Shimono, Hiro Japanese

Tsuchiya, Kouta Main

Miyata, Kouki Japanese

Shimada, Minami Main

Mizuhashi, Kaori Japanese

Kirishima, Shouko Main

Isomura, Tomomi Japanese

Himeji, Mizuki Main

Harada, Hitomi Japanese

Sakamoto, Yuuji Main

Suzuki, Tatsuhisa Japanese

Kinoshita, Yuuko Supporting

Katou, Emiri Japanese

Kudou, Aiko Supporting

Nanjou, Yoshino Japanese

Yoshii, Akira Supporting

Inoue, Kikuko Japanese

Cook, Justin Producer

Saitou, Shigeru Producer

Itou, Yoshiyuki Producer

Kaneko, Hayato Producer, Planning

Reviews

Apr 2, 2010

-Naami-

Recommended

Comedy is subjective. Some people prefer witty satire and others prefer blunt brainless nonesense. Well, Baka to Test is the latter of the two. Just like its namesake, Baka to Test to Shoukanjuu (Idiots and Tests and Summoning Beings) is one hell of an idiotic show. But it serves its purpose of providing nonsensical entertainment, and I'm afraid if you are expecting otherwise then Baka to Test is not for you.

To many, the story is – to put it plainly – outright stupid. Students are split into classes from A-F based on their academic skills; A being full of smartarses and F being crammed ... with quote/unquote “the mentally retarded”. Incidentally, what class you are in correlates to the facilities they have, much like an academic ‘caste system’.

So we have the idiots and tests out of the way, so what about the Summoning Beings? Evidently, there are ways to acquire these prestigious facilities – the obvious one being to score high on the mid-terms...and the other, Exam Summoning Battles. Such battles consist of the student’s being, which is a chibi version of themselves fighting other student’s beings. Much like video games, they have points (which can be considered as health bars) that are knocked off through physical contact. There is little to no “exam”, or any such academic skills tested in these battles, but what the heck – anything goes in anime, more so in this one. The show is already incoherent enough to be questioned at this point.

Akihisa and the rest of F-class duel in these ESB’s to get the hotel-suite like facilities and prove to everyone that grades aren’t everything! Along with that there are love triangles, moé, traps, incest, lolicons, cross-dressing, yaoi, yuri and every anime cliché under-the-sun.

And I for one love it for that.

Brainless comedy is brainless. Filled to the brim with slapstick humour and overacting such as the infamous anime nosebleed and much, much shouting to the point it is classed as screeching; dirty jokes and overall randomness Baka to Test helps the reviewer just sit back, relax and take it in all the over the top nature of the show.

Not only does it spoof anime traits but it also parodies anime shows, the most recognizable ones being that from Gurren Lagann and Code Geass but they are quite subtly played. Knowledge of these shows aren't required to enjoy the show as they are only for minimal comedy relief.

Another wonderfully played cliché are the stereotypical characters:

Akihisa, the idiotic male lead completely oblivious to all the girls lusting over him;
Himeji, the big breasted intelligent yet timid beauty – and the most obvious love interest;
Yuuji, strong willed and often in a comedic duo with Akihisa;
Minami, tomboyish though is actually quite the girl to heart;
Kouta, the class’ pervert;
And Hideyoshi, the ‘trap’ – often mistaken as a girl due to his appearances.

These walking stereotypes were all so superb at keeping the viewers laughing with their antics and traits. But as most stereotypes are – they are restricted. As progress throughout the show went on there was no doubt, a formula in the comedy. There were many spontaneous comedic moments as well, but most of it was rather repetitive. However, I wouldn’t say it hindered the show greatly as it does not insult the viewer’s sense of humour. It knows that we know this or that punch line or act yet it is delivered in such a way that it still stays fresh and funny. Much like a signature catchphrase, each character is assigned a certain quirk, habit or joke which we all come to know and love.

Silver Link’s animation was impressive for an almost unknown company. The only other anime they have actually produced (Tayutama ~Kiss on my Deity~) is not very well known and since then their animation has improved. Although the art and animation is fairly average and similar to most other shows, it has subtle add-ins that would make it recognizable even amongst a hundred different anime, such as the colourful shadows each character has – all different colours, no less and the “spotty” inking in backgrounds and objects. Baka has no trouble integrating different styles of art for either comedic purposes or otherwise – using blindingly bright colours when needed and eerily dark when called for. Music is, just like the art, average. The OP and ED are very skippable and the background music is forgettable.

Baka to Test does the job of using some very well known seiyuus as well as some not so very well known. All display a charismatic quality in their characters and bring out the character that they are. Akihisa is the loud idiot. Yuuji is the sometimes-calm-sometimes-not idiot. Himeji is naively sweet. Minami is an awkward idiot. Hideyoshi...does not sound like an idiot per se, but comes across as amusingly girly. And Kouta is perverted through and through. Just hearing the voicing alone could tell you this.

The ‘ending’ of the show is much left to be desired for, in other words it was quite a letdown. Fortunately it has the opportunity to redeem itself with the second season announced to be aired soon.

Baka to Test isn’t anything that hasn’t been seen before. And honestly the excuse of a story isn’t even well thought out or developed. But sometimes you will have to sit there, laugh it all off and say “That’s just stupid!”

Reviewer’s Rating: 8

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Jun 14, 2014

stoopid_engineer

Mixed Feelings

Ah, BakaTest, pearl of the Orient! Just look at all these jolly good reviews filled with hype and squealing!

But, as an old Russian idiom says, always there is "a spoon of tar in a barrel of honey". So, let's take a more critical look at this show. Although I've watched this anime long time ago, I re-watched some episodes in order to refresh my memories, and now I'm ready to share my opinion with you.

OK, let's look at the title first.

Baka to Test to Shoukanjuu.

Let me start from the end, i. e. "Shoukanjuu" or Summoned Beasts. Well, I think that this should match ... proper to some kind of "-mon" anime, and so I thought when I just started to watch the series. Surprisingly, in the very beginning it looks kinda like an anime about kids and their "mons" fighting for glory, money and whatsoever. But if you look closer, you will see that these "shoukanjuu" are added only for a tick. All battles are short as a... I don't know what, let it be a bunny tail, the whole premise is that if your grades are high, then you're as cool as Chuck Norris and you can beat anyone without even lifting a finger. Also, we don't see the "shoukanjuu" much often, because the plot concentrates more on the everyday life of main characters. So, the titular Summoned Beasts become absolutely useless for the plot. Even without them the series won't lose anything. Just any random super-duper thing could replace the "shoukanjuu", for example, laser swords which sing traditional Japanese songs in battle.

And now, for the "Tests", or plot.

There is nothing special here, to be honest. All we see is just everyday high schoolers' activities, flavored with some situational jokes and so on. Meet the characters, the characters get into first serious action, pool episode, amusement park episode, bla bla bla... *yawn* The whole show looks like it's filled with random events, typical for the anime of this kind. Only in the end the plot gets more action, but it's too insufficient to cover its lack in previous episodes.

All right, let's go to the "Baka" part. The characters.

What do we have here? Oh, it's just a bunch of clichéd school guys and girls - a tsundere, a main character's stupid friend, a moe girl with big boobs (oh, boy, this stuff is just gonna keep happening and happening), a pervert and yet another pervert. Groovy! And do we have any character development during the series? Absolutely not! The tsundere is needed to do her standard "tsunder-ish" activities, the moe girl is needed to make us all like "Ohhhh, what a cutie!" and the perverts are needed for some perverted jokes if there is a necessity (ha-ha, repetitive jokes about nosebleeding, so funny I could die). You may argue with me that this is a comedy anime, not some kind of drama, but I'll tell you just one thing - the flatness of the characters makes them so annoying, that I wish to hit each in a forehead with an axe dipped in curare venom. And I didn't even say a single word about our main hero...

OK, there he is, Akihisa Yoshii. He is nothing but the biggest loser I've ever seen and this fact annoys me greater than the stupidity of other characters. His behaviour seems so unrealistic and lame, and I'll tell you what - in Russia, we call such people "lokh" ("лох", don't be confused with "loch" which means "lake" in Scottish, everyone knows about the famous lake Loch Ness). This word is used to describe a simple-minded foolish person, which is easy to manipulate. And so our main hero is. I think, that if such character should exist in real world, even a Russian kindergarten kid could easily fool him and make him its... uh... well, you should guess, what word goes here. And for this reason, as other characters, Akihisa also deserves to be hit with a poisoned axe in his forehead. And then with another axe. As a coup de grâce.

Oh, come on, man, if this anime is a parody, then the characters at least should act not so stereotypically. For example, let's take our moe girl, Himeji Mizuki. Instead of being cute and clumsy and other yadda-yadda-moe-stuff she should do something different, something out of the ordinary. For example, riding on an elephant, shouting "THIS! IS! JAAAAPAAAAAAN!" and shooting down UFOs with a shotgun which fires fried chicken legs. The parody is meant to be satiric or ironic to the source material (in this particular case, it's about "school" and "super-duper power" anime), not to bring all cliché and stereotypes over the top and up to eleven.

Well, there is one parody element that makes this show more interesting for otakus and kinda postmodern - loads of background events, references and shout-outs to different anime, videogames and whatsoever (yeah, the whole Evangelion-style episode is memorable only because of this). But, most of these references are quite openly revealed, it looks like they are waving hands at us and shouting "Look at me! I am an easter egg! I am an easter egg!" (this phrase is an easter egg itself too, ha-ha-ha). This makes BakaTest look more like Scary Movie.

Well, and what should I say about art and animation? Ah, let it be "OK", the picture is bright with colours, the characters are drawn pretty good, especially girls. Nothing else I could say about it.

And so about the sound. You see, guys and girls, because I watch all anime in subtitles, I concentrate my attention on the writings and I'm really not into that "seiyuu" thing, for me all Japanese voice actors, both female and male, sound the same. So, let's leave it as it is.

So, to sum it up, Baka to Test to Shoukanjuu is just an ordinary anime mostly for otakus who will undoubtedly have great pleasure while watching it. For anime beginners this series could be hard to understand because of all references (just like Haiyore! Nyaruko-san) It's not a great masterpiece, although you can kill some time with it. But keep in mind all the aforementioned things.

Dixi.

Reviewer’s Rating: 5

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Dec 7, 2011

ktulu007

Not Recommended

Baka to Test began as a series of light novels written by Inoue Kenji, of whom I could find no information. The anime adaptations currently consist of two seasons and an OVA, but The light novels are still going so there could be more of them in the future. For now, I'm just going to look at the first season.

The story is about a school where students are separated into different groups based on their grades with the dumbest students getting the worst room and equipment. The students can challenge each other to battles using summoned creatures with power based on their test scores ... and lower ranked group can use this to take the room and equipment of a higher ranked group should they win. A young girl named Himeji ends up in the lowest ranked group due to having been sick during the test and the other students decide to challenge the other groups to get a better room, mainly so that she can have a better environment to recover. The premise is pretty stupid and the execution is extremely shoddy. The over-arcing plot is full of holes and the writer constantly forgets or ignores how the created world was set up which means that the rules for summons change several times for no apparent reason. But it's primarily a comedy, so the lousy story doesn't matter as much as the humour. Unfortunately, the humour fails on every conceivable level. There are three joke types that are frequently repeated throughout the series. 1. Gay jokes, which aren't funny. 2. Jokes about abusive relationships, which also aren't funny. 3. Jokes about how the characters are all morons, which are only funny once or twice. Aside from those you get a lot of repeated jokes, most of which aren't funny the first time but even those that are cease being funny almost immediately through being repeated over and over and over again. It's like a twisted experiment to see how long you can tell the same bloody joke before it becomes/stops being funny. Incidentally, the answers are it will never be funny/with jokes like these, once.

The characters are incredibly flat. Most of them have a couple reoccurring jokes they're involved in and their characters revolve around those jokes. A few of the major characters get more than a couple jokes but they're still less compelling than wet cardboard. Another character issue is that every single character is an idiot, even the ones that the audience is told are intelligent. The only sign you get of intelligence is that they get a higher number for their summon. They don't act or say anything intelligent, ever. It's almost like the writer has no idea how to write intelligent characters, or even how intelligence works. Even characters of average intelligence don't exist in this. They're all absolute morons.

The art is decent, for the most part, but there's this odd tendency to change the artistic method completely at random times. It's like the anime was drawn by someone who really needed a dose of Ritalin.

The voice acting is atrocious. None of the characters show any depth or range of emotions. They all have one ridiculously exaggerated voice and either yell or whisper to illustrate "emotional range." Which doesn't work that way, I might add. If I wasn't familiar with Harada Hitmoi, Kato Emiri, Mizuhashi Kaori, Miyata Kouki, and several others from other anime I would think that they just got people with the most obnoxious voices possible. But it's just that the direction is terrible. The music is also really annoying.

The yuri factor is a 4/10. There's an openly lesbian character who has a one-sided crush on one of the major characters. Of course, she's just used for highly problematic gay jokes and nothing ever comes of her feelings. So it just ends up being infuriating.

Baka to Test is an unpleasant, unfunny, uninspired and unintelligent series. I feel ashamed of myself, and less intelligent, for having watched it. It was painful to sit through. The humour is either problematic or lackluster, the characters are insipid and the sound is an assault on the ears. My final rating for Baka to Test to Shoukanjuu is a 1/10. The only aspect of it that any effort went into was the art, and even that isn't good.

Reviewer’s Rating: 1

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