Back to D-Lusional's Profile D-Lusional's Profile

Infinite Stratos is a pretty decent anime, nothing too good or too bad to enjoy.

First off, the good points about this anime is the story. It's good so see some original content that brings the watcher into the anime to find out more about it. We get one genius (potentially a sexist too) who has created an exo-skeleton suit called IS (Infinite Stratos) that can only be piloted by woman, and thus split the world into two with women who are now the dominate gender, and the males who are classified as feeble, weak etc. And so enters our dense harem lead Ichika Orimura who ... can for no reason at all pilot an IS and is forced to attend an IS Academy filled with girls to fill in the harem and "one man, limitless girls" quota that this anime brings to the table. The plot doesn't even try to touch on the subject of bringing equality back to the world, but focuses purely on one boy and his life around girls who are head over heels for him just because he's a boy.

The characters, oh boy the characters of this anime are so cliche and generic. Our main boy and girls is a dense harem MC, a childhood friend, the boastful princess-type, the second childhood friend, the sweet and likable one and lastly the girl with no common sense. While I'm on the subject, let me get the character Dub/Sub voices off my chest. The Sub is 100x better than the Dub. Why? The Subs sound more natural and doesn't seem to sound a bit racist. While in the Dubs, they have fake and poorly voiced accents for the main five harem girls, while the behind-the-scene characters such as the unnamed students are awfully voiced. They sound bland and emotionless without any true effort put into them. For example, one student in episode 2 sounded like a hippie. It's that awful.

Moving on, the art and music are without a doubt really good with smooth 3D animations during IS screen time and return to the 2D animation afterwards. The opening and ending of this anime are cheerful, sung by female J-pop bands.

In all, the anime can be enjoyed if you're a fan of mecha, harem, cliche comedy and really don't care about the characters.

Gundam SEED was the first Gundam anime that I watched during high school and it got me into the Gundam franchise. I would always stay up late to watch it on Cartoon Network and I adored it back then, but now that I've matured more I see the hate for this show which I didn't honestly see back then.

Story
Gundam SEED is set in the future where humanity has reached the space age and genetic modifications, which the latter leads to a hated war between the Naturals (natural born people) on Earth and Coordinators (modified born people) in space colonies known as PLANTs. To put ... a stop to the war, Kira Yamato, a Coordinator living in a Neutral Colony has to join with Naturals on a warship to fight his own kind while he has to fight a childhood friend along the way. This seems like an interesting story with one friend pitted against each other in war, but all we get is one constantly screaming the other's name followed by a pew-pew from a laser rifle.

Art
For created in the early 2000s and the first Gundam anime to be drawn in CG, it was more than good for its time. The character and mobile suit detail was impressive, although the background art looked it was made in the era of Gundam WING or Mobile Fighter G Gundam.

Sound
I have to say the sound was the best part about this anime. It captures the moment almost perfectly with either emotional, intense or epic fight music. The openings an endings are top-notch and I could listen to them all day long.

Character
I have to be brutally honest here. The majority of characters were unique in their own way, except for a few which are the main characters. Kira Yamato for instance, is the WORST one of them all. He is probably the most annoying protagonist in any anime. Throughout the anime you'll hear him either crying loudly or moaning about everything else like how he hates to kill and how wrong it is, despite being in a war.

Overall
The anime is neither mediocre or perfect but if you ignore the constant footage recycling again and again over the 50 episodes (48 if you're watching the remastered) then this is at least 7 out of 10.

Once I finished the preview for this OVA when GundamInfo released it on Youtube, I was instantly hyped for it and after months of patiently waiting and finally clicking the video to play, my hype died becoming nothing more than a disappointment at the conclusion.

If you read the title of this OVA, “Island Wars” and thought that the cast got invited to a large free-for-all tournament being held on an archipelago, introducing new Gunpla and characters to the Gundam Build Fighter franchise, you are wrong. Instead of an OVA worth to be hyped about we get the cast who get to be testers for ... a new Gunpla Battle Simulator and when things go wrong, the cast team together and pulls off the same shtick the final episode of Gundam Build Fighters did.

To me, this OVA fells like just like a normal episode of Gundam Build Fighters: Try without bringing anything unique. What really got under my skin about this OVA is that it was mainly used to pamper to people who watched Gundam Build Fighters completely for a bit of fanservice.

The ending left me speechless, not in a way that wants me to re-watch again and again, but in the form of cringing because the ending was so rushed and was not very compelling. Not even a single particle of awe.

5/10

With more than 15 re-watches counted, I think it's time I dug into the review of this rare gem and express my thoughts about it.

Let me start off the good points with our MC, Kenshi Misaki. He is a new intake to the common dense and generic MCs of a Harem genre. Kenshi brings excitement with his constant enthusiasm and energy when ever he is on screen so it's almost impossible to get bored of him. What really shines in him the most is his comedy. Whenever he gets himself in situations, he pulls funny and cute faces at the same time. The supporting characters ... bring their own hilarious and cute moments as well when they interact with the MC.

The music fits perfectly into the setting that the story is held in another world, despite hearing the same track played over several times like the OVA only has fewer than a dozen music tracks. The art is smooth and the details the creators put into the characters was well thought out. Each character design blends in with their personalities which makes them likable all the more.

The story is an original one indeed. The part of an anime character coming into another world seems cliche, but what picks this OVA from most is that betrayal is stirring while the general story (Kenshi getting used to the new world) is flowing at an easy-to-catch pace. Although I have to argue that the main villains are presented before us in an obvious way. I think they could have held us in suspense with who the real villain is behind the scenes instead of showing us who the antagonist is off the bat.

Now that I've talked about the good, it's time for the bad.

As I said in the music paragraph, the soundtrack is too few with the same tracks played over and over again throughout the OVA. It feels like there was only six soundtracks including the OP and the ED. This got annoying a few times for me before.

Another bad is the lack of mechanical combat. After Ep 1, we don't see any mechanical combat until Ep 5, and then again at Ep 8 - 13. As a mech fan myself, I was disappointed in this factor. As one of the Top Helpful Reviews said, the majority of the story is set in the academy and it can get boring to a few who are desperate to see two mechs fighting against each other.

The last bad I want to talk about, we are left with a cliffhanger at the end with NO signs of a Season 2 OVA. If you want more of Geminar, you might have to turn to fanfictions I'm afraid.

I'll give this a 9/10. A must watch for people with mecha, ecchi and harem tastes.

Shuumatsu No Harem, or in English translation World’s End Harem is that type of story that’ll only attract the audience of male teens and young adults, as the manga presents itself as a male fantasy with a few men left alive on Earth to help reproduce with the vastly outnumbering females. This manga was inspired by other anime and manga titles with the same “one male, infinite girls” concept like Nagasarete Airantou and Infinite Stratos. Like the said two anime/manga titles, this manga shares a mutual element with them and that’s a dense MC.

Story (6/10)
The base of the story is that a few males ... who have been affected by a disease without a cure, so society decides to put them into cryostasis for five years until they can come up with a remedy to cure it. Five years later, the main character Mizuhara wakes up from his five year sleep only to find out that not only has he been cured, but a virus known as the MK (male killer) was spread. As the name implies, it killed nearly all of the males, save those in cryostasis. Then he’s assigned an agent, Suou Mira to help him in his daily life as a servant of sorts, and create an atmosphere he’s comfortable in, assigning him chosen females to mate with and begin recuperating humanity. However as I said, this manga has a dense MC and he constantly shoots down every proposal, refusing to help repopulate just because he wants to be with his girlfriend from five years ago before he went into cryostasis. It’s respectable to stay loyal to a fiancée, but come on, the world is on the brink of extinction and the world needs the MC’s desperate help to restore humanity and he decides it’s not important to him. This is the reason why readers of this manga hate him so much. Heck, another male that pops out later on is 100x more likable than the MC.

Characters (3/10)
I don’t have much to say about the characters. All I can say is that they are so bland and boring. You can’t find a single piece of connection or feeling between you and them. There’s an exception for the male I mentioned a few seconds ago who has an interesting and sympathetic backstory of being bullied in high school, but is now enjoying his peaceful life five years later without a single bully in sight,

Enjoyment (3/10)
There isn’t much enjoyment so to say in this manga. It doesn’t have any moments or cliffhangers that make you want to read the next chapter right away in suspense and find out what happens. All you feel what you finish a chapter is “Okay that chapter is done.” You don’t feel any excitement in any way. The only enjoyment at the moment is the fan-service with nudity and R18+ scenes for the male audience.

Verdict (5/10)
This manga has the potential to become better with more character developments, exciting moments and make the main character a more likable person for the audience. I don’t recommend this manga if you’re after a good story.