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PLEASE READ: This is a review of both IS seasons. Scroll to the very bottom of this review to see IS S2 review (it's legit I promise!!)

There is absolutely nothing wrong with over-used generic stories. Nothing, really! Except when they're like IS. The anime that failed from the start. Though I can't say I'm surprised, with predictable story, characters, there's nothing to keep me guessing or wondering what's going to happen next.

I can sum up the story with a couple of common words:
Boy
Girl(S)
High school
Mechas

... Now go ahead and guess: Will the story be interesting or not?
There you go.

Instead of putting us into a world where the reality of a Woman > Man type world with mechas and perhaps applying Marshall Mcluhan's four laws to that, and showing us the complexities of it's layout. Instead we get, teen boy hustled by horny teen girls.

Plot? Oh I'm sorry, THAT WAS THE PLOT!!!

In all honesty though: the story takes a while to introduce the full cast using a few episodes dedicated to each girl. In some parts there are fights and a tournament, terrorists yadda yadda blohmadda.

The art suffice to say was, great!(it is in no way close to any of the other factors in terms of weight) The settings were detailed enough so I could recognize the general things. You could identify the main characters easily as well (although you can't remember their names cause they're blander than me blending water). The fights were, pretty good but the MC should really ask people to stop giving his butt to him as a damn Christmas gift. All I can say is, decently-good.

The sound was fine as well, but no really interesting music to get your blood pumping.

Characters: Shit. Now I know what you're thinking, "Hey don't be too harsh, the characters are vibrant and have different personalities". I say NO. Let me explain:

What makes a good character? Personality sure! but what other qualities should they have? A decent art model yes. But what makes the character -stand out from the rest-? There we go.

Picture those 5 girls. Imagine in your head about how they interact with Ichika. Now take away Ichika. What do you see now? Nothing.

You know that saying where you say "I can't imagine X without X". Yeah well that's mostly used in a positive context. Here? Bad.

Ok I found their names and here: let's see how this goes now.

Houki: Childhood Tsundere. Enough said.
Cecilia: Proud, stuck-up rich girl who likes Ichika.
Rin: Chinese Loli (pig-tails are bonus OH YEAH!!)
Charlotte: Blonde girl who tried to be a guy.
Laura: Angry German Loli with military background.
BONUS: Chifuyu: Angry older sister, constantly hits Ichika. Gets mad at him for unfair reasons.
BONUS: Tabane: Created the idiocy that was IS.

See? Aside from the 2 bonus characters, I can't see any sort of character in these Haremettes. All I see is some saltless-butter of a bunch of dolls. This is the problem in most harems. (ignoring the fact that harems in general suck) The girls are nothing without the dumb MC to anchor them to be pseudo realistic in any sense.

Almost forgot Ichika.
He sucks......I won't go too much into it I'll point form it.

-Too stupid to exist.
-Boring personality
-Scared of girls
-Did I mention boring?


Enjoyment. I forced myself to watch this because it was so bad, I really had to see just to what extent of bad this was. No I don't torture myself to watch anime, I did this as a self experiment to see just what to expect when going into this type of genre. It didn't disappoint my expectations at least (good!) because they were zero (oh...). But seriously, I was bored as heck. I was very tempted to skip to the second halves of the episodes to see some action... then to my dismay finding out that there was no action in some episodes. Boring Boring Boring. *SPOILER* Not even that climactic battle with Laura was good, it was just stupid in all places. *END SPOILER*

This anime was bad, I'd hate to see it's manga/LN version because I bet that's a bunch of useless writing.

I obviously expected too much from this anime. No wrong. I expected too much of what I WANTED from this anime. Instead, it did the usual pander otaku schtick and rolled with it. Obviously it was a harem/romance/romcom/highschool/mecha anime. But still, just seeing these always piss me off at how blatantly Japan doesn't care to try and even try something new for once.

The settings could really have been expanded on. Like I said, Marshall Mcluhans 4 laws could have been applied here.

Enhancement: No brownies here, this is too easy to explain.

Reversal: Instead of it's intended purpose of space exploration, it could have added on to that, explaining how technology can be manipulated into a purpose of reversal.

Retrieve: What earlier actions/service could have been brought back because of the intricacies of IS?

Obsolesce: What does this technology make obsolete. Again too easy.

It could have showed these 4 laws applied in greater detail. EVEN IF YOU DON'T KNOW MARSHALL MCLUHAN, there could have been some more focus on looking at the mechs do stuff. But no, Ichika and his teenage crisis with his girls is wayy more important. (sigh)

But as I said. It was doomed from the start when it said Harem, Ecchi and those buzz words right off the bat.



...

Anyways here's my IS S2 review.

It's shit.

THANKS FOR READING!!!

I thought this anime was going to be really good. I watched the first episode and thought maybe it gets better later (which I was told happened in the Light Novels). Sadly it didn't. I really wanted this anime to succeed, with my friend introducing it to me. However it's not what it's lacking is the problem, it's what it does too much of.


~Story~
-I gave it a 5 because I hardly could get into the story. When it introduced a school setting, alarms already started going off in my head. 'Oh no, this isn't going to be one of those convoluted teenage identity crisis dramas ... is it?'. Thankfully it wasn't. Unfortunately it was something else just as bad. Seriously what is it with this "Blooms and Weed" classification of the students? This really doesn't make sense because it's just another little path for the Gary-Stu of a main character to completely trample like he does everything else. A little action here and there, mostly exposition, almost NO development of plot or character. Utter bore.

{Art}
-It's not too shabby. The fight scenes are nice with the magical effects and what not. Only problem is, the fights last like what? Less than a second? No seriously that happens. It's foolish. The reasoning behind it is even more so. However it is decent, passable.

[Sound]
-Same here, although the droning of the main character doesn't help. Not much to say honestly because it's just that: fair. Nothing great but at the same time nothing bad to point out.

\Character/
-Oh boy here we go. Like I said: the MC was emotionless for a reason which was extremely stupid. The relationship between the MC and his little sister is just iffy. Why does it exist? Is the creator trying to tease at some sort of incestuous relationship? Is he trying to induce some sort of comedic value (since it is only hinted at). Besides that little sister is just plain soulless like every other character in the show. She's only there to make the older brother look good like some sick fantasy of a wish-fulfillment type story. Without him? She's absolutely NOTHING. At least the other characters have some sort of niche trope to fill although still laughable since the main character is just so good at everything. (stu stu stew stoo)

-Enjoyment-
-Interesting AT FIRST because I was hyped to see this "magic" in action. I saw the first fight. I tried to be forgiving, watching it recapped in the second episode. Disappointment. All this show did was talk about something. Nobody ever said "I FEEL this" or "This makes me want to do X". And there's the problem right there. Almost little to no expression. And if these characters are so unwilling to show some real emotion? Why should I? Oh yeah like I could feel sorry for that samurai girl when she was an idiot for mistaking her senior's words a few years ago. Honestly, there was nothing to pull me in. Nothing to say: 'Watch this anime, it's interesting for this reason!'. But there is no reason. Do I want to see triumph after triumph? No. I want to see development, feeling, action. Some substance to this lifeless anime.


!Overall?
-It was bad:

-Story was boring. It was a generic school setting with generic student barriers with a generic unbalanced ratio between female and male student characters. Yeah, you know where I'm going with this.

-Art was Ok
-Sound was Ok

-Boring characters with little to no substance. The MC was boring and never made anything interesting. His little sister is a damn barbie doll. Everyone else is there to make our robot of an MC look good.

-Nigh enjoyable, unless you like to jump on hype trains, see Gary-Stus just do boring stuff because of self-projection unto characters FTW.

It could have been good. It really could have. Removing the little sister because she provides nothing but a pseudo goal for the main character would have immensely improved the story because then it would have been fun seeing a robot own everything and then do some exposition for the hell of it. Giving the characters more substance because: seriously... what are their names again? Anyways, not much to say but don't blame me, blame a boring anime. Cheers.