Mar 27, 2017
The worst thing about this series is that the basic premise gives almost everyone who has seen shows with similar set ups a horrible preconceived notion about how this show will play out.
I'll say this now: This is far more than a monster girl school-life harem, and has a level of character depth and genre awareness that screams "It sucks that other authors trashed what could have been something interesting."
What initially stood out to me was that they took every opportunity to subvert the typical harem bullshit you'll get in the likes of Highschool DxD and all that, and not in the To Love-ru way
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where they turn it up to 11 and say "Deal with it". That isn't to say there's no fanservice, but it's even more tasteful with it's delivery and presentation than other A-1 Pictures such as Sword Art Online.
The thing that made me completely fall in love with this series, though, is the portrayal of adults as...well...adults. In most other school-based anime, the teachers and parents will all be either cartoonishly strict and intolerant, or just as immature as the students around them. Rarely is there a teacher or parent who feels as real as they do in this series.
For example, the parents of the Demi's aren't just your average couple. It's obvious from their first appearance (and their behaviors towards the characters) that they exist as their own people outside of the immediate story. In addition, they are genuinely concerned and thoughtful towards the "conditions" that their children were born with (more on that in a moment).
The teachers also feel like genuine role models and guides for the children of the school. Even the Vice Principle who is played up as a sort of "villain" later on is shown immediately to have very real and very understandable reasons for his actions and choices, acting with the students' best interest in mind and not because the series feels the need to have a villain.
On top of all that, though, they decide to take an interesting approach on the whole "Demi-human" thing. Demis aren't just monsters born from other monsters. In this universe, being a Demi-human is a sort of genetic defect that people can be born with (For exaplme, Hikari is a Vampie, but her twin sister Himari is completely normal.) Not only does this add the extra question of "Are they still human, really?" but it also adds in the question of "Do they WANT to be treated like a normal human?"
With so many concepts to explore, you'd think that they would fall flat on that. But no. They frequently go into great detail about the conditions the demis have, and how many superstitions surrounding their demi-human race may have come about as a result, but it never feels like a gigantic info dump. It's worked seamlessly into the demi's own development, or other character's development in understanding and reaching out to the demis.
There is so much more I could say about this, but I'll just say that it's a shame A-1 Pictures picked this up and not some other studio. The Art and Music are really the only detriments to this series, but even so, they aren't bad. I'm just tired of the same A-1 Picture's face plastered everywhere on their works. That's why I'm still giving this series a 9 out of 10 and a definite recommendation.
Reviewer’s Rating: 9
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