Taimadou Gakuen 35 Shiken Shoutai

Title:Taimadou Gakuen 35 Shiken Shoutai
Anti-Magic Academy: The 35th Test Platoon
対魔導学園35試験小隊
Overall:Watch
Keywords: , , , ,
Notables: Animation - SILVER LINK
HOSOYA Yoshimasa
OOKUBO Rumi
SHIRAISHI Ryoko
UEDA Reina
People with magic powers are close to being wiped out. Just as the balance of power and military might had once shifted from swords to sorcery, it shifts once again to guns. Takeru Kusanagi goes to "AntiMagic Academy," a training facility for Inquisitors of Heretics who crack down on the dwindling threat posed by magic users. However, Takeru cannot use guns at all and can only fight with a sword. As a result, he is relegated to the 35th Test Platoon, the motley "small fry platoon" for poor students. One day, Oka Otori, the ultra-elite pistol master who already has her qualifications for witch-hunts, joins the platoon.
(Synopsis courtesy of ANN)

12 episodes
OverallArtAnimationCharacter Design MusicSeries StoryEpisode StoryReviewer
Watch 8 7 8 5 5 5 Ggultra2764 [series:3120#1552]
Largely a pretty by-the-numbers anime as far as story and characters go, the series attempts to be a mix of magic action and harem romantic comedy focusing on male lead Takeru and the girls of his brigade involved in an organization that fights enemy sorcerers. The series is divided up into several story arcs that explore personal problems affecting Takeru and the girls to varying degrees, though these largely felt like window dressing since the characters are still largely the same as they were since the start of the series after their story arcs wrap up and nothing with the conflict between rival organizations within Anti-Magic Academy felt too compelling to engage me. Plus, the series also gets into a number of the typical tropes involving harems when the girls are shown to have varying degrees of interest in Takeru by usually arguing amongst one another to get his attention and usually trying to make advances on him, this involving the title's occasional habit of dabbling into pointless fan service. In short, I was rather underwhelmed by this series with how typical it felt with its story and characters, and highly doubt I'm dabbling into this series again anytime soon.

Last updated Wednesday, November 23 2022. Created Wednesday, November 23 2022.
Unevaluated Stretch [series:3120#628]
(One episode watched):

Do mangaka, the authors of manga, include the painfully common cliches like 'guy trips and falls on girl, and finds himself with his hand on her breast' or do the anime people add those things when manga are converted to anime? I suspect it's the latter. There seems to be a standard framework for the conversions: take the manga, add a trip scene, and perhaps a 'guy walks into room of partially naked girl' scene (or something similar) ten minutes later, and voila, what we now have is an anime that will do fairly well thanks to the inevitable urges of teenage boys. If there was any quality to the manga to begin with, that's a bonus, but not really necessary. That seems to be the way the average anime people think.

And Taimadou seems to have been made by thoroughly average anime people. The first scene of episode one made me wonder if this might actually be a serious, dramatic show instead of the usual fanservice-driven drivel masquerading as a comedy, but that delusion of mine was quickly dispelled. This is another show which strives to be average rather than excel, since that would involve taking risks. 'Magic Academy' shows are dime-a-dozen these days, and the anime industry just keeps cranking them out. What yet another one needs is some originality to set itself apart from the rest, but originality is in short supply. Yet another cliché is that swords are somehow better than guns, and here magic is used to make that happen. It's sort of like how nuclear weapons somehow have to be disqualified from mecha shows so that one mecha or another can claim to be the ultimate weapon. You might even say Taimadou is a harem show, since there is only one male, namely platoon leader Takeru. Perhaps the problem with Taimadou is that it can't decide whether to be a serious show or a fanservice driven one. Near the end it appears that we are supposed to be moved by a emotional revelation which the previously gruff and distant Oka makes, but that just seemed discordant after the show had attempted to exploit the usual patronizing fanservice tricks. Maybe the manga was a credible dramatic tale, but the anime people insisted it had to be given the usual crapola in order to be worth making into an animated series. I did not watch episode one until nearly a month into the fall season, and could have converted the second episode of the series as well, but I had a strong feeling that one episode would be more than enough to convince me that Taimadou wasn't worth watching, and I was right.

Last updated Thursday, October 29 2015. Created Wednesday, October 28 2015.

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