This is seasonal harem but damn, they’re not holding back with the cliche fest. Probably wrong of me to think this way because what is a harem series without any cliches? However, I’m seeing a lot more male leads with the hidden background, extremely powerful but misunderstood type these days. The craze seemingly following Mahouka’s trainwreck of an adaptation with introducing characters that go through very little development since they are developed by a backstory instead of doing anything meaningful as the story actually progresses.
But shit, who am I kidding, it’s anime. It’s a medium to make money and girls do that, they could care less how their story and character development goes.
Let’s get right to it shall we?
What better way to start a harem series other than the male character immediately barging into a girl’s shower? Granted it’s outside and the school grounds are for all girls, but yes, the series starts with our male protagonist Kamito running into Claire Rouge in the middle of a bath in a small body of water. Claire immediately confirms her place on the harem Checklist as the token tsundere and calls out her titular gimmick Spirit weapon in form of a whip. Of course, corresponding to her hair color, her power is over fire.
Anyways, Kamito is able to save Claire from a tree she sliced and the two eventually begin walking to a nearby shrine. Claire apparently has some inner struggle and wish to get stronger and attempts to form a contract with a rather powerful spirit sealed inside a sword. She completely fails and Kamito is forced to make the contract with the ancient sword to save her.
So for whatever reason, Kamito is made to enter the all-girls school as the only male elementalist. The principal forces him to partake in the upcoming Blade Dance tournament for reasons that pertain to Kamito’s ex-partner/sword that apparently disappeared, which was contrary to his statements beforehand. Apparently the only other male elementalist happened to be the “demon king” who controlled over a ton of spirits. Knowing the genre and how it takes from the fantasy RPG cliches as well, any sort of legend or prophecy will immediately come true later on so this is completely relevant.
We’re introduced to the rest of the harem group already. First we have Ellis Fahrengart, the blue haired tsundere who treats Kamito like trash since he’s a disgusting male who provides for him a shed near the horse stable as his new lodging. Then in class we have Rinslet Laurenfrost, who also seems to treat Kamito like trash.
Honestly other than that, that’s all we got. The series reminds me of a rather recent series that also happens to feature a secretly powerful main character in a similar situation with Kamito here. I don’t like it any more than this series but it resembles this . It also reminds me of Machine Doll but at least that doesn’t as many cliches as this one. I could list all the comparisons but I got other stuff to write so that’s all for now folks.
Lair of the Idle 
Well you can always say “screw originality, its all about execution”, but some trends/trope does really started to grind me a bit.
Proper execution didn’t cross my mind once when viewing this.
Reasonable enough. Still keeping up with mahouka? Love to see you review it thought you probably already stated what you thought about it.
Here are my general complaints about Mahouka
First off, the series exist to show off how much Tatsuya is a literal God with a capital G. I wouldn’t have minded if the series focused on him and the side of the series that dealt with him as a military asset and all but why a highschool? Of all the settings they had to do, it had to be a highschool where Tatsuya is the envy of all men while every girl wants to get with him. I would have been perfectly alright if it was at least some other setting with Miyuki. They just HAD to put him in a highschool with a group of irrelevant characters in the end. Later, Tatsuya is revealed to have around 50 other people stronger than he is but they also happen to be female who also potentially want to get on him as well. For a such a developed world, they just had to limit itself to a highschool and pander to people who watch it for the girls.
Maybe it’s because I’ve been playing too many games and watching series I like with decent characters but Tatsuya’s character is something I find tiresome. It’s all about “backstory” that we never actually get to see. It’s never about the character actually undergoing the change, the change has already happened and the authors think that their “experiences” are enough to convey development. Whatever happened to characters going through changes? Some actual development as the series goes along?
You can argue that Mahouka is basically power fantasy for insecure/unhappy teenager(common problem in Japan apparently considering how popular the series is) and the discrimination between the bloom and the weed thing is something that never really tackled or explore, its just there so Tatsuya can be symphathize with and make him look like a badass when he beat the bloom
It’s not like Tatsuya himself trained himself to be like this, he was just handed these godlike abilities.
A bit irrelevant to the discussion, but I do find their parallels to OreImou which the fandom constantly draws kinda.. fun. How canon, I don’t know, but I would assume the parallels are VERY canon, since the comparison seem to have gained a strong consensus,