So, Infinite Stratos is finally over. All I can say is that I really need to pick better anime to blog about. I'm still a fledgling blogger, so maybe one day I might be able to tell earlier if it's worth my time. I can say this much, at least: I liked how things played out in the last couple of minutes of this anime. I really felt it was done very well. I'm not much for Houki's weird parting hairstyle though; I think she looks better with her hair down...but I guess all that matters is Ichika's taste. lulz
Story (plot)
A cheesy harem does not necessarily mean it needs to have no plot. The one huge and gaping hole to this anime was the lack of a decent plot. It seemed more like a cut-and-paste story that a 3-year-old could write. They had almost zero attempts at building any tension - or any attempt they did make was so badly done that it couldn't even be noticed. Maybe if even more plot events occurred, I could write more about this. It was quite literally: join class > class tournament > mystery robot shows up. That was everything of any importance in the timeline, which is pitiful. It is a sad day when I have to rate this even lower than Dragon Crisis.
~1/10
Story (non-plot)
I really liked the designs of the mecha. I mean, it was the main reason for me picking up this anime. It was different from the usual full mecha design and was more of an exoskeleton, which I liked a lot. I also wanted to see how well they would do a "female-dominated society"...and I think it was bad. Some of the characters were tsundere, but you did get quite a few of them that acted too "normally". It didn't give off the vibe of being female-dominated when everyone still went all dere-dere around Ichika. The story was slow at times, since nothing really happened plot-wise. The anime, by no means, had a bad flow; there was just lots of time spent on his harem and not enough on giving the anime a story. On the humour front, it was mediocre at best. I guess compared to something like Zombie (also airing this season), nothing can really hold up. There's so much that could've been done with this setting that it feels really wasted. This is another amazing world destroyed by garbage plots; sigh, sigh.
~6/10
I think this was decently done. The fight scenes were almost always cut short with lots of cutting away and showing much less of the action. I guess that was the only small thing that bothered me (and only a little). Nothing stood out as "amazing" on either end of the spectrum, I guess.
~7/10
Characters
I guess this is a big part of any anime with a harem. It's always humorous when each girl needs to have different hair colours and hairstyles to be easily differentiated. Well, in this anime, they also needed to be from a different country each, to further differentiate. The only big thing that kind of felt wrong was that there was more than one childhood friend. It's breaking the rules!!!!!! The girls themselves each had their own personality but still seemed very static. The zero-development with themselves or with Ichika made them pretty garbage. Ichika was no jewel, either; dense as a rock when the girls were pretty much throwing themselves at him. The only real redeeming factor was that he always fought for himself rather than letting his harem do the work.
~4/10
Personal Satisfaction
I gotta say: the ending really helped the anime in this category. Although the explanation of events were sketchy at best, I can't refute the stupid logic. It gave me some more closure with the final chat between Ichika and Houki. At least he knew which girl he really wanted and has decided by the end. I think many things could've been done better throughout the series but having a decent ending is probably the most important since it is what lasts. Having a random side character like Pika-tan helped a lot too, actually. XD
~7/10
Overall
I guess the only real way to describe this anime is "your average harem anime". Nothing stands out in any aspect and they are relying heavily on the girls of the harem to get people to watch. I mean, for a mecha-ish anime, they really don't fight much. Too much time is spent chasing after Ichika and not enough time on anything else. I'll chalk this up as an attempt to sell fanservice with a paper-thin plot as a mask.
Final Score: 5/10
~Pearz
