This show is Dog Days crossed with Ichiban Ushiro no Daimaou, approximately. Sort of.

Our hero is Akatsuki. He was summoned to another world to become the champion of Princess Listy, whose kingdom was besieged by a demon lord. Akatsuki gained enormous powers of magic and combat skills, and eventually defeated the demon lord, quite possibly killing him, though that's not completely clear. The demon lord, for whatever reason, entrusted his daughter to Akatsuki to care for, and to prevent her from bring destruction.

Or something like that.

Akatsuki decided that it was time to return home. Princess Listy didn't want to let him go, and sent her ninja maids to stop him, and we start the show with him fighting the maids in a forest as he tries to reach a magical portal which will return him home.

The fight is rather anticlimatic, a real mismatch. Princess Listy herself waits for him at the portal and makes one last attempt to convince him to stay, but he leaves anyway.

So back home again, he opens the bag he's been carrying all this time. The demon lord's daughter is in it, naked. Her name is Myuu.

The two of them are instantly detected when they return, and are instantly enrolled as students in the Babel Institute -- for free, and involuntarily. Akatsuki decides that the cover story for Myuu is going to be that she's his younger sister, who vanished long ago. The two of them met in the other world and he brought her back again. This excuses her living with him, I guess, but it also makes him available for any love interest that comes along.

Initially I had high hopes for this. Then I watched the preview, and thought maybe it was going to be a mess. Now I've watched the first episode, and it was really good. I'm getting hopeful again.

It really came down to whether Akatsuki was a perve or a decent guy. He's kind of half way in between. He isn't a piece of scum like the guy in High School DxD, and he also isn't a wide-eyed idealist like Shinku in Dog Days. He's a bit cynical, and a bit taken with his own power. I think he's due to be taken down a notch, which will help him.

He has a trick where he can steal a girl's bra and panties right through her clothing, which is handy for demoralizing her and making her stop attacking him. Seems to have been one of the special abilities he picked up, but that's not all there is to his powers and fighting skills.

There's some sort of prophecy regarding him: he is "the true Hero and Supreme King", or he will be. The unreasonably powerful student council learns of this immediately, and the student council president, clearly giving off "bad guy" vibes, challenges Akatsuki. It isn't a fight, but it does suggest that Akatsuki might have trouble dealing with Kyouya.

SubDESU picked an ATX raw to sub, so we immediately get the answer to the question that matters most to us: Yes, Myuu does have nipples.

Now I surely don't mind gratuitous nudity. But it can be handled well or badly. I liked it in Daimaou, but in dreck like High School DxD it didn't save things. It spices up a show, but spice is no substitute for meat. You still need a good central character and a reasonable story to tell. And the possibility is there for such a thing in this show.

Akatsuki doesn't seem to be a jerk. He seems to be taking his role as guardian of Myuu seriously, and that is something of a "pet the dog" element. The underwear-stealing thing is something he thinks is funny. It isn't like Happosai.

It is also helpful that the relationship between Akatsuki and Myuu is starting well. They're pretending to be siblings, and he doesn't seem to be lusting after her. He's treating her well, and she doesn't seem to harbor any resentment towards him.

So while he does seem a bit cocksure, he is overall rather admirable, and that was essential to make the show worth watching. I'm holding out a bit of hope now that this could be decent.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in General Anime at 10:32 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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