Maybe there's hope for this season after all.

Ichiban ushiro no Daimaou is hardly top-drawer. But it's got cute girls, panchira, lots of magic, a harem, and a likeable lead. And nipples, at least if you watch the AT-X version.

Tokyo MX hit the torrents first, at 480P, and I downloaded that as a sub. I also noticed a raw from AT-X at 720P, so I was curious and got that one, too. As I had already heard, the Tokyo MX version was censored. Sometimes it was a floating cartoon gizmo, and sometimes it was a big black area, and sometimes it was different art.

There's a power you sometimes see in magic shows involving girls which can completely shred a girl's clothing without making even the slightest mark on the tender, lovely skin beneath. I sure wish I knew how they do that. Whatever the technique is, it happens twice in this show -- with rather different results depending on which version you're watching. I've got four NSFW frame grabs below the fold.

It's interesting that they not only exposed more in the AT-X version, but changed her face. There were a couple of other cases like that where the Tokyo MX version was more cartoony.

As to the story? Our hero shows up as a transfer student to enter a school of magic. All transfer students have to face a magical creature that looks a bit like a bird, smoking a cigar, which serves something of the function of the Sorting Hat. It evaluates the health of the student, and then states what the student will eventually do for a career: soldier, doctor, magical engineer, demon lord.

That latter was the prediction for our hero.

That prediction seems like it may be self-fulfilling. Once everyone knows about it (and it spreads like wildfire on the rumor mill) everyone treats him differently. One girl tries -- twice -- to kill him, and both times the fight ends with him letting loose a titanic magical explosion. The first one ruins the classroom. The second one results in a very impressive crater:

What's more impressive is that there were three people (including our hero) at ground zero of that blast, and none of them were harmed -- except for the afore-mentioned clothes-shredding of one of the girls. Interestingly, the other girl's clothes weren't harmed in the slightest.

Magnificent stuff, magic is, isn't it?

I don't know if this will turn out to be anything worthwhile. I'm expecting B-grade story telling mixed with rather nice fan service, but I might be disappointed. It's not uncommon for shows like this to front-load fan service, so it may not keep  up.

On the other hand, the magic is cool. And our hero (name of Sai) seems to be ridiculously strong, at least judging from that crater, so it could be OK.

I guess the real question is this: will they tell a complete story? Will they finish it? It's based on a series of light novels which is not, as I understand it, finished.

Did I like it? Yeah, it was fun. I'll watch the next expisode.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in General Anime at 07:04 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
Post contains 548 words, total size 3 kb.