This was actually pretty good. Nothing astounding about it, yet, and a lot of romcom tropes to be sure, but there's spirit in it, life. And It's growing on me.

Our hero is Ikki Kurogane. In the school his rank is "F", which means he's flunking. His nickname in the school is "The Worst". But he isn't sullen or resentful; he is upbeat and cheerful and he's working his best to be as good as he can be, even though he has next-to-no magic. He attends a school in Japan for Magical Knights, so his lack of magic is a serious impediment.

Stella Vermillion is a princess of a foreign land whose magical power ranks "A". She has decided to attend this school, for reasons which come out later. The school headmaster assigns her to share Ikki's room.

Boy meets Girl, who has a spectacular figure and exquisite taste in lingerie. Shortly thereafter she powers up and is about to try to kill him, when the headmaster shows up to inform them both that they've been assigned as roommates.

Well, Stella ain't happy with that, and to settle the whole business they are going to fight a mock duel, using something like the rules and magical protections used in the InterMiddle championship in Nanoha Vivid.

The match is announced and a crowd shows up to watch it. Can't you just feel the excitement?

Given Ikki's reputation, and his nominal rank of "F", Stella assumes it will be an easy win. But she finds herself struggling, so she eventually decides to haul out her magic and become a supersaiyajin.

It isn't really a spoiler to reveal that it doesn't help, and that she loses. That was pretty much a foregone conclusion.

So the two of them come to an accomodation and agree to be roommates.

Stella had a talk with the headmaster about Ikki, and her main reaction was that categorizing him as "F" was blatantly unfair. The headmaster tells her that the problem is that the evaluation algorithm isn't tuned properly for someone like Ikki, because it only evaluates the ways in which Ikki is weak, without giving any credit for the multitude of ways he's actually really good.

When Stella first arrived, she told the headmaster that the reason she was there was because she was constantly put in a box back home, a box labeled "genius", and couldn't free herself from it to try to work to improve herself. That seems to be why the headmaster assigned her to Ikki as a roommate. She tells Stella that she should try to learn from him.

This is a harem show and in this first episode we met at least two other girls who are probably going to end up in the harem, but it's clear that Stella is the first girl, and the others are just going to be complications.

And I'm intrigued. There's plenty of potential here for this show to go completely off the rails, of course, but there's also potential here for a really good series.

The best thing is Ikki. He isn't a Marty Stu but he isn't a potato-kun either. He's just a really nice guy who is doing his best to overcome some serious failings, and trying to make himself as good as he can be. Ikki isn't competing with anyone else and he frankly doesn't care what anyone else thinks about him, which is why his nickname of "The Worst" rolls off him without leaving a mark.

If they maintain that, and don't descend into idiotic romcom tropes, it could end up being pretty good. Stella is giving tsundere vibes and the best thing would be for that to fade out, though I suppose that's too much to hope for.

Rakudai Kishi no Cavalry gets a tentative thumbs-up.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in General Anime at 07:11 PM | Comments (9) | Add Comment
Post contains 643 words, total size 4 kb.