Makoto's review of Gakusen Toshi Asterisk

Hard Pass

When experiencing a TV show as bad as Gakusen Toshi Asterisk, it is easy to blame the source material for being bad. But that would not be fair. You can transform an unredeemable source into something at least commercially viable, like A1 Pictures did with Sword Art Online, or you can even transform something completely empty and devoid of soul into a heartfelt, complete and fulfilling show, like Kyoto Animation did with K-on!. An adaptation should be judged on its own. It should be judged on what it chooses to do with the source material. But even before that: what framework do you use to analyze a show like this? It tries to be science fiction, it tries to be romance, it tries to be action, and it tries to be ecchi. It fails at all of them so spectacularly, that one could argue that it transcends genre conventions. There is a vague concept about values being inverted. The social structure changed after the so-called inversion. But no values are inverted. You could remove this part completely and nothing would change. It is meaningless. There are unexplained gadgets all around, the setting seems to try to be futuristic, but there is no substance and no effect whatsoever on the characters. It seems like the science fiction elements are put there by a bad AI that was only fed pictures of what science fiction should be, but never a single word about it. A romance cannot exist in a Harem context. It cannot exist if a character is too immature to participate in it. It cannot exist if feelings are never acknowledged, discussed or resolved. Therefore, giving this show the benefit of ignoring those, what does it have to offer as an action and ecchi show? Well, not much, unfortunately. Action wise, some fights are so anti-climatic, they look like a parody. There are no stakes and characters are not motivated by anything. Ayato himself says in episode one that he has no wish, no reason to be there. Fighting is unexplained and unengaging. Ayato is too powerful and the show cannot achieve stakes anywhere else. As an ecchi, there are too few compelling scenes, and although I can see the appeal of the female character designs, the suggestive or otherwise explicit scenes are not compelling, with some exceptions. Let's talk about those exceptions: The Good Claudia is the one and only character that could be moved to a different show and be salvaged. She is the only one with compelling fanservice scenes. Although she is, in the end, made of 7 tired tropes attached to boobs, at least the tropes are sort of executed well, and the boobs are big. She is a Lucoa-type character. Calm, collected, horny, with enigmatic power and inexplicable love. The voice acting is not to be blamed, but Tamaru Atsushi is not up to the task of carrying a TV show, and I don't find his acting here particularly good. His performance aside, everyone else is here doing their unfortunate jobs of contributing to this tragedy. The bad: Motoyama Satoshi has never made a single show that I like. In fact, he has done a lot of shows that I consider subpar, like Kaichou wa Maid-sama!, Boku wa Tomodachi ga Sukunai and Yahari Ore no Seishun Love Comedy wa Machigatteiru. I find the background music and the sound effects distracting sometimes, and the OST varies from OK to very bad. Ono Manabu does not do a bad job here. Firstly, the first episode does not establish what was needed. Instead, we get a classic A1 Pictures exposition dialogue where information that is not needed right now is dumped on the viewer, instead of using the time to build the characters' motives, relationships and setting. The tone is also not set properly in any audiovisual way. After watching two episodes, an unattentive viewer would not know what to expect, because the dialogue does not match what is shown. What I mean is: The dialogue and exposition dump tells us that the events in the city are deadly, and then show they are not. We are told students compete, but fights are never close. Good directing would cut one of these to be consistent. The choice of using CGI students was wrong. It always is. Ayato is shown to be at times afraid of women, and at times gropes them. On the art aspect, one could say it is an example of bland "visual novel adaptation" art,or an example of bland A1 Pictures art. Those are both true. Everything is uninspired and subpar. There are a lot of very economical shots all around. In the end, this is a bland, bad adaptation of a terrible light novel. People working in this did not care, and nor should you.