Asterisk War

Summary: >

Academy City is known for the "Star Wars Festival", where contestants battle it out in front of an audience. Ayato is a new student at an academy intending to join the tournament and find out what happened to his sister who participated years ago. The problem is he needs a partner. Luckily he encounters a popular but testy girl also lacking a partner. As the deadline for entries draws near, she settles on Ayato for a parter, but may be interested in him for other reasons. The tournament is only a part of the forces conspiring against them, leading to more challenges than expected..

Thoughts: >

From the imagination of a horny teenager who plays too many video games and lacks any sort of creativity, springs Asterisk War - because punctuation is going to pay!

Take a bunch of girls who are just so awesome all the guys worship them, yet intimidated by them because they're so strong or whatever. But then there's a guy so awesome he's even better than them, and somehow finds himself in situations where he can save them. Over and Over and Over. Then they shower him with gratitude, before shamelessly attempting to lead him down the road to deflowering them (which of course never happens). Over and over and over. This is Asterisk war.

The reason I mention the rescuing thing is because Asterisk War is basically a chain of events for Ayato to save various fair maidens. Aside from the usual harem stuff in a high tech context, nothing else happens. The plot surrounds a "fighting tournament", (the lowest plot substitute excuse for "action") but there's surprisingly little fighting. Worse still, fights are basically random mega-power blasts which overwhelm opponents, unless it's supposed be a "challenge" for Ayato to overcome. The "romance" between her and Ayato is a total dud. It's the same generic male guy afraid to do naughty stuff to girls who clearly want to. Don't even get me started on the whole thing with a princess from another country joining a fighting tournament so she can make money and save an orphanage.

But at least this show looks nice.

How does all this pan out after 12 episodes? Almost nothing is accomplished. Sure Ayato defeats a girl wearing a school uniform in a totally inappropriate (but kinda awesome) way, but it ends with a mysterious person eluding to an evil scheme, accompanied by evil smile. Then some other person eluding to evil scheme + evil smile. Then a THIRD random person doing the same thing. Twelve episodes of barely any story and nothing accomplished, but oh so much mystery! Seriously? Addition: I started watching season 2 and my (very low) interest stalled out quickly enough to stop. I realized Asterisk War is crippled by moving right into the fighting tournament, because this denies any possibility of it properly developing a story.

While it looks nice and does the usual harem stuff (I'm referring to that as a feature here), I'm giving this my lowest rating. Thus far there is no story, and the fighting sucks. If something (or anything) happens in a second season I'll happily "upgrade" this rating, but as it stands now it's a total waste of time. Asterisk War is like the creation of a little kid who triumphantly declares he will make the best thing ever, tries to jam things he liked into a show, but can't actually make any of it work coherently and isn't even sure why it's there. My rating is very harsh, but a line needs to be drawn somewhere and "harem stuff happens" isn't enough by itself.

Screen Caps: >