The show opens up with Kagurazaka Asuna doing a bizarre incantation in hopes that her homeroom teacher will once again be Takahata-sensei. Unfortunately, it turns out that it was just a joke that her friend Konoka made up, and they have to hurry to make it to the first day of class on time. While sprinting to Mahora Academy, a 10 year old boy pulls up alongside Asuna and mentions that she has “a look of unrequited love” on her face. Asuna beats him up and then runs off to class (but not before he accidentally sneezes and blows her skirt up). Upon getting to homeroom, they are beset with just about every anime stereotype ever, but the best part is that Asuna’s friends Haruna and Yue are trying to get man-shy (and fellow library staffer) Miyazaki Nodoka to look at yaoi!!!! Good times until it turns out that the homeroom/English teacher is actually Negi Springfield (the boy from before) and not Takahata sensei. Asuna’s day gets worse when she finds that her springtime lival of her youth, Yukihiro Ayaka, is also in her homeroom. Asuna calls Ayaka a pedophile (since she seems to really like Negi) and Ayaka calls Asuna a violent monkey with a geezer fetish, and so the class is taken up with cat fighting (interrupted only temporarily with more skirt-shredding sneezing). Later, when Negi is brooding, he sees Nodoka falling down stairs under the weight of a stack of books, and so Negi has to whip out his standard-issue RPG staff and use his wind powers to break her fall. Asuna sees all of this and has her suspicions about Negi confirmed.
I didn’t know much about the show other than that it had good art, but from the OP I quickly found out what type of show this would be. Yeah it wasn’t anything to scream and shout about, but I thought it was kinda enjoyable. The art was very good and the comedy was ok. Really the best part about these harem shows is that you (the viewer) can sit at home and pick a favorite girl to root for and try to predict the winners and the losers. It’s like watching sports or those reality competition shows. From what I saw, I liked Ayaka, but the show is still rather young. The sheer amount of stereotypical schoolgirl designs (even a robot girl!!!) ensure that there will be a team girl for everyone to root for. I’m looking forward to this show as a nice fluffy change of pace from the other shows on my watchlist. OP/ED and general music were decent as well. Most of all, this show makes me think of Full Metal Alchemist with harem, and that sounds great to me!
This post was written by...
Kabitzin – who has written 1970 posts on Sea Slugs! Anime Blog.
One of the founders of Sea Slugs, I handle most of the blog admin tasks while wearing my I AM BOSS shirt. I like my action series well choreographed, and my romance series extra trashy. I also have a soft spot for puns.
{ 10 comments… read them below or add one }
Ugh….and I thought having 12 girls in Sister Princess was bad enough, now they throw in an entire classroom. The character designs were so generic, I almost gave up on it after the crappy OP. Luckily the show itself was a bit more amusing, but still…
LOL I thought the OP was hilarious. It took me FOREVER to cap all 30 of those screens and I had to keep shrinking the picture size. You gotta have a fav to root for! Where do we place our bets?
*looks at the first 4 vols of the manga that I still haven’t read yet*
hmm… I sort of enjoyed this episode but I think it’s a tad overboard with 20+ girls, even for an harem series. Odds are I’ll watch but probably won’t like it too much…. heh.
The series has been dubbed as ‘Harem Potter’ and for a good reason.
BTW, am I the only one who get the impression that Negi is a Gaijin?
For the record, its ALL about Evangeline, the white haired one who snears at Negi during the kiss montage. She’s AWESOME.
I’ve read a good bit of the manga, and its pretty entertaining. I’ll try not to give anything away (and some things may turn out different in the anime), but there’s an interesting reason for all the girls going to kiss him in the OP (I love some of his reactions to certain girls too). So far in the manga they’ve done a pretty good job focusing attention on certain girls at first while slowly bringing more into mix. I got to Vol 7 and there were still girls that never got attention (not that I think they won’t). Still, that leads me to believe it will be a long series.
Another fun thing is the magic and fighting ^_^ But yeah, there’s definately a reason some have called it “Harem Potter”
Hmm, this might be more Full Metal Harem than I originally thought. Been reading some manga and the story is actually really interesting and a lot of the little stupid things that seem to be just harem fluff are actually really important! This is screwing with my mind!!!
Hmm, the story sounds quite interesting, but I can’t seem to find the manga anywhere. Kabitzin, I need a hook-up!
Now I don’t know if this is just a myth, but legend has it that a torrent lives deep within the bowels of THIS CAVE. Brave the dangers of fanservice and spoilers at your own risk…
Ha, thanks Kabitzin! (^_^)