| Super_Boom said: In recent memory, I think Rakudai Kishi no Calvary fit that bill. It was about a kid in one of those ubiquitous magic academies, only he couldn't use magic, just a magic sword. Err..wait, maybe I'm forgetting how it went. Somehow he was called a weakling by everyone, but he won like every fight we saw him in. Yeah...I know. Anyways...the basic plot is that he meets a girl who is supposed to be his polar opposite and they end having to live together, fight together, and eventually they get together, all the while he works to not be the "Worst One". Looking back, the warning signs were all there, but I was won over by hopes of an interesting romance, and potential character development. Unfortunately, I got none of that. The interesting romance dynamic didn't really matter, since the girl fell in love with the MC after one episode, and the main character's development was basically continuing to win all his fights, which, were mostly throw-away fights he won easily...making you wonder why anyone considered him a weakling in the first place. Honestly, that was the biggest annoyance I had with the anime. Despite the main character's status, I don't recall if we ever saw the MC lose outside of flashbacks, and therefore his struggles seemed to be largely resolved before the anime even began. If you're calling a show something like "Tales of the Worst One"...why is it so hard to let that character lose every once in a while? Sometimes I feel like Japanese manga/light novel authors have some collective inferiority complex that prevents them from ever letting their main characters lose. It exists in western media too, of course, but it's something that just annoys me in general. If you want me to like your character, make them at least somewhat relatable. It wasn't the worst thing I've ever watched...but boy did it have problems. |
The problem is that the anime adaptation only covered 3 volumes of the light novel series. Also, Silver Link modified some of the material sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse. It definitely gets better, in my opinion, starting Volume 4. That's where you actually do see the MC gets his ass handed to him.
I personally enjoyed Rakudai mainly because when I watched it, I was so sick and tired of the magic/battle academy harem genre at the time. At the end of it, I was rather surprised that not only did the MC and love interest hooked up before the halfway point, but they get engaged at the end and there's no harem.
