Battle Girl High School

Etue Sep 19, 2017

5.5

Battle Girl High School is based on a mobile game wherein once again you collect cards of the 'cute'girls  and do battle with them. The cast is expansive, very much so for a series with only a limited episode count. The story takes part after some canon events in the game this is based on, because of this character introductions are rather unnatural and due to the episode count it feels very much rushed in the first episode. You can already read from this that this is mostly suited for those who've played the game. The overarching story of the anime itself is rather standard for these days. The setting is unique in concept but might as well take place on earth due to the anime's execution. Animation The animation is standard, that's that most that can be said of it. While it practically never goes noticably off-model it doesn't really impress either. The animation has cost-cutting measures that are common to most anime and the extent of cost-cutting does show however it doesn't really make the anime worse for it. The character models themselves don't really have much impact as they are shown on screen but get the job done. The battle scenes are often very short and lack real impact however even in the final episodes there's moments were the amount of characters fighting causes some of the better animation to be drowned in the less impressive cuts. Sound The music isn't horrible but again doesn't really go out of it's way to impress you during the opening and ending theme. While some insert songs are more memorable the anime's background music intergrates well enough but doesn't impress even the few that do distract you a little. The cast is varied and has pretty decent voicing making most characters sound distinct enough which is helpful for the characters that look alike more and at the same time sets the characters a little more apart. Characters  There's simply too many characters in this show for 12 episodes. The characterization is at times clumsy because of this. The first episode's cast showing is especially unnatural to the uninformed viewer. The character arcs of the cast are mostly filling most of the episodes between the beginning and the end due to how expansive the cast is and how natural it feels varies greatly. While there's a duo of true protagonists one of them manages to be a pretty weak characters while the other argueably isn't much better. The anime spends a lot of time on quite a few different characters but a lot of them don't get much backstory and it all feels rather soulless to me because of this. Battle Girl High School feels like a dime a dozen. It doesn't really have much charm in what it's doing most of the time. It feels like a something put together without much heart put into it. It's plot almost feels mechanical and the girls arcs are simply too short and perhaps also too episodic to really get you to feel continuity. The character relationships feel stagnant despite anime original character being developed as the show goes on. While this anime certainly does have it's moments it's greatest sin is simply being forgetable and having little identity of it's own. On a whole this anime just doesn't manage to get the presumed charm of the game accross that it's trying to sell during most of it's run due to it's seemingly almost mechanically constructed story.