Battle Programmer Shirase

ThatAnimeSnob Apr 12, 2012

5

This is basically a minor production, done with minimal funds and with hope of a better sponsored sequel. This never happened and the whole project was scrapped. Back when I originally watched it I was still new to the medium and I was amazed with its bold humour and fast pace so I was really hoping they would one day pick it up again. After all these years though, I now don’t care much about it since it didn’t really have much of a context to work with and was even going in circles with the scraps it had laid out. The story is about a super genius programmer, used by the government to prevent a criminal hacker from doing various major acts of terrorism. He is a slob so his underage female cousin comes to his house to help him in his life. So in every case, the exact thing happens. A government official would come to inform Shirase of the danger and would always meet him at the moment the little girl has accidentally bumped onto him in a very naughty way. He will immediately imagine a lot of erotic and psychologically depressed stuff before Shirase will take a computer and do his thing to prevent the opposing hacker… And that is pretty much all of it.It sounds typical the way I describe it and frankly speaking it doesn’t try to mess with its formula much. Heck, even the jokes are repeating in the exact same way. But in practice the show manages to be very funny because each episode is short in duration and has fast pace. Plus the jokes are both bold and despite bordering paedophilia and being rehashed, they are always based on misunderstandings and not on the real thing; thus nobody is insulted. The protagonist is also the lazy but smart type of hero, who is always liked by most viewers for simply not belonging to the shounen lead archetype or the harem lead archetype which plague most anime. Having his cousin as a contrast to further boost his presence, as well as nobody else in the cast with similar traits to steal some spotlight, Shirase is one heck of a guy. In all, it is not that great of a comedy. The jokes are hilarious but it is questionable if you laugh after the third time they are used in the exact same way. The production values are poor, the story is going in circles, the hacking battles aren’t exciting, and there isn’t any actual progress in any way. Not exactly a throw away title, but it could have been a lot more than what we got. Wasted potential, although you can get a somewhat similar feeling from another anime titled Irresponsible Captain Tylor.

Justice4harima Jan 8, 2016

3

I can't say how this anime looks to a tech-agnositc viewer. But as someone who knows a little bit about computers, security and programming and this show is worser than those hollywood hacking movies. I basically couldn't get myself to watch this due to the very unrealistic portrayal of computers, programming and hacking. If you want to see real hacking watch Mr.Robot. It has very few mistakes.

Jadice Mar 30, 2018

6.5

Overall, I enjoyed this show enough to watch it to the end. Shirase is a "decent" (in the terms of development as a character) and the gags were decently funny. However, it's literally the same one every episode and there's no small amount of recycled animation. Generally speaking, the anime itself was pretty mediocre, but I still liked it and their choices for Shirase's personality traits, so it isn't too bad.