A quick disclaimer: I know nothing about this anime. Oh sure, I read the synopsis weeks ago like everyone else, but it must not have been a very remarkable synopsis, ’cause I’ve already forgotten what it said. As a result, I’m going on in dry.
— Aaaaaaand… it’s a great start to 2015, boys.
— Okay, so it seems people can conjure up weapons, and this dude over here looks cool as hell!!!
— First things first, our hero’s name is Thor. Yeah, Thor. As such, I expect him to wield a fuck-off hammer. Here, you can see him shaking hands with Imari, but she’s not the main haremette. She’s probably just one of the many haremettes. Here’s the main one. I don’t know what her name is supposed to be, but considering how Thor just awkwardly stared at her for a few painful seconds, she must be hot or something. But according to the cold opening, they’ll be fighting each other at some point. Oh, what a tantalizing hook!
— Rich, fancy academy where they’ll learn to fight in this coliseum, blah blah blah.
— The school president is a gothic loli.
— That’s an appropriate outfit for a school. She’s probably a teacher or something too, huh?
— Whoops. It turns out Imari is not hanging around for long, because the school’s screening test dictates that the students must battle the person sitting next to them. If you lose, you will have to go home. As you might have guessed, she and Thor are sitting next to each other. Anyway, what a dumb test. What if two of your best students just happen to be sitting next to each other? As a result, the school has no choice but to send one of its best students home just because whoever wrote this story wants to grab the viewers’ attention right off the bat.
— It’s pretty much a foregone conclusion that Imari’s going to lose to the main character of the story. The only question is whether or not she’ll return at some later point in the story to get her revenge.
— The characters in this show cannot vogue to save their life. She looks positively bored with life. Tsk tsk. Basically, everyone has a “Blaze,” which is a weapon that they can conjure up from… from…? I don’t know? A pocket dimension or whatever. And as you can see here, the main heroine has two long blades.
— Lookin’ good, boys. Lookin’ good. Tear up that assembly hall.
— As Thor witnesses all the carnage, he gets triggered. No, really.
— So everyone has a weapon, and as such, you must be dying to see Thor’s weapon, huh? It’s a fuck-off hammer, right? We first see Imari conjure up a sword of her own, but enough about her. Let me see what Thor can bring to the table!
— Uh…
— So Blazes are always weapons… until they’re not, of course. Because Thor is such a unique snowflake, he’s an — wait for it! — Irregular. What’s even funnier is that Imari’s going to lose to someone who doesn’t even have a weapon.
— Thor anticlimactically blocks Imari’s attack, then punches her with his free arm. The gothic loli then announces that time’s up, so he basically wins by default.
— May the force be with you too, gothic loli. Or the odds be in your favor. Something like that.
— Imari: “All that fancy fighting and no one even got hurt.” D…did you want to die?
— You’d think Imari would be torn up or something, or maybe even resentful. But nah, she’s just standing here, chilling with the main character. It doesn’t look like we’re going to get our revenge story. Instead, her breasts bounce as she encourages Thor not to hold back next time. You only lose once! YOLO!
— Meet Tora, the midget. Apparently, he and Thor go way back. Also, every harem needs a beta best friend to make the harem lead look good.
— And now that Imari’s out of the way, Thor’s relationship with the school’s apparently hottest chick can start in earnest. Like every other anime you’ve seen, her classmates whisper simply because she entered the room.
— Yeah, yeah, we’re already staring and blushing at each other.
— That lady in the cleavage-bearing maid outfit and bunny ears? Yeah, she’s their homeroom teacher.
— Finally, the bishoujo introduces herself as Julie. Oh. It really is just Julie. Yeah, I saw the main character say Julie in the cold opening. I just didn’t expect her to have such a boring name.
— The students here apparently get an allowance of 100,000 yen per month. And as the show’s title suggests, everyone will pair up. Naturally, the main character gets to room with the hot girl, a fact which he mightily protests.
— Welp, that was fast.
— Julie’s from Scandinavia. Just Scandinavia in general. No specific place in Scandinavia. And yes, she’s well aware that Thor is a Norse god of mythology. Somehow, Thor has this name and he doesn’t know it.
— Oh no, a cute girl is all up in my face. W-What do I do?
— Julie wants Thor to teach her his special move. Y’know, that boring punch that he used to lay Imari out. Our Scandinavian bishoujo is all like, “Yo, teach me that shit.” You mean balling up a fist, pulling your arm back, then punching someone really hard? Are you serious?
— Yes, we’re very serious: “Sorry. That move puts way too much strain on the body.” Oh, okay. Naw, it gets better: “If a girl used it, it’d destroy her.” Well excuse me, Thor of Japan. I had no idea your punches were so masculine.
— Instead of just yawning like a regular person, Julie wobbles back and forth until she instantly falls asleep face first into Thor’s crotch. He thus has to carry her to bed and tuck her in. Well shit, if girls can’t even put themselves to bed, I guess a punch is out of the question.
— And with that, the credits roll. Afterwards, there’s a short scene where Julie wakes up and they both enjoy some apple tea, but uh, yeah…
— All in all, what a terribly generic opening episode. As I expected, Absolute Duo is absolute crap.
Moe Sucks 
Ja, this show defines mediocrity.
At least it is the only shitty wish fulfilment LN adaptation this season, right?
I wouldn’t bet on it
Uh…
This show was so bad…. it had to be ghostwritten written by a computer program didn’t it? It almost felt as if the scriptwriter simply plagiarized the most common, cliche lines in LNs and VNs, and copied and pasted them in a horrific montage of shitty writing, swapping around a few names.
The opening minutes were filled with some of the most generic lines and characters imaginable – anyone who has seen a few Harem would have heard of all the cliches before, per verbatim. To compound it all, , it’s notion of the harem protagonist is obsolete- I thought the harem genre abandoned the wussy, easily flustered “relatable” wish-fulfillment Beta Harem MC for the assertive, witty, Gary Stuish power wish-fulfillment Alpha Harem MC?
The art too is just… it pains me to look at it.
I feel like every single god damn season has a handful of shows where a bland male lead finds himself surrounded by girls in elaborate uniforms with enormous tits, and also there’s a fantasy/sci-fi plotline that feels as if it was written by a bored teenager.
Does anyone actually watch these things? They always seems to just vanish into a black hole, so I’m amazed they keep getting made.
They’re pretty much forgotten the minute the finale episode’s end credits roll.
I mean, does this shit even have enough substance to even shit out merchandise?
Hell, I’ll be surprised if I even find a legit good dojin sourced from this show.
I seriously thought Imari was going to die like in one of Kenshi’s mk9 fatality. The show is so generic it hurts.
Absolute Dog Sh*t.
Crapsolute Duo.
Man, someone should make a checklist of “Cliche LN Adaptation Themes”.
See, Shirobako should’ve been about a studio trying to be gungho about these generic adaptations. I’d like to see that.
I thoughy the girl herself was the shield, this is a lot worst than what I imagine and I already thought it’d be pretty bad.
Also, Thor isn’t really his name, FUNi just fucked up badly.
Then why did the girl point out he has the same name as the Norse god in the show itself?
Because it shows similar, or something, his name wasn’t always Thor though (actually, it still isn’t), which explains why MC had no idea what it meant.
As much as I was dreading the interchangeable LN march of doom Thor and his Man-Punch have made me think this series might just possibly at least be the entertaining kind of shlock.
“Well excuse me, Thor of Japan. I had no idea your punches were so masculine.”
LOL.
Yay, another crappy LN adaption. I kinda wanna write a crappy LN, because no matter how shit it is there’ll always be legions of fanboys who’ll eat it up. How else are these things still profitable?
“If a girl used it, it’d destroy her.” are you serious!? lol
I didn’t like it either. It looks like it will be pure generic crap. That being said, I’m glad you’re going to recap it. Are you going to continue?
Sure.
I’m so glad that you’re covering this.
Me thinks this anime should be added to the list of “Literal Examples of How To Be Vanilla Ice-Cream Levels of Generic”.
It really is embarrassing that something like this got animated. Now I can’t wait for the budget to disappear and see everything melt into sub-human forms.
Vanilla is delicious. I wouldn’t knock vanilla. This is gruel, plain and simple. This is what Anime Quakers would feed you to fight those dirty urges.
So are we going to start the Absolute joke for the rest of this series? This show will be Absolute bullshit. Let’s begin!
As I Hate Everything would say.
Fuck this mov-, I mean anime.
Lol that shield design is terrible, it has a hole in the middle like a donut, what a joke, I know he wanted to be a special snowflake like every other Gary Stu, but that’s just ridiculous.
Haha! Brilliance! Aren’t you glad you didn’t leave this behind, mate?
hahaha
Also, you bet the horses on the hammer too early. See, Thor will come to a point where he must rescue his haremette, and THAT’S when he’ll manifest Mjolnir from the bottom of his Gary Stu.
Just give it, oh, 14 eps. It’ll happen.
The writer’s just being cheeky about it.
Oh god, first episode of the first anime released this year and it was a very bad impression. Why can’t people in japan get tired of this type of garbage? magical warfare, blade dance, dragonar, machine doll, this generic garbage, there are way too many of this already! I like action shows a lot but man, why can’t we get something with a bit more heart put into it? with less pointless harem stupidity since real life females don’t fall for the most generic fucker you see on the side of the street, cut down the amount of girls since this way, you don’t end up with five or six cardboard cut outs pretending to be characters and give us some cool and unique (design and personality wise) boys and girls as our heroes that we can root for as well as remember. Also give us some creative fights like in some good old shounen. I’m not asking for masterpieces, just good old fun that i can watch anytime. But i guess that’s too much to ask.
” Well excuse me, Thor of Japan. I had no idea your punches were so masculine”
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!
I think it has something to do with not losing the appeal to all those generic fuckers who can’t get enough of this kind of shows because of lolescapism.
I am now contractually obligated to post this comic:
… Yeah, all bets are on Thor’s shield being a false lead- I’d be expecting the fuckhammer to show off later on, when his !TruePower! is revealed…
It’s good to have you continue in 2015, E-Minor! (and hope you enjoyed the holiday.) Especially given that this season seems to be a real winner, as far as formulaic harems are concerned…
This series is just to beautiful. Makes me teary-eyed.
WOW This is just…this is hentai without the porn. No really, I know I commented on how the last show looked like a hentai but really.THIS kind of animation and design quality plus the horrible story and numerous tropes are right out of a cheap porn. Unholy shit this was painful.
Also I find it odd that the succubus had female signs on her headdress before we found out she likes to suck life essence. I wonder if the implications there were intentional
Crap, meant that for the Shinmai Maou no Testament Ep. 1 post. my bad
Does anyone remember the harem anime that also plays at a generic school teaching a particularly pointless skill? It came out every year for the last 30 years or so.
God what was its name….
The last show liek this that iactually watched with mild amusement was the one with the dimension hopping guy that essentially just trolled the school and everyone because at no point did he fiorget that he was the male lead in a harem show.
Something with yuusha in the title and ao pink haired girl i an sack.