Halfway Point: Campione!

What I plan to do is release one of these things per week. Wish me luck.

I guess I'll start going through them in alphabetical order. I'll save the ones I don't like for later though.

Note: I will not be reviewing Asa Made Jugyou Chu!, Nagareboshi Lens, Marimo no Hana, or Ai Mai! Moe Can Change! since I don't like to review single OVAs. If there are requests I might do so, but there's very little else to say other than that they're all dumb except for maaaaaybe Nagareboshi Lens, which was just another mediocre shoujo OVA.

I also watched the Blu-Ray bonus episode of iM@S and the Guilty Crown: Lost Christmas OVA, as well as Code Geass: Nunnally in Wonderland. If you wanted to know, iM@S episode 26 was good, Code Geass was OK with its inside jokes, and Guilty Crown as expected sucked and sucked it down hard.

Anyways, I DO have the K-On! movie downloaded in glorious 1080p, so if anybody wants it I'll be looking forward to watching and reviewing that.

Anyways, here's one for our friendly neighborhood mythological/fantasy harem/action-adventure series, Campione!

Yeah. Just like that.

Graphics are meh. To be quite honest, I don't like how the characters are drawn much slimmer than in the light novel. It works out with some characters, definitely not all of them. Remember Hayate no Gotoku? Don't do that shit (thank God To Love-Ru Darkness will be done by Xebec). Other than that, the action is the action. Not too bad, but I will bet a thousand dollars that more than one person will be reminded of Gilgamesh from the Fate franchise when Godou (the protagonist)'s awesomely awesome power comes into play. OK job, Diomedea.

I expected slightly more from the studio that also did Ika Musume and Lotte no Omocha, but at least the drawing is an improvement from what they did with the adaptation of Nogizaka Haruka no Himitsu. God, that oldie had horrible graphics for a fanservice series.

What's. With. The. CAT. EARS?!

The audio isn't much to hoot'n'holler about, either. The ED (Raise by Ogura Yui) is slightly interesting in its full version once you realize that the opening phrase is pretty much the only real 'happy' part of the song. Other than that, not much to mention.

The plot is actually quite funny. Godou gains the powers of the war god Verethragna, whose job was apparently being a jack-of-all-trades to defeat the enemy with his various powers + his god-killing sword. This is actually a very convenient mechanic (probably pre-mediated with the editor and the author beforehand), for it helps to do a couple of things:

1) The various powers allow Godou to handily defeat a lot/most/all of his enemies relatively easy just by pulling enough magic tricks out of his goodie bag. This doesn't seem as overpowered to the viewers as it should, because gee, it's not like he's Superman - it's not shooting lasers from his eyes, only summoning a huge monster boar abomination! Furthermore, he can only use these powers once (not noting the fact that since he has 8 other pretty good powers besides the handy god-killing sword of god-killing, he doesn't really need a mulligan on the usage of his powers. It's like being allowed to shoot off the Meteor god power twice in Age of Mythology because you might whiff the first time. If you can't hit anything with that sort of crap, you probably don't deserve the power in the first place.)

That is an unblockable move if I ever saw one. Good luck teching out of that shit.

2) Due to the availability of all of these random powers (plus the fact that you can use several powers in conjunction), Godou doesn't need to undergo a training/let-me-gain-new-powers arc for a very long time.

3) The god-killing sword gets stronger (to the point where it becomes a curbstomp if you know enough about the opposing god) if you know more about the nature of the god. This allows the author (Taketsuki Jou) to talk about random mythology and stuff that he likes, for a very very long fucking time. This is especially true against gods/goddesses that the author has created that are not dumbasses, since then the end of the arc is essentially dictated by how long it takes for Godou to get enough nollij in his brain.

Unfortunately, several of the mythological connections and quotes/references that the author uses tends to be just a little kinda sorta absolute bullshit. This detracts from the conversations a bit - even more so when you realize that several paragraphs worth of dialogue are not only kinda repetitive, but also wrong. For instance, if I had a penny for every time Campione! uttered "mother", "queen", "land", "earth", and "snakes" in the Athena arc, I would have enough to buy myself a full-course dinner in New York. On a stripper. Who is on another stripper.

In fact, the main translator of the original light novel over at Baka-Tsuki has a blast wiki-ing and pointing these things out in the footnotes of each chapter. Check it out for some lulz (and to read the series instead of rotting your brain watching it).

4) The above also allows Diomedea to drag out arcs longer than they need to be, since Godou needs to spend his time thinking and using all of his powers to beat down the enemy.

You'll hear that a lot in this series.

Good thing is that the studio is actually pacing the series pretty decently though - they know the series needs to finish at least up to the second arc, and probably a bit further than that, seeing how the harem is lined up during the OP (they also added Liliana Kranjcar [in the blue uniform], who comes along a bit after the 2nd arc, unless they change around some shit with the anime adaptation). So good job including the initial Verethragna arc (which actually takes the entirety of the third LN volume in the form of a flashback) and the Athena arc in four episodes while giving no shits and not slowing down. A pity about the Athena arc though; Athena was voiced by a very nice VA (Ogura Yui - also voices Alice [Kamisama no Memochou] and Onjouji Toki [Saki Achiga-hen Episode of side A]; and HOLY SHIT she was born in '95 - younger than I am) and I would have liked to hear her a bit more.

To be quite honest, this is simply not for the mythology enthusiast or people that can string together connections (and a little bit of common sense). The main point of the fantasy/action plot almost seems to be just to build the harem, which again is a pity, because a good mix of fantasy/action plus a harem makes for a great story. But if you like hearing random gods' names, severely long magical incantations, and a story that is relatively nonsensical but has a pretty decent harem that comes together without too much fuss, this series is for you.

Recommendation: lol magical harem. Take that how you will.

The ability to level entire cities by accident turns the ladies on.