Bladedance of the Elementalers

Kamito Kazehaya (CV: Makoto Furukawa) is a Elementaler. Not only that, he’s a male Elementaler. The only man known to be a Elementaler in the past is seen as the evil of the world, so when Kamito transfers to a magic school, it’s questioned by all students. But he has his reasons and he just has to pull through for two months until he can meet someone from his past.

THOUGHTS
This show has an interesting premise but it’s clearly problematic in a lot of areas and I wouldn’t suggest anyone watches this unless you think it seems incredibly interesting.

First of all, this is a harem. Some harem shows are good and some people do like them, and fine, but this one basically harasses Kamito with girls and he is not at all interested. In the first episode he is pulled between to girls and — of course — his arm touches the girls’ chests. Kamito… doesn’t show anything about it. So in a sense the show actually objectify women by letting the girls do the job. Kamito does tease Claire Rouge (CV: Ibuki Kido) but to be honest I wouldn’t say that’s more than Claire harasses him.

Secondly, this is clearly supposed to be funny. It has all the “funny harem” things. Girls seen naked, girls being violent when seen naked, girls beating the male MC’s arse until he passes out, male MC ends up with his face in some girls chest… The list goes on and this show clearly gives off an image that men are animals. Because Kamito even gets a shed to sleep in next to the stables and can’t use the bathrooms anywhere at the school. Actually, he’s not even an animal. I think he’s on the level of a bug because clearly his housing isn’t worth to care for and Claire and Rinslet Laurenfrost (CV: Kana Yuuki) destroyed it during his first evening as a student.

So not only does this show harass its MC and objectify women, it tells us guys are worth less than a horse, which makes Claire using a fire whip on him so much more appropriate? And these are just examples from the first episode.

But, as I mentioned the premise is interesting, and honestly I think the idea and characters themselves were interesting and this could have been good.

I think this tweets says it all. If you could remove all of the harem comedy and sexual jokes, objectified women, naked characters in every episode… Well, pretty much everything that makes this title target itself to a male audience, it would be a good show. Believe it or not, but the characters have some depth, which is very deeply hidden under the harem. The characters all have reasons for what they do and Kamito and Claire, who are clearly the most important together with Restia (CV: Youko Hikasa) who we don’t really get much knowledge of, have a good characters chemistry while making each other evolve.

But this doesn’t make it a good show. Why? Because you can’t remove the crap and it clearly overpowers the good stuff. It’s also very much unfinished and made to make people read the LN. It builds up to a blade dance competition that begins after the anime ends, so the ending is so open it’s painful and we never get a conclusion or any answered questions. We got a flashback of Kamito and Restia, but never learnt what it meant. We don’t really know what Restia is trying to do although we know Restia’s and Kamito’s past relationship and then there’s a bunch of side characters that I don’t understand the meaning of, likely because I never got enough information because instead of actually making this good, it’s filled with harem comedy. Compared to the No Game No Life anime, this is not well done. No Game No Life also has this kind of humour and fan service but the story isn’t actually overpowered by it in the anime so it’s possible to actually make it well. This series failed though.

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Want to buy Bladedance of the Elemetalers despite my opinion?

Blu-Ray (BD)
   

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