The opening scene of High School DxD gave me the impression it was going to be another generic no nonsense ecchi school anime. Twelve episodes later however, I find myself a little baffled at how much I enjoyed it.
Story: 7/10
In my mind, average would equal seventy percent (seven out of ten). While this show’s premise is not very ambitious, it isn’t horrible either. The show starts out with our pal Issei dying from a spear wound from a demon b!tch in a park all alone. His last words call out to our “loaded” red headed president Rias who allows Issei to continue on living by becoming a demon. The plot in general actually had a very nice pace; there wasn’t any section of the anime where I thought it was dragging. We have the beginning events, the laid back period where most of the stuff happens at school, then the main conflict which arises and ends all within twelve episodes. Most shows that follow in the ecchi format are nothing more than eleven filler episodes with the studio scrambling at the end to make some sh!tty ending. High School DxD genuinely was an interesting show to watch. It didn’t go over the top with its premise but it was far from boring. Some might argue the ecchi content might have gotten in the way but generally since our protagonist is a perv anyway, it didn’t distract me…too much.
Animation: 7/10
So I was lucky enough to get to see this on a BD copy of the movie (courtesy of a friend). The visuals are quite well done; every character model was constantly presented very well, the backgrounds had attention to detail, and fight scenes had great feudality. AND YES for all of you who are just going to watch this for the ecchi stuff do not fret, all the scenes that point out the most awkward camera angles are here for you to enjoy. The BD copy does not hold back at all; where the broadcasted version was heavily censored (at least I was told it was), it's no holds bar here. But like I have stated in my other reviews, I am part of that weird percent of anime viewers that do not watch for the “scenes”; if a show has an interesting plot and very well written characters, I can sit through it.
Sound: 7.2/10
I am very picky about sound since I spend most of my time around music. While the musical score for this anime isn’t genericly bad, it is somewhat average. The music that plays during the fight scenes and around the school sound like any other anime’s soundtrack; there just wasn’t a whole lot of originality here. The voice actors however did a pretty good job; everything was recorded fairly well.
Characters: 7/10
Again while the characters were not “OMG AMAZING”, they also were not a hindrance to the anime. The club’s characters all have an overlying personality that may be somewhat generic but we are exposed to them enough through character development that I started to like all of them by the end of the show. Even though Issei is a pervert crybaby, he genuinely grows throughout the show and becomes pretty badass by the final fight.
Overall: 7.1/10
So with seven out of ten being my average score, a 7.4 out of ten is above what I expected coming into this show. I was so sure that after the first episode I was going to have another Champione! experience (in other words, a generic boring ecchi anime). But this show really surprised me; even though there was a lot of ecchi content, it worked itself fairly well into the show and since the animation was very good backed with a decent cast, it was overall a good watch. It exceeded my expectations so why not yours?
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