Baka & Test: Summon the Beasts

There are tons of comedic styles to play on in anime, and Baka to Test to Shoukanjuu takes to it some of the more popular ones - and suceeds with it. Be it Kouta's excited peeping (and failing by nosebleeds), Minami's tomboyish behaviour and acts of violence against Akihisa, Shouko's yandere-esque violent obsession with Yuuji or the sheer over-the-top fighting with the Summoned Beasts. Or the rather subtle and rare allusions to various shows; Baka to Test has it in itself to bring out laughter from everyone and nobody. Baka to Test is the kind of comedy where the characters themselves, and not necessarily the situationaround them, is what makes you laugh. The various character's personalities all have some sort of specific trait which an experienced anime watcher may recognize, to an extent. The totally kawaii moe girl; the tsundere; the yandere; the peeping tom. WHile they're all too apparent, they really do work; in the hands of skilled enough writers, overused character type can be fun to watch over and over again. And it does throw a few interesting turns at you; like the FFF (christ, I'm still laughing over them) - a cult like the KKK; only that they go after those who have girlfriends (or guys who receive obentou from girls, for that sake). And the two male leads, who are actually refreshingly deep - for comedy male leads, that is. Akihisa is rather wimpy, and a total idiot, and has tons of quirks which one may or may not recognize oneself in (they're all over-the-top, though). All his quirks are a constant fuel for humour; seeing one's own problems made fun out of is something most people can recognize. The other male lead, Yuuji, is totally hilarious to watch. He is in no way a sidekick character, like Kouta; instead, he takes on more of a 'group leader' role; being class rep and the one in charge of planning for the summoning battles. Truly, when he is at his peak, he is like Kamina (TTGL) in attitude; over-the-top spirited and spouting loads and loads of bull concealed as meaningful and supportive words (who can forget Kamina's "believe in you, who believes in yourself"?). Even those who don't recognize the Kamina-esque personality will probably find his adamant personaltiy hilarious to watch. As far as settings go, you don't experience anything new. School humour show is school humour show, meaning pool days, theme park trips and that stuff are obligatory. Not to mention the school hallways; which are used as the base for the ESBs. The school does, however, have a few pleasant surprises (like the ESB server room, and the exam paper vault). And of course, the school's roof, where the more serious moments typically take place. The show doesn't stand out much on its other fields; while above middling quality it's not much more. Backgrounds are tormented by an annoying, dotted style, which I see no apparent reason for having in the show. Character designs are average enough, but the hand-drawn effects which appear at the 'heroic goodbye' talks between Yuuji and are hilarious; likewise is their increased face complexity featured when they are shocked or have any similar reaction. The soundtrack is standard-fare humour; themes fit the humour setting, the few 'dramatic' moments, and that is about it; there's no memorable theme or likewise to set your mind on. The opening theme is standard upbeat crazy j-pop style, and unfortunately lacks any interesting animation. Same can be said about the ending theme; though it's more j-rock than j-pop. SUmmarized, Baka to Test is your everyday absurd humour show with a few quirks thrown in to make it refreshing enough to be truly enjoyable, and anyone who's looking for an easy no-brains laugh may find it pleasing.

If you want to see Anime all bundled up into one in the most stereotypical setting with the most cliche characters and unoriginal title and all the hilariously idiotic romance you could ask for, this is for you-- I love it! I had the experience of watching Baka no Test as one of my first Shojo anime and I could hardly contain my outbursts of laughter and confusion. Then, I watched it after watching a lot of anime, and I still laughed because it brought back so many memories. You have the cute, perfect, sexual magnet, (who can't cook) innocent girl that the hero seems to havea thing for- there's the pretty, flat-chested, violent, smart common sense-wise, tomboy who gets made fun of way too much and has a thing for the hero and people seem to dump pity on her-there's the pervert who has a nosebleed about everything and can't seem to put down his camera- the main character's hot, smart, tsundere friend who's relationship can be mistaken as gay with the main character- there's the quiet, dangerous, mysterious, extraordinary girl who hunts down the main character's best friend- the gay, smart one who just can't keep a cool head around his crush- the crazy, stalker chick that can't stay away from one of the heroines- the one that's made fun of for being both sexualities at once... AND THE MAIN CHARACTER WHO'S INSANELY OBLIVIOUS AND STUPID. A perfect insert character for anyone. These are the Archetypal characters of anime and whenever you revisit them, you can't help but laugh your head off. This anime makes fun of any anime with any of these characters, this plot of starting from the bottom and getting to the top, summoning beasts, high school, and every genre in between. Given that you don't need an insanely deep plot and you're looking for something light-hearted to watch: this is the anime that I recommend you watch!

Baka to Test to Shoukanjuu, the show with one of the least creative names ever seen. Just calling it Idiots and Tests and Summoned Beings... can you imagine if they called Avatar Blue guys and Forest and Environmentalism, nobody would be able to take the movie seriously (well... you can't really take it seriously anyways...). Anyways, silly titles aside, Baka to etc, is a simple show that illustrates how funny anime can be. A juvenile sense of humor with lots of slapstick gags, that delivers in every way you expected it to, just like it should. With that said, lets look at Baka to bloobybloo. The plot of this anime, is a deep and intriguing one if you look at it symbolically, and barely visible if you don't. A down trodden class of good for nothings is thrown to the bottom of the social ladder like yesterdays dinner, and its only after a young charismatic leader whips them into shape that they realise they must enter an spectacular struggle to climb up the food chain and defeat the high and elite who are squandering their power. Ok well, bad literary synopsizes aside, the show doesn't really pull off anything spectacular in that fashion; as you would expect its a comedy. The plot (as with most comedies), is their to provide somewhat of a driving point for the story, but mostly just to help string along more humor. And it does it well, it seems like every "summon battle" they have something extreme and wacky happens. Really every episode is enjoyable and you'll get a good laugh. I think the main reason for this (aside from a great sense of humor) is that they like to mix up the episodes quite a bit in presentation. For example one episode is aimed like a RTS video game, viewed from above mostly where you watch the battle unfold. Another is set where you follow the protagonists friend Yuuji, while not exactly knowing what the rest of the gang is up to. So in summary, the plot is simple, but does exactly what it needs to to keep this show rolling. The characters are... well pretty token for a comedy of this sort. They all are pretty one dimensional, usually only having one trait to go upon, but again it works in this kind of situation. And despite there being some cliche in most of the characters, you can't help but feel that theirs something special about each and every one of them. For example, Yoshii, the protagonist. He's weak, dumb, useless, clumsy, poor, and has 2 beautiful women chasing after him (ummm and a guy, but don't think about that too much). Yawn you might think, that's been done a million times before, but what I like about Yoshii is that he isn't a wimp. Most leads of this sort, are pathetic not because they are terrible at everything, but because they are pansies who bend to every whim and have no mind of their own. Yoshii on the other hand, seems to accept that he's completely useless and strives instead to just enjoy life as much as he can. All in all, the characters are rather interesting for a comedy troupe, and I don't think I really hated any of them (something that most shows can't say). There are a tonne to pick from so you are bound to find at least a few that you find hilarious. Finally, the art and sound are actually really fantastic. Looking and sounding good isn't such an achievement nowadays, as computers have streamlined everything... but you really have to enjoy the artistic style of this anime. It always feels like there's a weird fluffy feeling to it I find, not really sure how to describe it. Needless to say, it gently massaged my eyeballs with quite nice art work. So, to sum it all up as quickly as possible, Baka to *omg this title pisses me off* to Shoukanjuu, is a fun little experience, that I definitely recommend to anybody who needs a few good laughs. Might not be for you if your a sad lonely critic who can only watch anime if it stimulates some part of your brain, but hey give it a try at least.

Baka to Test began as a series of light novels written by Inoue Kenji, of whom I could find no information. The anime adaptations currently consist of two seasons and an OVA, but The light novels are still going so there could be more of them in the future. For now, I'm just going to look at the first season. The story is about a school where students are separated into different groups based on their grades with the dumbest students getting the worst room and equipment. The students can challenge each other to battles using summoned creatures with power based on their test scoresand lower ranked group can use this to take the room and equipment of a higher ranked group should they win. A young girl named Himeji ends up in the lowest ranked group due to having been sick during the test and the other students decide to challenge the other groups to get a better room, mainly so that she can have a better environment to recover. The premise is pretty stupid and the execution is extremely shoddy. The over-arcing plot is full of holes and the writer constantly forgets or ignores how the created world was set up which means that the rules for summons change several times for no apparent reason. But it's primarily a comedy, so the lousy story doesn't matter as much as the humour. Unfortunately, the humour fails on every conceivable level. There are three joke types that are frequently repeated throughout the series. 1. Gay jokes, which aren't funny. 2. Jokes about abusive relationships, which also aren't funny. 3. Jokes about how the characters are all morons, which are only funny once or twice. Aside from those you get a lot of repeated jokes, most of which aren't funny the first time but even those that are cease being funny almost immediately through being repeated over and over and over again. It's like a twisted experiment to see how long you can tell the same bloody joke before it becomes/stops being funny. Incidentally, the answers are it will never be funny/with jokes like these, once. The characters are incredibly flat. Most of them have a couple reoccurring jokes they're involved in and their characters revolve around those jokes. A few of the major characters get more than a couple jokes but they're still less compelling than wet cardboard. Another character issue is that every single character is an idiot, even the ones that the audience is told are intelligent. The only sign you get of intelligence is that they get a higher number for their summon. They don't act or say anything intelligent, ever. It's almost like the writer has no idea how to write intelligent characters, or even how intelligence works. Even characters of average intelligence don't exist in this. They're all absolute morons. The art is decent, for the most part, but there's this odd tendency to change the artistic method completely at random times. It's like the anime was drawn by someone who really needed a dose of Ritalin. The voice acting is atrocious. None of the characters show any depth or range of emotions. They all have one ridiculously exaggerated voice and either yell or whisper to illustrate "emotional range." Which doesn't work that way, I might add. If I wasn't familiar with Harada Hitmoi, Kato Emiri, Mizuhashi Kaori, Miyata Kouki, and several others from other anime I would think that they just got people with the most obnoxious voices possible. But it's just that the direction is terrible. The music is also really annoying. The yuri factor is a 4/10. There's an openly lesbian character who has a one-sided crush on one of the major characters. Of course, she's just used for highly problematic gay jokes and nothing ever comes of her feelings. So it just ends up being infuriating. Baka to Test is an unpleasant, unfunny, uninspired and unintelligent series. I feel ashamed of myself, and less intelligent, for having watched it. It was painful to sit through. The humour is either problematic or lackluster, the characters are insipid and the sound is an assault on the ears. My final rating for Baka to Test to Shoukanjuu is a 1/10. The only aspect of it that any effort went into was the art, and even that isn't good.