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Whenever a cute-looking anime series featuring high school romance, light-hearted comedy and combat drops onto my reviewing pile I always sigh in resignation. Whilst there's nothing particularly wrong with this style of series they're often very similar to one another and cram in every single anime cliché they can think of, from jokes about breast sizes to pervert schoolboys, unnecessary bath scenes to love triangles. In actual fact many of the recent series I pigeonholed in this way - from K-ON! and Bamboo Blade to Clannad - have confounded my expectations, but surely Baka & Test was going to be everything I expected. Surely? Baka & Test is set in a prep school that utilises a
unique study system whereby student facilities are allocated by order of
academic ability. Top students get allocated to Class A, where they enjoy
plush surroundings and the latest mod-cons, whilst low performers are relegated
to Class F's dusty old classrooms where they boxes instead of desks and don't
even have chairs. The only way to improve your lot prior to the end of
year exams is to declare a 'Study War', where a lower class challenges a higher
one to a fight between their computer-created avatars. The avatars have an
attack power/life gauge equal to the student's test score, and the scores used
are determined by the subject an adjudicating teacher teaches. To the
victor goes the opportunity to switch facilities with the loser, to the loser
goes remedial tests to restore their avatar's point total and the inability to
call another study war for the remainder of the school term. Akihisa Yuuji
is a student of Class F alongside Class Rep Yuji Sakamoto, tomboy Minami
Shimada, pervert Kota 'Muttsulini' Tsuchiya and the highly feminine looking
pretty boy Hideyoshi Kinoshita and is determined to improve the class facilities
when the highly intelligent but sickly Mizuki Himeji is assigned to the class.
Mizuki should be one of the school's top students but her poor health led to her
leaving in the middle of her placement exam, which gave her an automatic zero
score and consigned her to the lowest class. Akahisa really likes her and
is determined to improve the facilities for the sake of her health, something
that stirs the determination of the entire class. With Yuji's help he
hopes to instigate a study war campaign to get her to Class A where she belongs,
but with their low grades do the really have any chance of defeating anyone? |
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Baka & Test is, in many ways, everything I expected. It's got a set of characters straight out of the big book of archetypes, it has jokes about bust sizes, a sweet girl who's a terrible cook, a pervert who suffers crippling nosebleeds in pursuit of his 'hobby', a love triangle, loads of fanservice, homosexual admirers and a lead character who has hidden abilities. What I didn't expect was that I would thoroughly enjoy it all. On paper Baka & Test may seem like many other school-based anime series, but in practice it actually approaches |
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lots of familiar tropes from fresh directions. One of the best running gags is focused on Hideyoshi, whose androgynous good looks lead most of the characters and the series itself to treat him as female or as an entirely separate 'Hideyoshi' gender. This leads to most of the fanservice actually focusing on him rather than the many female characters, a situation which annoys him no end! Comedy is the series' strongest hand, with the combat and romantic elements taking second place for the most part to anarchic humour and silly situations. The central cast make for a good set of comedy stooges too. The characters are all pretty good. They're
archetypal but engaging, and as the series progresses the cast expands
considerably to take in several others including Hideyoshi's sister
Yuko, Mr Nishimura - a teacher nicknamed 'Iron Man' who appears suddenly
to drag defeated students to remedial class - and Class A representative
Shoko Kirishima, a gloomy and quiet girl who's obsessed with Class F rep
Yuji and will stop at nothing to be his girlfriend, even employing a
taser to get him on dates! The extended class add to the humour,
but it's actually the lead character Akihisa who's the most refreshing.
His 'hidden skill' is that he's so useless that he is given a special
avatar which is able to interact with physical objects... so he can help
the teachers out with the many chores he gets lumbered with as
punishment for his poor grades. He's rubbish at studying, clueless
when dealing with others and easily led, but he's also loyal, honest and
determined. What I like about him is that he doesn't suddenly
discover a hidden ability that will allow him to defeat all-comers, he's
a low achiever academically and he remains that way. He is central
to the story not because he becomes someone to beat but because in his
own simple way he wants what's best for Mizuki, which is quite a nice
sentiment to have. The storyline also has some surprising depths
for all of the comedy, with Yuji's goal to prove that grades aren't
everything in life suggesting that the author has a point to make. |
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The series' main problem is that whilst it's clever about how it approaches its story, it is still completely filled with all of the clichés and stereotypes you always get in this kind of setting. The characters are hugely entertaining but are still largely unoriginal, and the central premise - although quite an original idea - basically means that this series is yet another one that's based around combat in a high school setting. However, the focus on comedy rather than action, and there's an anarchic side to the comedy that is something |
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anime seems to be able to pull off well. What is strange in a series about battling with school grades is that no-one ever seems to do any studying, but that's nothing new in this kind of show. At least there's more than one teacher! Baka & Test: Summon the Beasts was a series that I surprised myself by finding hugely entertaining and sometimes laugh-out-loud funny. The characters were are archetypal but with enough of a twist on them to make them feel fresh, and the central concept of a system which turns studying into powers for a competitive computer game was quite an intriguing one. It's never going to win any awards for subtlety even with the underlying focus on whether grades are important, but despite the stereotypes and clichés it manages to remain enjoyable and keep the jokes coming. The running gags don't become too tired, and the storyline is decent enough to hold everything together. The subtitle may be a bit of a misnomer as it suggests the characters will summon mighty monsters to battle, when in fact they summon cute versions of themselves and action takes a back seat, but nonetheless Baka & Test: Summon the Beasts was unexpectedly one of the most fun series I've seen this year. Well worth picking up. Extras A great selection! Alongside the usual clean opening and ending sequences and trailers there's a few TV spots and promos as well as several anime shorts focusing on everything from Muttsulini's perving trips to Mizuki's terrible cooking. They are even more anarchic than the series itself, and Mizuki's cooking lesson - in which she adds a host of deadly chemicals to her dish for twistedly logical reasons - was my personal favourite. I always like to see these bonus shorts as they give the writers and actors a great opportunity to mess around, and these ones are great examples. Good stuff! Ratings Feature:
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