Do you want your loved ones to remember you when you die? What if, every time you pass by, perhaps in a glorious combat defending your city from the robotic beasts that devour all the people there, you are without hands? You meet your end forever… but then your parents forget who you are. They can’t mourn you because they didn’t even know you existed. His favorite store at the end of the street that he used to go to every day and argue with the store manager now has no record of his existence either. Your life has been erased.
Such is the life of a magician in the kingdom of this story. They are particularly powerful humans who can use weapons that make them even more dangerous, and are the only defense against robot-like flying insects who want nothing more than to destroy everything. After all, that is why humanity has been driven to the sky, to floating cities of armor. Kanata is a young man who was known, and still is, as the best of the best. His squad were the best in the academy, S-rank mages who could finish off enemies like they weren’t even there. However, something changed after one particular battle. All we know is that he is now branded a traitor and a coward; he now spends most of his days helping logistics with inventory and other things. Even treacherous and cowardly, for the logistics team he is a god because of his plans.
One day he is recruited by a former member of his squad to take charge of teaching a squad at the academy, the worst squad in the school, on the verge of being fired. Without much care, as shown throughout most of the show, he agrees. When he meets the three girls from the E601 fire team, his fears come true. Not only do they all suck, but they all suck and they suck. Common sense like teamwork and strategy have no place in his mind. The leader is an airhead with anger issues, the melee member is so timid that he can’t even take on an enemy, and the long-range member thinks that she is a goddess. Pretty bad.
So there’s the storyline for you, Kanata is supposed to get the three members in shape and prevent them from getting kicked out of the academy. Along the way, we get to see how the city is handling the attacks from the bugs, including an attack that infiltrates the city. There is also a madman who is quite annoying and is killing people, and a tournament that three must win to stay. Hint Hint.
I want to keep my opinions short and sweet about this anime because, well, I hate it. I can’t stand it. The ten episodes I watched were the longest episodes of my entire life. The plot sounds amazing and great, but when you get into the anime itself, you are left with a bad taste in your mouth. The main one is amazing, don’t get me wrong, especially in English dub. His comments and I don’t give a shit about the attitude are the only thing that kept me going, that and the occasional fan service. Let me break it down a bit more I guess.
The fight scenes are terrible. This is one of those anime series that, during an action scene, features about ten seconds of fighting and ten minutes of talking. Which is fine, cough Naruto, if the action was really good, but it’s not. The animation during the action sequences is just… poorly done. You don’t get the sense of urgency from the battle and you don’t really get into it. On top of that, the three members of the fire team are completely annoying. Their personalities are terrible, the dialogue is bad, and they are clueless. Simple ideals like, you know, basic teamwork, don’t apply to them. Throughout their “training” you never get the feeling that they really improve at all, until suddenly they start gaining, which is terrible in itself.
All in all, I do not recommend this anime series at all. There are many other fantasy anime series with a similar plot that do a much better job of engaging the viewer than this one. Stay away.