Opening Songs
OP 1 - Embrace Blade (Afilia Saga)
Ending Songs
ED 1 - Calling My Twilight (Kanako Itou)
Genre: Action, Comedy, Drama, Fantasy
Episodes: 12
Another day, another action/fantasy harem, what's new? Everyone loves their daily dose of super powered teens in their super powered high school settings, "Anti-Magic Academy: The 35th Test Platoon" is not much different from most shows in the genre. I'll be nicknaming it "35th Test Platoon" for short because of its obnoxiously long full title, and for simplicity's sake. When we go through "Test Platoon", there's many things we'll need to compare to most other harems with similar genres, and there's one thing that "Test Platoon" manages to accomplish that other harems don't. Its slow, and its boring. Outside of the final few episodes, this is probably one of the most uninteresting combat high school harems. There's little to lift "Test Platoon" above its competitors, and because of that, it obviously falls quite flat. Here's why.
 |
| The only character and reason why this show isn't a complete slop. |
For an anime I don't quite like, this show actually has very decent theme songs. "Embrace Blade" by Afilia saga is the opening theme, and its honestly quite thrilling to listen to. It may not be straight out rocking or insanely epic, but its catchy. It almost doesn't sound like an opening theme to an action anime, but it works here. The ending theme "Calling my Twilight" by Kanako Itou, who is a very talented anisong artist. Anyway, "Calling My Twilight" is a slower approach by her, and while its not as good as many of her other songs, its still quite powerful here thanks to her vocals.
Rating: 6.5/10
I can think of many other shows that I'd rather introduce to someone who likes their fair share of action/high school/harem shows. "Test Platoon" is just not interesting enough to carry through, and while some of its episodes are clearly better than others, the overall ratio of good episodes vs bad episodes isn't so good. The main character cast is generally cliche, with the exception of a very small few likable ones. Other than Ikaruga, I can't seem to grow attached or like any other of the other main heroines, which is quite a shame. Also, for an "Action" themed anime, the show is pretty criminal for taking making the action scenes so bland. There's not much action here, and even the supposed action segments are seriously so lazily done. The plot for most arcs are uninteresting, and honestly only the final arc with Kusanagi's sister is decent.
 |
| Typical of 2 heroines trying to impress the MC. |
Kusanagi Takeru is a typical underdog hero in a modern age setting. In a world where magic weapons, sci-fi guns and overpowered summons are used to combat the forces of evil, he's a puny swordsman wielding nothing but a family heirloom sword. He's one of the very few people left in the world still using one, though he is fairly well trained through his family teachings, he's considered a washout by most of his school mates. Speaking of which, he is enrolled into the Anti-Magic Academy, a school training students to do combat against evil magic users that try to threaten peace and society. He belongs to the 35th platoon, which is considered a failure of a platoon, wielding the lowest grades and scores among the school. Within it are girls that can never work together, Usagi and Ikaruga. Though they are individually quite decent, their teamwork is all over the place. One day, they are joined by Oka Otori, a genius gun user, and things start to take a turn for the weird...
"Test Platoon" just isn't good enough to stand in this overpopulated and over saturated genre of action/magic/high school animes. I mean, it isn't good enough to be remembered as a good one, it'll just be one of those shows that you'll watch and throw aside, not remembering it again. There are better shows out there, even for fans of the genre, this isn't one for you.
