Kenka Banchou Otome Series Review: Just Your Typical Girl Meets Boy, Trades Places With Him, and Aims to Rule the School Kind of Story

Overview:

Apparently based on a game, this story has a heroine who is either unnamed or who has a name I can’t remember run into her twin brother who pretty much coerces her to take on his identity and attend an all boy’s school. There she’s forced to fight to prove she can be the top of the school. And other than some stuff about the power of friendship that’s about it.

Review:

There’s nothing overly wrong with Kenka Banchou Otome given the short anime format being used and the premise. Plus, the whole based on a game thing is painfully obvious. That said, there’s not a lot overly praiseworthy about the show either.

The heroine, who I am going to refer to as Hikaru because that’s the name she uses most of this series, has the same problem a lot of male harem protagonists have. Other than being good at pretty much everything she has practically zero personality. Maybe mopey. She does mope well. For a show where episodes barely crack the one minute mark with their closing credits, I get we aren’t going to develop an entire cast of well rounded individuals, and to be honest they do a decent enough job of most characters given the time they have. The characters all run pretty cliché but they feel distinct enough in the moment so they work.

The fight sequences are necessarily short given again the episode lengths. A few punches, a kick or two, some still images of other dramatic poses and facial expressions, and then we’re pretty much down to the huffing and puffing aftermath and someone conceding defeat. To be honest, for a show about fight your way to the top of a school, there are surprisingly few fights. They manage to make this make sense given the reputations of most of the characters that few people want to pick a fight and just accept that they would lose, but it still seems like there’s be at least one random attack of opportunity around the school at some point.

One thing I didn’t like was the diary style entries that cut into the episodes. We’d be watching a sequence and then one of the characters would be narrating their thoughts and we’d see them in some other random setting apparently thinking back on that time. Its the kind of conceit that works in a story when the characters have some actual depth and there might actually be something to reveal from their inner thoughts and reflections but to be honest it is just a distraction and it eats up episode time this show didn’t have to spare. It adds nothing to the characters or the narrative at all.

Otherwise the music is relatively good and the story makes enough sense. And that’s literally all I have to say about this because there really isn’t a lot happening here. Basically this one is a watch if you’ve got a spare hour or so because that’s all it is going to take to watch and it isn’t bad. Again, it isn’t particularly good, but it is hard to imagine what else they could have managed with those episode lengths.

I’d love to know what you thought of the show if you’ve watched it.

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Thanks,

Karandi James.