Absolute Duo

I struggled quite a bit with how to begin this review. A review of a series so lacking anything good or even memorable that the name, despite sounding familiar, didn't invoke any memory of the series in my mind beyond the thought "it was bad. I don't remember exactly why, but it was bad".

Deciding to write this review was more of a self-incentive to watch it again, an investigation into why I had such a clear negative idea through basically reliving what it was like to watch Absolute Duo for the first time. Without further ado, let's start with this review!

After losing someone precious to him in a terrifying incident, Toru Kokonoe decides he wants to become stronger and enrolls in a particular school where people manifest their souls as weapons called Blaze. People with this unusual ability are called "Exceed," and this phenomenon appears only in one out of every thousand people.

Toru decides to attend an academy where people are trained to use these abilities, with him being a unique case. This is because his soul manifests not as a weapon but as a shield.

At the academy, he discovers the duo system, so he must get a partner to fight alongside him. Julie Sigtuna, a skilled double dagger user, will become his partner, and together they will face various challenges.

Absolute Duo follows everything that most adaptations of teenage light novels do to the letter. An insipid protagonist with an irregular power within the x power system, an academy to train said abilities, and girls who fall in love with the protagonist. They don't venture off the usual route, and the cliché is poorly done. Everything happens too fast, there is hardly any explanation, and the plot is poorly exploited.

This anime started off more or less well. I saw that it offered battles, was entertaining, and had its funny points through episodes one and two. But as the story progresses, it gets more and more tiresome. The main characters are very pretentious and boring.

Despite their compatibility and the battles they offer, I got tired of them. The anime became increasingly repetitive as it progressed: Battle with certain characters, something always happens to Julie or Toru to protect themselves, the same moves... But since I had started and was already more than halfway through the series, I decided to finish watching it.

My expectations grew again in episodes 9-10 when they did a certain thing with X character, which could have given more intrigue and deepened the story. Still, it was solved in one single episode. as for the ending, repetitive. They repeat the same battle as the previous episode but with new powers, and the ending boring somewhat normal.

Add to that, it has ecchi, but the kind that gives you cringe; as soon as it's revealed that the protagonist's roommate is actually a girl, it showers us with every stupid and awkward opportunity to bring ecchi into the series that might arise from the two of them sharing a room.

Knowing what a cliché the show is, makes you assume from the start what the canon couple will be by the end of it. Toru is the protagonist who wants to become strong, Julie is the kuudere, Tomoe the tsundere, Lilith the blonde Brit, Miyabi the dandere, and so the list goes on and on. We even have a loli teacher. They are flat characters, and the primary relationship is one devoid of moments of emotional depth, those that tell the viewer that there is something there. There's just a couple, and that's it.

They tried so hard to highlight the strength of the main character. They turned some of the secondary characters into dummies to be kicked around by the enemy to show how strong he is and to make us understand that if the main character defeats him, it's because he's stronger than the others.

It's okay if they are the weak part of the team, but even so, after fulfilling this "role," their appearances on screen contributing to the plot are usually minimal. The series even contradicts itself in that this group of characters and the main character are supposedly considered equal in skill level, yet they are easily defeated.

There is some character development within how generic they can be, so it's predictable. Plus, at least we have villains with motivation. For a short series like this, they managed to achieve something at least decent, so there's plenty of room for improvement.

The animation has proper use of the color palette. But the need to save money is noticeable. Fighting and other scenes (including the climax of the series) are filled with as many visual effects as possible to simulate movement and save on actual animation (blur, speed lines, etc.) It's not hurtful to the eye, and it's not something we can't hold against it in this section.

What I can't understand is how the animation budget seems to have been put on the fanservice scenes of the series rather than the ones that really needed attention. I mean, even in the battles, it seems like they focused more on making bouncing boobs in the middle of the action than on the action scenes themselves.

On the soundtrack side, it gave me modern vibes. However, it won't have the contribution that many other soundtracks have in the narrative of their series. They fail to invoke anything in the viewer, even in the finale. It's not memorable; it just doesn't interrupt the tone of the scenes; it simply serves not to have a quiet background ambiance.

Not much to say; another harem cliche in the endless list of this genre. It fails in almost all the things the series could fail on, and while it's not a series I hate (because there are series I hate with all my heart), I wouldn't recommend it. It's one of those shows you can watch when you turn your brain off and have nothing else to watch. I think that as it happened before, I'll just forget about it again.