I was never an anime fan due to long winded, drawn out episodes. The temptation of reading the manga, which is always ahead of the anime, gets to me as I am quite the impatient one. I’ve started watching some anime now and I would highly recommend High School DxD. Being a fan of One Piece, Bleach, Fairy Tail, GTO and Prison School I am really into this type of ecchi shounen comedy manga and anime. I stumbled across High School DxD some time last year when I was bored, which caught my attention since it fits exactly into that category.
Issei Hyodo recently started attending Kuoh Academy, which used to be a private girls school but recently turned co-ed. Unbeknownst to him, part of the school’s population is comprised of devils, angels and fallen angels. One day, Issei is suddenly asked out on a date by a girl named Yuma. After their date, Yuma makes an unusual request and tries to kill Issei after revealing that she is a fallen angel. This is where the other main protagonist, Rias Gremory, steps in and saves Issei by reviving him.
Rias turns out to be a gorgeous, curvy devil and heir to one of the few remaining great pureblood houses of devils. Issei gets introduced to Rias’s other servants who belong to the High School’s Occult Research Team where they meet to discuss their devilish plans. Each of her servants has a title based on a chess piece, Issei being the Pawn, weakest of all roles. We then meet busty Queen Akeno, pretty boy Knight Yuuto, tiny but powerful Rook Koneko, and later the ex-nun Bishop Asia Argento. The team work together to fight against angels, fallen angels, human demon hunters and even among themselves. Expect to see lots of action in the fight scenes. In saying that, it seems like the quality of the battle scenes is not done as well as their ecchi scenes. The animation is still great but would be great to see just as much effort put towards making the battle scenes top notch.
We learn from season one that revived humans are randomly bestowed with ‘sacred gears’ and Issei, being the main protagonist, of course gets an extremely powerful one. The story focuses on how Rias establishes and empowers her servants and also her own role in the society of demons, including the chess piece rating system to climb up the demon hierarchy.
Rias is very fond of Issei and gets very jealous when Issei is with other girls. We see Rias waking up naked in Issei’s bed with multiple sexual suggestions, innuendos and advances in pretty much every episode. The addition of Asia into Rias’s family results in a love triangle between a petite girl, a girl with all the curves and a high school boy with an overly active mind and this is where the harem aspect comes in to play. There is, of course, nudity from the other female characters just in case these two girls aren’t enough for you.
At first glance, you may think High School DxD is just a fanservice anime with all the nudity, but as you learn more about the characters a unique storyline with a twist on the normal concepts of good and evil is produced as the series. I’m looking forward to the next season.
A review copy was provided by Madman Entertainment to the author for the purpose of this review.
