Anime Review: IS: Infinite Stratos

Genre: Comedy, Mecha, Action, Sci-Fi, Harem, ShounenEpisodes: 12Overall thoughts: Not going to lie, it’s difficult to complain too much about harem animes

Image via Zerochan

The IS suits look, to put it simply, awesome and really compliment the pervy nature of the series, for the most part making sure the girls stay fun to look at and the fight scenes all flow rather nicely with consistent animation.

The soundtrack is pretty much as expected for a shounen, and as before, does what it intends to do well. When the moment is tense, the music is tense, when it gets dramatic the music is dramatic, and so on and so forth.

I watched this anime not too long ago honestly, I know I’m a little late since the second season is currently airing, but whatever, it’s as good a time as any to check it out. I’ll run over the basics pretty quick, Infinite Stratos is all in all your standard harem anime, one male lead surrounded by a bunch of girls seeking his attention due to whatever bizarre reason and/or circumstance. The reason and/or circumstance was actually what drew me into IS specifically. The series is set almost entirely in a school that is not technically female only, however, due to the school being dedicated to the IS, a newly developed mecha suit system which just so happens to reject the Y chromosome, there are no males who attend. That is until our main character, Ichika, discovers that an IS system responds to him and proceeds to show that he has a fair amount of natural talent for the systems and lands himself a spot in the school.

Image via Anime Vice

Infinite Stratos does what it intends to do rather well, all the girls are fun to look at, and honestly, Ichika himself isn’t too hard on the eyes and all their personalities mesh fairly well. Of course, I have complaints about the series, such as the over presence of scenes where the girls’ personalities take a 180 so that they can act like cliché house wives. This can be amusing because of the standard clueless male of harems, but don’t overdo it, these characters have decent writing to them, and these scenes really only hinder that.

Image via a Blogspot

Overall, IS is pretty much just a fun fanservicey anime with a bunch of cool fights and epic mechas, and as long as something is fun to watch, it’s difficult to have complaints. I will say, I wish the actual reasoning for the IS systems rejecting the Y chromosome was elaborated on more, I mean, aside from it being an easy way to make a harem story. I would’ve really liked to have seen a good explanation of the systems’ functions. Oh well, perhaps I’ll find out more as IS2 progresses.