High School DxD

[ben0119]

I was wanting something else to watch and was going through Funimation's library, and this show appeared on one of the lists.  I remembered Daos saying this show along with Haganai were two of the legendary harem series or whatever.

Again, I'm not a big fan of the genre, but neither series really fits the mold.  This show doesn't take itself seriously.  High School DxD is a comedy and possibly even to parody levels, with a lot of the meta lines and scenes that happen.  Like Issei saying a girl wouldn't randomly want to have sex with him for no reason, unless it was a porn or one of those harem animes. And the fact that Issei acts like how a young guy actually WOULD act if he got put into one of these shows, and even gets powered by his pervertedness later on, it's HILARIOUS!

By the way, is Issei left-handed?  I'm a lefty myself so it would be cool to see a rare lefty hero.  I remember Rias saying to imagine the most powerful part of his body and that would be where his sacred gear would come from.  Is that because that's his fapping hand? And that time Ddraig said he wasn't looking forward to what Issei would be doing with that hand later on.  I'm surprised that was the only time that joke got made!

Another refreshing thing is how Rias acts.  I get tired of the whole innocent, embarrassed girl thing when it comes to sexual situations.  Rias is not like that at all!  Plus, she is just awesome and lovable all around!

Why aren't the Devils in High School DxD evil?  These characters aren't really Devils.  They're just a faction of anime characters.

The fallen angels are worse than the actual devils.  Also I thought fallen angels WERE the devils/demons.  So this show has its religious lore stuff screwed up.  

Then again the show barely has anything to do with high school, either, but I am just fine with that.  I don't need a ton of school focused scenes, and I'm especially glad they aren't going to a special "Devil School."

I was not a fan of them saying God died in the show.  I guess maybe it was done because God would be too "OP" if he got involved directly in the story.  Then later on it was revealed that the Greek and Norse gods and Youkai and everything else were totally real too.  Then I realized this show isn't just being Christian-based with this stuff and isn't trying to be realistic or accurate at all with the religious stuff.  As I mentioned about the Devils, it's just to have different themed factions of anime characters with special powers.

One thing I will give credit for is for Asia, I thought it was a mistake to say Asia could heal Devils.  Usually a healing power like that for humans should damage undead or demons etc.  But Asia was a special case because she could heal Devils, and was branded a witch for it.  Asia is great and adorable, by the way.

Why did Koneko start liking Issei?  I did not get the impression that she was a tsundere character.  She seemed to genuinely dislike Issei.  To go from that to how she acts after he helped her with her situation with her sister is kind of hard to buy.  Also that age difference, eh...  Jad Saxton is hilarious as Koneko though.

I could have sworn that Issei and Rias already said how they felt about each other before?  And I don't mean that mini filler arc in season 3 (and for some reason you can just sense something is filler before even confirming it.)  They for sure already kissed several times.  It also seemed like they were already a couple.

Thought it was pretty odd how the author refused to kill off Freed for the longest time, then introduced a new character who looks almost exactly the same, but isn't as depraved.  

And oh yeah, this show had some sicko scumbag characters in it, some rapey, sort of like some of the SAO scumbag often rapey characters.  So I guess that is not just an SAO thing.  But it wasn't as prevalent here and these characters seemed to have a little more effort put into them.  They were still pretty cartoonish, but still.

I was surprised when season 3 came around and voice actors were changed.  I honestly did not even notice with Akeno.  I thought maybe she sounded different when she had to take charge and shout orders to the others in that one battle, but Akeno had never really had to do that before, so I could see why she would sound different, even if it was the original VA.

But Issei was very obvious.  I could not understand why Funimation would get rid of Scott Freeman when he had done such a good job as Issei.  I googled it and I was like, ok, I can see why he was fired, haha.  They really had no choice here.  I did not remember that that was who Scott Freeman was.  He really wasn't in any major roles in anything I had seen back when he got in trouble.  But man, he was perfect as Issei!  It's a shame he had to do what he did.  

Issei sounded like he had a cold after the VA change.  I don't know why Josh Grelle was doing that sort of voice, either.  I know he can do a higher pitched voice.  If he did more like his Armin voice, but sillier and not so wussy sounding, it would have been pretty good for Issei.  After a while I got used to it.  Not sure if it was because Josh Grelle got better at the voice or changed his performance, or I just got acclimated to it.

Asia was also changed for season 4, but sounds exactly the same.  I could've sworn she was played by Stephanie Sheh, because Asia's voice is very similar to Stephanie Sheh's Hinata voice, but nope.  But if at least two other girls can do this voice, I guess it is not that hard or uncommon of a voice to do.

Also could have sworn that Kiryu was played by Michelle Ruff, but she's played by someone named Alexia Sabanbeard.  Huh.  Looks like she is the voice for Videl and Goten.  Oh she also went by Kara Edwards, which is her actual name.  That explains things a bit.  Still, I definitely didn't think of Videl when I heard her here.  Wait, she used the Sabanbeard name JUST for High School DxD lmao.  I get it now!  Not wanting people to know she worked on this perverted show! And Tia Ballard did the same thing!

Also Freed's VA, Ben Phillips, sounded just like John Lithgow.  That would have been amazing if it was actually him.

By the way, why did Funimation refuse to keep dubbing Interspecies Reviewers on account of it being "too perverted," but they dubbed this?!  What the hell HAPPENS in that show?!

Then after VA changes for season 3, the art style totally changed for season 4!  What the hell happened there?!  It doesn't even look like you're watching the same show.  I suppose the animation and production values are probably better, but I liked the previous art style and character designs more.  

Also, it could be my imagination, or maybe because I didn't see them as much, but it seemed like newer characters and side characters looked more like themselves than more major characters, which made it even more annoying.  Like Irina.  Although Sairaorg looked totally different.  And Kiba looks like Eugeo now.  I really did not like how the eyes were drawn.  Apparently, the studio changed?  But that doesn't mean they had to completely change the look of the show!

Anyway, I don't know if there will be more seasons or not.  I think the light novels ended, but I'm not sure.  If so, a future season could just cover all the remainder of the material in one go.  There was a post credits teaser at the end.  But, it stopped at a pretty satisfactory point, with the big win over Sairaorg, and Issei and Rias confessing to each other (although I could've sworn that already happened,) so I would be ok if there were no more seasons.

[ben0119]

 

Edited February 6, 2022 by ben0119

[PokeNirvash]

I've only seen season 1 subbed twice, and outside of a couple episodes near the middle which were tough to watch (the dodgeball half of episode 7 was great, but the familiar-hunting half was PAINFUL), I can say that this show is as solid as battle harems get and is well worth the watch.

Fun story: I checked out the first episode as a test-watch just to learn the context behind Issei's near-death in the first episode, and kept watching because the plot was actually pretty good. The boobs had nothing to do with it, though they were a nice bonus.

Also you can thank s-CRY-ed for this property existing, or at least for the Boosted Gear looking the way it does.

[shocking first bullet]

[PokeNirvash]

Another fun story: about four or five years ago, while lost in my own thoughts like I usually am, I figured out there were a surprising amount of similarities between the basic plot of DxD and that of my first hypothetical anime that I took writing seriously with, NIBAI MUGENDAI. And this isn't a case of me ripping off DxD without knowing, I was posting about NM on the old ASMB a year or so before the first DxD light novel came out in Japan and didn't even know about DxD until a month shy of the anime's Winter 2012 debut, but the similarities between both were honestly alarming and actually kind of fun to figure out.

Spoiler

So we have our main character (Issei Hyodo, Takashi Fujishima) who, unlike most protagonists, is hardly a saint; Issei is a massive pervert, while Takashi is a chain smoker and beer drinker who curses quite a bit. They also have a grand total of two friends they regularly hang out with; Issei has his perverted buddies Matsuda and Motohama (no first names given), Takashi has his dormmates Tomoki Kumagai and Domyoji Arashokou. Personality-wise, Tomoki is way closer to Issei than Takashi is.

So one night, our MC makes a decision that in hindsight was shady at best and stupid at worst; Issei agrees to be this girl from another school's boyfriend after she asks him out of the blue, to the point of going on a date with her, while Takashi hears a series of gunshots down an alley blocked off by police tape and goes past it to get a closer look. This decision ends up getting them killed; Yuuma Amano turns out to be a fallen angel named Raynare who kills Issei in an attempt to neutralize the threat of his Sacred Gear, while Takashi just gets his arm shot off by stray bullets from the rooftop the sounds originated from.

Enter our female protagonist (Rias Gremory, Motoko Kotegawa). They have large breasts, brightly colored hair (Rias's is red, Motoko's is blue-violet), and aren't nearly as tsundere as you'd think they would be. (Seriously, I went into DxD expecting Rias to be a violent tsundere, but she wasn't, so I wound up hating Koneko instead.) They also have a dangerous other side the public doesn't know about; Rias is a devil, Motoko moonlights as a costumed vigilante opposing an organization known as SORE. (That's pronounced "soh-ray", not "soar".) As our MC lays dying, our FeMC arrives by his side (Rias via a pocket summoning circle her familiar in humanoid form gave Issei earlier that day, Motoko by being involved in the fight whose stray bullets injured Takashi) and proceeds to revive them using items intrinsic to the series' lore; Rias uses chess pieces - all 8 of her pawns - to bring Issei back as a devil, while Motoko steals the artificial arm off one of the SOREAs (short for SORE Agents) she just killed and uses it to replace Takashi's disembodied one. After that life-saving maneuver, the MC goes back to their everyday life, but with numerous changes they soon discover...

First, they discover they have enhanced abilities. Issei can see in the dark, hear from far away, and has better reaction time than he had before; Takashi simply gets increased strength, super enough to rip a tree from its roots. Next are their inhuman capabilities, with Issei gaining devil abilities and attributes, and Takashi having the ability to instantaneously heal from even fatal wounds, an ability made possible by the special fluid powering his replacement arm, dubbed R-NA (the dash is what separates it from regular RNA). And then there's the arm that they often use in combat situations, which draws similarities to Kazuma from s-CRY-ed; Issei by his Boosted Gear looking similar to the Shell Bullet (and also sharing Kazuma's voice actor in Korea), and Takashi by his hypothetical English VA being the same as Kazuma's, the legendary Steve Blum.

But the most important change to the MC's life is that the girl who saved them has gotten closer to him, in either a borderline or directly romantic manner. Borderline for Issei, directly for Takashi. (Seriously, he and Motoko become BF/GF in episode 2 of NM, confess their love to one another by 7, kiss and then make out in 11, so on and so forth; while it takes around 10 or so LN volumes for Issei to work up the courage to refer to Rias by her first name, something the dub completely missed the mark on, not to mention him having affections for a bunch of other female characters.)

With these new powers and the FeMC by his side, the protagonist joins her in battle against the force responsible for their death (the fallen angels/the church, SORE), and does so alongside an initial group of the FeMC's comrades, which grows as the series goes on. Issei and Rias's initial comrades include the other members of Kuoh Academy's Occult Research Club (Akeno Himejima, Koneko Tojo (fitting surname for a character I hate), and Yuto Kiba), while Takashi and Motoko's are mecha engineer/creator Junichiro Haikai and weapon designer/ex-soldier Goro Kurosawa, the both of whom also oppose SORE for their own reasons.

Spoiler

It's in episode 45 of NIBAI MUGENDAI that it turns out Goro is actually Takashi's estranged father and was also cryogenically frozen for the 50 years before Takashi was conceived. As to be expected by a hypothetical anime formerly "produced" by GAINAX.

The expanded group of allies in DxD starts with nun Asia Argento, who also gets killed by the fallen angels (and stays dead for longer than Issei did) and is subsequently revived as a member of Rias's "chess set" and the then-newest member of the Occult Research Club. The rest, meanwhile, I don't know all that much about because I still haven't seen New, BorN, or HerO, but I know that a former ally of the Church (Xenovia Quarta), a vampire femboy (Gasper Bloody), and an older woman of an affiliation I have no clue about (Rossweisse) join the Occult Research Club, and Xenovia's partner (Irina Shido) is sort of a member, but kinda isn't and I base this only on her lack of presence in New's second ED. The expanded ally group in NM is a little more limited, consisting of the members of the Aichi Prefectural Police's Criminal Investigation Division who Takashi later joins as their "kill guy" (police-contracted hitman for super-dangerous criminals), consisting primarily of division chief Sakuto Yakawa, chief inspector Naokuu Tanoshiba (as in the protagonist of Kinky Kunoichi, yes), another character from Kunoichi whose identity will remain under wraps because I actually care about keeping spoilers for that hypothetical anime unspoken, and rookie officer Arifumi Udesaka, who loses his own arm halfway through the show, gets a new one, and more or less becomes Takashi's disciple in the way of fighting with R-NA-powered prosthetics. Another character shows up in the form of Tokyo-based detective and former "criminal killer" Haiken Shibata, who will also be featured in Kunoichi's second season, arriving hopefully at the end of this year but maybe in 2023 if my efficiency doesn't drastically improve.

There are a lot of differences that keep DxD and NM from being too similar and give them their own identity, a lot of which are tied to the above comments. (I.E. the aforementioned romantic progress with Takashi and Motoko, Issei's allies being mostly beautiful women while Takashi's are mostly adult men, Tomoki and Domyoji being more involved in the plot while Matsuda and Motohama remain ineffectual minor characters who were only weighing Issei down, Raynare dying in episode 5 and the fallen angels from that point on being pretty chill while SORE remains a threat all the way to the end.) But there are two things that make the similarities between the setups very uncanny.

The first is the case of the secondary antagonist who is in love with the FeMC, and hates the MC because of it. For DxD, it's Riser Phoenix, Rias's fiance who she dislikes for personality reasons and who dislikes Issei because Rias would rather fuck the latter than marry the former. (He gropes one of his haremette's breasts while telling Issei "this is something you will never do" even though he got to second base with Rias (by her guidance) earlier in the episode, and that's one of several reasons why I think episode 8 sucks.) For NM, it's Shizune Nihei, a vigilante of the same breed as Motoko who has a problematically outdated but extremely character-important psycho lesbian crush on her, and wants to kill Takashi for reasons including and beyond him being Motoko's main and only squeeze. The difference here is, while Riser disappears after season 1 (though his sister Ravel returns later on), Shizune is just as present as SORE throughout the series, becoming less of a secondary antagonist and more of a deuterantagonist (is that a word?) for NIBAI MUGENDAI as a whole.

The second is the real kicker. The MC has a running gag involving their alarm clock. In season 1 at least, Issei is regularly woken up by his alarm clock, which displays various stock characters from VNs and harem anime, including the tsundere childhood friend, the chainsaw-wielding yandere, a maid, a little sister, a MILF, a catgirl, a drill instructor, and a magical girl. Takashi's alarm clock gag, meanwhile, consists of him shooting his clock instead of regularly turning it off, and leaving Tomoki (who knows his way around technology) to repair it while he's doing other things. The gag occasionally changes up, one case having him pull the trigger on his gun only for it to be empty, another having Motoko (who he spent the night with) turn it off the normal way before he can fire, and a third having him almost do it, only to remind himself that it's a hotel alarm clock and just turn it off like a normal human being.

Who needs actual noise to cut out the silence while driving when you have your own thought processes?

Happy fifteenth anniversary, "Awesome Anime Idea".

Edited February 17, 2022 by PokeNirvash

[stilgar]

Why would a harem anime take itself seriously?

[Daos]

Yeah I mean, the plot was surprisingly good for how ridiculous everything was. The voice actor changes and the non cannon ending to one of the seasons followed by the butchered art style change really fucked the series. The plot was getting too silly to continue anyway.

[Martinman]

Oh man, I loved this show back in the day and blogged the first two (or three?) seasons as they came out for CSW, if you guys remember Jubbz's blog.  I had the commercial break eyecatches as my desktop on a random rotation.

I had a hard time trying to determine if Rias or Akeno was best girl.  I loved them both.

 

 

 

 

...Then I became a high school teacher and figured I shouldn't be watching shows like this...

[ben0119]

On 2/6/2022 at 7:58 AM, PokeNirvash said:

I've only seen season 1 subbed twice, and outside of a couple episodes near the middle which were tough to watch (the dodgeball half of episode 7 was great, but the familiar-hunting half was PAINFUL), I can say that this show is as solid as battle harems get and is well worth the watch.

Fun story: I checked out the first episode as a test-watch just to learn the context behind Issei's near-death in the first episode, and kept watching because the plot was actually pretty good. The boobs had nothing to do with it, though they were a nice bonus.

Also you can thank s-CRY-ed for this property existing, or at least for the Boosted Gear looking the way it does.

[shocking first bullet]

Ah, I knew that Boosted Gear thing felt familiar!  Man, I haven't heard about s-CRY-ed in a while haha.  That was another not very serious over the top show haha.

On 2/9/2022 at 7:18 PM, Martinman said:

Oh man, I loved this show back in the day and blogged the first two (or three?) seasons as they came out for CSW, if you guys remember Jubbz's blog.  I had the commercial break eyecatches as my desktop on a random rotation.

I had a hard time trying to determine if Rias or Akeno was best girl.  I loved them both.

 

 

 

 

...Then I became a high school teacher and figured I shouldn't be watching shows like this...

LOL.  Even though the show barely has anything to do with high school and doesn't have many school scenes.

Rias is definitely best girl!

On 2/7/2022 at 12:29 AM, Daos said:

Yeah I mean, the plot was surprisingly good for how ridiculous everything was. The voice actor changes and the non cannon ending to one of the seasons followed by the butchered art style change really fucked the series. The plot was getting too silly to continue anyway.

So there probably won't be a season 5?  Haha. 

Not that the plot was the most serious thing to begin with.

Yeah the flow was really harmed by those changes.

Edited February 17, 2022 by ben0119