Infinite Stratos - Review

Art (9/10)
The animation was done fairly well. Backgrounds were detailed and characters were animated well. Even the extras were all physically different in some way. The battle scenes, even though there weren't many, were really smooth and exciting to watch.

Characters (6/10)
This category is where the anime suffers. First, you have the dense male harem lead, Orimura Ichika. At first glance, he looks like a regular teenage guy who gets the opportunity to enroll in an all-girls school. Many guys out there would give up everything just to be in his situation. However, because he is the typical, dense male harem lead, he is oblivious to the feelings of the all the girls around him. This happens throughout the whole series so it is frustrating to watch sometimes. Understandably, since he is the only male, all the female characters want to befriend him. The main females come from different countries of the world so there's a bit of diversity in the characters. However, they all possess at least one of the typical harem traits (childhood friend, tsundere, ojou-sama, sadistic etc). With that being said, the characters' interactions were not special. I guess with IS being a harem anime, I should not have expected character development. I didn't really have a "favorite" character because there wasn't a character that was interesting.

Sound (8/10)
The OP and ED were very good. I found it nice that the seiyuu voicing the main female characters sang the ED. Both songs were upbeat and fit the general mood of the series. The BGM wasn't really memorable but it was not out of place.

Story (6/10)
It's hard to say that IS actually had a "story". A third of the episode was used just to introduce characters. The rest of the episodes (excluding 11 and 12) were mostly about the girls interacting (is that even the right word?) with Ichika. Episodes 11 and 12 wrapped up the so-called "story" with a battle scene. If I were to condense the story into a few points, here is what it would look like:

• Teenage boy discovers he is the only male capable of piloting an IS
• Main female characters are introduced
• Male lead interacts with females
• Final battle

As you can see, there aren't a lot of points. However, I understand that a harem anime is not watched for its story so I guess there's no helping it.

Overall (7/10)
Infinite Stratos met my expectations in general. I wouldn't mind having a second season sometime in the near future. There are some aspects that I would want the producers to improve on but overall, I enjoyed watching Infinite Stratos.