Review of Akashic Records of Bastard Magic Instructor

I expected this to be your run of the mill magic academy storyline with a perverted protagonist who gets caught up in totally crazy and suuuper awkward situations that occur in literally every anime ever with a male main character and several supporting female characters. Instead what I got was an interesting story about a substitute magic instructor who tries to open the minds of his students, and have them think about how to use magic outside of what their textbooks teach them. I also thought this was going to be a stereotypical ecchi anime, made more creepy than usual by the fact that themain character is a teacher and his students are underage, but once I was able to look past the scanty school uniforms I ended up liking the show.

One thing I should say about this anime before I briefly discuss each element of the show is this: Before you judge whether you will like the show or not, watch up to episode two. If you are wondering why I insist on doing this, it is because episode one is garbage. It is full of clichés and a whole lot of nothing important happening. However, it provides context for the events of episode two, so I still recommend you watch it. For those of you who follow the three episode rule like myself, this is not a problem. For those of you who do not follow the three episode rule, I urge you to watch through to episode two before deciding if this anime is for you or not. That being said, let's go over the aspects of the show.

The story's not bad for a magical academy setting. For something that has been done a billion times over, I feel as though the creators of this show managed to put an interesting spin on it. Most magic academy stories take place from the students' perspective, but instead with this show, we get both the teacher's and students' POV's on the story. Although having the teacher as the main character is not a novel idea (e.g. Negima), the way it is presented in Akashic Records is presented well enough. Because Glenn already knows a lot about magic, the fights that take place showcase how serious he can get, while still keeping the viewer informed on the workings of magic in this universe via Glenn’s lectures to his students. In the interest of being fair, the episodes do have a habit of jumping around sometimes, and inserting filler episodes such as a beach trip. I felt as though there were several minute chunks in a few episodes that could have been cut entirely and replaced with either character development scenes or more world building scenes. But, for what the show has, it works.

Not much to say about the art. It feels standard and generic, like any anime studio could have made this. Some of the background art is nice, and a few of the shots going over the different locales are nice, but for the most part it looks pleasing enough to the eye to not be considered bad. The areas where it shines are in the appearances of the magic spells.

The soundtrack - from what I remember of it - is quite nice. Many of the songs that play during dialogue-heavy scenes are soothing, while music played during action scenes are upbeat and exciting! That being said, I am not exactly an expert on what makes good music and soundtracks, so I cannot say much else on it, nor do I feel confident going into detail on why it's so great.

By far, the best part of the show is the characters, especially the main character, Glenn. Most anime protagonists are hotheaded boys who are kind to a fault, and get angry when someone harms their friends. Glenn's an utter bastard - true to the show's name - and is not afraid to be himself in that regard. He's lazy, rude, and shoots down the dreams of his students (at first). Yet as the show progresses, we see more and more that this bastard personality is more of a persona than a personality. This other side of him is brought out while he teaches his class, but the two students who see this side the most are Sistine and Rumia, the main supporting characters. At first glance, these two are your generic tsundere with a big dream, and deredere with a dark past. Of the two, Sistine has the bigger spotlight and goes through more development than Rumia (although the most focus goes to Glenn). The other students in Glenn's class are also quite interesting. The only problem is that we never learn much about them. None of the students' backstories or motivations are fleshed out much beyond basic personality traits and what type of magic each of them is best at, according to Glenn. This is a huge shame because I would have loved to learn more about some of the other students, as well as other supporting characters such as Albert.

Ultimately, the story, art, and setting are nothing special, but the characters are all marvelous and make the show worth watching. That said, Akashic Records' biggest shortcomings are the generic setting, art style, story (to a degree), and the fact that it has a very interesting and diverse character cast, yet only fleshes out about four of those characters. In comparison, an anime such as Negima dedicates entire episodes to some of the different students, and although it never gets to every student, you're still left knowing more about them than you will with Akashic Records. In fact, I found that the students that I was most curious about were the ones who had just enough screen time for me to notice them, but not enough to remember their names. Overall though, if I was asked whether Akashic Records was worth somebody’s time to watch with a simple yes or no, I would say, “Yes.”