Review of High School DxD Hero
"I watch it for the plot.", the common excuse given by dxd fans which actually holds true for the first 2.5 seasons. Yet hero seems adamant about falling short of expectations set by its predecessors. *I AM NOW GONNA TALK ABOUT HOW SHITTY THE BREAST DESIGN IN THIS SEASON IS* As i watched through this season of Dxd, it is obvious that the new director/art director is probably a virgin that have not seen boobs in real life. Note this has nothing to do with the new art style despite my preference for the older style. This is extremely noticeable when you compare Akeno from Bornto Hero; for some reason, the team decided that her breast wasnt big enough and have to bring it to the point of those in hentai. The breast and physics animation is comparable to that of Shinmai Maou no Testament. If you have no qualms with how breast are shaped there, you'll have no issue with this season.
*I AM DONE TALKING ABOUT BREAST DESIGNS*
Art style has taken a new change which made me thought that the studio would be able to play this into their advantage and have more fluid animation/ jiggle scenes. I was wrong. Despite the soft designs and character marking, animation is comparable to that of season 1's choppy cuts. This new art style is a waste on this studio and its directors.
Story wise, dxd has been going downhill since season 3 whereby there have been wasted opportunity to create exciting conflicts between the protagonist and adversaries. For this season, there are 2 main arcs, Hero factions in kyoto and the Bael family arc. Both arc are extremely detached from one another whereby consequences from one seems to play little effect to everything outside the dxd universe. There will be several instances where you may question the rational behind the character's actions (ie issei firing a beam at Cao cao for the sake of "landing a hit") and be given no resolution. The main attraction of the action aspect of dxd was its "chess" game and how underdogs/weaker forces are able to turn the tide. This season follows the same generic yelling motion as end of "born" by having Issei asspull a win because they're the good guys. Issei has also grown more powerful that his allies including kiba which downplays all interesting strategy that season 1 had.
Issei has grown to be the protagonists that i really dislike in anime. The sort that always talks about perverted stuff but when put into the situation, rejects it for reasons(???). The character is shallow at best apart from his harem situation.
Perhaps dxd's lackluster-ed story in this season is the fault of its source material but with how things are turning out for this season, whatever comes next is probably not going to be worth looking out for.