Review of Akashic Records of Bastard Magic Instructor

This show is one of the most plainly average shows I have borne witness to in a long time. This is not a testament to its quality, but rather an indictment of its lack of attempt to be anything more than a cash grab. There are various issues with the product as it is, but the biggest one being that it is only supposed to serve as a poorly disguised advertisement to get people to purchase the light novel. I don't know anything about the quality of that product, but as a standalone product this story lacks almost everything to be seen as a goodshow.

The story is nothing unique. We follow a scumbag temp teacher at a magic academy who engages in lecherous and lazy behavior unbefitting the position of professor. We learn that he is actually a good guy at heart and only acting this way to hide his honorable intentions from his students. Yet he still acts this way afterwards, so that excuse falls flat on its face. There is an introduction arc, multiple one-off school-themed threads like competitions and the such, and everything else you expect of the bland fantasy magic school fair.

The main issue with this show is that despite the name being "Rokudenashi Majutsu Koushi to Akashic Records" or "Akashic Record of Bastard Magic Instructor", the Akashic Record is just a superlative golden egg, a teaser name dropped towards the end of the series to introduce intrigue. It does not play any role in the story despite being hyped up as an important artifact or object in the universe; and to this end the plain advertisement nature of this show becomes clear. The show (and consequently the light novels as well) are empty husks of stories, differing from other stories of this genre only in the names assigned to the highschool-aged waifus. The motley crew of white and blonde haired waifus along with the generic black haired main makes this a good self-insert power fantasy for anyone looking for that, but beyond that it becomes clear that all relationships in this story are vacuous and devoid of real value.

The characters are generic 2D cutouts, and they are often off-model. The artwork is bland and suffers from the same washed out hyper-filtered look that most of these anime suffer from, in the same way that shooter games from the late 2000's were all brown and green. The audio is done by the books, but there are no standout tracks that catch your attention. It all is so bland and uninteresting as to almost be impressive. Nothing is technically wrong with its production, but it was clearly a rushed job in comparison to other high quality shows, and it is clear not a lot of effort went into anything beyond the initial consideration of getting a show out into the public. I don't even know if there is a LN associated with this, and that is all speculation, but it should be clear by how convinced I am that this is an advertisement for that as to how boring this is. It appears to be the only people who would enjoy this beyond immediate gratification would be those who enjoy the source material.

I just don't see the appeal in this show and think it is a lackluster product at best. Despite not doing anything wrong, it still fails to be at interesting or memorable, and just wastes your time. 3/10.