Review of Absolute Duo

[Introduction] ‘Absolute Duo’ was made (Not a big surprise) by 8Bit studio, a small studio founded in 2008 that is dedicated to do some Romance-Harem-Ecchi Colorful animes, and it was adapted from a Light Novel written by Takumi Hiiragiboshi (Who isn’t very popular because this is his only work) and transformed into an anime by Atsushi Nakayama. I would classify this as an 'Ecchi-Harem'anime, so I won't be judging it so hard in the story. However, I'll judge it by how interesting it is, how great character are and how beautiful it's art style-music is.

Story: [2 Plain Boring]

I'll summarize all the "story" in one sentence: 'Middle-schoolers got some guns attached to their soul, so bad people want them in the army...' Maybe I say too much, more than the anime actually does. But it is not only simple and cliché as it could be, it is also REALLY boring and so bad implemented in the anime that it drags you out. The idea of having a sword that represented your soul started as cool. Then the main character came with a shield, running all that could seem interesting there making the main character "special" and blah, blah, blah... And then a girl with a rifle. Why? Because f*ck the story, right?

Characters: [2 Bad Cliché]

Main character? Boring as it could be in a harem anime (Also, as a plus, I never fully understood his name: he was supposed to be named after Thor, a Nordic God, but ended being called Toor or Tooru). Main girl in the anime? Typical white-haired loli kuudere... It's okay if you like that type of girls, but this one is nothing that you haven't seen before, so you are not missing a big thing. Oppai girl? Clumsy and plain, and even her boobs are too big to enjoy. Her friend? Okay, she was nice, I guess. I have to admit that the few times I laughed while watching this was because of her. His friends? Who were them!? I couldn't feel something like 'Oh, they must be important to the story' or 'They must be really good friends!'. Blond girl? Useful for an Anime MLG Recompilation, I guess...

Aesthetics: [6 Simple but Nice]

Don't get too much excited about it, this is a necessary thing in Ecchi anime: it HAS to look nice. Still, this one manages to do it a bit better. One of the few things that can be said about the anime is that it looks nice. When it needed to look cute, it sure did with big rounded cheeks and bright colors. When it needed to look serious, maybe the colors drag a bit out, but the combination of red and violet sometimes did it’s job and make the mood feel a bit more 'in the story'. Still, it's an obligation for an Ecchi-Harem series to look this way, so don't get too proud. And then the animation was good... until they decided to do fighting scenes, and that it's supposed to be the main part of the anime. They were... not so interesting to look at, and by that I mean really boring to look at.

Music: [7 Enjoyable the Music]

Finally something that was good! I loved the music in this anime, both the openings and endings. The opening, "Absolute Soul" was nothing very impressive by the looks, but it did well his job: it showed you the characters, the way they are and their relation with each other, and was the best animated part of the whole anime. I liked this OP so much that I sang the intro at the beginning of each episode, and I even have it in my anime songs folder. Then, the endings "BelivexBelive" and "Apple Tea no Aji" are also great, they show you a bit more of the two main girls in the harem and have cool songs and nice direction. The 'worst' song in the anime was the ED "2/2", and even though, it was a nice song to listen and okay to watch.

Enjoyment: [3 Exciting as Grass]

When the story appeared, it was really slow. When they tried to show character feelings, they were plain and cliché. When they did some actions scenes, the animation make them look stupid and boring. When they show the main villain, he was also boring. When they show the director, boring. But we are not here for story, right? This is just an Ecchi-Fanservise-Harem anime, so the main reason you would watch this anime is because you want to see some boobs, some buts, nice animations, OP characters and funny jokes so you could have a good time, but even there it fails. Why? Because the boring-as-hell story is there, blocking most of the reasons you could have to watch this show.

[Personal Opinion]

If you made it this far in this review, I want to thanks you your taking some of your time to read this, it means so much for me! (っ◕‿◕)っ Okay, let’s go back to the anime. When I started watching ‘Absolute Duo’, I was with some friends and we wanted to mess around and watch a nice funny anime with great style and, of course, some fanservice for the gentlemen. We were unlucky enough to find this anime and see that the main girl was a white-haired loli, favorite kind of girl for a friend of mine, so we jumped straight into it. We laughed a lot with its incoherence and bad characters, but had a nice time. After that time, we could find any more time to reunite to watch the whole anime, so I had to end it myself, and then I noticed how bad it was. Still, some nice things about this can be said, especially thanks to the presence of Konomi Suzuki, my personal favorite OP singer, in the main song. So, you want my advice? If you are going to watch this, please do it with some close friend so you all could have at least some laughs at this.