Review of Walkure Romanze

I first started Walkure Romanze because of a longtime love of knights and horses. The hope of an anime accurately portraying girls learning to joust crashed to the ground the instant i saw the opening theme, which shows them all riding in miniskirts. While that could have been excused as an artistic choice to make the opening look nice, it’s the same in the episode itself. A few girls, such as the student council president, wear what look like tights but are hopefully sturdy leggings to protect their legs. Most don’t, however, which means it’s a miracle any of these girls can walk upright, giventhe horrible saddle sores they must have – especially the girl who jousts in lingerie.

I kept watching because of a sick fascination of everything they get horribly wrong. For example, the main character, Mio, who’s never even touched a horse before in her life, is challenged to a joust by a more experienced girl. Mio’s friend spends the next episode teaching her how to manage a lance, but she almost never gets on a horse until the day of the match. There’s a slight problem with that. Even inanimate modes of transportation, such as bicycles, motorcycles, or cars, require a lot of practice before you can comfortably use them. Horses have a mind of their own, in addition to the rider having to learn how to signal to them where to go. The type of horses that would be used for jousting are much more strong-willed than beginner’s horses. The best case scenario, given the situation, is that the horse Mio borrows stands still and doesn’t listen to a thing she says, while everyone else in the school laughs at her. There are other scenarios equally likely. One: Mio makes the common beginner’s mistake of squeezing with her calves to stay on when the horse starts moving, which tells the horse to go faster. Sakura will run away with her, right past their opponent, and Mio won’t be able to get her to stop because everything she does tells her to go faster. She becomes the school laughingstock. Two: the weight of the lance pulls Mio off balance until she falls off and becomes the school laughingstock. Three: Mio leans too far back and to the left while trying to balance the weight of the lance, so she falls off and becomes the school laughingstock. In the worst-case scenario, she breaks her neck when she falls. Or she gets a concussion. Jousting is very dangerous even when you wear a helmet, which a good many people here don’t usually bother with. However, since these are wonderful magic~ horses who defrock anything in a skirt, things go just peachy for Mio. They only wear helmets in matches, and apparently then just for show, as evidenced when one girl is unsaddled. Her helmet goes flying, and she falls in a different direction, thus hitting her head rather badly and getting a concussion. Except she doesn’t get a concussion, because this is anime. There’s a reason riding helmets come with chin straps, people.

But enough about that. It’s not as though this show is actually about jousting or horses. It’s just a framing device for the same goofy harem ecchi that shows up in a lot of shows and gives anime a bad name. Walkure Romanze is full of huge-breasted girls and one guy, who accidentally gropes pretty much every girl in each episode, because isn’t accidental groping great? Because he’s the only guy of a reasonable age at the school, all the girls either want to get into his pants or each other’s. Noel is especially rapey towards Mio, which is shown with lots of random groping and sex disguised as stretching. Or the other way around. It’s hard to tell with this show. Of course, they couldn’t leave out the hot springs episode! Lots of nekkid groping, pillow fights, and people in the wrong bath at the wrong time hijinx for your enjoyment! (Or lack thereof.) Rather than individual characters, we have a bunch of typical anime stereotypes. There’s the offensively naïve and stupid main character, the nice guy, the elegant student council president, the kuudere albino, the crippled imouto, and so on, none of them with anything resembling personality. Everything feels very rote, like they’re following a formula for bland anime. Honestly, the only reason i rated it above a one was because the jousting idea was pretty original.

The predictability of the plot (as opposed to the characters) shouldn’t really be held against it. You can’t bring any interest to a sports story, anime or no, without a big tournament. Still, though, the progression of newbie falls in love with the sport –> defeats a few minor opponents –> becomes tournament underdog and does surprisingly well didn’t feel like they were trying to bring any originality or flavor to it. Again, very formulaic. It only managed to surprise me once, with the end of the very last match in the tournament. I won’t say what happened, but i will say that it followed common sense more than you’d expect from anime. The best part was the music. Not the opening and ending – those are just as dull and interchangeable as the characters. But the background music was very nice, classy instrumentals similar to medieval music. It helped build the mood that ‘these are knights in training’ much better than anything else the show tried to do.

So, all in all, i don’t think it was worth it. If you like ecchi and/or the discussion of a lance as if it were a penis, then this is the anime for you. But if you have even the slightest interest in jousting, horses, or girl knights, you’re better off reading old Tamora Pierce novels.