Review of Absolute Duo

Absolute Duo is absolutely terrible. It’s been a long time since I’ve watched an anime series and gone an entire 12 episodes without being able to pinpoint at least one positive aspect. Not only does the plot suffer from being predictable and translucent, but the amount of money grabbing fanservice littering every ounce of substance is beyond upsetting. The premise on its own is promising, but the series ends up drowning in its own inadequacies left and right, leading to a dissapointment for the ages. Unassuming teenage protagonist? -Check Random beach episode? -Check Barely post-pubescent characters with jiggly titties? -Check Unnecessary lolli panty shots? -Check A horribly cast English dub?-Check
An incoherent plot with as much depth as a kiddie pool? -Check

If Absolute Duo succeeds in one aspect, it would be to be as underwhelming as humanly possible. Nothing is fleshed out, the storyline never seems to go anywhere and the characters are essentially just cutouts without any amount of development beyond their breasts and oddly deepened voices. Things just seem to happen but most of it doesn’t make any sense, or even follow a cohesive formula for the audience to grab onto. It honestly felt as though the writers for the anime didn’t even care about their jobs.

The battle system sounds cool on paper, but when you don't spend the minimum necessary time explaining it and end up leaving a multitude of unanswered questions at the end, it becomes nothing more than "what could've been". The action scenes often opened up with a still image of the characters with their weapons, multiplying the corny factor, while the animation was inconsistent at best. Young girls with boobs that seem to bounce with the slightest of movement, and nervous blushing emblazoned on the face of basically everyone. Not to mention the sporadic humor and misunderstandings making me want to slam my head against the wall.

Characters are entirely too tropey for me to take seriously, as they seem to be more of checks in boxes rather than actual dynamic individuals. I thought I could find something good in the MC until he succumbed to the awkwardness of being in a perverted Japanese high school anime. The enemies were one-offs without purpose, and were almost completely useless in the scheme of things. Plus, literally every voice actor with the exception of our lolli friend was miscast with an older actor, a sign that the budget probably wasn't where it needed to be.

If you googled J pop, I'm sure you'd find something very similar to the opening and ending of Absolute Duo. Granted the animation in the OP was actually decent, possibly the only highlight of the show for me. The OST is absent or cringey, and I've already given my thoughts on the rest of the animation. Sigh, this show made me sad for the hopeful fans waiting for the manga adaptation…

In summary,

Positives: the OP isn't bad
Negatives: pretty much everything else

AVOID at all costs, I literally would t recommend this show to anyone… unless you’re some sort of sadistic masochist or stereotypical weeaboo pervert. So, with that being said there probably is a target audience for Absolute Duo… but I'm certainly not a part of it. Thanks for reading!

Story-1
Art-3
Sound-5
Character-1
Enjoyment-3
Overall-2.4