Review of Mikagura School Suite

All my reviews are spoiler free aimed towards people who haven't seen the show. Mikagura School Suite Initial summary and review, if you're not interested in the summary skip the story section. *note my reviews are always spoiler free. Any part of the story that's revealed in the summary is only for the first three episode or less in an attempt to intrigue you to give it a view. MSS is an anime adaptation of a novel that was first inspired by a series of popular NND songs created by Last Note and performed by the Vocaloid GUMI. The words that describe this show as a whole arefun, energetic, even charming at times. But I think the word that best describes with show from an objective standpoint. Is lazy.

Story: The show starts off rather ominous, with a girl running from a pursuer through the dark Academy halls in the middle of the night. Ending with an incredible attack from said pursuer with the outcome unknown to the viewer. By the end of the episode, we learn the girl that was being chased at the beginning of the show, is the granddaughter of Mikagura Academy, the girl who prompted Eruna's attendance, Seisa Mikagura. Seisa is a austere individual who usually secludes herself from the rest of the academy even as far as not attending classes. She catches sight of Eruna when she arrives and offers her to join her club, assuming this has something to do with her family name, and ask her to represent the club in the upcoming battle demonstration. Eruna happily accepts with drool running down her face from gawking at her sweetheart senpai. But she doesn't even know how to battle..... It seems as if it's a start to a good mystery. What happened that night? Why is Seisa so withdrawn from everybody else? And why does she have an interest in Eruna the moment they meet? As Eruna enters her first battle, she quickly learns how much of a disadvantage she's at and flees from the fight in an attempt to catch her opponent off guard during the pursuit. She stumbles upon a closed off section of the building and enters a room with a shrine where a very ... familiar looking girl, grants Eruna with her ability to manifest absolute energy from her spirit. Just like that huh? In a fluke, Eruna is able to pull a victory against the Calligraphy club member. At this point the show is still looking good, despite the animation which I'll get into shortly. Eruna then goes back to Seisa bragging about her victory in her first battle. Seisa tells her the only reason she won, was cause her opponent wasn't taking her seriously to begin with. Refusing to believe that, she challenges Seisa to a mock battle to show Seisa her strength. Seisa accepts, but tells Eruna if she is unable to break one of her crystals (a battle is won when you break all three the crystals that float around the combatant) she will revoke her membership to the club. Eruna is defeated with little effort from Seisa. No longer a part of any clubs, Eruna goes from club to club meeting the members, making friends, causing some mischief, trying to find her place, and trying understand why Seisa acts the way she does. Sounds interesting right? Well unfortunately it kinda loses this focus halfway through the show, but manages to end on a decent note.

Story Execution: The narrative begins with a bang and some intrigue. There's some mystery to be resolved, an MC who has been brought to an understanding of what she needs to do, and the battles to be had...... well, not so much the battles. When you read the synopsis and watch the first few episodes you'd think that would be a good focus. But instead they focus more on character action outside of battle and lots comedy skits. They go as far as to hype up a battle, cut to the eye-catch when a commercial would air, and when you return, Eruna would be talking to someone like, "*sigh* I can't believe I lost". And this happens multiple times. For a school based on club battles, you rarely see any of them fight. The show would have been much better off with Action rather than Slice of Life Comedy, but the budget wouldn't allow it I guess. The story gets cut up into little arcs as she goes from club to club meeting it's members. With bits of interaction from Seisa drive the main narrative subtly. This was fine for half of the show. Then you meet Otone Fujishiro, who takes up a third of the season with nothing to gain from it by the end, besides a bunch of yuri jokes and a lesson in friendship. Which becomes really boring to be honest. It does manage to end with an interesting conclusion to the narrative but it wasn't very exciting and a kinda cliche ass pull. It could have been fleshed out more without the... basically comedy filler. If the writer took this a little more serious than he did, he could have had a compelling narrative, but it's washed out with all the random comedy and cliche friendship morals.

Characters: Lots of fun characters. Each one is given it's own little arc and melancholic back story. Eruna is very energetic and has a lust for anything cute, specifically girls. Although she seems rather naive see isn't exactly dumb, in fact you tend to see that she has a more level head the more you watch behind her constant antics and care free attitude. You find a heartwarming development as to why Akama, the Drama Club Prez, is initially so harsh to the new freshman during their training. The tragic story of the deeply misunderstood Art Prez Kyouma. The inspiring reason for the freshman Asuhi to push forward bettering himself. Then there are the "antagonists" I guess you could say. Like the Music Club member who instead of battling fair, plays with her opponents and unnecessarily humiliates and belittles them. Or the broadcast member who tries to to shut down Eruna's little scheme she comes up with. I will say the drama club members were annoying and took up more time than they needed to. And you can't forget then man that brought Eruna to the Academy her cousin Shigure, who is completely in love and obsessed with Eruna, it's pretty funny. But sadly none of these stories become a focused theme, and reverts back to Eruna and her cheesy friendships for the remainder of the show.

Art and Animation: ....... This is my biggest problem with the show, as I believe it is the cause of all the other problem I see with it. The Art looks great. The designs for the characters are good, the colors are beautiful, etc. The animation is very lack luster. Only main characters are detailed, anyone extra are merely white silhouettes. Not that big of a deal itself, but just the tip of the ice berg among shortcuts. When action arises, characters look rather inconsistent and vague. It's also obvious why you don't see many battles, because it was too much of a hassle to draw them. The battles you do see are talks with an attack here, more talks and a face close up, then an attack there, more talks, commercial break, next scene after the battle skipping the conclusion. And the obvious errors are littered throughout the entire show. The crystals that hover above the characters, are sometimes absent during scenes or even switched places for a brief moment then returned to their original position. I even recall a scene where Eruna was just forgotten to be drawn, and was absent for almost 20 frames.

Sound: The BGM is alright but nothing memorable, the tracks that were the best are seldom used. The OP and ED switches during certain episodes were good to watch and listen too. The Eruna version of Houkago Stride is awesome.

Enjoyment: I did enjoy the show. Even though all the battles I wanted to see weren't shown, I still enjoyed the characters, some of the comedy, and the main story between Eruna and Seisa. I wish the show would have taken it's story concept more seriously and had a staff that wanted to animate some wild action. Instead it was just SoL comedy while Eruna helped other students be honest with themselves through her constant 100% smiles, energy, and cliche view on friendship.

Overall it was alright but pretty underwhelming. I'll give it a 5/10. Not really something I'd recommend watching to someone. Unless I know the person can look past it's flaws and enjoy the random fun and yuri jokes. Sry Eruna-chan, but you weren't that great. I still love your songs