Anime Review: Walkure Romanze

Who Would Like this Anime?

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It’s a visual novel adaption. A pretty uneventful… rom-com? There’s not all too much rom, not all too much com. It’s nothing, really. Something to kill your time with if you’ve seen everything else.

For: 13 uneventful episodes to kill your time with. It’s not boring. It’s not interesting. There’s not much rom. There’s not much com. If you’ve got nothing better at hand, this is yours.

Translation Where?

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I’ve watched this release since FFF is as fast as we are at guhehe. Neither bad nor good. They’re subs. Then again, I noticed one irregularity. While the sub group stuck to honorifics – which isn’t a bad thing – they went with “Sis” instead of Onee-something. That’s inconsequent and, as we all know, not all too smart a choice.

Translation: Nothing much to worry about if you get the above release.

Premise

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Takahiro is an ex-knight at an academy for jousting. He’s suffered an injury and hasn’t jousted since. The big picture is that there’s a tournament coming up and since he’s talented, a bunch of girls – of course there are mainly girls, who’d want guys to fawn on him – are after Takahiro as their squire. That’s it.

Visuals

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The style tells you right away that you’re watching a rom-com. It’s really typical. While the art isn’t exactly diverse, the “colorful” green sceneries are easy to look at and overall it doesn’t look bad. The academy’s interior’s quite detailed too, it looks how the Japanese tend to picture European stuff. This time, the art is above average, in my humble opinion. The backgrounds are really crisp for the most part and the subtle use of 3D CGIs does the setting justice. I kind of wonder where they got the budget from.

Conclusion

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The anime is based on a visual novel going by the same name. And here’s the general formula of anime adaption quality:

Manga Adaption > Light Novel Adaption > Visual Novel Adaption

Original anime isn’t an adaption to begin with and hence doesn’t count. In terms of interesting material and narrative quality in average, it’s usually:

Visual Novel > Light Novel > Manga

The lack of the adaption quality is frequently due to all character routes being thrown into one pot, stir it up good, and done is the anime storyline all the whilst hardly any route will receive a satisfactory conclusion but rather be cut-off like a coitus interruptus. And hence visual novel adaptions mostly feel very unsatisfactory and inconsequent in the end; just like a coi… let’s stop that. But how does it go this time?

Let’s get to the characters first. Surprisingly for a visual novel, the ecchi isn’t overbearing and rather subtle in comparison. It’s one of the few shows I’ve seen these days where characters actually look like they’re wearing a bra beneath. It’s shameful that this even has to be mentioned. The only subtle thing that repeats all the time is the camera frequently starting its scrolling from their bosoms. While all characters have their quirks, they don’t force you to roll your eyes all the time. They’re rather believable in the way they act. Alas, only one character out of half a dozen receives something you could call depth. I know it’s hard to give any characters depth within twelve episodes, but the point remains.

It was a pretty close fight over who’s best girl in this series at first, but the main heroine decided to screw the competition and ruins her own appeal. That’s canon, though; I checked. Another weak point is their lack of motivation. Don’t get me wrong, they’re all motivated to jouste and love it – but why?! Only one character has a real and clear motif. The rest just keep repeating how much they love it like parrots. So at some point it’s getting annoying, they should just shut up if they don’t have the depth to clearly state while they love this oh so “noble” sport of ramming a lance into someone else so much.

The protagonist is the most shallow character of all. He got injured while jousting once and is now struggling whether to start again or not. He’s got no quirks. He’s more of an observer that everyone swarms because of his jousting ability, so apparently that’s already enough. That’s pretty much it. A virtually faceless guy.

And now on to the story. It’s got hardly anything worth remembering. The big idea is that a big jousting tournament is approaching and everyone wants the protagonist as their squire and/or win it. But up until the final segment of the anime, this seems to hardly play any role. The only scene I really remember are the jousting battles with their nice CGI and more clearly the windmill segment. The rest of the story is just uneventful and doesn’t really motivate to watch the next episode.

It can be easily dropped at any time, you never get the feeling you’d miss out on something. And as there’s little linkage within the story, you can pretty much watch the anime – apart from the last segment – in any order. So the story’s not bad, not good, it’s just completely flavorless. The tournament is nicely presented, but again something you’ve seen a million times before. Power of friendship, blablabla. But let’s not spoiler too much. The only reason to save this anime is its success- and tasteful implementation of 3D and its visual quality overall. But even in these regards there’s better stuff, so you could say it’s another example of “nowadays, everything gets an adaption.”

So, what does this all add up to? We’ll consider that this is a visual novel adaption. It adds up to 6/10 thanks to art, and another point for not being as ridiculous in a bad way as most other rom-com things these days, 7/10. Then again it’s pretty boring and lacks the spice 80% of time, so that’s one point subtracted, 6/10. I wouldn’t rewatch it since it lacks memorable moments or anything, really, but the animation quality to rewatch it.

Rating 6/10