Is it that time of the season already? Is it time for yet another series of Harem Hill posts? Luckily for me, there only seems to be two shows to write about this season in the strictest sense of the term ‘harem anime.’ I mean, you could argue that something like Sword Art Online is a harem too, but to its credit, it has other things going for it too. When I do a typical Harem Hill post, I just want to focus on shows that are nothing but harems. So anyway, like I’ve said, there only seems to be two shows to focus on this season. Maybe it’s time I bring back the prestigious Crown of Shit Harem. After all, this guy has been ruling for far too long now…

Can anyone dethrone the king?

Let’s meet our candidates. First up, we have Rokujyouma no Shinryakusha!?:

Here, we have a show about a bunch of girls fighting over the harem lead’s apartment. But until they decide who gets this humble abode, they’ll have to live together under one roof. How in the world are the harem lead’s parents okay with this? Well duh, he’s living alone! According to anime, Tokyo’s full of eligible bachelors living by themselves in their own apartments! Can you believe I was told it’d be too expensive to live in the big city by myself? Pfft. I know better. In fact, I know anime. But I digress. Let’s move onto our next candidate.

Meet Seirei Tsukai no Blade Dance:

It looks like a delicious show already! All I know is that the anime has something to do with elementalists and their spirits. I don’t really care too know all too much about the show. Rest assured, the story’s meaningless anyway. All that really concerns us are the harem hijinks.

So how is this going to work? I used to give out points for every single time I saw an harem cliche or just anything that was plain stupid. That was too much work, though. As a result, we’ll streamline the process a bit. At the end of every week, we’ll just vote on which of these two shows are worse. Whoever wins the contest by the end of the season wins the whole thing!

Rokujyoma no Shinryakusha!? Ep. 1

Meet our hero, a wholesome harem lead like no other. I think his mother had recently passed away or something. Not only that, his father has to work in far-off places — don’t they all? — so as a result, our harem lead is living on his own. Not only is he living on his own and going to school full time, he also works part-time to ease the burden on his father. Wow, what a guy! Right off the bat, Koutarou tells us that his rent is only 5000 yen a month. 5000. Since most of my readers are from the US, that’s about 50 US dollars. Dude, my internet bill is more than that. We soon find out why it’s so cheap, though. It turns out the place is haaaaaaunteeeeedd~~~~ By who? By a hot anime babe, of course!

Meet Sanae, the reason why the rent is so cheap. She’s been “living” here a long time, so she doesn’t anyone to just move on in. As a result, she’s resorted to cheap poltergeist tricks to drive people away. Unfortunately, her antics don’t appear to work on our wholesome harem lead because he really, really wants to help his father out. And hey, you can’t beat a 5000-yen rent. We don’t know much about Sanae, however, because other girls quickly begin to crash the party all in a single episode.

Meet Yurika, a self-proclaimed mahou shoujo. She’s the clumsy, whiny sort of girl because you need one in every harem. In any case, she tells Koutarou that his apartment is a great source of magical powers. Not only that, other mahou shoujos will want to use all this magical powers for nefarious deeds. Therefore, he should turn his apartment over to her. Koutarou, however, thinks she’s just a cosplayer. Oh dear…

Meet Kurano-Kiriha. Yes, that’s her name. She’s different from us, y’see, ’cause she’s of the mole people. Needless to say, she fulfills the harem’s need for a girl with big tits. At first, she claims that the apartment is a holy site for her people, so she wishes to construct a shrine in its location. In exchange, she would give our harem lead a bunch of gold bars. Koutarou almost considers her offer too, until she stupidly says outloud how she plans to use the “etheric” energy here to stage the mole people’s conquest of the surface world. Whoops. Naturally, our wholesome harem lead reneges on their agreement. Kurano-Kiriha’s best efforts to seduce him with her giant tits were to no avail… for now. In any case, we’ve met a ghost, a mahou shoujo, and a mole person. What could possibly be left?

An alien! Meet Theiamillis. I guess Sanae wasn’t flat-chested enough, so here’s another flat-chested tsunderekko. In any case, she’s here because she needs to earn the loyalty of the subjects at these exact coordinates. It just so happens that these exact coordinates would point to — you guessed it! — Koutarou’s apartment. Unfortunately, he insults her lack of endowment, so she tries to blow up the entire planet. Aye yai yai…

Then there are some minor haremettes. Predictably, Koutarou’s landlady is also a cute anime babe. Not only that, Shizuka is a classmate of his. How exactly does a high school girl manage to make herself a landlady of a bunch of apartments? Who knows, but hey, the place is only 5000 yen a month. Also, after hearing all the ruckus from the girls, she marches into the apartment and beats them all up. Shizuka then makes everyone sign a peace treaty, but you know there won’t be any peace.

Then there’s this girl, the president of some knitting club. Yeah, Koutarou joins a knittling club. I kinda spaced out right around here, so I have no clue why he joined the knitting club. For now, however, Harumi seems normal, and therefore, she is boring.

Last but not least, Koutarou meets this lady in his dreams, then the camera twirls around them as they float in a sea of stars. Cool. But that concludes our first episode of Rokujyoma no Shinryakusha!? In terms of fanservice, there were some heaving breasts and an extended panty shot, but for the most part, the anime was pretty mild. Unless the other show is just as lame. I have the feeling Rokujyoma no Shinryakusha!? won’t be winning this week’s contest.

Seirei Tsukai no Blade Dance Ep. 1

Right after the OP, our hero stumbles upon a bathing maiden, but he tells her not to worry: “Don’t be afraid. I’m a normal young boy. I’m not going to do anything. I’m not after little kids.” When the girl insists, however, that she’s actually 16, i.e. the same age as him, he counters with, “…you can’t be sixteen with boobs that small.” Oh harem anime… you’re the same every show, every season, every year. But yeah, that’s our hero Kamito for you. He’s also very special because he’s the only known male elementalist in the entire world. This means his colleagues are all hot anime babes. For example, this flat-chested girl he just enraged…

Have you noticed that her hair is red? Therefore, she commands the power of fire. Anime is very clever. In any case, the hero and the heroine will always have to get off on the wrong foot. This way, they can go through the entirety of the series arguing with each other until one or both of them inexplicably fall in love with the other person. That’s how true love works, y’all. People never just meet and click right off the bat. They have to butt heads, because gosh, the last time a girl liked me was in elementary school. She would throw clumps of dirt at me then run off giggling her head off. As a result, every girl I’ll ever dream of will act the same way~

Anyway, Claire Rouge tries to punish our peeping tom with her whip of flame, but our hero disarms her by pointing out that the girl is barely covering up her unmentionables. Uguu, how hazukashii! She immediately drops her whip, which then lashes at a nearby tree. Of course, the whip cuts cleanly through the tree trunk, and of course, the tree will now fall on the poor girl–… not if Kamito has anything to say about it! Action dive!

Neat. The animation looks like shit already. Like every harem anime ever, however, his hand lands on one of her breasts. But it’s okay, guys! I’ve been told that this trope occurs in real life! Therefore, we should put it in every single anime ever. But now that the main character has introduced himself to the main heroine, let’s move on. After all, our alpha harem lead needs a weapon. He thus follows the girl as she enters a sealed shrine. Y’see, even though she already has a flaming whip at her disposal, the girl wants a sword of her own. Probably penis envy or something. Wait, no, she has other plans for it: “In turn, I will be thine scabbard.” Uh… let’s move on. This sword, however, is a demon sword! As such, it won’t go down without a fight.

Against Kamito’s better advice, Claire insists on taming the demon sword anyway. Wait, what the fuck is this? Pokemon?

No, kitty, no!

I’m sorry, but the cat’s face… it’s too funny. Plus, I don’t think this is what Claire meant when she said she’d be the sword’s scabbard. Anyway, our alpha hero has no choice but to claim the sword for himself even though he’s already got a sword.

Dude, please. You can’t be a sword’s scabbard–… unless… In any case, he saves Claire’s life again. But do you think the girl is grateful? Of course not. Instead, she can’t believe that a man can form contracts with spirits. After all, that’s a shrine maiden’s job! Yo shitlord, check your privilege! Kamito can be a shrine maiden too if he wants! He’s a strong, alpha shrine maiden, and he don’t need no vagina! Nevertheless, Claire also accuses Kamito of stealing her spirit, so in return, she, uh, demands that he becomes her spirit?

Zero no Tsukaima was a shitty series. We don’t need to revisit it. But sure enough, we end up at some academy for elementalists, and Claire has our hero tied up in her whip. Kinky stuff. Now that our hero’s made his way here, he’s not going to let the girl hold him back. So he escapes on his own to go see the headmistress by himself. On his way there, however, he overhears an argument. Yes, he’s supposed to become the academy’s first and only male student ever. And of course, plenty of people aren’t happy about it: “Why must we have a man here, at a place of study for holy shrine princesses?” What? Are you saying that a guy can’t be a shrine princess? Ugh! I can’t even! I can’t even right now! This is triggering me so hard!

Meet, uh, the next girl, I guess. She’s none other than Ellis Fahrenfart, and she’s the one who’s not too happy about the fact that the academy’s about to admit a guy into its student body. Oh boy, another tsunderekko! We met the girl with red hair, so it only makes sense that we now meet the girl with blue hair. That’s basically how variety works in harem anime. You differentiate the girls by their hair colors. You’d think their differences in personality would do the trick, but that’s where you’re wrong. After all, what if the girls were all tsunderekkos? Then how would you tell them apart? By the hair, you fools, the hair! While we’re here, we may as well introduce the headmistress as well.

And of course, she has giant breasts. Why? How else would you be able to tell that she’s a woman and not just a mere shoujo. And we all know every woman north of 18 in Japan has giant breasts. This reminds me of the current debate over Batgirl’s latest redesign. Apparently, the big complaint is that Batgirl no longer looks like a college-aged girl. Rather, she looks like a teenager or something. But let’s be real. The only reason people think this is because we’ve been conditioned to think that all grown women must be curvy as fuck. But I digress… Ellis still wants to flay our hero and turn him into some kind of food dish. Hey, she’s just concerned for her headmistress: “I can’t leave someone like this alone with you.” Of course. All men are potential rapists; I learned this online. But wait, he’s a trans-miko, therefore, he isn’t a shitlord! Augh, I don’t know what to think!

Afterwards, our hero shares a tense conversation with the headmistress. Did I mentioned that her name is Greyworth. Anyway, she’s an evil witch or something, and she has info about Rinslet, whoever that is. I guess it’s Kamito’s first contracted spirit, but she’s gone missing somehow? Greyworth knows of Rinslet’s whereabouts, but she won’t spill her guts to Kamito just yet. He’ll have to join her school if he wants to find out. Why? Because she desperately wants him to win the Blade Dance, whatever that is. And why is it so important to enter the Blade Dance? ‘Cause he has to beat this girl…

…but the anime isn’t clear on why she should be beaten. I guess this is just the harem’s way of creating intrigue. Oh well. Our hero’s now a student in a girls-only academy. And thus the show has begun:

After touring the campus, in which Kamito learns that he’ll be living in a shed next to a stable, Kamito runs into Claire again, but they pretty much just have the same boring exchange as before. Hurr durr, I can see your black panties. Gyaaaa~~~, I wear white panties, baka! Oh no, I’m ruined for marriage. Claire still wants him to be her spirit, but he’s too alpha male to let her play him like that. Therefore, he brings up the fact that a contract between them would have to be sealed with a kiss. Needless to say, she backs down from her initial demands. Kamito then has to introduce himself to his new class, but let’s skip ahead of that boring bullshit and introduce the rest of the girls in quick succession.

First, there’s this blonde chick because what kind of harem would we be if we didn’t have a blonde haremette?

And how can we have a show about a fancy academy without a meido? And with that, the episode is over. Wait, we haven’t even talked about the fact that his demon sword is none other than a silver-haired loli!

How can you end the first episode without introducing every single haremette! God, stick to the protocol, Seirei Tsukai no Blade Dance!

Alright, let me know which show you thought was worse.