World Break: Aria of Curse for a Holy Swordsman
Nick Creamer
Rating: 1
There's no way around it - this episode was absolutely painful to get through. Normally even the most banal of harem light novel shows have at least one bright spot, or managed to avoid one tired, gross trope. World Break isn't having any of that - World Break is going for the awful harem hat trick. This episode opens with a flash-forward to a final battle with a big dragon, where a bunch of minor characters all do their one attack while the main character preps his big strike. That scene finishes off with a “thanks, everybody… and now… RAAAAAHHH” ending, confirming right off the bat that this series will be concluding in as typical a fashion as any show can. From there, we jump back six months, receive a pile of exposition about Saviors and past lives and Ancestral Arts, and witness a bunch of silly harem antics between flavorless main character Moroha, aggravatingly loud little sister-type Satsuki, and sleepy big-boobed contender Shizuno. After a bunch of pratfalls, boob jokes, and more talk about past lives, we finish off with Morohaunlocking his Secret Power (it has to do with dragons!) in defense of his sister-lover's honor.
It was almost surprising how much of What Is Bad In Harems this one episode managed to fit in. We started off on standard ground with little sister (well, little sister in a past life) Satsuki getting mad over Shizuno randomly kissing Moroha - but World Break was not content to simply make tired jokes about boobs. Although there certainly were boob jokes, including the “put MC's face in your boobs” one, the “that girl has smaller boobs, let's mock her for it” one, and even the “I don't care if you're my brother, have fun with my boobs” one. We also had a changing room scene, a shower scene, and even a “girl is stripped in battle, main character gallantly covers her” scene. That last one in particular is vividly reflective of the sexism inherent in most shows like this - women are things to be claimed or protected from evil men, and their own goals are, in the words of Satsuki herself “to look good in front of you, and have you praise me.”
There's no creativity or noteworthy craft to speak of in World Break - it's really just the basic gags and id of harem light novels, all laid out in a row. If there's anything to be said about it, it's that it's a handy one-episode guide to how the overt tropes of many harem shows are reflective of an underlying worldview that sees women as unknowable prizes to be won. But you don't need World Break to tell you that.
World Break is available streaming on Crunchyroll.
Zac Bertschy
Rating: whatever i gave Absolute Duo
Moroha is your average teenager with the magical ability to recall his past life as a holy swordsman, thus giving him the power of the Ancestral Arts, which means he has fantasy RPG combat skills. He's enrolled in an academy for teenagers just like him, and during the induction ceremony (which seems to take place in the exact same assembly hall as the magic school for magic teens from Absolute Duo - nice that they're just reusing locations for shows like this, I suppose!) including Satsuki, a demanding, short-tempered redhead who was his sacred princess/lover/sister in that same past life, and she's all over his jock now as a result. Then there's Shizuno, she of the dark hair, mysterious temperament and giant breasts, who... I think confused him for someone else from a past life but is also all over his jock. They're all getting prepared for a big world-ending conflict where Moroha is the Ultimate Holy Swordsman Savior.
World Break is another generic, flavorless magic teens in magic school action-adventure harem show based on what I can only imagine is also a generic, flavorless light novel series. Like half a million other shows it opens with a scene from what you'd assume is the climax of the series, where the female cast is in chains begging to be freed and Moroha is furiously writing out what looks to be a particularly nihilistic internet forums comment using magic runes in order to kill a dragon that's attacking the school. So we know where it's going, which is nowhere interesting, and in the meantime, we get a whole bunch of bog-standard harem antics, with the notable exception of Moroha's imouto character Satsuki, who has the honor of being so overwhelmingly obnoxious and shrill that you don't feel particularly bad for her when she gets her ass kicked in the school's battle arena. There's a scene later on where Moroha, Satsuki and Shizuno all sit down for some fast food together, and the romantic rivalry between his potential waifus erupts into a contest where they start alternately mashing his confused virginal face between their school-uniformed tits while screaming and pointing and making a giant scene. That they didn't get arrested is a mystery - that I kept watching this anyway is a bigger one.
This is zero-effort junk. The animation is generally passable minus a few sloppy character moments, but the bodies on the women - at least, the ones with enormous breasts - are drawn really strangely, with their breasts sticking out to either side of their torsos like the flaps on a tri-fold wallet. The school uniforms are straight out of every single fantasy/sci-fi based-on-a-light-novel anime you've ever seen. Come to think of it, so is literally everything else about this show. Why am I still talking about this? I have other things to do.
World Break is available streaming at Crunchyroll and January 18th at Funimation.com.
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