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The Spring 2016 Anime Preview Guide
Hundred

How would you rate episode 1 of
Hundred ?
Community score: 2.8



What is this?

Earth is under alien attack! The monstrous invaders, known as Savages, stand hundreds of feet tall, and only those who wield the power of Hundred can stop them. By resonating with mysterious powered stones, talented teens known as Slayers can don fancy floating battle armor with different powers and capabilities from chevaliers to dragoons, depending on the stone and its user. On his first day at Little Garden, a military and scholastic institution for Hundred training on a giant aircraft carrier, Hayato Kisaragi attracts the ire of Claire Harvey, captain of the fighting force and Little Garden's student council president. Now they'll be testing their Hundred powers out on each other in a duel, which means Hayato's best guy-friend Emile Crossfode (of extremely dubious guyness) will have to teach him how to put his incredible Hundred compatibility to good use. Hundred is based on a series of light novels and can be found streaming on Crunchyroll, Mondays at 2:45 PM EST.


How was the first episode?

Lynzee Loveridge

Rating:

We've all seen this show before. We watched it last season. Some seasons, we watched it twice. It's elite gifted boy goes to elite gifted magical school and meets magical battle girls, all of whom love him. This time, said protagonist is Hayato, the elite school is Little Garden, and the girl (thus far) is drill-haired ice queen Claire Harvey.

Hayato ends up being challenged to a duel against her to keep his new friend Emile from expulsion. He'll probably win, despite having zero experience fighting with the Hundred battle armor, because it's that kind of show. Hayato is going to be good at everything, until it's dramatically necessary for him not to be for the sake of conflict. He'll probably see Claire in a compromising position, and then she'll lighten up, and then they can fight the Savage alien threat together. In the meantime, she'll redirect her tsundere tendencies toward the other members of Hayato's love-struck harem. Like I said, we've watched this show before.

We'll have to accept that this brand of subgenre is enough people's anime comfort food now that we're going to keep seeing personality-void genius protagonists easily best their alien/monster/extra-dimensional demon foes with a horde of devoted female co-stars at their side. A rare few might do something novel, like have higher-than-average production or a cast I can't predict based solely on their hairstyle. Hundred isn't doing any of that, so it can join the others of its ilk in the snooze pile.


Nick Creamer

Rating: 1

The more you see of This Exact Show, the less it feels like an actual distinct narrative, and the more it feels like the collection of reader-approved trope pieces it actually is. This is this season's magic academy harem show, and as magic academy harem shows go, there's basically nothing distinctive about this one at all. However, there is plenty that isn't distinctive, so let's run down the list!

A made-up magical power and magical enemy with proper noun names and a needlessly convoluted explanation (yes, yes, and yes). A male main character who's naturally awesome at this magic system (yes and yes). An opening that reveals his dark, violent past, complete with a nod towards a former companion who might already be right beside him (yes, yes, and yes). A bunch of absurd character names that seem like someone spilled a bunch of European consonant sounds on the table (yes in spades - “Emile Crossfode” is a particularly good one). A cute girl who leaps on him immediately and then won't leave his side (it's a cute boy in this case, but that switch has actually entered the trope library at this point, so I'm gonna give this a yes). A loli who's actually an adult, and a catgirl of some kind (yes and yes, and the catgirl's also a maid, so this one earns a point multiplier).

You thought the end of that paragraph meant I was finished? Nope, just catching a breath.

A haughty female student council president with ridiculous drill hair (yes, yes, and yes) who angrily challenges the main character to a duel for some arbitrary reason (yessiroo). A bunch of “as we both know” exposition to establish the combat system that in a well-written story would be established through actual storytelling (yes). A sickly little sister (yes and yes) who gets jealous when her brother gets turned on by another woman (yes). A scene where the protagonist walks in on the cute girl (boy in this case, remember) naked (yes) and then subsequently wakes in their lap (yes as well), where he then learns that they're actually roommates (yes, of course).

I think that covers the major ones, though obviously stuff like hair colors, individual lines of dialogue, and boob sizes are all fit to order as well. There's not a single thing that happens in this episode that separates it from every other show that is also this show, and as usual, it feels almost unfair to actually draw attention to the weakness of the writing. Of course the exposition is going to be graceless, and of course all the characters are going to seem like empty cliches - that's pretty much part and parcel of the genre. But even with this questionable subgenre, Hundred has unappealing designs (are those balloon boobs supposed to be attractive?), a lack of distinctive features, and a real slowness dragging it down. If we know everything that's going to happen in the first episode, that first episode better move, but this one doesn't even get to the actual duel with the student council president. There's just nothing to recommend about Hundred.


Theron Martin

Rating: 2

Review: Hundred could end up being good or forgettable, but there's one thing for sure about it after its first episode: it is about as cut-and-paste a production as an anime can be.

Granted, the “cut-and-paste” criticism can be leveled to some degree or another at the overwhelming majority of anime produced in the past decade, but Hundred is a special case because I honestly don't think that there is a single original element – or even an original combination of elements or even slightly fresh twist on personalities – anywhere in its first episode. In fact, it is such a pastiche of elements from other light novel-based anime that an amusing activity might be to get together two teams of people who have not watched the first episode yet and have a contest to see which team can most quickly identify which series also has/have that element. Girl pretending to be a guy who rooms with the main male protagonist (MMP)? Infinite Stratos, of course! (Okay, technically we don't know that for sure at this point, but all of the signs are there.) Imperious girl whom the MMP must face down in a duel almost immediately upon arriving at school? The Asterisk War and a slew of others. Ill sister getting advanced medical treatment in exchange for the MMP joining the program? Okay, I'm spacing on a recent example of that, but I know it's been done. Child prodigy head researcher? Too many to count, but you could start with A Certain Scientific Railgun. A giant vessel designed to house an academy? Girls und Panzer or Horizon in the Middle of Nowhere or, with a slight stretch, even Chrome Shelled Regios.

I could go on and on. Seriously; I'm almost thinking about organizing and promoting this as a convention event, because it would probably be a whole bunch more fun than actually watching the first episode.

Now, I will temper this criticism by saying that the first episode doesn't do any of this badly or even obnoxiously; by the standard of light novel adaptation, this is a run-of-the-mill, by-the-numbers production based on typically silly logic. The technical merits, while nothing special, aren't bad, either; the designs for the manifested Hundred weapons seen so far just don't stand out. Neither do the character designs, almost all of which are just minor variations on characters seen in other light novel adaptations. (And really, who actually thinks that those ringlets are appealing? Of all of the anime hair styles that need to die, that is the first one that needs to go.) The one place where the production stands out a little is in some of its musical selections, which include a jazzy number for one of the practice scenes which sounds like a hold-over from the 1970s and a heavily dramatic rock number for an opener.

Still, the utter lack of creativity here is crippling. Yes, playing to your established audience is a wise move, but even dedicated genre content has to offer at least something novel, something which differentiates the title from a crowded pack. So far this one doesn't.

 


Jacob Hope Chapman

Rating:

When I found out this show was called Hundred, at first I was worried that's how many named anime characters there would be in this magic high school, and my stomach flipped right over in my gut.

Fortunately, it looks like there's only fifty named anime characters or so in this light-novel anime. Phew! Apart from an immediately more voluminous cast, Hundred's other selling point to set it apart from the hundreds of other Asterisk Wars and Undefeated Bahamut Chronicles out there would seem to be the voluminous bazooms on everyone's chest. Seriously, if they told me that Hundred compatibility was based on bust size in this universe, I would immediately believe it. (Hayato is clearly just binding his boy-knockers. Hey, his best friend is doing it! Nonsense, it can't just be a girl in disguise! Hayato's a genius, and he thinks Emile's a boy, so he must be, right?)

From the sick little sister our hero has waiting for him in the hospital, to the red-themed haughty tsundere he gets challenged to fight, Hundred is textbook magic-high-school-light-novel-anime from stem to stern. I've said before that this genre is the bane of modern anime, and every new entry feels like a depressing waste of everyone's time and energy, but I'd now like to make a few addendums to that stance. First off, mobile phone game anime are the new bane of my existence, magic-high-school-light-novels are just a close runner-up.

And secondly, I thought Hundred was pretty okay. It's funny, because plot-wise, there's nothing to praise here. It's all the same tired schtick, the same eye-rolling fetishes, the same paint-by-numbers self-insert fantasy pabulum. But execution is everything, and for whatever reason, whether it's the surprisingly attractive art design, the numerous sequences of nice weighty animation, or even just the ludicrous boobs packed into the otherwise serious setting without shame, Hundred struck me as the most well-made and sincerely entertaining magic-high-school-light-novel anime I'd yet seen.

Even though there were plenty of opportunities to do so (there's a finger-sucking scene!), I didn't cringe at Hundred, I didn't groan, and I didn't wish for death as it rolled merrily along, and by the end of the episode, god help me, I kind of wanted to see how a fight between these two goofy plastic sci fi suits would turn out. Which means I will watch the second episode. Hundred is doing something right, and while I can't call it a good show, I was entertained by this episode from start to finish, courtesy of good direction, pacing, transformation sequences, set design, whatever-have-you. If you have a high tolerance for light novel anime, this strikes me as pretty cream of the crop. If not, Hundred isn't going to change your mind, but don't blame me if you give it a shot for irony's sake and find yourself unexplainably engaged by all the pretty colors and stupid outfits. I tried to warn you!


Rebecca Silverman

Rating: 1

Stop me if you've seen this show before – impossibly talented young man enrolls in elite military high school with ludicrously nice dorm rooms only to find himself accidentally challenging the status quo and ends up having to fight the super-buxom and bitchy student council president or he will be expelled based on her draconian ideas of discipline. Add in a loli-bait scientist, a cat/maid hybrid, a person of indeterminate gender, a busty nurse, an a possessive little sister, to say nothing of a tragic past and science fiction monsters that can only be defeated via Mysterious Weapon, et voilá – Hundred.

Despite a weariness and/or dislike of this particular combination of tropes and players, that's actually not what the major issue is with this introductory episode. Rather the problem is the way that they're all shoehorned into twenty-four minutes and then used precisely as they typically are – there's no creativity here in terms of storytelling or presentation, unless you count the grotesquely swollen breasts of a few of the female characters. (How does that nurse stand upright?!) This story is so by the book that it could almost be the example for “basic military school story” in a textbook, and when you have other shows that use the premise more creatively, that's not a great plan, at least in terms of possibly interesting someone not a fan of the genre to it. Add to this the fact that the only show thus far with more named characters shoved into the first episode is Lost Village and there's also a sense that people and potential plot points are being thrown at us too fast in a fever-pitch effort to make the episode appealing.

This is not to say that Hundred’s first episode is a total loss. Hero Kisaragi Hayato shows his reluctance to be both at Little Garden (not the island in One Piece, to my dismay) and the spotlight in a much more realistic fashion than usual – he simply hides and avoids people who are trying to get close to the genius who has such a high aptitude for the Savage-fighting tech known as “hundred.” Rather than protesting, he just quietly takes himself out of the picture and even stammers uncomfortably when forced into being the center of attention, which gives him an edge over other overpowered heroes who just sort of accept it. He also doesn't back down from something he thinks is unfair, although we do see him consider it when Claire, the student council president, puts him on the spot. That brief hesitation felt more telling than anything else he did in the episode, making him more interesting than he might otherwise have been.

Unfortunately the rest of the episode is just the newest retread of the usual story, with information disbursed somewhat awkwardly and the mysteriously feminine Emile's secret being blown by the ending theme, just in case the requisite walk-in-and-get-pounded-for-peeping scene didn't clue you in. I do like that the fight with Claire has been put off until episode two; even though it feels like a safe bet that Hayato will win, it means that episode two is likely to have more action. How good that action looks may be another story, as nothing about the visuals was particularly impressive here, apart from the way that Claire's hair looks like curls of shaved metal.

Standing by the tropes doesn't have to spell doom for a story, but Hundred’s first episode feels so devoted to them that it feels like it hasn't taken the time to do anything beyond throw them at the screen. Hopefully I'm wrong and something more will come of it, but I can't say that I'm holding out a whole lot of hope for this story.


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