An unex­pected boon for me this sea­son, Baka to Test to Shokanju is like a dream come true for a gamer turned anime fan. I mean, which one of us wouldn’t want our high school lives to be just like a video game?

Upon first glance, Baka to Test to Shokanju looks just like some over­done high school romance harem com­edy series, a genre so over­done it hurts my brain just to see the pro­mo­tion poster — prob­a­bly the rea­son why I glanced over the series descrip­tion in under a split sec­ond. Fac­tu­ally, that para­graph used to describe the series is entirely point­less rub­bish, and only seven words is required to replace it: “High School RPG with Exam Sum­mon­ing Bat­tles”.

Hence why Baka to Test to Shokanju becomes an atten­tion grab­ber within actual future prospects: the incor­po­ra­tion of a dream ele­ment, a con­cept we could only wish was avail­able in our own high schools (Nanoma­chines where are you!!!). Besides, all the video game par­o­dy­ing is sim­ply too lolsy. I for one spent too much time laugh­ing through­out the episode…

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Set­ting & Mechanics

BTTTS takes place in an acad­emy with the seg­re­gated class sys­tem: where stu­dents are sep­a­rated into dif­fer­ent classes based on their aca­d­e­mic stand­ing. Here the A class stu­dents are honor stu­dents priv­i­leged with the best of edu­ca­tional envi­ron­ments and equip­ment, while the use­less F class stu­dents are bestowed a teacher who doesn’t care and forced to ‘study’ within a wrecked class­room where super-glue and nails are more use­ful than books.

While this caste sys­tem sounds dread­ful to the under­achiev­ers, the school is not with­out its sec­ond chances. The school fea­tures a spe­cial sys­tem called the Exam Sum­mon­ing Bat­tles, where stu­dents can call forth sum­moned beings (Shokanju), avatars of them­selves which may then bat­tle for supremacy over the resources, facil­i­ties, and over­all stand­ing avail­able to each class. Basi­cally, if the F class beats A class, then sud­denly they can acquire the aris­to­cratic high-class rooms of the A class, while the A class gets reas­signed to their… shed.

There’s a catch of course: the power level of your Shokanju depends on your last test score in the aca­d­e­mic sub­ject in which you are duel­ing in, so obvi­ously those with higher grades in the sub­ject have more pow­er­ful sum­mons. The ‘sub­ject’ of the bat­tle­field is deter­mined by the super­vis­ing teacher. As the bat­tle pro­gresses, your Shokanju’s power points are depleted as you take dam­age. If it reaches 0, you are hauled off to take reme­dial lessons with the Iron­man teacher Nishimura-sensei. The only way you can recover your Shokanju’s hp is to take a recov­ery test, thus replac­ing what remains of your old test score with your newer one. Also, there is no limit to the num­ber of tests you can take, which offer some mechan­ics abuse oppor­tu­ni­ties of its own…

Obvi­ously, with the title of Baka our cast include some par­tic­u­larly notable idiots. Unhappy with being sorted into F class, they plan to revolt against the upper classes and chal­lenge them in the Exam Sum­mon­ing Battle.

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The Party Members

Here lies one of the other amus­ing parts about Baka to Test to Shokanju, as our cast is meant to ful­fill the posi­tions of a typ­i­cal adven­tur­ing party. Yes the char­ac­ter designs are generic, but they’re meant to be…

Name: Shi­mada Minami
Class/Position: Fighter/Attacker
Weapon: Cut­lass
Spe­cialty: Coun­ter­at­tack for mas­sive dam­age
Char­ac­ter Traits: Genki, Vio­lent, Tsundere

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Name: Tsy­chiya Kouta
Class/Position: Rogue/Opportunist
Weapon: Cam­era
Spe­cialty: Delay­ing enemy with blind sta­tus from cam­era flashes
Char­ac­ter Traits: Per­vert, Voyeur, Quiet

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Name: Kinoshita Hideyoshi
Class/Position: Generic/Balanced
Weapon: Nag­i­nata
Spe­cialty: ???
Char­ac­ter Traits: Fem­i­nine (almost Trap), Easygoing

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Name: Sakamoto Yuji
Class/Position: Tactician/Commander
Weapon: ???
Spe­cialty: Just as planned
Char­ac­ter Traits: Aniki, Com­posed, Mastermind

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Name: Mizuki Himeji
Class/Position: Battlemage/Trump-Card
Weapon: Greatsword
Spe­cialty: Buff up on recov­ery exams before limit break­ing
Char­ac­ter Traits: Kind, Inno­cent, Sickly

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…and finally, the main character…

Name: Aki­hisa Yoshii
Class/Position: Novice/Noob
Weapon: Bokken (wooden sword)
Spe­cialty: Being an idiot
Char­ac­ter Traits: Fool­ish, Gullible, Straightforward

The main char­ac­ter does have an inter­est­ing abil­ity: being the most idi­otic per­son in school, he is granted the title of Kansatsu Shobun­sha (a bit too lit­eral: Pun­ish­ment Inspec­tor), who has a fully mate­ri­al­ized Shokanju but also per­son­ally takes all dam­age dealt to his Shokanju.

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Bat­tles

Pre­sented in clas­sic fash­ion, unsur­pris­ingly. Incom­ing pictospam…

After Yuji chooses the first oppo­nent as class E and a dec­la­ra­tion of war is made, the hall­way between classes E and F erupts into the first bat­tle, sub­ject: Math. Sum­mon­ing of Shokanju obvi­ously comes first.

Then the bat­tle begins…

Kouta defends against the first attack, then quickly switch out for Minami, whose coun­ter­at­tack takes the first kill of the war. How­ever, as class E’s main forces arrive, they quickly began to ham­mer class F’s front line apart…

Soon, class E man­ages to reach the class F head­quar­ters where they face off against Yuji and Yoshii. Here Yoshii wastes some more time with his pure stu­pid­ity, delay­ing class E just long enough for the cav­alry to arrive: Himeji, who has been busy tak­ing Recov­ery Exams…

First we wipe out the minions…

Then, boss fight ensues, which lasted all of one round…

Just as class F begins to divide the spoils of their first vic­tory, the antag­o­nist reveals herself…

What else can I say? Watch­ing this series is like play­ing a video game, except fun­nier. I’m not sure if it’ll be worth going for all the way, but it’s cer­tainly amus­ing enough to at least try a few episodes. Besides, I’m wait­ing to see someone’s Shokanju get over 9000 power level while their oppo­nent breaks the scouter.

Pos­si­bly Related Posts

• The Ani­manga You Wish You Were Play­ing: Read­ing Video Games
• Every­thing You Want At Once: Baka to Test to Shokanju

This entry was posted on Friday, January 8th, 2010 at 23:52 and is filed under Anime, Impressions. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.