Campione! [First Impressions]

Studio: Diomedea

Genre(s): Comedy, Romance, Harem, Fantasy

Episodes: Unknown, but I highly doubt it will be more than 13

Notable Seiyuu: Hikasa Youko, Kitamura Eri, Hanazawa Kana, Hidaka Rina

Summary: Average-kun is sent to Sardinia by his mysterious relative to return a plot-important item, but before he arrives at his destination he bumps into Bitchy Magical Girlfriend-chan. From there, he finds himself involved in some crazy-ass shit involving ancient Gods, scantily clad witches, smug little children who speak cryptically for no reason, and immensely powerful swords that make even the bitchiest of magical girlfriends desire his goods.

Brief First Impression:

Admittedly, Campione! had a few moments that I genuinely laughed at (which probably wasn’t their intention, but funny is funny.)

Average-kun just minding his business when all of a sudden–

WHY?!

That being said, Campione! puts way too much effort into trying to seem deep and complex, but underneath all of it’s pretentious and utterly incomprehensible dialogue, it really doesn’t have much substance at all. The plot is basically the same “Average male lead and his tsundere save the world from ____ with special powers that conveniently fall into his lap” that we’ve seen a million times. You can try to make things seem cooler by adding Real Historical Terms (“Yes, the trickster who deceived the Gods, the hero who brought fire and civilization to mankind– that was Prometheus! His ability resides in this tablet!” ), but at the end of the day, it’s all the same.

I know how to read Wikipedia too.

As for the characters, they’re the same standard tropes we’ve come to know and expect from LN adaptations. The average male lead who is average, the tsundere who accuses him of being a pervert, the bodacious but wise old woman who doesn’t look her age- beyond their cliches, there really isn’t much to them at all, and it doesn’t help either that their designs are incredibly bland and unappealing. As Mira from Hachimitsu points out in her post, the obligatory transformation sequence doesn’t even come with a cool outfit! Not that I’m an expert on fashion, but usually the one thing you can use to distinguish one magical girlfriend-chan from another is either their hair or their clothes!

Speaking of Erika, did anyone else find it a bit jarring how fast she seemed to go deredere?

Overall: Meh. I wouldn’t say this show is bad, but it’s inevitably doomed to get lost in the endless sea of LN adaptations almost exactly like it because it fails to stand out in any way. If you like this kind of thing though, then I guess it’s worth giving a try since, at the very least, it’s not the worst of it’s kind. The animation is nothing to write home about, but the fight scene did admittedly look pretty cool, and the ancient Gods actually had pretty interesting designs, even if the people didn’t.