What's On: Kampfer Season 1

She's actually a he, but she likes her better than him,
and he is in love with her, but she doesn't know,
but they do know, and they love him AND her, but
he doesn't-- GAAAAHLASKJDALSKDAS

In a world where delightfully gross stuffed animals and sexy psychopaths hold the keys to untold power, Kampfer follows the story of Natsuru Senou, a boy who is given a bracelet that turns him into a powerful warrior- a Kampfer. The small problem? Kampfers can only be girls, so he mush transform into the fairer sex. The BIG problem? The main goal of Kampfers is to fight and ultimately kill each other! If that isn't problematic enough, his crush turns out to have feelings for the girl Natsuru! While this seems like a unique and interesting story, it sort of falls apart from there. The story quickly derails and starts to focus mostly on the romantic and perverted side of everything.

From the first episode, they jumped right into the plot with no back story to explain anything, forcing Natsuru to explain everything in a minute in the next scene. The Kampfers started fighting in the next scene, but it quickly stops once they realize they are on the same side. From that point on, the action scenes don't take up a lot of time, and start to be come rarer and rarer, as the other Kampfers wish to stop fighting and start questioning why they were selected and why they must fight.

And then they forget about everything and decide to go swimming.

It's rather disappointing that the story wasn't fleshed out anymore, because it could be very interesting. But there's no question what this series was really about. Halfway through the series, they stop humoring us with a plot and roll into full on perversion. Finally in the last three episodes you see another sign that the plot is coming back, but for lack of a better word, the climax was rather simplistic and left you wanting more.

That isn't to say the perverted humor didn't leave me giggling... for the first two or three episodes. Then it became utterly predictable. Natsuru also has the utterly clueless boy act down to a science, but it goes overboard into being completely unbelievable. For example, he doesn't realize that some girls actually like him romantically, even after they try to kiss him, date him, amongst other things. You find yourself getting frustrated at the main character more often than not, which is a VERY bad idea when the plot itself isn't holding together. It's hard to see what most of these girls see in him.

Bottom line is, Kampfer may have a plot, but the plot derails and is quickly forgotten about. It's simply an excuse for the characters to be perverted. I haven't even watched the mini season they had, because I'm wondering just how many more perverted jokes they can make. I didn't even watch the last episode because it was pure filler in the worst way. It does have a hint of originality and the art is nice-- but it is all executed so very, very poorly.

Grade: D