What really sets World Break apart from other shows is how openly it accepts ridiculous tropes of its genre, and anime in general, yet how it also feels so halfhearted when it presents them.
There’s even a tasty-looking crepe shop in this episode that the girls go to for no particular reason…though buying a crepe is immediately interrupted by a gigantic monster, which prompted the animators to just stop drawing the crepes that should still be held in the characters hands.
Forgetting about the crepes, forgetfulness seems to be the thrust of the episode over all. It opens with kissing from various girls, including a loli-chan for ‘magical healing reasons’ but quickly shifts to the romantic tensions of the three main characters, who don’t seem to have any need for tension since they all seem to actually like each other…
Then it shifts to two of the three being invited to the school’s sports team* then a training montage, then some T&A on a sleeping girl, then shopping for a present, then fighting a monster, then saving the day — it just keeps shifting and shifting from one theme to the next in a forgetful sort of way.
On the upside, World Break was funny-bad again. I really wasn’t expecting a HYDRA to attack a shopping mall for no reason while our love interests were buying crepes.
Additionally, while our hero has zero personality, at least he’s reasonably nice about it and a little more attuned to the emotional needs of the harem building around him.
On the down side, the HYDRA fight was dull to say the least. The heroes basically walk along the serpent’s body with their swords out to cut it, and even when the hero shows up, he basically floats through the air finger-painting his goofy magic spell until the hydra is all dead.
Everything about the visuals comes off as lazy or budget. Frankly everything about the storytelling too, but if it doesn’t even look that good, who cares right?
World Break isn’t going to survive its semi-finals match against Junketsu no Maria but I’m not holding that against it. It’s not trying too hard and I don’t get the sense that it thinks we should try too hard to care about it either.
At the end of the day, it’s just a silly, almost ironically by-the-numbers action/magic/harem show and that’s all it wants to be.
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