The first "first impressions" post of the winter 2011 season goes to IS Infinite Stratos, an anime about a guy who can do what was believed to be a girls-only thing... and that is to control a powerful mechanized exoskeleton called an Infinite Stratos. The principle of "spray and pray" in action. Being one of the taller students, shouldn't I be sitting in the back? It might be the future, but the culture of student abuse still exists. Brief summary of the first episode: Being the only male in the world who can operate an IS, Ichika Orimura is admitted into the famous IS Academy, but he isn't too happy about studying in a school where every other student is a girl. On his first day, Ichika discovers that his childhood friend Houki Sinonono is in the class and that his mysterious and quick-tempered older sister Chifuyu is his homeroom teacher. While popular among most of his other classmates, Ichika catches the ire of the arrogant and haughty cadet representative from England Cecelia Alcott who thinks that men have no place in IS. At night, Ichika discovers that he is roommates with Houki and Houki attacks Ichika with a wooden sword after Ichika walks in on her just after she took a bath. The next day, Chifuyu calls for a class representative and Ichika is nominated. Cecelia nominates herself and challenges Ichika to an IS duel, and thus the stage is set for the battle to become class rep. That's a pretty crummy door if someone can jab a wooden sword through it. The anti-male sentiment in the academy is high. I'm gonna show you that a guy has no place in a girls' academy! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ A rather unexciting first episode. There was the one random mecha fight in the beginning with all of the (presumably) important characters against an IS which sprayed shots like fireworks. The CG action looked decent (although lacking a bit in detail), but too bad it didn't have anything to do with the rest of the episode. The rest of the episode was mostly about introductions to characters and the setting, and it unfolded like a typical school harem comedy. The girls that have made themselves known so far are of standard character archetypes such as the tsundere childhood friend, the ojou-sama, and the big sister who likes to smack her little brother around. As such, nobody stood out yet as someone to root for. Ichika himself seems to be somewhat disinterested in the whole situation, but at least he is fairly composed and not overly excitable like many other harem leads who either freeze up or blow up when they see hot girls. Overall, there wasn't anything too impressive in the premiere of Infinite Stratos. Hopefully the duel for class rep in the next episode or two will change things around. As I said, the mecha action looked decent, but the motivation behind the battles might be a little lacking given that the IS are only used competitively. I'm used to seeing mechs/robots being used as instruments of war or tools to defeat evil, but the IS are more like an advanced version of kendo gear at least at the start. Maybe this will change as the story goes on. Somebody needs to be in mortal danger for these kinds of shows to be exciting lol. From the feed of A Product of Wasted Time
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