For this week’s Roast or Recommend, I will continue on the line of anime. This time, I will be reviewing the anime titled “Absolute Duo”
Absolute Duo is an anime that ran in the winter/spring of 2015 and is comprised of 12 total episodes.
The anime begins with a guy named Toru Kokonoe enrolling in a high school known as Koryo Academy. This is a school where students learn how to battle with their abilities known as Blaze, a power that lets them summon a weapon from their soul. However, most summon their blaze as weapons, Tor’s manifests as a shield. Also, in this school, the students are put in duos to prepare them for teamwork they’ll do after they graduate. Tor is paired with a girl, Julie Sigtuna, and it is highly unusual to see a boy/girl pairing.
Characters are the strength of this anime in my opinion, but I wouldn’t say it’s anything special. Our main protagonist, Tor, is another example of a perfect character that is always morally right and is never challenged with that.
However, I like the character development of Julie throughout the series. She starts off looking shy, weak and reliant on Tor. At the end, she is more confident, stronger and is more of a partner to Tor instead of very reliant on him.
Miyabi, another one of the secondary characters, is done very well. She faces doubt within herself that causes her to do some questionable things in order to get stronger to prove herself to Tor. I think this inner conflict is handled very well and drives the middle of the story.
Speaking of story, I think the story just didn’t have enough there. I liked the basis for it, but the depth just wasn’t there. The story also didn’t seem to have a strong enough consistent thread that tied it together. There were some things that kept it from being totally random of course, but I just didn’t feel like I could get too engaged because the center of the story wasn’t strong enough.
The other thing that missed was the backstory. They hinted at all these terrific backstories and teased them, but we didn’t see the full stories there that would have added so much depth to the story and would have helped us understand the characters better. So, this neglect hurt the characters as well as the story.
I get that you can’t do a whole lot in 12 episodes, but I’ve seen anime that do much more within that episode length. Absolute Duo was more minimalistic in nature and merely glanced over a lot of things that should have been explained better.
As for the progression of the story, however, it was fine. The pacing wasn’t insane or awkward. The progression felt natural overall and not rushed.
The art and animation is also done very well in this anime. The characters look good and the backgrounds are beautiful. It’s what you expect from modern animation and it fit the show well.
However, my main issue with it is that I wish the battles looked better. The battles definitely lacked in animation majesty, which is something other anime similar do so well.
Absolute Duo is mainly an action and romance anime, and I think it does the action part well. As far as romance is concerned, there are only hints of it in there and no official relationship amongst main characters happens. I would call it more of a comedy than a romance based on what I saw.
Overall, I define this series as ‘missing the mark’. This series really had some potential with its basis, potential backstory, interesting characters and the possibility for very good antagonists. But they missed the mark on all these things. Additionally, they stayed mostly in the same setting. The backdrop never changed much from a few different things, and it made it a bit stagnant at times.
The show really missed on all these things, but the worst part is that they didn’t miss it by much. It’s a shame that they were so close to something that could have been very good. Instead, I found it rather forgettable overall. Not bad, but also not good enough that I’ll look back and have memories about watching it. I’ll probably just forget about it because it didn’t strike me much emotionally or otherwise, and the story and characters aren’t strong enough to rectify that.
It seemed like they were relying on eye candy anime girls and fan service to keep people watching while ignoring the big flaws the series displays.
Now, I did not hate it by any stretch. I just think it could have easily been done better if the right things were focused on. Instead, they decided to overlook important concepts and focus on too many things that didn’t add any real value to the anime.
If you want an anime that is good but not too hard of a watch, this is the one for you. If you want something with a deeper story and more layered characters, this isn’t one you’ll enjoy as much as others. Overall, I’d recommend it because I did like it for what it was. But it all depends on what you’re looking for.
Overall score: 61/100
Final verdict: So-so
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