There was once a time in the early 2000s when Harem shows were one of the more popular genres of anime, even in a few parts of the western world with titles such as Tenchi Muyo and Love Hina. Though many anime fans didn’t love the latter because of this specific trope, the former focused on the anime community with its quirky characters. Nowadays, the harem genre isn’t as it once was, not in terms of merit but popularity. Once in a while, we get trying to put different ideas on viewing the genre in terms of parody, comedy, and character development. But some don’t try to do anything unique to it as a whole and most likely felt like it could’ve been a lost harem idea back in 2002.

Now we have the 2nd season of Infinite Stratos. The continuation of a series that most people, even fans of Harem, show no restraint in voicing their hatred of it. Somehow, it has gone to sell like hotcakes despite being anything more than drab and generic. The one question that pops into my head is: Why is this show getting all of the attention from people buying up the OVAs and BDs when there are better harem shows out there and continue to this day?

Some that come to mind are Hentai Ouji, Sora no Otoshimono, To Love Ru Darkness, Kore wa Zombie, and Haganai. All of which have an infinite amount of personality and creativity to their comedic writing and overall creative charisma that the series could ever have in its little world. But, of course, I’d have to explain why I think of Infinite Stratos this way, but I only bring this whole comparison thing up because there isn’t that much to say about this next installment in the franchise. Other than the fact that it pales in comparison to shows like it.

There are indeed some awful characteristics to be made public about the 2nd season. It’s pretty apparent how poorly written the story is for Infinite Stratos. What makes it even more perplexing is just how there’s so little plot, to begin with, and what little serious drama that is present comes across as muddled and overly not well-paced at all. All it is is just the characters going through different kinds of problems that typically might involve Ichika to help them, which eventually leads to him in a suggestive situation. These situations involve him getting kicked or beaten to a bloody pulp for accidentally changing or saying something that made them blush. From what you could get out of this description I made, you might think that they’re sacrificing the plot to emphasize comedy that can succeed. Unfortunately, this sacrifice only provided a lukewarm reception in all aspects.

The way to describe the comedy in Infinite Stratos in one word is “haphazard.” There are hardly any clever gags to most of the jokes to the point where it’s as if the writers copy-and-pasted the jokes on the scene in question and prayed that the audience would get a laugh from it. A few do garner a little chuckle here and there, but the vast majority don’t even deserve a snicker. We’ve all seen the typical Onsen and the accidental peeking scene in every harem show, so why keep milking it to the people who are already tired of it? I’m sure many people don’t mind that kind of humor, but there comes a time when they need to inject new life into these kinds of jokes. If not, it will be the equivalent of getting your face passively slapped multiple times by the people who come up with this day after day.

The writers do not put any new effort into the jokes themselves, but even the ones they wrote are so messy and confused about their reason for existing in the first place. One prime example is when Charlotte forgot to wear her panties, and she’s too embarrassed to tell Ichika. For some reason, that is never explained. After noting Laura, she finds out later that they are back on and pulls up her skirt and tells Ichika to look at them even though he doesn’t want to. Despite this, she still feels embarrassed and calls him a pervert, despite the fact she had no problem telling him to look. It’s almost as if the writers forgot what the punchline was supposed to be and, in a desperate attempt to be smart, just with the generic route of letting Charlotte call him a pervert for no reason. Good job on that one.

With the writing automatically becoming a one-trick pony, the overall character cast doesn't provide better reception, but a few do get some laughs. The new character Sarashiki is quite humorous in her attempts to be sneaky and conniving in messing with Ichika and his romances, even with her muddled reasoning for liking Ichika in the first place. But the charms stop there in the 2nd half when her appearances are only brief. We have to sit through her sister, who doesn’t have anything going for her except that she’s there for the 2nd to the last arc for no reason. As for the rest don’t improve from the 1st season, nor do they decline in quality since they weren’t even that strong to be with other than cute girls. Lingyin hardly makes an impression this season, indicating that she might have been the least popular of the girls, even though Cecilla would’ve been the more reasonable choice.

Then we have Ichika, the main protagonist, just about the by-the-book harem protagonist that you could find in the entire catalog of dense male protagonists. It’s safe to say that Ichika represents what most otaku love to see, a poor guy who acts so brainless to the male hormones that he can’t even muster up the courage to express his genuine emotions to feel better about themselves. Here’s a unique idea: How about a strong male protagonist who acts like an actual male would in that typical scenario? Now I’m not saying that being a total pervert is a good thing, nor does this indicate that we need more protagonists to think of females as sex objects. But when you’re like me, and you constantly see someone like Ichika that does the same shtick where he always acts like he doesn’t have any interest in any of the girls yet somehow later on does. He can’t find the courage to admit it openly. You’d think that we would be tired of this kind of thing around 2005, but nope.

The technical prowess of the show isn’t of any exceptional value because of the generic designs of the mechs, the average attempts on CG, and the average character designs. The girl designs are colorful and pleasant to look at. The opening and ending animation is almost like they recycled previous ones from the first season. Then we have the ensemble cast, to which I must ask how, in the name of all that is good and decent, these talented voice actresses sign up again for this? Granted, Kana Hanazawa is in every show that comes out these days. Still, actresses like Yoko Hikasa, Chiwa Saito, and Inoue Marina deserve better in something else than this. They attempt to be charming as usual, but it doesn’t dull out the pain of going through mediocrity even with those in mind.

Infinite Stratos 2 could’ve been an attempt to pull out a full-blown rant into tearing this show apart like some of my colleagues are willing to do, but in all honesty, you could sit through way worse as far as harems go. You could probably dig deeper into the lost collection of thrown-out harem shows that the studios have dumped and see how much worse they can be. However, since Infinite Stratos is headed by a well-known studio, 8bit, it can be seen as a high-profile failure to reboot the series for a second season that was in dire straits of regaining some merit. Not something that I would ever watch fully again in my life, maybe only a few amusing clips of it, but as I said before, I’ve seen way worse.

Grade: D+