I wanted a fun fanservice anime to help embellish my ecchi bone like I am always known to do. Is this too much to ask for? Is it hard to make a fanservice anime that is fun? Unfortunately yes. I don’t deny the tough task of trying to make a fun anime that can please many people. However, when it is obvious that the writers did not give this thing the time of day that it desperately needed from how it is presented, there is no excuse to justify laziness of this magnitude.

From the beginning, I thought Triage X started with some decent, albeit typical, layout of the characters and story as this secret organization based on a hospital staff of girls. The fanservice was quite voluptuous with decent-looking art designs on the girls and the guys, with an interesting shot of a nude guy’s butt. Then I watched episode two. It had the same thoughts by the end of it, even though the plot arc was forgettable. Finally, I got to episode three, and by the time I was halfway through it, I thought to myself, “Is this just episodes one and two over again?” Not in the sense that it was literally like the previous episodes, but the fact that all of the attacks have a similar structure: Black Label helps with this situation involving kidnappings of partially naked ladies or other terrorist antics. That’s pretty much it. Sometimes these arcs feel like they were an afterthought and that we are supposed to forget about them by the next episode.

Now, this wouldn’t be too bad based on how there are episodic anime. But unfortunately, with the case of Triage X, it is, what I would call, a soulless anime. All of the characters have absolutely nothing that makes them even the slightest bit interesting or gripping. Based on how predictable and formulaic they come across if you’ve seen most seinen-type action anime, Triage X is about as typical as you can get from the genre. Not only that, but the writers don’t even try to give me a minute to let me get to know any of them to help me differentiate between each character. Because of this, I couldn’t pinpoint a specific character trait that makes any of them unique. All they have going for them is that they are just characters to move the plot or lack thereof. This is never a good sign when trying to get to know any character in an anime.

There is even one scene where the girls have a spring bath scene together because there has to be one, and they converse about miscellaneous topics and events. The problem is that in the last episode, we barely even had time to get to know any of them to care. Of course, this problem of vapid characterization seems minor in the female cast compared to the main hero, Arashi Mikami. It’s not just the bland characterization that makes Arashi so bad, but also his poor charisma and personality. I would say that Arashi has the personality of a wooden board or brick, but I think those examples would be too generous when describing. At the very least, he dares to admit that “nothing was resolved” near the show's end to ensure that it was a mess from the start.

This poor characterization also comes down to how incredibly poor the writing is. Not just that the dialogue itself is painstakingly awful, but just how stilted and awkward the voice actors portrayed it. Any character dialogue between each other felt flat to the point where I almost felt like I was watching a hentai conversation. That might seem ironic, considering this is an ecchi anime. Still, there is much ecchi anime that make conversations, even at the level of Triage X’s caliber, decent enough to be passable. The majority of the dialogue consists of constant exposition and predictable one-liners.

With Triage X being an action/ecchi hybrid, you would think they would balance the two genres accordingly, right? That doesn’t seem to be the case since they are both executed with minimal efficiency. Action being the majority of what Triage X has going for it, it is by far the most lackluster I have seen in a while. This coincides with the criticism of the animation, which is sub-par at its best. Action sequences, at times, feel more finicky and less fluid because of this problem. Not to mention the number of corners they cut that made the action such a jarring experience. There are even action scenes where the action felt incredibly rushed, to the point where it was already over before I even started getting into it. By the time the fifth action sequence emerged, I had begun to lose interest in enjoying the action.

Fanservice is usually the selling point to anime like Triage X. However, I was surprised and disappointed with how little fanservice there was. And even when these fanservice moments happened, they were not super special to even watch the uncensored version for. If you watch the uncensored version to see some nipples and ass, I guarantee that almost all that time would amount to about five or six minutes. I don’t count the ones involved in action sequences only because they mostly serve the action than the fanservice. Whatever how many panty shots, beach scenes, skimpy outfits, and boobs Triage X has going for it. They do not leave a lasting impression of how dry the animation direction is. This is especially surprising since this is the same studio that brought us Highschool of the Dead. While not a great show by any measure, it at least had some semblance of a budget. When your ED is just a girl riding on a motorcycle from point A to point B with her boobs slightly bouncing for no reason, no amount of budget could save laziness of that magnitude.

I know this seems too big of a review for me to convince anyone that Triage X is bad, but it’s not just because it is bad. It is because it is the worst anime I’ve ever dared to sit through. I was not angry. I was not incredibly disappointed. I was bewildered by how something this bad could ever be approved to go on air. Dropping this could not be done by me as I wanted to continue watching this to see if it could get any worse than before. The truth was that it didn’t get any worse or better because it was already at the lowest point of quality anyway.

Grade: F-