It’s the distant future, and the planet Earth has been ravaged by an extraterrestrial scourge. Taking the appearance of giant celestial beings, The Nova show up without warning, attacking indiscriminately, leaving untold death and destruction in their wake. The only hope humanity can offer up are ~~an advanced futuristic military~~ the Pandoras, teenage girls who’ve been implanted with a mysterious substance known as Stigmata that gives them superhuman powers. Fighting by their side are Limiters, teenage boys who form bonds with them and aid them by restricting the movement of their enemies. Together, the Pandoras and their Limiters will navigate the cold, brutal, and unforgiving battlefield known as... Highschool life! Yes, while humanity may be under constant bloody siege that they still don’t completely understand, what’s really important is the social minefield of the Japanese education system! Can our heroes survive petty social climbing melodrama, love triangles and the constant attempts at murdering each other long enough to even BECOME soldiers?

When I’m researching an anime for a review, I often come across some tidbit about the production that winds up catching me off guard, but in the case of Freezing, there is nothing surprising about this show’s pedigree. Director Takashi Watanabe might be one of the lesser known Watanabes in his field, but this is hardly surprising when you look at his resume, which(as far as his main directing duties are concerned) includes not only such stinkers as Aria the Scarlet Ammo, but fellow piece of shit battle vixen shows like Senran Kagura and two entries into the Ikki Tousen franchise. He has done a couple of titles that MIGHT sound promising... He directed multiple seasons of Slayers and Shakugan no Shana, two shows that I do like, even though I’ll admit their visual direction and animation was never their strong suit, and he also directed a Kino’s Journey movie that I’ve never seen, so I guess I’ll reserve judgement until I see that, but for now, his overall involvement in crappy fanservice battle girl anime is more than telling.

As much as that one Kino’s Journey movie feels like an outlier in Watanabe’s resume, Freezing feels like a huge outlier in the resume of Studio ACGT. I’ve never talked about them before myself, probably because they haven’t taken on that many projects in the twenty years that they’ve been operating. From what I have seen, a lot of their early work had decent budgets to work with, but still followed a minimalist style in order to both conserve money and strike a more high-brow tone. The final project they put out in the 2000s was Monochrome Factor, an incredibly cheap looking show that promised badass action and scintillating BL content before ultimately dragging their feet on both counts, and I’m guessing that show’s failure to catch on must have been disastrous for the studio, because they went quiet for the next three years before putting out Freezing in 2011, and looking back at where the studio started, Freezing feels every bit like an attempt to modernize and rebrand the studio.

Not only was it ACGT’s first ever real ecchi title, launched at a time where battle vixen fanservice harem titles were all the rage, but it also doesn’t really look like anything they did before... Again, out of what I’ve seen. I don’t know, if GR: Giant Robo or Project Blue Earth contradict anything I’m about to say, let me know. Unless I’m missing something, Freezing was the studio’s first real attempt at merging 3D effects with otherwise traditional 2D animation, and honestly, it looks pretty good... At first. In the first episode, everything comes together pretty smoothly. The two techniques complement each other exactly as they should, and the two-dimensional fight scenes between the human characters isn’t anything to write home about, but it also doesn’t appear to suffer in compensation for the more expensive stuff. The problem is, it only looks like that at first. They must have blown a huge chunk of their budget trying to make a good first impression, because from the second episode onwards, things just look worse, and worse, and worse.

I guess I should clarify that the 3D effects themselves never look bad, at least not in a way that they should blame on themselves, but as the constant fighting between Pandoras wage on, the editing deteriorates to the point that they can become downright incomprehensible at times. Those fights themselves are extremely cheap, relying way too hard on frozen panning shots of every punch, kick and slash, with an occasional cut to the character’s bare breasts as the clothing previously covering them gets shredded. They spend a little money on that one frame of jiggliness before going right back to cheap, heavily stylized combat. Combat against the Nova isn’t much better as both sides of the field barely move, with the Novas just sorta floating there perfectly still while firing off their lazers, and the Pandoras just shift their posture a bit and shield themselves while screaming and talking to each other. It also doesn’t help that just about every character design in this series is bland and uninspired, from the Nova who all look the same, like they’re based on some obscure angel-based Yugioh monster, and the humans looking like the cast of every generic harem action anime ever.

At least the music kinda slaps. The actual video part of the OP is a jumbled mess of clips from the show, making it kind of an eyesore, but Color is honestly a pretty awesome rock ballad. Mizuhashi Mai has always been a popular choice for anime soundtracks due to her strong voice and impressive vocal range. She had done a few projects prior to this, but Freezing was the first anime she performed a theme for under the name Maria, which she’s been using ever since. She goes hard in this song, and the rock’n’roll inspired instrumentals do not let her down. The ending theme uses a lot of synths and autotune, and I usually don’t like that kind of thing, but it’s used to a pretty catchy effect, all things considered. The soundtrack over-all is pretty solid, with intense rock numbers standing as the only good thing about the fight scenes, and the occasional somber tune almost managing to wring emotion out of the one or two scenes that deal with the lingering trauma of past battles against the Nova. The english dub is also pretty good, although that should be expected out of Funimation at this point, they’ve always been weirdly good at recording amazing dubs for fanservice shows. No real standouts, most actors are immediately recognizable, putting in the top tier efforts that we’ve come to expect from them.

And speaking of top tier efforts, I finally managed to get through this series! My first attempt to watch Freezing took place back in 2012, at the recommendation of a friend, and I wound up dropping it after only two episodes for being a thoroughly unpleasant experience. What I remember most clearly from that time was how uncomfortable I felt watching the lead female go around brutally murdering her female classmates as part of some placement exam, these scenes being interspersed with long, convoluted exposition drops. I don’t know, maybe I was interpreting things wrong, but there was footage of students participating in the exam being cared for in massive numbers in hospital beds, while there was some dialogue about not wanting any casualties this year, and then Bridget just callously slashes open somebody’s throat. I’m not generally turned off by gore and violence, but we’re talking about a main character... A fucking protagonist... Building up an unnecessary body count, in a show full of bouncing boobies and an extraterrestrial threat that they SHOULD be killing, rather than each other. Something about how morally and logically questionable the bloodshed was, and how it clashed with the show’s attempts to be sexually appealing, made my stomach fucking churn.

And then things got worse because not only were all of Bridget’s apparent kills never addressed, but the lead male enters the picture, and nothing he did made any fucking sense. Something about this blonde girl reminds him of his dead brunette sister? Tackle hug now and ask questions later! People tell you explicitly she hates being touched? Repeatedly grab her wrist and restrain her against her will so you can make absolutely sure she knows how sorry you are! Somebody tells you she has social issues? Get mad at them for bad mouthing someone they know who you just met! Even though that is a very real thing that somebody could warn you about someone else, for very damn good reasons! Fuck this guy, I wanted to tear off his nuts and feed them to my garbage disposal. Also suddenly Bridget’s wearing glasses, and considering I had already identified her as a herald of sexualized violence, adding the meganekko fetish to her just felt like a bridge too far. So I dropped this show, and I spent ten long years avoiding it, until just this year, when I realized I needed a Christmas themed anime to review. I don’t feel like doing the Haruhi movie, and I figured nobody would click on a review of Itsudatte My Santa or Love Hina Christmas, so how about an anime whose title directly references the winter storm that we’re all trying to survive? Freezing it is!

Approaching this show a second time, it’s just as uncomfortable and abrasive as I remember. The first two episodes pissed me off just as much as I remember, and the third episode actually made things worse, with a scene where Bridget is pinned to the ground and violated when a rival Pandora pulls her panties down and gets three boys to take pictures of her exposed body. Thankfully, this is the peak of Freezing’s awfulness, as the show mostly just gets boring and stupid after that. Oh, that’s not to say it gets easier to watch, it just stopped pissing me off. Or at least not as often. I should pause right now to clarify that I don’t have an issue with anime nudity... In fact, as I’ve mentioned in previous reviews, I’m a fan, I really appreciate when an anime has the courage to show breasts exposed nipples. I’m grateful the bath scenes aren’t obscured by steam, and that when a character’s top is ripped open, there isn’t some stray, strategically placed shred of fabric left behind. Unfortunately, I also appreciate variety. With the exception of one or two flat-chested girls(by anime logic at least) all the tits in this show look exactly the same, and their presentation is also repetitive. There’s one girl who likes to skinny-dip, which I guess is kinda refreshing, but everyone else either showers in a couple of panning shots, or gets their shirts ripped open, rinse and repeat. The nudity honestly gets dull really quickly.

None of this bullshit makes any sense, and I’m not sure where to start explaining why. I guess I’ll start with the obvious question, why does all this take place in a high school? I’m willing to buy magical teenagers being trained as weapons to defend mankind against an imminent threat, but why are they doing this in high school? What exactly are they learning there? Every time we see anybody in class, it’s so the teachers can deliver expositio to the audience, in the form of basic information that nobody on campus should have a good excuse to not already know. All of this hierarchy and love triangle drama feels so insultingly pointless in the grand scheme of things, because the Nova threat should logically feel like an ominous threat looming in the distance, but no, they feel like an afterthought at the best of times. I’m not even sure what the point of limiters is. It’s possible that this is entirely my own fault, as I found trouble paying attention to this series at times, but I don’t remember any instance of limiters participating in battle against Novas. I only remember them helping out in Pandora vs. Pandora fights, which it turns out aren’t actually allowed on campus anyway! How the hell is a fucking high school supposed to work in this situation?

Yeah, the pilots from Evangelion went to school, but that was separate from their piloting duties. They spent time in a government facility, training and being tested, so they could defend humanity if called upon. The Angels are a constant threat in that show, as they should be. Hell, even Strike Witches does this scenario right, as the girls live on a military base to train and improve their skills, and like the angels, the Neuroi are always a constant premise. In both of those anime, there’s a ton of conflict between the soldiers, but it’s always for understandable reasons, it’s considered a serious problem when they get in the way of combat, and none of their conflict ever feels superfluous. In Freezing, I see these futuristic sci-fi soldiers back-stabbing each other and jockeying for power and status, fighting over their love interests and flat out attempting to humiliate and murder one another, and I keep wanting to step in and tell them all to shut the fuck up and at least act like they give a shit about protecting humanity.

There’s also an issue with sexism, but I don’t feel qualified to discuss that myself, so I’ve decided to leave you with the words of my biggest inspiration as an anime reviewer, Jesuotaku. Just remember, every word he says about Ikki Tousen here applies equally to Freezing.

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As long as we’re going with that comparison, there is one way I think Freezing is actually quite a bit worse than Ikki Tousen, and that’s that it never lets you have any fun. That’s not to say I have fun watching Ikki Tousen, but at least I feel like I have the option, because while it does try to have a serious plot, Ikki Tousen knows that it’s silly cheesecake, and it leaves room for the audience to not always take it seriously. With Freezing, everything it does is dead ass serious. Even when characters are kicking each other’s clothing to shreds, the tone of the material never wavers, never drops any of the tension. It wants you to feel like these ladies are fighting for their lives, blood splashing through the air while their bare boobs jiggle in the background. There’s a scene where the boring male protagonist goes into the boring female protagonist’s room, almost reads her diary, only to be caught by said female stepping out of the shower in a towel. She lunges for her diary, her towel falls, she lands on top of them, it’s nothing short of classic ecchi harem comedy, except it isn’t presented comedically. This is a serious moment in the development between them. I am not fucking kidding.

Before I wrap this up, I should probably address a few key elements of the series that I couldn’t find an appropriate spot to mention until now, that people might be curious to hear my thoughts on. First off, there’s the fact that in order for a Limiter and a Padora to bond, they have to have sex. I don’t think this is ever explicitly stated out loud in the series, only hinted at a few times, but that’s probably because harem anime always dance around the idea of characters fucking for real, in order to preserve some illusion of chastity so the basement dwellers in the audience don’t lose interest in them. This idea raises a ton of questions that I don’t really feel like listing out, but I think it could have worked if the series thought it out a little better. Another contentious element is Bridget’s backstory, AKA the reason she’s called Untouchable even though she gets her ass kicked a lot. I’m not going to spoil exactly what happened to her, your mileage will vary based on how well you’re able to take abuse-related backstories, but for me, it felt a bit lazy. If someone were to tell that story in a Reddit thread, I’d be more than a bit skeptical. And as far as Bridget and Kazuya as a couple are concerned, the only thing I find interesting about them is the fact that the animators couldn’t seem to decide which one of them was taller.

Freezing is available from Funimation. There’s a second season named Freezing Vibration, also from Funimation, and they each contain their own 6 episode OVA. Both titles are currently available for cheap from the Rightstuf holiday sale, as well as various other sources. The original manga is available stateside from Seven Seas Entertainment.

I’m sorry, I tried to give this series a fair shot, but there is nothing about it that works. Freezing is the perfect example of an anime that attempts to be mature from a place of immaturity. I’m not saying an anime can’t be sexy and violent without slipping into sexualized violence, in fact, lots of anime have done exactly that, it’s not a difficult balance to find, just look how well Berserk handled things... Well, the series, anyway. I don’t know whether to call this Ikki Tousen without the self-awareness, or the twelve-episode version of Master of Martial Hearts, but either one of those titles would fit beautifully with this pathetic, sophomoric attempt at gritty edgelord nonsense. Out of a massive cast of characters, nobody’s motivations made any sense, I didn’t find anybody sympathetic or relatable, and aside from the music and the English dub, I really didn't find anything enjoyable in it. I dropped this show ten long years ago, and I should have just left it on the ground.

I give Freezing a 1/10.