Baka to Test
This should be a series that I watch the first episode of and then dump. Maybe I don't even watch the first episode. It's a typical highschool-based comedy propped up by battle arena underpinnings that wouldn't look out of place in an episode of Pokemon. The characters are cardboard cutouts from every such show that's ever been made. You've got the dopey main character who's a completely idiot, his best friends who's a body double for Brock, the main character's childhood friend who is self-conscious about her flat chest and prone to violent outbursts, the ditzy female character with huge breasts who just happens to by super-intelligent and in love with the main character, and a host of other genre favorites that pop up to be the butt of a joke. The story features such timeless classics as the pool episode, the treasure hunt episode, and so on. It's also borderline harem and unabashedly animu. By all accounts, it should be generic, forgettable, and worthy of being mercilessly bashed.
But it's actually good! Why?!
Well, the answer to that isn't a simple one. There's absolutely nothing on the surface that might reasonably lead one to conclude that the show has any real merit, having already been undone on account of how many cliches it pulls out right from the start. I think that the creators of the show realized this and decided to go for broke. The show has a sort of manic energy that infuses every episode and makes even boring plot elements and cliched characters seem funnier than they have any right to be.
It's also not above pulling out references to other anime, complete with a shift in art style to go along with it, but, unlike Fall '09 snoozefest Seitokai no Ichizon, the references don't feel like they're being broadcast from a hundred miles away, they actually feel somewhat clever. The battle arena aspect of the show is little more than a comic foil to pop up in the last few minutes of the show to blow through a few more jokes before the credits rolls, rather than trying to be the driving force behind the plot.
In a way, it's a lot like a Shaft series, but without all the self-importance.
