The Spring 2016 season kicks things off with the biggest wildcard of the season, Hundred. Episode one does very little to dispel preconceptions, but that doesn’t mean it was a total waste, either.
As you can see, there isn’t much service to work with here, as episode one is pretty much your standard character orientation and plot exposition episode.
Our reasonably attractive and non-obnoxious male MC named Hayato arrives on an aircraft carrier type city known as “Little Garden,” a place where gifted young people are trained to become “Slayers;” warriors who use their “Hundred” powers battle the mysterious alien lifeforms known as “Savages.”
Upon arrival Hayato is treated like a celebrity, given that he’s the highest scoring ‘Hundred’ prospect in the history of the program. Hundred, by the way, is the name of the armaments system they use to battle Savages.
Hayato also has recurring dreams of a traumatic event he and a girl experienced with a Savage as a young child. This girl of course looks exactly like Hayato’s new “male” roommate, Emil Crossford. Emil makes for perhaps the least convincing fake male in recent memory, as ‘his’ voice and mannerisms are super girly, sounding much like girly-mode Jubei from Samurai Girls.
Near the end of the episode, Hayato walks in on Emil as (she’s) putting on panties. Whether he’s playing dumb or is actually dumb, he continues to refer to her as a guy even after catching her red handed.
A series of mildly contrived events leads to Hayate being challenged by the highest ranked Slayer of Little Garden, a blonde haired, blue-eyed, balloon bosomed bombshell of a western stereotype named Claire Harvey. She’s referred to as “The Queen” by her sycophants. The battle itself will be seen next episode.
Whatever your personal tastes may be, it seems that the show is playing Claire up to be the biggest babe on campus. Or at the very least, she seems to be the girl most interested in projecting her beauty and sexuality.
Hayato also meets up with the loli scientist girl named Charlotte Dimandius and her cat-maid assistant Mei Mei. MeiMei sniffs Hayato and says that he “doesn’t smell like soy sauce,” unlike previous visitors from Hayato’s homeland of Yamato. The word ‘Yamato’ is an alternate way of saying “Japanese” of course. Hayato’s Japanese name and the soy sauce reference hammer his nationality home just in case there were any possible confusion.
Later, Hayato meets with his loli-imouto Karen in the hospital*, as well as her well endowed caretaker, Miharu. Miharu’s boing moment is pretty much the only fanservice this episode had.
*Hayato agreed to join Hundred so that his sister Karen could get better healthcare, which might become a plot point later on.
Random thoughts:
Overall the episode was pleasantly inoffensive. The MC isn’t a female-phobe, annoying, overly-emotional, or unappealing. It seems believable that the MC would have girls all over him, given his looks, status, and lack of offensive traits. The girls are only mildly cliche. The story has opportunity for melodrama but so far seems to pass on it in favor of light comedy. Nothing is taken too seriously.
The music is decent, including an uptempo OP that sounds like it was plucked straight out of a Code Geass spinoff.
The designs are generic but pleasant, the art quality is good but the colors feel a bit compressed. It reminds me a lot of the art quality from Seikoku no Dragonar . The overwhelming use of balloon titties in this show reminds me of Dragonar as well.
I really liked the casting. Every character sounds exactly as they should. Emil(ia)’s playfully girly tone gives her an added degree of sexiness that she needs. Claire has a sultry voice that basically fits the western girl anime stereotype perfectly. Charlotte has a cute accent and peculiar speaking mannerisms that make her seem instantly likable. Karen nails the imouto voice. Hayato stays level with his tones and emotions… he’s a believable character.
Hopefully from here on out I’ll have way less to say about the anime and way more to say about the T ‘n A, but at the very least I can say that Hundred does fewer things to bother me than previous school battle themed shows did. Honestly my only complaint is that the show lacks excitement so far, but all it takes is one nipple sighting to fix that.
While it seems likely that Hundred will be another generic non-nude ‘school battle’ show, it’s worth noting that many other series began without significant fanservice in the opening episode, including Shinmai Maou no Testament. Given that Hundred is adopted from a light novel there’s a lot of freedom here for Production IMS to up the ecchiness in future episodes or OVAs if they want.
