Oh, the joys of being caught by your mom. No, not that, actually getting hands on with a girl!
What They Say:
Surprise! All the members of the Occult Research Club are devils, including new-recruit Issei, who’s having trouble figuring out the whole “demonic power” thing. Maybe he’d have better luck if Fallen Angels stopped popping up and trying to kill him.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
The opening episode of the series was a bit busy as it dealt with introducing us to Issei and the fact that he was being hunted by (fallen?) angels with black wings because he has something inside him that must be eliminated. His being saved by Rias at the end after being stabbed revealed her powers, and those that were with her being just as powerful as her in different ways, made for a quick introduction and a whole lot of questions. What sold it for me, not in big fashion but enough to definitely come back, was that it shifted to Issei waking up in bed and having a naked Rias next to him. It’s a panic moment but at the same time, it’s hilarious as she insists that he call her master as she’s the head devil in charge in these parts and she intends to make sure he knows it since he’s a devil too.
With Rias being the most popular girl in school, the idol of all idols within the student population, Issei’s being with her certainly causes a stir, though his friends take it the hardest. And she flaunts it a bit too, completely confident with him under her thumb. Issei’s introduction to the club is fairly basic as we get the expected meeting with the other girls and Issei gets the story about how what he saw was really a Fallen Angel and there’s a good bit of history about it where they come from above on God’s orders to deal with the devils. Issei at least tries to talk about how things are a bit hard to believe, but Rias is able to put all the right pieces in place for him to at least accept it even if he doesn’t want to be a part of it. Rias has her range of abilities though that can help smooth things over, which we get when it comes to his parents as she highlights how she took care of that awkward situation.
While it’s not a full on info dump, we get a good bit of information here that makes it plain that all of this may be new to him, but it’s been going on for an age. Mixing it in with some naughtiness that’s surprisingly more outgoing than I expected since I figured it’d be whited out, the show blends the serious and fanservice quite well. Issei’s reasons for going along with all of this turns out to be pretty amusing, but it’s also something that you can easily envision a lot of young men thinking and running with. Of course, he hasn’t quite thought everything out since he’s a servant himself and just thinking of when he can be a master, so a lot of the show will ride on how Rias handles him. And she messes with him a bit, especially as he powers aren’t all that much at the moment. That lets the show have a bit of geek fun before it shifts to an action scene that while short plays well for the kinds of challenges that he’ll get to face and a hint of what he’s truly capable of.
In Summary:
With the second episode of Highschool DxD, the series makes clear the scope of certain aspects of it and does a decent job of giving us a cursory introduction to the other devils in the club. Rias and Issei are still the primaries, but there’s plenty of archetype potential at play here. Rias is a real bit of fun with her commanding style and how she manages the group while bringing in Issei to things and having a spot of fun with him. The show brings in a fair bit of fanservice – with no obscuring with white bars or puffs of smoke to cover things – and leaves it to more comical elements where it thinks it needs to watch itself a bit. It’s a goofy show in some ways but it plays a lot of it straight while keeping that dirty edge to it. I’m not quite sure what to make of it but I’ve definitely enjoyed the first two episodes on a couple of different levels. And it’s worth watching just for that ending sequence alone.
Grade: B
Readers Rating: [ratings]
Streamed By: FUNimation
Review Equipment:
Sony KDS-R70XBR2 70″ LCoS 1080P HDTV, Dell 10.1 Netbook via HDMI set to 1080p, Onkyo TX-SR605 Receiver and Panasonic SB-TP20S Multi-Channel Speaker System With 100-Watt Subwoofer.