Raishin travels to the Royal Academy in London with his machine doll Yaya in order to have the opportunity to extract revenge and become one of the best puppeteers in the world. Unfortunately, his test scores place him second bottom, so his only chance to make an impression is to take on one of the strongest at the academy. He chooses Charlotte, a girl with a reputation for hurting people and known as Tyrant Rex for her use of a dragon called Sigmund. The challenge is interrupted by outsiders who can’t stand for Raishin trying to gain a backdoor entry into the competition at the festival. The next day, he spots someone from his past that he desperately wants to defeat.
All of the problems with CG animation that were present in Blue Steel are amplified here. These are battles with lots of movement, so having characters move around awkwardly in motion. I understand that these characters are supposed to be dolls to a certain extent, but when they move around so naturally in non-CG form it just makes it look that much more ridiculous. It would be one thing if that were this show’s biggest problems, but there are several others.
Raishin has the personality of celery and he’s the lead character of what looks likely to be a harem series. It almost makes me wish for any other harem lead to be inserted in his place he’s so boring. Then there’s his doll Yaya, who seems to serve the dual purpose of being able to make Raishin look good in battle and to sexually advance on him at any opportunity. Add in Charlotte being one of the most dull tsundere characters of recent times and Raishin’s student advisor being introduced with a shot of her chest and this could put most people to sleep.
The story is also pretty weak. It feels like a prison plot line by the middle of the episode. He gets sent in as one of the weakest prisoners so he has to fight one of the strongest to survive. Also, add in the ridiculous train derailment set piece at the station when they arrived in London. They cars rode up onto the train platforms when people were on them. There would have been injuries and deaths, but that all gets ignored because Yaya stopped the train. That cute sexually deviant doll. There’s also the revenge story line which is seen in filtered flashbacks and was completely worth jumping through a glass window for.
Reasons to Keep Watching
- This will probably end up being shown on late-night TV at some point, so best watch it now at a convenient time
- The non-CG portions of the action scenes look pretty good
- You suffer from insomnia
Reasons to Drop
- The protagonist deserves to be punched in the face repeatedly while being choked by his doll
- Yaya’s over-the-top sexuality is just so dumb
- Appalling CG everywhere
My Verdict: I can’t say much more than it was boring and stupid. I’m sure it will also gain a large audience despite that because that’s just the way things are. I didn’t think dumb fan service shows were supposed to be so painfully dull.
Lower Mid-Table 
Actually, the city at the beginning of the story should be Liverpool, considering the train was coming from Edge Hill (on the city’s outskirts) into Liverpool Lime Street Station, the central hub. It looks like the staff did some element of research (as in boarded a train), as the central design of the station was accurate,minus the ridiculous over-reliance of cobbles, while the approach does cut through solid rock, creating a pretty intimidating and claustrophobic atmosphere.
Naturally after that, the landscape simply becomes a generic Victorian setting, so who knows where the Academy is actually located. I’m certainly not sticking around to find out, although I’m kinda happy the show depicted the final steps of my train journey to university. ^^
That’s rather educational and a reminder that I really have to visit the North next time I’m in England. Otherwise, I think they may have flown into Liverpool to save money on research and figured the audience wouldn’t know any better.
I’m guessing someone went to Liverpool on one of those Beatles memorabilia tours that are absurdly popular with the Japanese and shared some of their experiences.
As for the North… eh. The cities tend to be industrialised and grim, but there are some nice beauty spots. Still, I prefer the South-West for my breaks. Love live the cider farm!