Anime: Shinmai Maou no Testament

"I can't abandon a girl when people are after her life just because she's the previous demon lord's daughter. I'm going to protect her! But... Am I allowed to have only one precious thing to me? Must I limit myself to one?"

No, that's not me pretentiously attempting to attach some meaning or something -- Those are a few lines of dialog that summarize Shinmai Maou no Testament. It's all you need to know about the show, as it is about just as much as the show cares to let us know.

So yeah, Shinmai Maou no Testament is another harem whose sole purpose for existing is to fill out a time-slot. A show that makes you wonder if the people behind the scenes are engaging in copyright wars from making such an uninspired amalgamation of several elements from other shows put together to make the same harem you've seen a dozen times over. It's so lacking in creativity that it uses the "I accidentally walked into you when you're undressed" cliché four or five times. -- said shows that come to mind are: Inuyasha, Bleach, Highschool DxD, and perhaps Tokyo Ghoul for Takigawa, Yahiro and it's EDGE.

"Basacchi". Oh lord, pls no.

Basara is your typical self-righteous "hero" devoid of personality; an indecisive, apologetic asshat, whom let's himself go wild on the girl's tits when he damn well pleases. When his sexuality reaches points where it can be brought under question, he gives in to his urges then he seeks to be comforted by said tits from having gone too far with his manhandling. By the shows end he's only a few notches away from being another despicable Itou, Makoto. If only. If only that would have actually been the case, at least he would have been less forgettable. All the girls in the show line up to feed the ego of whomever uses Basara as their surrogate. They exist just to get their breasts fondled or consistently refer to him as "onii-chan" or "B-baka".

A little too delusional, but not to the point of aggravation.

Most of the ecchi is constricted to a single gimmick — the partner binding spell crap — the rest pretty much revolves around it. The art design is easy on the eyes, yes, but still quite forgettable. And while surely not tame, the ecchi is presented in a very boring fashion. Though it may "look" nice, it still might as well be some dude in an ad testing Tenga products. Or perhaps sadder still, are the junkies who will rush in to buy the blue-rays.

As for the sound or even action? Nothing stands out, everything about this show just screams "routine". ...You might be familiar with a seiyuu who I believe goes by the name of Nomura, Kenji. You know, in bleach, that hot headed bulky bald bitch of a subordinate that follows Ulquiura? Well, Kenji plays that same bulky bald bitch here, same powers and everything, except skin tone. He suddenly appears out of nowhere for a fight and is just as briefly tossed aside so that Basara and galls can go back to breast fondling. *sarcastic cheerful claps* He stacks up a grand total of 5 seconds of screen time. Talk about pointlessly anti-climatic.

Initially tolerable even with the rather harmless tonal shifts, but then it becomes increasingly irritable as the series progresses from schizophrenic harem to obnoxious shounen. - 4/3/15

Testament is an action-based ecchi that caters to all tastes in every sense of the word. Need a dosage of hero? Check. Need a loli succubus? Check. Need a childhood friend? Check. Need a horny little sister? Check. Need a cleavage upgrade? Check. Need contractual weapons/relationships? Check. Need an overtly aggressive school nurse? Check. Need a demon world? Check. The list goes on but I'd rather not bore you further. In comparison to other shows, it is closest in my mind to High School DxD in terms of setting as well as ecchi levels. It does borrow heavy from numerous other shows such as Touma's nullification power (Index), the hero with demon theme that we've seen in numerous other shows (Yusibu, Hataraku Maou-sama, Maoyuu), and the need of a hero to check heroines' powers (Date a Live).

Our protagonist, Basara, has always wanted a little sister and so his father goes and finds him two before taking off.Unfortunately, for Basara, these are no ordinary sisters and soon they soon use magical powers to try to kick him out of the house. Unfortunately, for them, Basara is a former hero and the son of virtually a war god and thus puts them in their place. However, learning of their true past, he decides to cave in and live the life of a harem king instead. This is the story of that harem and how Barasa continues to defeat foes in order to earn the right to continue fondling girls. Yes, because this is a TV show this is as far as it goes folks- granted it amounts to what is essentially soft core porn with just as much pleasure-based groans and orgasms.

Animation:
The show is drawn in a rather saturated palette for a modern piece and features average backgrounds and shading. It's a typical setting for this type of a show so expect a fair amount of scenes in the house, city, and school. Characters are pretty well drawn though you shouldn't expect too many emotions other than embarrassment, elation, and anger.

There is a fair amount of action in the show ranging from melee to swords and magic. The effects are pretty good overall and you'll see multiple characters emit colorful auras. All of the characters in the show have distinct abilities and styles so you'll see a good mix in the fights. There is definitely a fair amount of blood and implied gore scenes, though they spare the viewer from the juicier details. With a perverted succubus as one of the main characters and a protagonist who's not too ashamed of putting his hands to action, you're sure to get a season's worth of ecchi. You pretty much get your full range of ecchi here from accidental peeping to seriously trying to dominate a partner. Surprisingly, considering the sheer amount of cliches here, there is no beach scene so a swimsuit scene will have to suffice.

Sound:
The show starts with a light-rock OP with a fair melody. The ED is by a different artist though maintains the same feel as the OP. The BGM is fairly wide in instrumentation and ranges from orchestral to rock to vocals. It's a fairly active BGM though it stands out the most during tension-building and action scenes; there is one theme in particular that's pretty good.

The VA cast is rather mixed in experience, as there are relative newcomers such as Mio's VA Ayaka Asai working alongside VAs rising in popularity such as Sarah Emi Bridcutt. Regardless of prior experience, Ayaka Asai does a pretty good tsundere and an especially effective "oniii-chan" in dere mode. An above average performance overall, helped in part by strong, veteran male VAs as well.

Story:
As in Hagure Yuusha, the former demon lord has died and now the vulnerable daughter needs protecting. Thus, our protagonist Basara steps in to fill in the role of protector, as well as abuser; as for some rather aloof reason they need to fondle each other to gain trust and grow stronger. However, Mio's former succubus guardian, Maria, wants in on the action too. And not before long, a childhood friend, Yuki, likewise seems to want to join in on the action.

The main strength of the show in my opinion is the same as that in Taimadou, the show is able to successfully develop the characters without sacrificing plot fluidity. There are rather intricate relationships built through the course of the show, which are really the intellectual's only haven in this show that is more meant for the carnally-inclined. The show follows a single progressive storyline where our protagonists face a series of ever-growing threats from various groups. This ultimately culminates in a multi-episode long battle involving a rather lecherous antagonist.

Despite the impressive use of multiple cliches and plot fluidity, there are some issues in the execution. For one, there are way too many "gotcha" moments used as a plot device to get characters out of sticky situations; whether it's a secret alliance or a hidden power it's just overly abused. The larger issue for me is that the show attempts to paint a very bleak picture with our protagonists facing virtually insurmountable odds. However, this serious and rather dire mood is broken constantly by scenes of fondling; almost as if to say oh well we're screwed we might as well screw each other (soft core style) in the meantime. This greatly reduces the tension that was used very effectively in other successful shows such as Shana, FSN, and the first half of SAO; what I'm trying to say is that the show could have been much more entertaining plot wise if it had toned down the frequency of the ecchi.

Character:
If catfights between harem members are your thing, this show has a lot of it. Testament has a rather limited harem compared to many other shows in the category but you get more development with each harem member. Despite this, Mio is really the only dynamic character in the group, going from a defensive and dismissive stepsister to a dependant and loving imouto. Despite not really being dynamic, Maria is probably the most interesting character in terms of her ability to manipulate others be it Mio or Basara.

Speaking of our protagonist, expect him to take a beating repeatedly for his harem members. I'd liken this to Unbreakable Machine Doll in the sense of constantly getting near-fatal wounds and yet magically recovering enough to resume fighting only moments later. He's a mix between the overly-perverse Issei from DxD and the levelheaded Raul from Yusibu. It's a pretty good mix actually and a great step up from the throwaway protagonists of the last decade.

There are a fair amount of supporting characters that don't really seem to matter outside of their particular plot sequence. However, a good number of them eventually take on roles that are more significant in the second season.

Value:
Though definitely at the high end of the spectrum ecchi-wise, Testament is a fairly entertaining show in its own right notwithstanding the ecchi. It combines a fairly intricate plot with a good dosage of character interaction. If you're looking for a fun, action-oriented ecchi-based harem and don't mind either ridiculous amounts of censored screens or almost constant topless nudity if you go Blu-Ray then definitely give this a shot.

Shinmai Maou no Testament -- An inbred show about (not really) inbreeding.

Shinmai Maou no Testament is a 2015 spring anime of 12 episodes, animated by Production IMS and based on a light novel of the same name by Tetsuto Uesu (writer of some other "tits and magic and harem" novel). Its English title can be translated as "The Testament of Sister New Devil".

And really, that could just as well be my review. The title of this show is, literally, "The Testament of Sister New Devil". It's just random words jammed together lazily, reflecting this show being random clichés about magic fights and heroes/devils and incest rammed together lazily, being a sort of attempt of mixing High School DxD with KissxSis for easy consumption. It's lazily thought up, it's ineptly put together, and it's horribly executed. The end, you can stop now. Odds are good you already know to either stay away, or you're going to see it because you get off on stupid harem shows that act like they're about incest when they aren't really at all.

But it wouldn't be me without spending two thousand words on exactly how and why. So let's get it in. Errrrr, on. That was unintentionally Freudian. At least I didn't say 'up'. But there was no real danger of that because this show is about as sexy as a row-boat.

Animation and Graphics: 4/10 -- Oh, look, runes. Oh, look, bouncing great stonking titties. Oh, look, subpar facial animation.

Because it has 'Devil' and 'Testament' in its title one would be correct in assuming New Testament Devil of the Sister is at least partially going to rip off any number of other anime with devils and otherworldly forces in them, and indeed you'd be correct in assuming that much. In other words, this show attempts to put some eye-candy in there in the form of battles and explosions, none of which look much better than a bit flat and jerky, with characters using five seconds or more hanging screaming mid-air because the fight choreographer was busy wanking to the female leads in their battle bikinis. All joking aside, the choreography isn't painfully bad but it's hardly very stellar either: It hardly evokes the tension of a close melee but rather puppets on a string launching projectiles at each other (with the swordfighters being their own projectile).

The other main noticeable asset in the art is the, um, 'assets'. The female assets, more specifically, the- oh you know what I mean. Every female in this anime is a sexpot to be leered at and you knew that from the poster. The character models, costumes and a lot of animation are therefore notable for trying its darndest to maximise fanservice, and from my somewhat stunted opinion on the matter it's not really all that sexy. I dunno, it just becomes a bit too blatant to be outright sexy, and the personalities of the involved parties don't really help in the matter. As for everything else, the backgrounds are generally low-fi and the animation in non-combat, non-fanservice environs are basic at best and very ignorable at worst.

Audio: 4/10 -- Well, I noticed the sound was *there*, so at least this show didn't drive me into becoming deaf. Which is something.

The music in New Sister the Devil of Testament is fairly... Not there. Don't get me wrong, this show *has* music but don't expect me to notice it much. In essence I'd rate it as 'Fate/Zero-esque', if Fate/Zero's soundtrack had been composed by the Least Interesting Man in the World and as a result sounded entirely generic and forgettable.

The voice actors aren't doing a much better job. While I wouldn't call this an entirely phoned-in performance, nobody here is giving anything beyond the base needed by the archetypes they personify. Boring standard-heroism hero, high-pitched angry red-haired tsundere, bad Rei-impersonation green-haired quiet lady and so on. Complete the ensemble with a villain that sounds like a bad Norio Wakamoto impression without actually bringing the glory of Wakamoto and we've got the essence of this voice cast: Expectable, subpar, and without any exceptional qualities or unexpected twists to it whatsoever.

Story: 2/10 -- If I was doing a drinking game about the clichés in this show I'd be dead by the first episode.

The first words in this show are "do you like little sisters?". And that pretty much sets the tone. The story involves Tohou Basara and his lovable oafish dad adopting a pair of beautiful girls who serve dual duty as Basara's new sisters (to get that incest train a-rollin' -- you know, because it really feels like incest when a girl your age you met yesterday at the age of 16 calls you "onii-chan") and 'foils' to an endless barrage of harem cliché scenarios and sex references, only to find out -- shock of shocks -- the busty red-headed one who obviously wants to sleep with him is a Devil, and furthermore the secret heir of the Demon Lord Wilbert (no, really. Demon Lord Wilbert. You may proceed to giggle helplessly) and a lot of demons want her for reasons because of it. Never fear though, for our gormless protagonist is secretly a member of the hero clan and will defend her bustiness to the death for the love of family and selflessness and other 'pure' reasons that are all boringly predictable. Insert a little love triangle with the hero's childhood friend (who goes into battle wearing bloomers), several Damsel in Distress plots and a continuing of the aforementioned barrage of sex references and harem clichés, shake and bake, marinate in its own piss for a month and voilà you've got the plot of this show.

Really, what else do you want me to say? This is as paint-by-the-numbers as you want. There are dead parents and sad backstories abound to give the 'high drama' quotient a try. The girls are all in love with our noble hero, who has the sex drive of a neutered Calvinist and all but goes "bad touch! bad touch!" at the mere sight of boobies or intimacy (because that's what we all did at 16 when girls flashed us their titties willingly -- we looked away in shame). The battles for the main heroine's assets are episodic and by-the-numbers "I win because of family and willpower and sudden powerups". The harem conflicts over the main hero's ass are episodic and contain the classic overreactions and misunderstandings never suffered by anyone real ever. There's a master-slave contract like in High School DxD, although in what must have been a Herculean effort in making this even more sleazy the man's the master and the woman breaks into orgasms if she ever goes against his wishes. A positive thing I can say about the plot is that it was actually fairly internally consistent and didn't have many plot holes... I mean, it was consistently horrible, but it *was* consistent.

Characters: 2/10 -- A real bunch of boobs. In both senses of the word.

The characters in Testament of Sister the New Devil aren't exactly what I'd call 'good'. In fact, calling them 'abysmally bad' still feels almost like an overstatement of quality. As mentioned in the 'story' section, the main cast consists of our neut- errr, 'noble' hero Basara, who would seem far better at home in any battle shounen series for the prepubescent than the sleaze he's dumped into, tsundere giant-boobed red-haired not-really-incest love-interest Mio, "my world revolves around my man" rival Yuki and Maria the 'lovable' lolita sex maniac. If any of these start to sound familiar or, you know, not like actual characters as just a line of characterisation, congratulations, you have seen an anime before that wasn't Cowboy Bebop or Studio Ghibli film.

The characters in this show are very paint-by-the-numbers and don't really feel like characters with their own agency, but like empty vessels to drive the plot forward and spout cliches and get into sexytimes. This is why the hero main character is the standard "love and peace and justice and I cannot stand seeing boobies!", why the main love interest gets bonded in orgasm slavery when she's not slapping him silly and why the hero lady has no existence beyond lusting for the hero at all, and why the underage-looking succubus acts like a pervy man who wants the hero to "tame" and "discipline" his love interest (because we can't have those nasty womens have any agency over their own sexuality, no sirree. Because that gives them cooties.), until the plot mandates she becomes a love-struck maiden idiot. The inevitable final boss is like a non-stop fountain of misogyny and rape, just because there's no time to characterize him as anything more than 'dog-kickingly evil woman-hater'. These characters aren't people, they're caricatures of people designed and given a vague resemblance of 'life' by what I'm convinced is 20-ish young men who've never had a girlfriend in their lives and just run with whatever shallow resemblance of existence will sell to other 20-ish young men who've never had to interact with these mythical "wo-men" in "real life".

Now, considering the succubus is a medieval Christianity myth that *was* invented by virgin men deprived of a healthy sex life (or as they were called at the time, 'Catholics'), I could *almost* chalk that particular characterisation up to a clever meta-mythological gag... But that would be giving the writers credit for something they clearly didn't do intentionally. Oh yeah, and the Demon Lord of the Underworld is called 'Wilbert'. I'm adding a point just for that. Because 'Wilbert, Demon Lord of the Underworld' makes me giggle.

Value: 1/10 -- Has all the intellectual stimuli of an icepick up the nose, and less originality.

In between the psuedo-magical battles, the incest, the giant breasts, the archetype characters and the harem 'antics' turned Damsel In Distress battle porn... Well, really, what else would you expect from a show named Testament of Sister New Devil? This show is like the bad Chinese knockoff of High School DxD, and I'm convinced it only avoided copyright infringement litigation in the first place because the spawning ground of its ilk, the Light-Novel-Turned-Anime, produces at least one "Battle Boobs Magic Harem!" show each season, each more incestuously slavish to the standard tropes and clichés of the genre than the last.

Even if you are the type who normally enjoys "Battle Boobs Magic Harem!" shows (hey, I'm not judging... Much), this is a pretty sorry showing even by those standards. I don't even know what to recommend that remotely hits the same genre/fulfils the same needs and can be said to be remotely watchable. If you want the magic and fight scenes, just go watch any magic-aimed shonen show. If you want the titties and incest, I'd recommend some actual porn instead. At least that's *honest*.

Enjoyment: 2/10 -- Why am I watching this again? Oh, right, I'm just waiting to see how low things will go.

The fights are dull, badly animated and predictable. The characters are dull, badly animated and predictable. The "almost-but-not-quite" porn is dull, badly animated and predictable. What little is left besides those you could call 'plot' is also dull, badly animated and predictable.

I guess the only thing I can say is that, thanks to the promotion material, title and the opening episode this show gives you *exactly* what you'd expect up-front, so at least I can honestly say this show didn't disappoint or mislead me. This show is unabashedly bad, and worse than that it's not even unabashedly bad in a fun or entertaining way. Heck, if this thing crossed the line into being *actual* pornography, it would probably make it better. It would at least remove this pathetic attempt at deceiving the true purpose of this show; looking at naked titties because *you're* surely not getting any if any girls find out you're into this stuff.

Total: 2.5/10 -- "**CK her... *****CCCKKKK HERRRRRRRRR... **CK *HIM*! **CK ANYBODY, YOU **CKLESS **CKING **CK!"

Ok, look, like I said above: I *knew* what I was getting into when I picked up this thing. I knew it would be bad, and likely that it would be *this* bad. That still doesn't mean this thing gets a pass from me, because just because it didn't disappoint me doesn't make this into an objectively better show that I'd like to see more of.

To continue from the value and entertainment section rant, the lack of honesty is almost the biggest obstacle to this show. Not necessarily that it's sleazy, or that it's full of clichés and damsels and little girls that act like creepy 40-year old men who have never interacted with one of these mystical 'wo-men' in the first place, but that it just can't seem to commit to that vision. Despite the ridiculous title and the preposterous opening titles that makes it clear this show is all about them boobies, this show still somehow commits to the world-view that a pair of healthy teenagers cannot have consensual sex with each other due to mutual attraction; instead the boy must be all standoffish and 'reject his desires' and only be forced in a quasi-sex scene of rubbing their bellies together for the purposes of a 'power-up before a fight'. And then there's the whole kidnapping plot with the obvious overtones of the hero having to protect *his* virgin princess from this very overt rapist...

Ugh.

It's this sort of paradoxical puritanism behind it all that really gets to me. I mean, there's a lot of schlocky, objectively bad stuff out there in the anime market that can still manage to have some sort of fun with either punching some of the old clichés in the mouth or just taking a stupid gag and running with it: Heck, I liked Ladies X Butlers, and that show was awful. But it was still awful in a playful way. But this... This show wants to sell on sex, but it doesn't want to actually *show* any sex in any context that resembles how sex happens in real life. This show wants to be sexy, but just because it sells and not because it *wants* to actually *have* any sex or sexuality in its plot. More to the point it wants to copy the success of High School DxD and all those other "Battle Boobs Magic Harem!" LN adaptations and it probably will be able to get away with that.

But it's still a bloody awful show for all that.