Anime: Trinity Seven

In a nutshell, Trinity Seven is: a generic setting with a magic academy, a demon lord and such; heavily sexualized female characters with generic personalities and, thankfully, a better than usual protagonist.

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THE PROTAGONIST ISN’T SO BAD FOR A HAREM LEAD

The protagonist, Arata, isn’t so bad in the sense that he doesn’t have the annoying characteristics that most harem protagonists have, namely: idiocy, naivety, the “white knight” attitude, weakness, shyness, and unawareness of the fact that most of the girls around him are desperate to have sexual intercourse with him. Rather, Arata is a pretty powerful dude with piercing eyes who speaks without hesitation and is honest with the fact that he is a pervert. Well, to be fair he isn’t the only harem lead who is an unrepentant pervert, there’s also Issei in Highschool DxD. But contrary to Issei, Arata isn’t motivated solely by his desire to grope girls’ boobs, and doesn’t yell all the time with an irritating voice like an imbecile.

STILL VERY GENERIC, THOUGH

Unfortunately, the rest of the cast isn’t nearly as good as Arata. As in any harem / ecchi anime, female characters only exist to be either cute or sexy, and as a result most of them are just stereotypes: Arin is the inexpressive girl who doesn’t talk much and speak in a monotone voice; Akio is the tomboy, Lilith and Mira are two variations of the tsundere archetype – because one tsundere wasn’t enough, I guess! Of course they didn’t forgot to add a loli character to please the ped- I mean the “lolicons”. The only thing that’s slightly different from other harems is that many of the female characters are as perverted (or as straightforward?) as the protagonist. You also have the academy president, the only other male character, whose only personality is being a pervert, which is sometimes funny, sometimes repetitive.

Though the comedy can be, at rare moments, quite funny, most of the time it’s the generic and predictable ecchi “humor” such as Arata always ending up fondling a girl’s boobs after a fall, or the fact that his magic can destroy magic clothing, creating countless situations where the characters end up naked. These situations aren’t funny. They’re cliché, repetitive and annoying. There’s even a scene where Arata and the girls are trapped in a room with no bathroom, and suddenly the girls need to pee, and they start moaning and blushing as if they were in a hentai. What is even the point of this scene? Comedy? Cuteness? Turning the spectator on? Well too bad! In all these categories, it failed.

THE STORY

As expected from a harem / ecchi anime, the story is generic and weak. TL;DR: Overpowered demon lord protagonist comes to an all-girl’s magic academy to learn magic and find his cousin, meets a bunch of powerful mage girls called the “Trinity Seven”, and fights evil mages.

There are tons of dialogues and explanations about how magic is supposed to work but it’s all bullcrap, and I doubt that anyone actually payed attention to it. Magic in this anime is just cheap shiny special effects, which sometimes doesn’t even look like magic, and can do pretty much anything, including teleportation, modern weaponry, and some sort of futuristic computer screens. The terminology is… ugh… extremely annoying. Attack names are just two random non-japanese words put together. Arata doesn’t know anything about magic, but it doesn’t matter since he is overpowered from the beginning, and needs little training.

Other annoying elements in the story include a beach visit as early as episode 3, and the fact that the grimoire of one of the evil mages is a goddamn tablet computer.

SOUND AND ANIMATION: ALRIGHT

Production-wise, this show performs fairly well. Though the outside backgrounds look dull – there’s a lot of photographic backgrounds, which look ugly – and the magic attacks look cheap, the animation is nice and clean. The inside of the buildings and the props look good. Character designs and clothing were rather generic, but at least they were well drawn. The most remarkable thing in the animation is the face designs, particularly the eyes, which are really pretty. Sound-wise, there was nothing wrong with the voice-acting and, as I said earlier, the protagonist doesn’t have an irritating voice, which is a plus. The background music was alright and fitted the mood. The opening was also alright if you can forgive the awful engrish – so awful that the fansubbers have to translate it!

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CONCLUSION

In conclusion, Trinity Seven doesn’t have much to offer. As any harem / ecchi, its characters are lackluster and its story is just a bad excuse to show the protagonist ending up with his face between one of the girls’ legs or boobs every two minutes. While its protagonist is pretty alright compared to other series of the same type and the animation does look nice, it isn’t enough to make the show good or enjoyable.

We have indeed entered a new era in harem anime; no longer are protagonist leads weak and timid and no longer are shows limited to only a reasonable handful of harem candidates. Trinity Seven is a perfect specimen of this new incarnation, with a boastfully-ecchi protagonist and many harem candidates (perhaps only bested in recent memory by Kanojo ga Flag). The show follows the initially tragic tale of a boy who could not protect the girl most important to him. However, the story quickly breaks away from the Kaze no Stigma likeness as Arata vows to do anything to get her back; conveniently, this means becoming a powerful mage and winning the support of many pretty women.

Trinity Seven, besides being a completely nonsensical title, is a melding of various genres. It combines the maou lord concept greatly popularized by other shows like Yusibu with the magic-centric, action-based harems such as Strike the Blood and (very similarly) Seirei Tsukai no Blade Dance. If you're looking for the new standard in action-based, (lightly) ecchi harems, this show should serve as a great baseline.

Animation:
The show is well animated with a slightly under saturated color palette mixed with very vivid magical effects. Expect crisp lines and detailed backgrounds accompanying the varying, shifting setting. The overall show gives off an interesting aura of something between Shakugan no Shana and a dreary post-apocalyptic world. The cast is full of a varied selection of female archetypes, all of which are pretty distinguishable (even the twins- who somehow have different eye colors). I happen to prefer the character design in other works more (both Seirei and Strike the Blood); perhaps there's less moe here. I also happen to dislike the extremely wide lips given to Akio and Sora. Facial expressions are nothing out of the ordinary for the genre, expect a lot of angry and embarrassed looks from the female cast. Oh, all the characters also engage "magus mode" in order to fully utilize their powers- so you can expect a few fairly pointless but screentime-consuming transformation sequences.

This show has a fair amount of action, with a mix of magical and physical attacks. Choreography is average overall with lots of attacks shown as colored flashes or slashes followed by blood suddenly gushing out. I do also have to wonder if Lilith's rifle is a shout out to Strike Witches given its sheer size. As seen in many other action-based harems such as Date a Live, team-based attacks using multiple harem members' abilities in unison is often critical in major battles. As for ecchi, if you're in doubt of the show's ecchi roots, Arata's first magical ability nullifies magic (cough Touma from Toaru Majutsu no Index), which conveniently removes clothing when people are in magus mode. Exapect countless accidental grabs, fondling, nd lots of suggestive conversations- though this time the protagonist openly acknowledges his libido.

Sound:
I didn't particularly like the fast-based, rock OP as it didn't have any central melody or theme going for it. The show has four separate EDs, each one sung by a subset of the female cast. All the EDs share the instrumentation from the BGM and so feel fitting; if I had to choose I'd say the first and third EDs are the better ones. The BGM is unique, for once, using vocodization, electronic effects, and a retro-sounding drum pattern rapidly descending down an octave. There isn't really one unifying melody or theme but the BGM in general is supportive, using stringed instrumentation in moments to increase tension.

The VA cast is, obviously, quite large and also quite varied in terms of fame. A lot of the cast are technically veterans, but veterans at supporting character roles. The standout performance for me was Nao Touyama, who gave Sherlock a very strong personality. Other (true) veteran leads include Youko Hikasa who voices a serious tsundere, similar to her role as Shinonono in IS, and Rie Kugimiya who returns as her trademark character type. Expect a lot of weird Japanese-made names and called-out attacks, cause shouting the attack name before using it obviously increases the attack's potency.

Story:
Our poor, ordinary protagonist, who through an outrageous early twist is enrolled in a prestigious magical academy, is immediately revealed to be not so ordinary. In fact, he is so powerful that he is a demon (maou) lord candidate; at least they reveal it upfront rather than using it as a plot device later as in Date a Live. However, despite all his apparently dormant, innate powers, he must recruit the abilities of the Trinity seven, the most powerful mages at the school who have mastered each of their respective domains; initially, this appears to be an uphill challenge as many of the members look disdainfully upon him, and some of them aren't even present.

The majority of the show has Arata warming up to the seven Trinity members. Though multiple members often show up at once, his progress is for the most part serial, persuading one girl at a time. Often, these girls start out as antagonists, similar to Date a Live and Hidan no Aria. By the time he has completed his conversion of the girls, the final arc is already well under way. The rising action quickly works to a climax battle involving everyone, including (not surprisingly) even more female antagonists and through a twist, a surprise character. The eureka moment late in the show is somewhat of a letdown actually, it kind of forces an artificial feeling into the entire antagonist camp. That being said, while conclusive, the story leaves some open doors with yet another antagonist promising to be return to finish off Arata. Overall, it's a fun story that unfortunately doesn't finish with a good aftertaste.

Character:
While some of the action is good and accompanied by a good dosage of thrills, the core plot isn't as engaging as I would have hoped. Thankfully, the characters were interesting enough to keep me from dwelling too much on the central plot. You have your choice from a lot of personalities ranging from the innocent to the perverse. The show did a great job of making all of the girls (including antagonists and grimoires) unique. That being said, many of the events take place on school grounds with supposedly other students- you will hardly ever see them and when you do, they are only half drawn in. While it keeps the focus on the important characters (and keeps costs down) it also makes the characters feel isolated from reality.

Though the gals are all unique compared to each other, many of them lack the depth found in more traditional harems; this is an obvious side effect when you have like ten girls to develop in twelve episodes and still try to have some meaningful plot. Though you'll know all the girls' base personalities and their uncountable number of special attacks, you don't really ever have time to see where they came from or what makes them tick. Thus, you're left with only interactions to judge the character's actions and behaviors. There is still some decent development as many of the girls are eventually converted over to Arata's side. Arata himself is a strong lead, far better than many of the harem leads of the previous decade- slightly perverse but direct and actually useful.

Value:
Honestly, despite doing a lot of things well, nothing resonates as truly unique or outstanding about this show. I'm not sure if it's because there were too many girls, or that the girls became too clingy too easily, but the show just doesn't rub off as anything particularly great. Ultimately, this show falls into the same category as Seirei- an entertaining show with lots of cute girls and some random ecchi, but one that I will soon forget.

Ladies and gentleman, here lies one of the greatest man ever created. He thinks like a real man (or maybe not), he doesn't hide his thinking and he's a danger to everybody, and you can only find here in Trinity Seven. A good ecchi anime created around Kasuga Arata, the one who was supposed to be adored by men around this Earth...or maybe not, this comes from you. But why am I saying about him if we're here to talk about Trinity Seven? Because he's part of this show.

Trinity Seven was animated by Seven Arcs and originally written by Saitou Kenji, the same one from Shukufuku no Campanella, and directed by Nishikiori Hiroshi (Azumanga Daioh and Toaru Majutsu no Index). Running for 12 episodes, brings a story about the life of Kasuga Arata, who lived a peaceful life until find the Black Sun and grimoires, and also magic, and started his studies in a magic school, in order to discover more about magic and bring his beloved cousin, Hijiri, back to him. And he's not alone. Surrounded by many girls, his days will be a grateful harem day by day.

Art-Animation: 8.0
Uniting a realistic world with a fantasy setting, Nishikiori Hiroshi brought his experiences with other magical works, like Index and Angelic Layer, into field. His experience really weighted in his favor, pulling another good experience with magical plays. Also, it's definitely his first "ecchi-oriented" anime, which was different coming from his experiences before Trinity Seven. The animation used here was oriented for fanservices, close to the manga itself. Aside from that, his team did a good job when we analyze the animation.

Now the art remind me of how things could play together when both art and animation should walk together to make things go. Well, this is something to be noticed. The art itself gives a sensation of a horror or supernatural animation. Since we're talking about magic, we can tell that the supernatural approach could call itself good, but not like a horror. Also, it resembles a little bit of Gothic art, because of the excessive use of black. Nothing against, but looking in this perspective, definitely it's something that cannot go unnoticed. Also, it really used the idea of making the art and animation better and better each episode. It started with a flat thing into a detailed characters near the end. This is the flaw that Hiroshi committed and can't go on unnoticed.

Coming from Inukami and Sekirei, Tomooka Shinpei is the one behind the characters design. Their design is likely close to the ones used in manga. Unless Arata, who received a little remake to appear a little bit more "main character" appearance. Although, it's only a normal guy, nothing astounding in his design. THe same can't be said when he's not on his normal student clothes, he really stands out in regards to other main characters, and also giving him a little bit of the two opposites of being the hero and being the villain. The girls also have a good design, close to their manga counterparts and their personalities.

Sound: 7.0
The only good thing to be noticed here in Sound part is the OP/ED songs. The opening was created and performed by ZAQ (Saki, Mirai Nikki and Chuunibyou demo Koi ga Shitai!), which is very attached to the anime itself. The 4 ending songs was sung by the 8 female seiyuus, in pairs, and all of them was created by Technoboys Pulcraft Green-Fund (Witch Craft Works and Akikan!), and it's also very attached to the anime and, somehow more specifically, the characters itself. The background actually is not something to be noticed and to receive an emphasis, which is a setback to the Sound Director Ebina Yasunori (Date a Live) and Studio Mausu (Fate Zero).

For the voice actors, the choice itself brought reality to the work in overall, but 3 of them caught my attention especially because of their experiences: Yuzuki Ryouka is the first. After Ruby Moon in Card Captor Sakura, Yamanaka Ino in Naruto and Kiryuuin Satsuki in Kill La Kill, she did a good job creating life to Fudou Akio, giving a good voice and reality to Akio. The other one is Kugimiya Rie. The Queen of Tsundere gave life to Sora, Arata's grimoire, but with an anime with 2 tsundere girls in main cast, this time she was only a shadow to the others. Definitely, she could easily receive one of them. She did what she could, but it wasn't something to be memorable. Her work in Wixoss was definitely better than here. And the other one is Miki Shin'ichirou. Coming from Captain Tsubasa, going to Pokémon with James and reaching Bleach, he is the director of Biblia Academy. For this one, I can tell you that was strange, but he really managed to do it a good job, but nothing outstanding like in the past.

Story: 7.0
Think about it a little bit. A guy who goes down the road to take back his beloved cousin with help of 8 girls. It sounds strange at first sight, but going further each episode, you will notice that the show actually crosses with another Seven Arcs creation called Dog Days: Few storyline, more fanservice. Of course, the moment you can say "No more fanservice", it happens again. It's somehow funny, but it repeats episode after episode, minute after minute. In other words, story here becomes second issue. The first issue here is ecchi and fanservice. And too much ecchi and fanservice obfuscate a good story. Even so, the story goes in some good ways, going in strange and sporadic ways to reach its destination. Somehow, it is interesting, but only interesting. Nothing really more than that.

Character: 9.0
In Trinity Seven, the characters have different personalities. Tsunderes, perverts, child-like, killers...you can choose your best one. Which means no one is totally perfect. Their flaws is noted as soon the story goes, also relating to their magic personalities, which is important in the story itself. And also, together they really evolve as the anime goes, but they remain a little bit the same from the beginning. It can sound strange, but reality must be said. Even though, I could notice that his time with each girl is not equal, but it stands out when he's alone with one of them. Also, since this is an action show, there's villains. And they're really not here only to play around. They're really looking for Kasuga Arata's head, so they have a hard time to deal with them.

Also, one of the things that really bothers me is Hijiri. She's the main reason Arata is running wild, but Hijiri itself doesn't have a noticeable screen time, only appearing when you don't really think she can. Thinking a little bit and looking to my anime list, I was really trying to remember a target character like Hijiri. Maybe Hitsugi no Chaika's Emperor Gaz could be the one close to her. Maybe they could call Hijiri's time up since she's the reason of this story. If that happens, we could see better all the sides of Hijiri, like we can see about the other girls.

Value: 8.0
Perhaps this one can bring a little bit of overhaul in ecchi main characters from now on after Arata's behaviors when we talk about girls. Most of them used to avoid woman's advance or even tried to avoid fanservices, which is the opposite here. Trinity Seven definitely needs to be re-watched more times. Must be stored in a good place and showed to the world in some years. But reality must be said: in one go, you can understand almost everything in this show. It's something that really shouldn't be recommended for beginners or even for the ones who are just entering the ecchi world because this is something a little bit "strong" in terms of ecchi. The ones who watches it for some time or just love ecchi should definitely drop here to watch Trinity Seven.

Enjoyment: 10.0
Using fanservice and Arata's personality as a weapon, Seven Arcs mad something with a high probability of enjoyment. Of course, ecchi is not the only thing interesting in this "enjoyment formula" created by Seven Arcs. Also, the story brings you inside a magic world in another perspective. This is something to be noted. In overall, just with these weapons, Seven Arcs brought a Perfect Score in this review.

Final Comments
Trinity Seven is definitely one of the works that should be analyzed and compared with the new ecchi works coming after this one. You can find many things that can be found in others, but in a different angle. You can find same old fanservices scenes in a different approach. Trinity Seven is totally playing a different field, uniting fantasy, magic and fanservices. Definitely, you're in need of watching this one. Trinity Seven is a interesting play that should be seen, even for the action, for fanservices...or because of Arata.