IS is a series that got a lot of attention and praise when it first came out but over the years it slowly lost its popularity and for good season. Even when I watched I have to admit I wasn’t all that impressed with it. I didn’t hate it nor did I think it was awful I just didn’t see why people were so focus on it. I guess when you have a genre pretty much dominated by one franchise seeing something new and noticeable tends to catch everyone’s attention.
The series focuses on a guy named Ichika who is the only male pilot in the world who can pilot these mechanical exoskeletons known as ISs which are primarily piloted by women who now hold most of the power in the world (I consider the Oprah joke to be one of my best jokes). He gets sent to a school which trains girls how to pilot these machines while also giving them an education and while there he gets reunited with his childhood friend who has a crush on him and as time goes on more girls start to fall for him. The anime just focuses on the day to day life of Ichika trying to survive in a school full of girls and live up to the legacy of his sister who is considered the best IS pilot. Looking back on this series I have to admit I have more negatives with the series than I do positives.
For starters, they tell us that ISs are to be used in sports and not warfare. That is a bald-faced lie. Look at these things! They’re exoskeletons suits that are equipped with missile launchers, guns, swords, and various other things used for combat and throughout the whole series all we see them used for is fighting against each other in combat and stopping someone from using them for terroristic purposes. The author clearly didn’t read his own story or he just ignored what he wrote and sent the series in another direction. Second, Ichika. While I like how he’s not some overpowered male lead who wins all his matches all the time but rather learns from his losses to become a better pilot what I find unbearable is his denseness. I mean my God I know it’s common for the main character in a harem anime to be dense but there’s no excuse for this guy. This guy is unbelievably dense. The girls are practically throwing themselves at him and he doesn’t notice it at all. You have a better chance at getting your senpai to notice you than Ichika. Speaking of the girls they’re handled very poorly in the anime. We only really learn about two of them and their development is very lackluster. Houki is the tsundere childhood friend, Ceclia the rich girl, and Lin is the yandere childhood friend who gets barely any screentime in the series now that I think about. The only two girls that anyone cares about and had any semblance of development was Charles and Laura. Charles is the cute one and Laura is the bad girl gone good. We were given a chance to explore their characters and see their backstories into how they became the person we see in the anime. I’m still on team Charles. Another negative is the school. For starters we’ve only seen two teachers throughout the anime. Are you really telling me this school, this school with girls from all over the world is being run by two people? On that note, are you telling me that each country willingly agreed to send their pilots to Japan where there’s a good chance they could be restrained by Japan’s government or brainwashed into helping Japan and turning on their home countries? Tell me you don’t see this happening? The fighting is also pretty bad now that I look back on it. It’s pretty slow and kind of predictable. I will admit I like the variety of the ISs and I like how they’re all modeled after Gundams from various Gundam series but other than that there’s not of negatives to this anime for me. If I was grading this anime to today I give it a 4/10. It’s not awful but it has a lot of problems and at best it’s mediocre.