Welcome to another edition of “Life on Anime” where this time we’ll be taking a look at “Campione” – a 13-episode ecchi anime series currently available on Crunchyroll.
Here’s the premise:
Godou’s life changes drastically when he inadvertently kills the god Verethranga and takes his powers in the process of doing so. Now, as a “Campione” (God Slayer), he constantly attracts the attention of Gods, other Campione, and women.
Review:
Campione is a hot mess.
Classified as an ecchi (perverted) action and fantasy series, it substantially lacks anything raunchy enough to be considered risque, exciting enough to be considered action, and fantastical enough to – no, it’s pretty fantastical; fantastically bad. It has it all: girls with big boobs, swords, magic, lore, glowing red eyes, undead hordes, mass destruction in Tokyo, international intrigue… the list goes on and on. But what it doesn’t have is anything worth watching.
Every character is generic. There’s the hot-headed Tsundere swordsman, a conservative Shrine Maiden, and a sexy older woman who makes an occasional appearance, just to name a few. The trivial bro character shows up for a whopping thirty seconds in the second or third episode before he never appears again. In Campione, a character’s development is based solely on how he or she interacts with the main character. What was his name again? Right. Godou. He’s forgettable too.
Even the action sequences are lacking. As if still images, recycled dialogue, and reused footage wasn’t bad enough, the lead male (Godou, right?) has to scream historical facts about the God he’s fighting in order to power up his attack which is based on his knowledge of that God. In order to obtain this knowledge, because he knows nothing about anything, he has to kiss members of his harem and he has to kiss them like he means it. He has to really want that information so bad that he’s forced to let these really hot anime girls kiss him. While the concept is interesting – especially the part about using knowledge to beef up an attack – and the kissing was a good start to being an ecchi series, that’s where the uniqueness and excitement end. While it’s nice that the creators found a way to address the power curve without endless training arcs or boring scenes of Godou studying in a library, it’s not nice that Godou has to literally scream a God’s entire history to that God in order to defeat them. Isn’t the kiss with the power up enough? It’s like listening to a hodge podge of copy-pasta from Wikipedia entries while the main character stands there, yelling at a God.
The story bounces all over the place. It needs medication. One second, you’re in Italy. The next, you’re in Tokyo with no explanation. One second, there’s an older woman seducing him and then you never see her again. It jumps around so much that it’s hard to keep everything straight – especially with all the random characters who just pop in and out of the series.
The script is terrible. Every line spouted, whether it’s a girl trying to seduce the male lead or a villain taunting someone, is generic. You’ve heard every one of these lines in some other anime – except for the three or four minutes of Godou yelling a God’s entire history during a fight.
Aside from just being generally bland and boring, characters have no weight or purpose. Yeah, they’re supposed to have purpose which is usually explained in lengthy expositions. Unfortunately, they just kind of appear and disappear whenever it’s convenient for the story. I actually went back to skim through earlier episodes just to try to find where some of these new characters were introduced. But they weren’t introduced. They just showed up and everyone talked to them like normal, as if they had always been there.
When did that become acceptable?
That’s where I drew the line. After three characters (a girl, a boy, and a really hot girl who are all as generic as the main cast) were just thrown in and out of the story without any care to the plot, I couldn’t watch anymore. I could barely tolerate eight of the thirteen episodes.
The Bottom Line:
What scares me the most is that Sentai Filmworks actually released this anime on blu-ray and, even worse – they wasted time dubbing it!
Campione can be described in three words: Generic, disjointed, and forgettable. It is, quite possibly, the worst anime I have ever watched.
If this sounded remotely interesting to you, don’t waste your time on Campione, just go watch Demon King Daimao.
Terrible. Oh lawd is this terrible. Do yourself a favor and DON’T WATCH THIS. 0/10
- NERD NATION MAGAZINE - 