First Look: Undefeated Bahamut Chronicle

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Studio: Lerche
Simulcast: Hulu (North America), The Anime Network (North America/ UK), Anime Lab (Australia)

It’s time for this season’s next entrant to the ring in the trash anime battle royale. Adapted from a light novel, Undefeated Bahamut Chronicle begins with a dark tale of a kingdom hanging at its knees as giant dragon armour clad warriors slaughter its people, leaving a young boy at a window grasping a black sword.

Interested? Think again, as we cut to the present and to one of the most horrendous boob-grab scenes in anime history as a young guy falls through a roof of a public bath and magically lands on top of the fabled breasts of the nearest teenage girl he can find. Welcome, to Undefeated Bahamut Chronicle, the latest fanservicey high school fantasy combat show.

Our boob-grabbing hero of the hour is Lux, former prince of the Kingdom of Arcadia, which fell in the aforementioned conflict and coup d’état. Lux is very much silver-haired pretty-boy material who has found himself falling into a school of very pretty, very cute girls who are training to become knights using the dragon armour exoskeletons that the show adheres to its name. The majority of the character designs are styled to be as attractive to a male audience as possible, with even Lux looking distinctly feminine. That’s at least one thing that marks it out as different from its brethren, but the rest of it feels overly familiar, carrying pieces of Dragonar Academy, Blade Dance of the Elementalers, The Asterisk War and a few others.

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The majority of the episode revolves around Lux being made to apologise for the boob-grab he did earlier by battling his victim, Lisesharte Atismata, who is –shock horror- the princess of the new country that arose from the ashes of Arcadia. It is a pretty obvious move to position her as an opposing force to Lux; but it gets played down massively with no reaction from anyone. Lux is as happy as can be with his newfound acquaintance, which goes against everything that he was set up to stand for. Hopefully this can all come into play later on, as this pair could go in a variety of different ways depending on who the enemy is set up to be.

To the battle then, and the Drag-Knight armour finally comes into play. We learn that there are a variety of different classes of armour, with Wyvern being the weakest and assumedly Bahamut being the strongest. It’s not hard to figure out that Lux is already in possession of the strongest Drag-Knight armour, but doesn’t use it due to reasons currently unexplained. We do get a mid-fight flashback of Lux’s past in acquiring it, but it’s nothing but hints and teases right now. It’s pretty assured that it will make an appearance later on as things get bad, no doubt accompanied by some lame exposition that makes Lux the best that ever was.

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The armour is pretty basic CG work that adds a little bit of depth and shine that melds into the standard-at-best 2D work, but is nothing particularly special. Liseshart carries a giant gun which she can attach with an invocation, which leads to the possibility of seeing other types of armour and powerful weaponry. Apart from that the fight is pretty unremarkable and ends up following the trope of the hero almost being defeated but escaping due to the appearance of a greater enemy, as Abyss monsters conveniently start attacking the school and the two team up to save everyone, thereby resulting in the hero’s enrolment in said educational establishment.

It’s so by the numbers that it is very hard to recommend picking this up over many of the other mediocre light novel adaptations that swamp the anime market. These shows tend to get better as they go along, so if you like this sort of thing then go for it. Otherwise there is plenty of better shows to watch this season.