"Trinity Seven" isn't ashamed as to what it is, much like its bold protagonist. It's a fantasy-harem action comedy about witches in a secret wizarding school, training a perverted male hero to become a demon lord. There are opportunities there for a fun anime series, but the viewer has to overcome one major hurtle: horrific writing. Not necessarily a bad plot, but REALLY bad writing. Starting with the title: what does "three seven" mean?Starting in an idealic and ordinary setting for a high-school teenager, Arata is living a normal life with his childhood friend and romantic interest Hijiri (who happens to live with him alone to boot). At some point, he recongizes there is something off about the world, and uncovers that he is living in a fabricated reality that hides that his city was brought to ruin by a magically-brought disaster called a "breakdown," and the real Hijiri long gone in an unknown ether. A young woman named Lilith comes in at the last moment to kill both the imposter Hijiri and Arata to resolve the phenomenon (Arata's own emotional state is partially causing the fake world to exist), when Arata offers his plan: to return with Lilith to the magical school she goes to in order to train to be a strong mage, with fake Hijiri as his grimoire and magic source, to eventually find and save the real Hijiri. Sounds good... except, how did he know there was a school? The 12 episodes of "Trinity Seven" move at a fairly fast pace, with a lot of exposition to help explain what is happening and why. But even with the dialogue, the vast majority of events occur without reason, or resolve themselves without incident. Facing a major enemy and your power is drained? Oh, I guess my powers came back, we can beat them now. Met with an impossible task? Cut to another scene for a moment, and the previous issue is resolved off camera. The story randomly throws obstacles only for things to sort of ... just happen and work out. Some actions by characters seem illogical from scene to scene, only meant to provide a way for an issue to be resolved, or to set up some joke. I can't say if the blame falls on the manga the show is based on, or on the anime's production, but surely the anime would have recognized and fixed some of the sloppy writing.It's a shame, since there are some inspired concepts hidden in the show. The idea of having grimoires that function similarly to computer programming is interesting, and having talented students choose a specific trait to dedicated their research and skills towards (one that is specifically opposite to their natural personality) shares similarities to doctoral education in real universities, which sounds more mature than most anime ever try to be. But for each good idea is a couple off-putting writing choices. For example, the "Trinity Seven" are exceptionally talented students at the school, but the show acts as if the hundreds of other students at the school had never cast a spell before. For that matter, it's a co-op school for boys and girls, but multiple jokes rely on thinking it was an all-girls school, which is easy to imagine when Arata is the only boy seen throughout the majority of the series. And is this really a school? All I see is a group of seven students wandering in the hall attacking invading demons, get back to class! I could write a book detailing why the writing is a mess in "Trinity Seven."
Thankfully, the show is reasonably fun thanks to the main cast of characters. Arata is refreshingly confident and not ashamed to be a flat-out pervert, while simultaneously smirking at every challenge like he could accomplish it blindfolded (to his credit, and again to fault the writing, he typically does). His major power early on is to make clothes explode off the girls around him, so if you enjoy fanservice, you'll get your fill (however, no explicit nudity exists, even on the home video release). The girls themselves are each distinct in personality and character design, and are surprisingly fun in their own right. Yes, they each represent archtypes, but instead of simply being embaressed by Arata's actions, or simply throwing themselves to mate with him, some just enjoy teasing and flirting with him. It's almost solely because of the cast that the show remains interesting, and that's impressive for a action-comedy with sexy scenes. The English dub helps pull it off, although some of its modern dialogue feels a little awkward even with the personality it provides ("it's a magical school, duh!" is the type of line you can expect). A handful of voices don't sound quite right either. The Japanese voices fair a bit better, but are a bit less extreme with modern slang and jokes, which isn't necessarily a good thing.Artistically, there are some good things with the character designs, although some come across as simply impractical. The environments look nice, but typically reused throughout. The animation is a bit limited, not coming into its own until the last couple of episodes for the more intense action. Character renders can occasionally appear inconsistent, which is not unusual in a TV production, but felt noticable here. The music is good in the background, with the violin being prominant, but the opening and multiple ending themes are atrociously bad and skippable. Exactly why multiple ending themes (I think four in total) were used for a 12-episode season, I'll never know. "Trinity Seven" is a disappointing and sometimes shockingly incompetent series, but the original premise and sexy humor make it bearable to sit through.