Gunpowder and lead: an "Aria the Scarlet Ammo" review
Sometimes there are shows that flicker on the verge of your consciousness as you're growing up that you don't watch until years later. Six years later, Aria the Scarlet Ammo grew free of that title for me. I had watched bits and pieces of the series on YouTube and various illegal streaming sites (back before I knew the error of my ways), and it seemed interesting. It only seemed natural to purchase the set at a used bookstore and watch it in my college dorm room with my brother, who was also curious about the series. What could go wrong?
A lot of things, apparently. Aria the Scarlet Ammo suffers from one of the major problems that Bladedance of the Elementalers had: romantic framing around a world that captivates more attention than all the unnecessary love drama. However, Aria falters where Bladedance didn't. The world of Aria the Scarlet Ammo is incomprehensible and unsure of what it is, and add to that the grating lover quarrels, one-dimensional characterization, and animation and acting stumbles, the show progressively dims until it's nothing more than a weak star. No matter how iconic Aria H. Kanzaki is, she cannot save the mess that is Aria the Scarlet Ammo.
Kinji Toyama doesn't want to be a Butei anymore. Even if it allows him to work with the police and stop crime from happening around the world, he doesn't have the drive or the interest his classmates do, so he's stuck at the bottom of the class. Besides, he knows what happened to the one who came before him. But all that changes when a bomb is strapped to his bike and he's saved from becoming ashes by a petite girl with pink twin-tails. This girl is Aria H. Kanzaki, a rank S Butei skilled in dual-wielding guns and swords. However, her temper gets the best of her, and she lashes out at Kinji immediately after they regain consciousness from the attack escape because her school uniform got pushed up so her bra was exposed (oof).
But the attack has only just begun. Artillery robots come to finish the pair off, and Aria gets ready to destroy them. In the process, Kinji ends up pressed against her cleavage, which not only activates Kinji's suave lady-killer charm, but also the ability to fight. He's able to take care of the rest of the job and fluster the already flustered Aria to the point where she can't function. But this incident creates an awkward dynamic between them, one where Aria is convinced they can be partners if Kinji follows her orders like an obedient slave. Kinji wants nothing to do with any of it, but the same person who strapped that bomb on his bike strikes again, and it's up to the two of them to take them down. But if getting along is rocky, how are they going to handle a mission?
Imagine me as the Aria in this situation with Aria the Scarlet Ammo trying to calm me down. This show got a visceral reaction out of me right away when the inner workings of being a Butei were explained through exposition in a classroom lecture (one of my biggest pet peeves; the information immediately gets framed as not important despite being super interesting). From there, more things started popping up, making me angrier. The trite dynamic of Aria and Kinji debating the latter's perverseness got grating, background reveals didn't lead to any true character development, and the whole way Kinji's condition was written felt potentially offensive to me. The hysteria mode is a fictional interpretation of savant syndrome, sometimes found in those on the autism spectrum or those who have suffered a brain injury. The people with this condition excel in a certain activity, usually associated with memory. However, Kinji isn't impacted by autism. Rather, he only needs to get turned on in order to perform well on the battlefield. To watch a real-life condition get adapted into something to bolster the fan-service factor feels tasteless and like an insult to those who actually have the condition.
Even when the show attempts to bring up something interesting, they never really integrate it enough into the plot to really make it count. The irony is that they very well could, but the writing never makes any effort to go beyond its harem set-up that wants to act all coy (we all know what it is, though). I mean, when you have "incompetent" descendants of Sherlock Holmes and Arsène Lupin and the potential to explore how those who are viewed as faulty can actually get together and kick butt, you really shouldn't squander it. Alas.
Because of that, a lot of the characters here, especially the women, feel very generic. Aria, despite her charming appetite for food and her headstrong sense of justice that gets her into trouble when she's reckless, is, at the end of the day, nothing more than a stereotypical tsundere who pretends not to like Kinji (even though she does) and threatens to pump people full of holes. Shirayuki is the childhood friend who has a secret craving for our male lead, and even her dormant powers locked inside as a prestigious shrine maiden do nothing to elevate the mess her character becomes. Riko is the flirty vixen with a hidden agenda, and Reki is the silent and stoic girl. The list goes on and on. Even the few male characters are flat. Kinji's aggravation at his surroundings is something I've seen in several harem anime, and Muto is the best bud turned pervert by the end of the show. It's all recycled and lacks creativity.
J.C.Staff's animation for Aria the Scarlet Ammo is average. The initial character designs and color palette look good, but there are several moments when characters go off-model. It's not a flattering look. Also, the strength of the animation as a whole varies by episode. Some are better than others, in particular Satoshi Saga's handling of the fourth episode (he has always been excellent with angle, color, and light experimentation), but as a whole, the colors get muddy, and the characters fluctuate in proportions.
Takumi Ozawa's score has some exciting moments, but it's pretty much what you'd expect from a harem anime score. However, the opening and ending of the show are a different story. "Scarlet Ballet" and "Camellia Eyes" are engaging and really make the show seem more epic than it ends up being, but it's all for the best because I have NEW BOPS and may have already adapted them into okay-sounding English versions.
Given that the characters are flat, the voice acting somewhat suffers from it. Rie Kugimiya's performance as Aria is the exception, though, showing why she has been the reigning tsundere queen of anime. She delivers each line with passion and fire like her character warrants, and her comedic timing (when this show is actually funny in terms of its bizarre humor) is awesome when given the right backing. And while it was fun to hear Junji Majima's tonal switch between Normal Kinji and Hysteria Kinji, he's the only other person I liked. Then there's the dub, which is perhaps one of the most awkward FUNimation dubs I have ever heard. This surprises me, especially since most of the actors are experienced in voice acting and have done excellent work. Perhaps they felt no connection to this show (if the commentaries hinted at anything; they were directed more toward the process of working on shows than this in particular), which is understandable. Maybe there was misdirection. Perhaps the adaptive script was clunky. Maybe it was even the audio mixing, which made dialogue so quiet on the Blu-Ray but made sound effects super loud (this might just be the typical mix of Blu-Ray anime audio, but it threw me off). Regardless, the dub is disappointing, and if this show serves any interest to you, I'd recommend watching it in Japanese (whether streamed on FUNimation or their Blu-Ray/DVD combo release).
That's Aria the Scarlet Ammo. For a show I was curious about watching since I was twelve, it pretty much fell flat. Perhaps I would've liked it in the past, but now that I'm eighteen and pretty much done with harems, this didn't bode well. With a vague story, cliche characters, off animation, and average voice acting, there's not much for me personally to walk away with that's positive. Maybe the action scenes? But then again, those depended on the episode. This anime could've been good if it would've opened up its world like Bladedance's could have, yet the world we got made no sense regardless. With a few tweaks, we could've gotten a fun action anime. Instead, it's another harem dud. Perhaps the spin-off Aria the Scarlet Ammo AA could pull it in the right direction? We'll wait and see.
