Baka and Test: Summon the Beasts

Imagine your high school days, where you went to class, talked with friends, did normal student things. Now imagine what it might have been like as a war-zone between your class and all the other classes in your year. This is the world of Baka and Test, and it's probably one of the funniest anime's I've seen in awhile. The premise is that in this particular Japanese high school, the students have been placed into classes based on their scores for their entrance exams, ranging from Class A which is the geniuses of the school all the way to Class F, the idiots, losers and overall scum of the earth. The classes have equipment of varying quality: Class A has a luxurious classroom with comfortable chairs, laptops and coffee station; Class F has broken down tables made for Kindergartners in a drafty, dirty classroom.

The twist is that during the school year, a lower-leveled class can declare war on a higher class and if they succeed they can claim their stuff for their own. Of course they don't fight each other physically, instead they have a new state of the art system that allows students to summon an avatar of themselves in a summoning field controlled by a teacher. The strength of the avatar is tied to the student's latest test scores, and the summoning field uses the subject the teacher teaches. So a Math teacher would supervise a battle using the student's math scores. A student loses when their avatar's score becomes zero and they must take a remedial class as punishment. If a lower leveled class looses the war, their equipment gets downgraded as a result, since the higher leveled class wouldn't want to take their stuff.

So the story follows our main character Akihisa Yoshi, the titular baka, in his second year of high school in Class F. Alongside him are: his best friend the brilliant but lazy Yuuji; flat-chested tomboy/tsundere Minami Shimada; pervert ninja, with a camera, Kouta; extremely feminine-looking male Hideyoshi; and the pink haired girl he likes and seems like the typical first girl in the harem Mizuki Himeji. There are also other characters the pop up quite alot, like Shouko (Yuuji's yandere sort-of love interest), Akira Yoshi (Akihisa's very strange elder sister), Aiko (major tease), Iron Man (the craziest teacher ever, he drags students off for the remedial classes and presides over them), Miharu (Minami's lesbian stalker), Kubo (Class-A student with a crush on Akihisa), and even the FFF Inquisition (a bunch of Class F losers who torture guys who get the tiniest bit of affection from girls, since they can't be happy and decided that no one else would be either).

Akihisa is a refreshing sort of main character for a series like this because he's an idiot intentionally and there's really nothing more special about him than that and his sincere good heart. That's not to say he's perfect, like other leads in this kind of show. Akihisa is a major pervert, teases all his friends pretty harshly and when he inevitably gets retribution for his teasing it feels more justified, though still overboard. He wants to do the right thing a lot of the time and for once the fact that he's oblivious to love is justified. His harem is barely existent, only two girls actively show their interest, another is just a kid, one is a shy gay guy, and the last is his own sister, which he is understandably creeped out by. He doesn't realize Minami even likes him at all, since she is rather violent toward him and he primarily thinks of her as another friend, and the girl he does like he doesn't ever try to get with because he feels she deserves better, and that's his driving force throughout the first season at least: trying to improve Mizuki's lot in school with the wars.

Mizuki is fairly bland, though she also feels a bit more nuanced then a character I could normally expect from an anime like this. On the day of the entrance exam Mizuki fell ill and couldn't finish the exam, landing her with 0 points and Class-F. In truth she's Class-A caliber and her grades are on par with the top students in the school. She isn't treated as flawless by the anime either, there's a running gag about how lethal her cooking is and she's quick to join Minami in punishing Akihisa if he so much as looks at another girl. It's just a shame that in the two seasons of the show I've watched we get relatively little insight into her, she's just kind of bland as a result.

Minami is a pretty stereotypical tsundere tomboy; her chest is flat and she gets teased for it, she responds to said teasing by putting Akihisa in incredibly painful wrestling moves, she gets easily embarrassed when her feelings are addressed, etc. She's in Class-F because she's recently moved back from Germany, and while she's picked up speaking the language, she still can't read Kanji worth a damn (I so know that feeling) and thus her only class that she does decently in is Math, which is numbers and something she can understand. Unlike other tsundere characters she's not always hostile, she gets along with everyone, even Akihisa, until he does something really stupid, which is pretty often, but she's not defined by that hostility toward her crush.

Yuuji is the representative of Class-F, so if he gets taken out during a war then it's over. He's brilliant at strategies and tactics but has a tendency to not carry out his own plans at times. His and Akihisa's relationship is very amusing and he really comes off like an older brother of sorts to the group. He has does end up being abused by Shouko, which is something I have a bit of a problem with but I'll discuss that later. When Yuuji does put his mind to it, he has the intellect of at least a Class-B student, which is pretty darn good. He has a tendency to sacrifice Akihisa a lot of the time, tricking him into thinking he's the conerstone of a plan when he was just the distraction.

Hideyoshi is the most fan-serviced character in the show for guys... and he's a guy. There's a lot of great gags over this that I won't spoil here, suffice to say that both Akihisa and Kouta both perv over him like they would a girl, or more so. Aside from being in a somewhat genderless state, Hideyoshi is notable for being an amazing thespian with incredible range, and has the most common sense in the show. Kouta is a ninja pervert, his score in physical education is the single highest score in any subject in the school, outclassing the Class-A students. He always has a camera and is around to snap photos at opportune times and acts a surveilance/tech specialist when the group needs one.

These are the main characters we're with over the course of the series, along with many more minor characters, some of which I've mentioned up above. The series itself pretty often seems to forget about the Avatar system, it's not uncommon to go some episodes with no appearance or battles of any kind. It's also very hyperbolic in nature, on the verge of being satirical. A lot of the abuse dished out by the girls is like this, it's supposed to be over the top and funny how much they hurt the guys for even the most minor infractions. There's also the premise, banding groups of students to help each other do better so they'll get better grades and become stronger to get luxuries other classes have. Then there's a second season premise that takes up a few episodes that's essentially a war between the boys of the second year and the girls/teachers to spy on the girl in the bath. It's a concept that sounds good, a literal war over peeping on girls, but it plays out very dully and it's repetitive.

I have a problem with this show and it's fairly serious, despite it's hyperbolic nature. The abuse that goes on in anime always makes me uncomfortable, but this series dials it up for the sake of comedy and I just can't laugh at it. Sure, the boys fairly often behave in such a way that it makes sense the girls would get angry and "punish" them for it, even though it's not their place to do so. But almost all the time it's disproportionate and a number of those the guys didn't even do anything wrong. I so detest abuse anywhere in media, regardless of who's doing it, and it really concerns me when I see something like that played for comedy when if the genders were reversed it'd be dramatic and the abuser would be a monster. The problem with this anime is that this is almost satirical and laughing off anime that does this kind of stuff seriously. It is over the top, the girls are shown to be kind of crazy when they do it, but the fact is it's still supposed to be funny for the audience. I'm very mixed on what to think about it but it detracts my enjoyment of the series overall.

I don't intend to turn this into a discussion of sexism though, that's for another time and place and probably not by me. Baka and Test is a really interesting anime, it's pretty funny even with the problems I have with it and I would recommend watching it if you're a fan of comedy and especially comedic anime. It's a fun ride for the most part and it even manages to get some decent drama and sentimentality into the mix without making it melodramatic and sappy.

-Subtle