Baka and Test: Summon the Beasts Season one

Title	Baka and Test: Summon the Beasts Season One (Limited Edition) DVD/Blu-ray Combo
Director	Terri Doty
Actors	Scott Freeman, Jamie Marchi, Brina Palencia, Alexis Tipton, Greg Ayers
Release date	2011-08-02
Theatrical release date
List price	$69.98
ASIN	B004TP55U2
Genre
Manufacturer	Funimation
Running time	325minutes
Studio	Funimation
Purchase	Buy it now!

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The story of this anime takes place in Fumizuki Academy, a high school that’s divided into six classes, A through F. The better your grades are, the better your classroom is. Class A has the best stuff, and resembles a mansion with comfy cushion chairs and chandeliers rather looking like a normal classroom. The main focus of the show is Class F where the baka (idiot) students are, who get the worst supplies like barely functioning seat cushions with no stuffing, tables that break, and broken windows that let in a draft.

Akihisa Yoshii is the main character . Despite being the baka of all baka , he’s actually a nice guy. Other characters include Mizuki Himeji, a busty pink-haired beauty who is actually quite smart academically, but due to being sick on a test, got an automatic zero and thus is stuck in Class F. She likes being there with the other students, who are nice and friendly, if oddballs. The other main characters are Yuji Sakamoto (the cool and collected class representative), Minami Shimada (a Japanese girl who spent time in Germany and is the show’s tsundere character), Hideyoshi Kinoshita (who, despite looking VERY feminine,  is actually a male) and Kota Tsuchiya (the pervert that nobody really minds the antics of).

There’s lots of other characters including Akihisa’s older sister Akira Yoshii, who REALLY like him (if you catch my drift), and Hazuki Shimada (Minami’s REALLY cute younger sister who playfully calls Akihisa “Baka no Oniichan”, or stupid big brother).

The main focus of the plot is that these students use summoned avatars to battle the other classes' avatars. All this is to improve their grades.

Shin Oonuma is a director that I really like who originally worked on various studio SHAFT shows like Pani Poni Dash, Negima!?, and Natsu no Arashi. This series, however, is produced by Silver Link, who is currently directing the anime C3. His visual style is very recognizable, using a half-relief pattern, giving objects an abstract look. I really enjoyed this show. While I found the first two episodes to be the weakest the show (I find the avatar battles boring, honestly), the rest was quite hilarious. The characters, while being standard comedy anime templates, were quite memorable and funny. I especially like how Akihisa is in a state of perpetual poverty due to his idiocy of spending what little money he has on video games rather than food, and thus is forced to ration out his ramen cup noodles to ridiculous levels.

Speaking of ridiculous, I liked the fact that this show doesn’t take itself too seriously. With a premise of a school where students are put into classes based academic scores by using virtual avatars, it shouldn’t have to be serious. There’s also quite a bit of cross dressing jokes in this show. Not just the girlie looking Hideyoshi, but also Akihisa, whose been forced to dress like a girl a couple of times. I found these moments hilarious.

Despite being released as a DVD/BD combo pack (please stop doing this, I would rather buy one or the other), I was sent just the DVD discs. There are thirteen episodes across two discs, plus a third with extras that have various shorts including a Christmas spoof, and a cross dress show. The English language dub is decent (I actually saw some episodes on the Funimation channel before getting this sent to me), but I always prefer to watch it in Japanese with English subtitles.  Overall I enjoyed this show much more than I thought I would. It’s not perfect, but I found the humor to be great and hope to see Funimation release the two episode OVA and the recently finished second season as well.