This show... I want to enjoy it. The premise carries a bit of potential, the setting is absolutely gorgeous and creative, and while the animation isn't breathtaking, it does its job well enough.
But what has dragged this show into the ditch are the characters. Seriously, they are incredibly obnoxious! It's like the novel author made a draft of the character personalities and decided that they weren't cliche and annoying enough so amped up their annoying traits in the final version.
You have your typical good-natured handsome protagonist who drags in the ladies without any effort. That's fine, but we see that Ichika doesn't know the very basics of IS, he has trouble even lifting and landing, and yet he is shown to somehow have l00t fighting skilz and nearly defeated the representative of a whole country in his
first battle! Worst of all, Ichika is devolved into an absolute moron by episode 3 and cannot tell if any of the 3 girls like him! They're almost catfighting over him, and he stands at the sidelines with a huge metaphorical question mark drifting over his head as he laughs nervously. Most guys would have moved to Rin's room by now and would have hot sex with her every night, but such a straightforward direction in plot would have eliminated the
oh sooo interesting romantic tension so the author had to knock down Ichika's IQ by 25.
Houki, she's the cool, dark and bishoujo tsundere swordsman childhood friend. Whoa, that's a lot of tropes already. There are times, usually when she's in her deredere mood, when she's a respectable and interesting character. She reminds me of Sakurazaki Setsuna, who is one of my (many) favorite characters in Negima. But why does she have to be so darn harsh? Tsundere characters can be written well, it's not necessary for them to say horrible hateful words like "get kicked by a horse and die" or try to beat the protagonist up with a kendo stick.
Cecilia honestly makes me cringe ever since her debut in episode 1. I've seen overconfident, snobby ojou types in anime before, but the writer of IS seems to want to stuff every bad and "seen that before" ojou cliche onto her. I don't think I've ever seen any other character so full of themselves and yet completely open about it, other than comic relief, which Cecilia is
not. I can't take her seriously, she acts like someone with no significant social life.
Rin, she's the least annoying character yet, but that could change very quickly in the upcoming episodes. Why does she have to be another tsundere though? Frankly, the author looks like an idiot when it comes to writing romance, as he seems to think combining a moronic elusive protagonist with multiple tsundere heroines creates interesting romantic tension.
The conversation Rin had with Ichika about their childhood promise was torturous to watch because of their completely incompatible personalities.
I'm sorry if I offended any fans of this show and its characters. It would be easy to say that it's not my type of show, but I can see myself liking it if the characters were written better. I find nothing wrong with fanservice or harems but if I can't appreciate the characters, everything falls apart. I can only wish that this'll improve but at this point it's easily begging for me to drop it soon.