Type: TV

Episodes: 12

Status: Finished Airing

Aired: Jan 6, 2012 to Mar 23, 2012

Premiered: Winter 2012

Broadcast: Fridays at 11:00 (JST)

Producers: Genco, Lantis, AT-X, PRA, Showgate, Atelier Musa, Fujimi Shobo

Licensors: Funimation

Studios: TNK

Source: Light novel

Genres: Comedy, Romance, Ecchi

Themes: Demons, Harem, School

Duration: 24 min. per ep.

Rating: R+ - Mild Nudity

Plot:High school student Issei Hyoudou is your run-of-the-mill pervert who does nothing productive with his life, peeping on women and dreaming of having his own harem one day. Things seem to be looking up for Issei when a beautiful girl asks him out on a date, although she turns out to be a fallen angel who brutally kills him! However, he gets a second chance at life when beautiful senior student Rias Gremory, who is a top-class devil, revives him as her servant, recruiting Issei into the ranks of the school's Occult Research club.

Slowly adjusting to his new life, Issei must train and fight in order to survive in the violent world of angels and devils. Each new adventure leads to many hilarious (and risqué) moments with his new comrades, all the while keeping his new life a secret from his friends and family in High School DxD!

User Review:Surprisingly, despite this being labeled as "harem," this show didn't feel much like harem to me. Really strange. In fact, Sword Art Online felt even more of a harem than this, but ok. Issei only had like one real love interest, and that was Rias. Maybe it's the perspective of socially awkward people who think that if a girl talks to a guy, that means that the girl is in love with the guy that makes them think this is a harem. So I guess harem now means having a bunch of female characters and having one relevant male character in a same show. Oh, and I guess the main character constantly went on about how he likes harem or something. But I'm pretty sure that doesn't qualify a show as harem either.

Obviously one of the most important factors in these shows is the main protagonist. Everything centers around them, after all. Harem genre in general, unfortunately, does not have much variety in what main characters they could have. Very rarely you have protagonists like Keima, who is on a class of his own, or Shidou, who's at least likeable despite being incredibly generic just because he's not an annoying piece of shit that causes more problems for himself than everything else in the show. And then you have Issei. This protagonist just happens to be one of the obnoxious protagonists you could have in a show, harem or not. Did you ever watch other shows and saw that silly "perverted guy" who always hangs out near the main character and only exists as a brief comic relief? Yeah, that guy is a main protagonist now. Hope you liked those brief comic reliefs, because that's definitely not going to get old after an entire series.

If that wasn't bad enough, he's also "that" guy who happens to have one of the most powerful McGuffins in the series, which makes him suddenly important. Normally this wouldn't be too offensive since it's done by literally every other show, where the protagonist happens to have that special trait that gives him unfair advantage no matter what, but the way this show handles it is just terrible.

You see, the side characters that Rias has under her are supposed to represent what Issei lacks- Outside of them being awfully shallow as characters and merely existing to pander to specific parts of the audience as overdone archetypical tools that are in nearly any JRPG ever, they are supposed to exist to make Issei feel comparatively inferior. In fact, in the last episode, Issei talks about how he lacks the strength, healing ability, magical ability, or swordfighting skills while fighting the obligatory final boss of the season- Does this all matter? No. He has the most powerful weapon shown in the series so far, so why is this relevant? What was the point of making him seem "inferior" to others when all he has to do is do the typical resolve speech and it will make him just instantly more powerful than everyone else?

Let's put that in this context and see if that sounds any less ridiculous:
"I may not have a bamboo stick, boxing gloves, or a first-aid kit, but I have a rifle that I can shoot you with."

No, it still sounds dumb as shit. I also liked that chess analogy that the show kept bringing it up, though. It's almost like it's just there for the sake of being pretentious. And it is.

As for Rias, she's just bland as any other character in this show. She even goes on a speech about how she wants to be seen as Rias/herself and not be carried by her family name and nobility- Huh, that sounds awfully familiar. Oh, that's right- That's every Disney princess speech about how they're so perfect that it's bad. Outside of that, she falls in love with Issei because he's the main character and also because her fiancee conveniently happens to be a pretty huge dick like again, every Disney princess plot. While I'm not looking for super originality here, it's pretty bad if you're ripping off the fucking Disney routine.

Download || High School DxD Episode 2 Hindi Dubbed

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