Anime review: Chivalry of a Failed Knight

It was a decade ago, when Shakugan no Shana popularized battle harems by making them seem like an awesome new way of merging fighting shonen with harems. Everybody went on to copy its formula with slight variations, and the result was the saturation of the whole thing. Now nothing can make a battle harem seem like it stands out from the rest no matter what it does.

There was a time when calling something a deconstruction or subversion was enough to elevate a show at the top of its respective genre. But those times are now gone, since as it turns out anything can be a deconstruction if you overthink it enough, and anything can be labeled subversion just by being a satire of stereotypes. Everyone uses them as buzzwords nowadays to excuse why they like a show, so everything is a deconstruction and thus nothing is special even when it is doing more than the average specimen of a genre. Examples:
The World God Only Knows (date sims)
School Rumble (school comedies)
Monthly Girl’s Nozaki-kun (shojo romances)
One Punch Man (fighting shonens)

A proof of which is Chivalry of a Failed Knight. It makes fun of the formula by messing with peoples’ expectations when it comes to the stereotypes. There is a scene where the protagonist walks inside a room while a girl is undressing. Instead of yelling and apologizing like a beta male, he takes off his own clothes, so the feeling can be mutual. There is another scene where upon hearing the protagonist’s sister is coming to see him, he is questioned if they are not blood related and thus there is incest involved. He replies they are blood related, which does not negate the fact that there is incest after all.

Is any of that enough to make the show actually good? Of course and it’s not, since it’s still a battle harem about an OP protagonist being surrounded by several bimbos hitting on him and constantly undress on every occasion. Many are praising it for the MC going for a steady relationship instead of never choosing a girl, but this is only making the harem to be of the support type instead of the balanced one. I don’t see how that is a plus. Sword Art Online is also a support harem; does that make it any less terrible?

I sort of liked the emotional baggage everyone in the cast was carrying, since subverting expectations is messing with their head even in-story. Their internal conflicts felt a lot more significant than the average bimbo who only cares about becoming the no1 bitch of the MC. That is as far as it goes though, since it’s still about an OP protagonist everybody constantly victimizes although he is constantly steamrolling one-dimensional rapist bad guys who constantly gloat and underestimate him during battle.

I liked the psychological warfare they were using in every battle, making them be more about a proper mental state that brute force. They were still coming down to the OP protagonist being the only one who can steal techniques and use them against his opponents, thus having a secure counterattack no matter what power they’re using or how strong they are. The show deviates from the path only superficially, and thus doesn’t make an actual difference in the longrun. It’s not something like Neon Genesis which becomes a completely different show by the end of it.

Is it a bit better than your typical battle harem? Yes, especially Mahouka, which is everything wrong with the genre. But not by much, and since all these types of shows are trash it is still a bad show, based on a bad light novel.