This is a sports anime and the second strangest one I have encountered (“Girls und Panzer” wins that race). “Walkure Romanze” takes place in Germany (they never say it, but you see enough text and print to be able to determine this) at Winford Academy where, on the agenda, is jousting. Forget metal shop here, we’re going after some really heavy metal here!

Now, it is supposedly for both male and female knights, but we only focus on the ladies. Our male hero is Takahiro Mizuno. He used to be a knight but suffered an injury to both body and mind and has now relegated himself into being a begleiter (and you pronounce it like you are trying to bum a match for your cigarette: beg lighter). His job is to offer support and guidance to whomsoever the knight is. (Much like what Burgess Meredith did in ‘Rocky’).

Mio Kisaki is at this school (the one holding the helmet), but not in the jousting section. However, she runs afoul of Celia Cumani Aintree (big busty blonde) who challenges her to a joust. This is bad, as she is a jousting prodigy, is Student council president and has never lost a round in her two years here. However, Mio does well enough to want to get into the jousting program. The series is her attempts to better herself, trying to get Takahiro back into the jousting program and all the other concerns and machinations within the jousting program.

This is just fan service. Jousting requires a lot of upper body strength and many of the ladies certainly have two upper body muscles well developed indeed! Plus, that armor needs to be tailored, so you can’t just grab something off the rack to fit your rack. Can you imagine the metalsmith, hard at work?

Taptaptaptap. “Let’s try this on. Hmmmm. Needs more work.”
Taptaptaptap. “Let’s try this on. Hmmmm. Needs more work.”
Taptaptaptap. “Let’s try this on. Hmmmm. Needs more work.”
Taptaptaptap. “Let’s try this on. Hmmmm. Needs more work.”
Taptaptaptap. “Let’s try this on. Hmmmm. Needs more work.”
Taptaptaptap. “Let’s try this on. Hmmmm. Needs more work.”

How many times does this have to happen before you realize he just wants to check out your boobies? Besides, it may take the entire metal output of Ecuador to cover your bustline.

In one episode, there are so many smut innuendoes, Beavis and Butthead would laugh themselves stupid. In a pair of other episodes, it is total and complete fan service filler. Explain to me again why two ladies are STARK RAVING NAKED in a windmill? Although I did like that someone was willing to take on an alternative sport, the fan service undercuts it at every turn. Even the end feature “Jousting for Dummies”, which tries to let us proles know a tad more about this event cuts out after a few episodes, so that bit of charm is gone, so it falls into the old trope: can the promising rookie defeat the solid leader?

It’s just that a somewhat more serious approach to this could have been taken, but when the ladies get ready to joust, their lower halves appeared to be sponsored by Frederick’s of Hollywood. Not really practical for something as serious as tilting at each other. So, if you like harem comedies and something a tab off-beat, then this is your show. Come for the jousting, stay for the boobs.

On a scale of 1 to 10:

Artwork 9 (They had BETTER be cute!)
Plot 7 (Underdog tale done before)
Pacing 7 (Slows down at the middle and never really recovers)
Effectiveness 7 (Too many cliches)
Conclusion 7 (It reaches a ‘coupler point’, but doesn’t really end)
Fan Service 6 (A similar show would be “Mahoromatic”)

Overall 6 (Nice, but falls short)

And remember, it’s first run until you’ve seen it. Quite a lot blossoms.