So... Infinite Stratos. I dunno how so many people could tell that's it's bound to suck before it actually aired, but I've actually anticipated the anime due to its character designs, seiyuu cast and crew that worked on Macross Frontier. I loved Macross Frontier, so I won't say no to anything that's even remotely similar.
Well, I won't say that I'm disappointed in the show, but I'm disappointed in choices the studio makes, especially in how they ended it. I've wrote a few posts that tries to justify that IS is more than what people gave credit for, but I had to eat my words when the story took a (laughable) serious turn which resulted in a humiliating conclusion to the series.
Lets be honest here, the only thing that sells IS are the characters. And by characters, I mean 50% Charlotte (see above) and 0% Ichika (also above), because his character is as shallow as a bird bath. I don't think you need me to explain Charlotte, but you can check out here and here. The IS (as in the mechs) itself, well, are a little more than eye candy.
I figured that, thankfully, studio 8bit realizes that as well and the bulk of the series (8 or 9 episodes) remains focused on the character development. Or to put it in another way, milking as much moe out of them as possible. Each character is progressively more awesome than the next (Laura might have been a bit too extreme...), and I think that we're all fanboys of a certain character at some point. They aren't exactly original, but they took the best from each moe category, assign them a country with no purpose whatsoever, and somehow managed to make it work. I guess the nonsensical story style forced our standards to drop somewhat.
The rest of the story is, well, utter bullshit. I won't go too deeply into it, but I'll just say that I don't appreciate how irritating Tabane is, how they created an enemy for the sake of an action-packed ending, and how they try to link it all back to Tabane in the end. It all just screams CHEAP PLOT DEVICE to me.
"Super Stream" and "Straight Jet" are both pretty good songs, but the animation barely hits average. This is 8bit's first TV series, after all.
The series as a whole isn't really worth anybody's time, after all. But if you're looking for a bit of mindless fun in a harem genre, IS might be a good pick... and as a bonus, you might find a new favorite character while you're at it.
Plot/Concept: Fair
Story Style: Good (Very good up to Ep9)
Audio/Visual: Fairly Good
Value: 7
