Ohakonyapachininko! Yo, buddies. Still alive?
Every season now and then, there are some anime whose story overlaps with each other. It’s not a surprise. Normally, movies does also have overlapping story, too, particularly when it involves soaps and drama. It’s just the matter of the author’s storytelling and their ability to make the title distinguishable and interesting enough to maintain readers’ interest.
The one type of anime genre that overlaps most of the time is, of course, magical battle school. I can think of many titles with that genre: Freezing, Aria the Scarlet Ammo, Hundred, Unlimited Fafnir, Absolute Duo, etc.
But, at times, there were anime that overlapped so much it feels like it’s the same story made by two different people. For the next two post starting this one, I’ll tell you four of those animes in which each two tells the overlapped basic story and was broadcast at the same season. First pair, The Asterisk War: The Academy City on the Water and Chivalry of a Failed Knight: A Tale of Worst One.
WARNING: This post contains spoilers for The Asterisk War and Chivalry of a Failed Knight.
In magical battle school genre, the opening story’s common scenario is like this: A boy, being a transfer student or ordinary one, enters a room where he meets a girl in either her underwear or just plain naked. The next thing that happened is that both the boy and girl were involved in a mock battle where the girl wanted the boy to die for “defiling” her. But, the boy was stronger, and the girl was defeated.
The same scenario occurred in The Asterisk War (Japanese name Gakusen Toshi Asterisk) and Chivalry of a Failed Knight (Rakudai Kishi no Cavalry). In both titles, the boys, Ayato Amagiri and Ikki Kurogane, respectively, enters a room where they meet the girls, Julis-Alexia von Riessfeld and Stella Vermillion, in just their underwear. The girls demanded the boys to die after being “defiled,” which attract people’s attentions. The next thing happened that they won the battle.
That sounded normal, I know. But, this is where the similarities gets on the new level: both Ayato and Ikki came from a distinguished families of infamous house of sword practitioners, while Julis and Stella were foreigners who are fire element users; Both Julis and Stella are the princess of their respective small kingdom being sent as their representatives (and incidentally, have pink hairs); The characters are part of what I call “the enhanced humans” with unique powers (Genestella and Blazer); The boys and girls intended to participate in their world’s battle competition (Festa and Seven Star Festival) to gain their rather-similar goals (getting acknowledged for something); and the potential lovers have a rival who are petite (childhood friend Saya Sasamiya and little sister Shizuku Kurogane). What makes them rather noticed, though, is the fact that they were broadcast at the exact same season, which, complete with the striking similarities, somehow became a sort of comparison of which author wrote the story better (Yuu Miyazaki and Riku Misora).
Of course, the similarities end after the first one or two episodes. To begin with, there were differences in the characters despite the general similarities, anyway: Ayato practices his family’s Amagiri-style sword techniques, while Ikki was unable to use Kurogane-style technique because of his inability to project Device; Julis came to Asterisk in order to aid the finance of an orphan located near her kingdom residence, while Stella came to Hagun to find more power to her already powerful ability; Ayato’s goal is to find her lost big sister and to find what he perceived as important to protect, while Ikki’s goal is to get his father to acknowledge him as a fine swordsman despite his inability to materialize a Device. There’re more, but that’ll completely spoil the story.
As the story goes on, the two titles goes in their separate ways, though the similarities still exists. In Asterisk War, the story have its own pace with Ayato and the girls, where each of them have screen time to cover their life and the problems behind their personality. The story isn’t just centered around Ayato and the girls, either. In Chivalry, though, the story centers around Ikki’s struggle and his relationship with Stella, who became an item quite early (Swift move, Ikki).
I had wanted to watch Asterisk War since I like the story and the characters (particularly Julis) and that the novel is illustrated by okiura, who once did the illustration for IS: Infinite Stratos light novel series. As for Chivalry, I picked it up after some reviewers noted the striking resemblances between the two titles when compared. One of the reviewers even pointed out that the first episode’s title of Chivalry, compared to Asterisk War, already wrapped up which of the two is worse. Well, no surprise there, since the first episode of Chivalry was titled “The Worst One I,” so, I guess that was a case of bad luck in the works. Even so, I find Chivalry‘s first episode somehow entertaining than Asterisk War. I’m basically like, “Wow, that escalated quickly.”
The background of the title’s story was different: In Asterisk War, the superpowers human have were the result of a meteor strike disaster named Invertia, where the government essentially collapsed and the leadership of the world was done by an entity called Integrated Empire Foundation. The humans with superpowers, called Genestella, were basically the result of that Invertia residues (quite similar to Charlotte, but without the side-effects). There wasn’t any particular background in Chivalry, though: it’s about humans with superpowers called Blazers who had all the swordsmanship ability in addition to a magical power to their skills.
I reckon that even if Asterisk War and Chivalry hadn’t been broadcasted at the same time, it would still receive this much attention. After all, Asterisk War was produced by A-1 Pictures (Persona 4 The Animation, GATE) and Chivalry by Silver Link (Fate/kaleid liner Prisma Illya, Baka and Test). I still think Asterisk War was more popular, though, considering that it has 24 episodes compared to Chivalry‘s 12 episodes. In terms of quality, that’s where I say both anime did well. If one is good while the other is bad, it won’t gain so much attention, and it’ll get way worse since they were broadcasted at the same season.
That’s the first two animes dabbled in the same pool, The Asterisk War and Chivalry of a Failed Knight. Next post will be another two anime overlapped together not just by the first episode, but by overall storyline.
Period!
Aoi Nagase's Blog 
One thing I like Chivalry for is that last episode, I feel they left most of the budget for that last fight, I always get goosebumps even when i just THINK about it