Maid-chan no Anime: Ben-To
How have you been over the changing years? Maid-chan was busy watching some of her favorite animes again. Isn’t it strange how time can fly by when you feel comfy and nostalgic? Especially if Maid-chan is together with her master, tee-hee!
But of course Maid-chan also got her eyes on some shows she did not had watched before. As you know, Maid-chan prefers animes which are a bit unusual. You humans may be idiots generally, but your fantasy is first class!
Take Ben-To for example. In the core it is just your average shonen one-against-all fighting anime with cute girls for fanservice.
But the reason the fights happen? Right in the supermarket? 50% off bentos! The fighters, called “wolfs”, gather at the evening and wait for the supermarket employee responsible for putting on the discount stickers (called God of Discounts) to do his or her job, and than start fighting over the bentos.
It may not sound very logical, but certainly funny. So let’s have a look together, shall we?
First we have to look at Satō Yō, the protagonist who will later be nicknamed hentai (pervert), because of genre conventions. At first he thinks that those bento fights are complete idiocy, but once he got dragged in, he has more and more fun fighting.
The person who draws him in (unwillingly) is his senpai Yarizui Sen.
Sen catches Sato’s interest in several ways. One is that she is the president of the Half Priced Food Lovers Club at his school, a club where Maid-chan wonders how it got ever permission to exist (and a club room).
A cool beauty, Sen is known – and feared – by the fighting wolfs as the Ice Witch. Her leg work is outstanding, as you will be able to amply see if you watch this anime.
In now way cool is Shaga Ayame, Sato’s half-italian cousin, who like him likes to play games. Preferably with Sato.
She likes to put erotic under (or over)-tones to her interaction with Sato and delights in teasing him, Maid-chan thinks. Unbeknownst to Sato she is also a half price wolf, known as the Beauty by the Lake.
By the way, as you will find out when watching, all the nicknames are not as romantic as they seem to be at first look. Like Sato’s nickname they are all reminders of something that the people shouldering them would like to not talk about.
Maid-chan really likes that little twist.
But Ayame is from another school, so she can’t be in the same club. You need three for a club, and number three is Oshiroi Hana.
Hana isn’t a fighter, so she has to try to sneak through the battles to get her bento. But that is okay for her, because her main reason to be a wolf is to be close to all those manly figures and use them as inspiration for BL stories.
Really a fallen girl. And dangerous.
Even more dangerous is her friend Shiraume Ume.
The girl with the strange name is the student council president. She takes her friendship to Hana very serious. Don’t ever come between her and Hana, or you may end up dead!
During the anime you can see Sato growing from a hapless average student to be one of the best wolfs fighting over half-price bentos. You can also see some relationship between the characters. But Maid-chan has to admit that from time to time the anime seems to jump around and rushes things too much. That is also true for the comically overblown naked skin scenes. While they are certainly erotic, only that as a description of a relationship?
The graphic department definitely knows how to draw cute and sexy girls, but the background often looks like it came from some cheap stock photo site.
Summary
Ben-To is in many ways a very typical shonen anime. Maid-chan had hoped for more unusual things. But as it is, Ben-to does it’s job in it’s genre, and does it well.
But for the lack of nice background graphics and the often too rushed story and character development, Maid-chan cannot give more than 7/10 points on the totally objective Maid-chan scale even for fans of the genre.
Ben-To had potential, but it looks like the budget restrictions were too much. Since there are enough Light Novels for more story, a more fleshed out and balanced 24 episodes might even have made it a 9 pointer. But as it is, Maid-chan can only recommend this Ben-To at half-price!
