AKA: 新妹魔王の契約者 BURST (Shinmai Maō no Testament BURST)

Genre: Harem, male power fantasy, action

Length: Television series, 10 episodes, 24 minutes each

Distributor: Currently available streaming on crunchyroll.

Content Rating: TV-MA (Violence, off-putting sexual material.)

Related Series: The Testament of Sister New Devil (season 1)

Also Recommended: High School DxD, Maoyu.

Notes: Based on a Japanese light novel series by Tetsuto Uesu with illustrations by Nekosuke Ōkuma, published by Kadokawa Shoten.

Rating:

The Testament of Sister New Devil BURST

Synopsis

After Zolgia's attempts to take Mio's power for himself, Basara, Mio and Maria tries to return to their respective normal lives, but is almost immediately attacked on several fronts. Eventually, they all end up in the demon world where they're invited to partake in a fighting tournament. But not before Basara adds a few more notches to his harem belt.

Review

I once said about the first season of this show that it had some good ideas to his name, and I still stand by that. However, after watching The Testament of Sister New Devil BURST, I'll be damned if I can remember what those were.

And why would this show get a sequel? Yeah, I know -- storywise, it can just throw in new villains or perils as needed, and could theoretically go on forever, but again... why? Good ideas notwithstanding, The Testament of Sister New Devil was a deeply unsettling mess. It was a mess because it didn't seem to be able to settle on a theme beyond the whole "teenagers acting like badasses (but failing)" power fantasy thing, and deeply unsettling because... well, the stuff this show tries to pass off as sexy is awkward at best and kind of offensive at worst.

I don't see how the creators of this marvel had much hopes for the series either, because the animation, which was never fantastic to begin with, manages to look even worse now. The character designs are relatively stable, if nothing else, but a lot of the action scenes, in the latter half in particular, are stiff and unexciting, eventually devolving into the good, ol' animation budget savior "yelling and shooting energy beams". That's why it's more than a bit weird that this series' final boss... thing... actually manages to make the "firing lasers everywhere" thing work. There's also a chance that the animation during the curse-related molesting scenes are well done too. It's hard to tell when in most cases, the screen is almost entirely covered up by censorship clipart.

Not that said censorship can hide the fact that the sex scenes are still deeply unsettling. In the review for the first season, I mentioned that they came across as disturbingly duty-based and kind of rapey. To make matters worse; not long after, I watched a comedically handicapped but sexually respectful little something called My Wife is the Student Council President, where I made a comment that I wished the "sex" scenes in Sister New Devil show could have taken some notes from this one. So, you might be wondering whether Sister New Devil BURST learned anything from how it did things in the first season.

"Since Mio and I both became bitches and submitted to Basara, all three of us have grown stronger."

I just... what?! Yeah, that really was a line from the show. No, I could hardly believe it either.

"Since Mio and I both became bitches and submitted to Basara, all three of us have grown stronger."

"Submitted to Basara"?! Really?! This is the attitude you cop on the road you chose when it came to the show's stupidly immature approaches to fanservice and sex? This denigrating attitude? This is actually a step down from the first season, and that show was already approaching rock bottom to begin with! To make it even worse, Maria actually manages to trick even more girls to curse themselves into this bizarrely denigrating BS the show dare to call erotic. The show tries to pass it off as a means for the girls to become stronger, but I don't really buy that for a second; the fact that Maria continues to do things like spike the girls' drinks with something and seems strangely insistant in filming it just comes across as revenge porn rape-y. Why would you do this, Testament of Sister New Devil BURST? What the hell is WRONG with you?

Besides, any battle powers on display are completely arbitrary anyway, since the show is more caught up with who needs to win or lose in any given moment. From a straight shonen perspective, Basara is still the one who carries most of the workload; often, again, coming in from the sidelines to save the girls. In all fairness, the show does fortunately abandon some of that later on, as they're allowed to fight and win their own battles. Still, the attitude persists once the show goes into Basara's heritage as at least half nonhuman. This leads to the introduction of the good old shounen trope "using too much powers will make you go berserk" with Basara, which becomes a huge issue near the end of the show where he apparently deactivates one or two of his three power limiters... that he has for some reason, and then it's suddenly not a problem anymore when he releases all three not long after. And when Basara is lost in his own rage, Mio enters his inner mind/consciousness/whatever to... allow Basara to reign it in on his own, because Mio's contribution was "believing in him". Either way, any topics or aspects of power usually includes things each character is born with or whatever they might be releasing, and in Mio's case, her powers become a plot point of the last half (to a certain extent) much like the first season. So excuse me if I call BS on this line:

"Since Mio and I both became bitches and submitted to Basara, all three of us have grown stronger."

And of course, Basara just goes along with all this because duty. And of course Kurumi becomes a part of this too, as well as Zest, because they all just looove to "submit" to Basara, because they're all "family". (And totally not because Maria countered her very understandable display of displeasure about this situation by basically doing this show's version of "What? You scared?", almost to the point of waving her bent-elbowed arms and going "Boooooc boc boc boc boc.")

And yes, this is all about "family" too, or that's what the show is trying to convince you to believe. But The Testament of Sister New Devil BURST's idea of what a family is all about is that Basara should rescue them all... from... whatever battles are thrown in their general direction, preferably in as overtly a dramatically late arrival as possible, with bonus points if he has to catch any of the girls falling -- literally falling -- towards him while he's at it. See, one of the reasons why Listen to me, Girls. I am your father! worked on a fundamental level despite its extremely MOEbaity characters was that the people in it acted like a family! I feel none of this from Basara and his harem troupe; they simply don't have any time for that sort of thing, mostly because they spend nearly all of their time being caught up in what passes for political machinations in this show (someone wants Mio's powers or Basara dead) and what little time there is left is for posturing. Tired, trite shounen posturing. We apparently learn that Basara's father is "the God of War" now, whatever that means in this show.

So, does this show still have that little something that made me at least slightly intrigued in the first season? I'd have to say... no. Oh, it certainly tries; even outside of the whole "God of War" thing, the show pulls the "I want to go on" plot twist at the end, with one of the characters showing a side to herself that came right out of nowhere. And that's not even going into the plot elements that are left dangling from the beginning of the show, like the fact that we learn more about the school nurse, Chisato, and we're also introduced to a rather feminine young man who's also a vampire somehow, which just sounds all kinds of familiar. Sadly, the show just seemingly ditches the latter in its character introduction stage and the former is merely used as a tool to introduce us to another aspect of Basara's mysteeeeeerious parentage. Also, while she doesn't technically add herself to Basara's harem, of course he gets to feel up Chisato as well. OR DID HE?! Was it just a dream? OR DID IT REALLY HAPPEN?! Don't expect any straight answers out of The Testament of Sister New Devil BURST anytime soon. It's too busy being mysteeeeerious.

I don't care anymore. You took what little goodwill you had, Testament of Sister New Devil BURST, and you wasted it. Amazed as I am that this got a second season, I don't care if it gets a third, because I will not be watching it. Nothing good can come from it.

This show don't get any credit for being mildly intriguing anymore. I'm not taking THAT bait again. — Stig Høgset

Recommended Audience: BURST took the offputting sexual escapades from the first season and somehow found a way to make them even more despicable. That's quite the accomplishment, Sister New Devil, but it ain't the kind that earns you a gold star. The show also gets quite violent near the end, much like the first season, in the way that some of the characters are straight out executed by decapitation, and one of the characters gets his arm torn off.