This one doesn't pretend. Maken-Ki! puts a Maken in everybody's hands, builds a whole dueling academy around it, and then spends its budget on everything except the duels, and the people who love it knew that going in. Takeru Ohyama transfers into Tenbi Academy with the standard perv-with-a-heart setup, gets adopted by the Maken-Ki committee, and immediately has Haruko's childhood-friend claim, Inaho showing up announcing she's his fiancee, and Kodama Himegami's icy disinterest all stacked on top of each other. The art holds up better than the writing does, the cast is voiced like the studio actually cared, and the fanservice is animated with a level of attention the plot never gets. If you want a magical school battle series with stakes, go watch Freezing. If you want the harem comfort food that knows exactly what it is and never apologizes, this is the one you keep in the rotation.

Takeru Ohyama, a perverted but mostly ordinary teenager, enrolls at Tenbi Academy, a former girls' school that has just gone co-ed and asks for no entrance exam. What he gets instead is something far stranger. Every student there wields a Maken, a magical artifact that grants special abilities used in duels. On his first day he reunites with his childhood friend Haruko Amaya, meets Inaho Kushiya, who announces she is his fiancée, and crosses paths with Kodama Himegami, who wants him dead. The principal then decides on a whim that all four will share a room. Persuaded by Haruko, Takeru joins the Maken-ki, a student council unit that oversees duels, only to learn that no Maken is compatible with him. The result is an action ecchi romantic comedy about a powerless boy surrounded by girls who can fight. For viewers who want action mixed with humor and don't mind the fanservice, it delivers exactly what it promises.