It dares you to quit at episode four, then makes you eat it. Yes, Ayato is a Gary Stu who catches a girl's undergarments in the opening minutes, and yes, the first stretch is transfer-student boilerplate with Lester swinging an axe around. Push through and Phoenix Festa arrives: Julis burning through her flower-named Amaryllis volleys for an orphanage back in Lieseltania, Kirin at barely five feet dismantling grown duelists with Senbakiri, Ernesta's autonomous puppets Ardy and Rimcy making a philosophical argument out of a tag match. Claudia's Pan-Dora showing her every possible death and her smiling anyway is a better character hook than most shows in this lane ever attempt. The choreography earns its Festa stage, and Ayato's sealed power with a hard time limit means he actually has to think. Julis calling him a mannerless brute while quietly checking he ate is the whole show.

A meteor storm changed everything. When the Invertia struck in the last century, it wrecked cities around the world but also brought mana, an unknown element that pushed human technology forward. It also produced a new kind of human: the Genestella, born with extraordinary physical abilities. Their best are gathered at six schools in Rikka, an academy city on the water also called Asterisk, where they battle one another in the Festas, the world's biggest combat spectacle. Ayato Amagiri comes to Seidoukan Academy as a scholarship transfer student at the invitation of student council president Claudia Enfield. Almost at once, he accidentally catches the famous witch Julis-Alexia von Riessfeld half-dressed, and she angrily challenges him to a duel. The Festas mean nothing to Ayato. He has enrolled to find out what happened to his missing older sister. When a more devious plot comes to light, though, he sets out to win. The series mixes action, fantasy and sci-fi with comedy, romance and ecchi elements.