Alternate Titles: Sekai Seifuku: Bouryaku no Zvezda
Anime original by A-1 Pictures
Simulcast on Crunchyroll

Premise

Kate Hoshimiya is a little girl with big plans. Determined to conquer the world and bring it all under her heel, she’s recruited an eccentric bunch of individuals, including our hapless male protagonist Asuta Jimon.

Gee’s Verdict: Fun Premise, Faulty Execution

The basic premise is a solid one to start with; A bunch of weirdos decide to take over the world while dressed up in eccentric costumes and performing magical feats with little explanation while giant monsters rampage through the streets. Really, there’s a ton of great directions you could go with such a premise. And World Conquest: Zvezda Plot has not inherently done anything egregiously wrong yet. Alas, it’s the execution where I feel such an anime falters. Jimon is your stock and standard protagonist with an ostensibly normal life before things are thrown into flux by the arrival of a strange mysterious loli. Now if you’re familiar with anime at all, a hapless protagonist and an annoying loli should already be setting off your alarm bells. Kate herself, funnily enough, is basically a less charismatic and far more irritating version of Fate/Zero’s Rider, grand dreams of world conquest included. It’s bad enough that she’s a scantily dressed loli, but you throw in her utter lack of charm and I’m just about to give up altogether.

However, it’s the rather questionable character design in general that really gets to me. Half of the character designs are actually pretty good. Giant skull dude, katana lady, and robo girl make for some genuinely fun looking characters. I’d gladly watch a show about those. But then you see a naked witch and an almost-naked loli, and you realize that World Conquest is a show that could have knocked it out of the park, but then made the express decision not to. All that said, relatively solid art direction combined with a decent premise make me want to at least try to keep watching, if only to see if it ends up a train wreck like I expect it to, or if it can pull itself together after this poor first impression.

Marlin’s Verdict: Take the Risk

I went into World Conquest: Zvezda Plot with the same mindset as Gee, loving half of the designs, but feeling iffy on the others. Thankfully, the aforementioned scantily clad loli isn’t really scantily clad until the last minute or so, and even then they don’t really draw attention to it. Instead, the story focuses on a protagonist that I’d say isn’t very commonplace at all: a runaway child. Sure, we’ve had stories with family problems before, but not very often is it actually acknowledged the child is running away from home. It makes sense that he would be drawn to someone, even if it’s just a little girl he can play along with. He has no one else right now, he’s forsaken his family, and he’s absolutely powerless. Why wouldn’t he want to get a taste of power, even if he doesn’t believe it?

The world is interesting in and of itself. The idea that Marshal Law is so commonplace that a character just makes an offhanded comment about it before going about her business was pretty great. The magic is totally unexplained, but it had that kind of playful mad scientist vibe to it that you’d get from something like Evil Con Carne or Invader Zim, except the villains are actually winning for once. There’s enough left to discover about this world that I can’t wait to see more.

Lifesong’s Verdict: Bulletproof

It’s rare that I watch a premier and think it was basically perfect. There have been two shows that managed that this season and of the two World Conquest is more ambitious by a mile. I loved the way the mood was set by showing us the success of conquest. The juxtaposition of having a cute loli as the leader of a revolutionary force bent on taking over the world by force both humanizes the character and adds a taste of dramatic irony. No one would ever expect a spoiled loli brat to be a powerful dictator, but a spoiled childish dictator is commonly accepted and even expected. Those may not be the words we would commonly use, but the shoes fit. I am reminded of Rider from Fate/Zero. The reversal of roles carries with it an an ironic sense of justice that is smarter than you might expect.

I’m not completely convinced that this show will deliver on all of the promises of its premier, but even it doesn’t it seems like we could be in for a fun ride. The visual storytelling and voice acting are amazing and the animation keeps up. Bones? Who are they? A-1 is where it’s at now. The character designs themselves are also perfect for the role and come off as fun, ridiculous and just evil enough to make sure we never forget that our heroes are actually the villains. If I wasn’t already in love that Lincoln joke did me in. Unlike Lincoln this loli dictator is bulletproof!