rutherford.glenda - 2015-02-14 18:47:28

Silly at times but downright boring and others, so it unfortunately sits comfortably in the painfully average criteria.

benton81 - 2013-12-17 21:13:55

WARNING!!!! The following show is not suitable for peasants that are tight on money and don't eat properly, may cause severe self-pitying. Viewer discretion is advised.

"People strive to survive everyday. Everyday is a big challenge to us. Everyday is filled with sufferings and hardships. But what makes us continue to live on and move forward? It's because of the satisfaction we get at the end of the day as each day passes by."

STORY~

Ben-To, at first glance, is a show that may seem to be a show about culinary matches and how-to-cook segments. Who would have thought this is about some plebeian named Sato as he try to "FIGHT" his way out of a tight budget and starvation. Ben-To's premise is very unique, this is the first time I saw a show combine action and food as their main focuses. In the universe of the show, people fight in order to survive, and yes, they do it "LEGALLY". Unfortunately, there isn't much about the story of it. The whole show just shows how Sato fight and eat, set in an episode by episode basis. And yes, somethings the individual episode by episode basis have ridiculous plot points. It's pretty much established that they need to fight in order to eat a decent meal, and yet there's this organization that owns their base of operations, and wear expensive clothes, etc (seriously, if you can afford those things, then eat proper food bro), and the main focus of "EATING" is pretty much sidetracked by some people whose major concern is just to beat someone's ass. I can't possibly go on without talking about the fan service. The fan service of the show, is unexpectedly better than the main story itself. Yes, unlike my review to High School of the Dead, I actually liked the fan service. Because of the lack of an existent story, they threw in ecchi stuffs, which is surprisingly well done and entertaining. So, after watching the entire series, I realized the show is pretty much just an alternate representation of street fights and thugs beating up each other, with the excuse that they need to eat something with some fan service (as always). Not that there's something wrong with those. Anyways, moving on.....

ANIMATION~

This is where Ben-To truly shines. The art of Ben-to was nice, the character designs were ok and they made the characters look.... ecchi, the backgrounds were drawn with good detail, and the food was very appetizing (yes, they literally made me hungry while watching). The animation was very fluid when battles occur, and the battles were well choreographed, flashy and downright jaw dropping. And even when battles don't occur, the animation is consistent, I noticed only a few moments with still frames, there were a lot of things going on. Definitely the selling point of the show.

SOUND~
The sound of Ben-To was very well done. They have a lot of tracks that were used to build-up the mood, and there are some tracks that are good even on their own. These tracks range from fast paced songs, to subtle and relaxing songs, to very arousing and exciting songs, to hardcore rock songs. They have wide variations, and each of them are very good. The Opening Theme, "Live for Life: Ōkamitachi no Yoru" by Aimi, is probably one of the most addictive and catchy opening themes I've heard in a while. This show can definitely boast its soundtracks against most of other show's.

CHARACTERS~

There's really nothing much to talk about the characters. They are your usually cookie-cutter archetypes. But unlike some generic characters I've seen, the cast of characters of Ben-to were not as bland as I thought it would be. They are actually pretty interesting. Although the lack of character development is visible, they still managed to provide enough to fulfill their roles.

ENJOYMENT~

There are three parts of enjoyment for this show, the part where they fight and kick other people's asses around, the part where they just spend time doing nothing other than spending time, and the part where some half-baked plot points kick in. The first one is very entertaining for me, given how good the animation of the show was. The second one is your semi-typical harem/ecchi, but they were definitely enjoyable and entertaining even though they feel like they're just wasting time (and oh, the jokes were hits for me). And the last one, where I just feel bored and thought I'd sleep if this prolongs. Overall, I enjoyed the show even though it's ironic to say that spending time bullshitting is much more interesting than the actual plot points and story line.

OVERALL~

Ben-To is a unique concept of "Street-fighting", and coupled with great animation and sound, will more or less amaze you with how well-executed it is. Unfortunately, the story and characters of the show is just below average, it doesn't take itself too seriously while executing a unique concept.

runolfsdottir.gabrielle - 2013-09-25 17:17:22

taya24 - 2013-09-20 01:00:01

The best way I can think to describe Ben-to is that it is an anime that went places so stupid that it looped right back around and became epic. The entire plot is based around students fighting to claim discount meals from a convenience store so you should be going in thinking that this series is going to be ridiculous and honestly its completely self-aware that its ridiculous. Its completely over the top with everything that it does (fanservice, fight scenes, etc.) and completely has fun with it.

All in all this is a great series if you just kinda want to turn off your brain and just enjoy. It wasn't meant to be taken seriously and it just has fun with itself. Honestly I can't call this a good series but I can say that it was a highly enjoyable one, and that's enough to get a definite recommendation from me.

thoppe - 2013-09-08 12:29:32

Let's see. Ben-to. Gang wars over food, yet there exists an honor code. Sign me up! The mixture of the girls, delicious bento, and the fighting makes this series the kind of lifestyle, that makes you want to live in.

With nothing serious going on, this series was outright funny. The fighting was fun, and the fights have nothing at stake other than character's egos and a hearty meal. With that, it makes me wanna join the rumble.

As for the girls in this series, they are put into situations, that makes you want to be the main character. That includes the sadistic kicking from Ume-chan. They're simply worth getting beat up for. Yet, the overall silly mood of the series prevents you from being jealous of the main character.

Unfortunately, this series suffers from the shounen cliche, where the main central character is a male underdog, who eventually gets stronger as the series progresses. That's the only hidden blessing with it being only a single 12 episode season. Aside from that, this series is a very fun watch.

myrna.pouros - 2013-08-29 04:50:39

As always, my reviews are spoiler free.

MAL-era import review; please excuse my lack of experience.

But there isn't a whole lot to spoil here. When I first saw this series on the coming season chart, I laughed at the ridiculous premise. Just read the description! Teams of high school students fighting over discounted groceries, all while following some sort of highly regarded honor code? "This show has to be absolutely mindless," I thought. It is. But that's okay, because Ben-To is completely self-aware. It knows you didn't come here for the plot. You came to be entertained. And you shall be entertained.

Story - 5/10

As you would expect, the story is an absolute trainwreck. To put it briefly, at certain time in a certain convenience store, a special sticker is placed on food to mark it as discounted. Logically, there are dozens of people, waiting like vultures, to swoop in and beat each other senseless to save a few yen (sounds a bit like Black Friday, but I digress). There are leaders in these battles, such as Sen "Ice Witch" Yarizui, the president of the "Half-Price Food Lover's Club" that You Satou, the MC, happens to join. These leaders battle it out, claiming the sticker as a trophy of their victory. Those who fight with honor and abide by the rules of bento brawling are given the title of "Wolves."

This is about as bad as a story can get. The reason it gets an "average" 5 is because it is able to build a complex system around this idiotic premise, a system which happens to be interesting and funny at the same time. The customs, titles, everything about it has been thought out to an unnecessary level of detail. Really, this is as much a comedy as it is an action series.

Animation - 7/10

Ben-to is surprisingly well animated. The fight scenes are choreographed well, and there is a large variety of character models which each get their own style. There is a significant amount of blatant fanservice, if you're into that kind of thing.

Sound - 4/10

It has a pretty bad sound track consisting of several background convenience store songs and corny action music. I have no complaints about the voice cast. I don't put much weight into this category anyway.

Characters - 6/10

If you like cheeesy, over the top characters, you came to the right place. While the main character resembles Harem Protagonist #652, nearly every other character is highly entertaining (if shallow). You have the cold, calculating Ice Queen, the formidable "Kyou" sisters, the incredibly violent lesbian Ume who is constantly after Hana, who only joined the Half-Price Food Lover's Club because she wanted material for her yaoi muscleman fanfics. Lastly we have Shaga, who is one of the main fanservice magnets, and while the other girls were by no means left constantly covered, I felt she was the main source of the series' tissue material.

She wants the V.

Enjoyment - 8/10

Let me compare Ben-to to junk food. It's bad for you, has no real value, and you know deep down you shouldn't like it. However, that never stopped me from loving every bite of this anime. If you can sit down and turn off your brain for a bit, I promise it will leave a smile on your drooling, vegetative face.

Other Thoughts

My brain is too numb for thoughts, but I will leave you with a quote. "To the winners go glory and half-priced bento! — Ayame Shaga"

pattie.lueilwitz - 2013-08-22 02:42:27

Ben-to is a very silly anime. The story is about the main characters, You Saton, Sen Yurizui, Ayume Shanga, and Hana Oshiroi, All highschooler who go to supermarket for the half prince ben-to. However there are also people who would fight for the ben-to. The fight was violent to the point of someone get bloody and bruise. Which i found sad, Because i was thinking that these highschoolers would risk their life to get dinner just for a night while we can just go to our kitchen and pick whatever we like to eat. I love the animation for this anime, I mean its not the greatest but the fighting scene can literally knock you out. The soundtrack is not that great in my opinion. The character is somewhat decent on how hey develop throughout the series.Overall i love this anime, i enjoy watching it. I would gave it an 8/10

gusikowski.zola - 2013-07-27 02:40:51

I expected Ben-To to be a generic harem anime about how the main character uses bentos to makes girls fall in love with him. (Ok, that might not be generic, but still, I expected something along those lines) Thankfully, I was wrong, or else I would've dropped it right at the spot. Ben-To is an anime that I never expected to enjoy so much, yet I did because of the good comedy, awesome action, unique characters, and, most of all, the shock factor that it both revolves around food, and they're literally risking getting beat up for that food!!Story: 8/10Basically, Sato Yo went to get a half-priced bento one day, but then he got beaten up and loses consciousness. When he wakes up, he has no memory of what happened in the supermarket. A girl then warns him (Sen Yarizui, AKA the ice witch) never to go to the supermarket again. However, Sato goes again with his friend, Oshiroi Hana, and gets beat up again. Yarizui then invites them to the Half Priced Food Lovers Club, where she teaches them all about being a "wolf" (figher for half-priced bentoes)The story is very comedic, with Sato getting embarrassed and the fights full of action-packed battles. The characters have their own special names, which the "wolves" refer to by. Then, there are "boars," "wolves pride" and "rulers of the east and west". This turns the plot into a great story, basically talking about how much fighting for bentos mean to them. It's surprisingly deep, for an anime about food. I'm also surprised how there are rankings, and how they use everyday supermarket items as weapons. Overall, a good story.Art: 7/10Standard anime art. It's colorful, but the art style has been used a lot of times. Not good, yet not bad, either. Looks good, scenes are animated great. There really is nothing else to say besides that.Sound: 8/10The seiyuu did a great job, doing voices that fit the characters perfectly. The BGM was good, but aside from the battle scenes it's pretty average. The OP is upbeat, which fits a series like this one. The ending was not bad, but the song didn't really fit the series, in my opinion.Character: 9/10This is one of the categories where it truly shines. Character design and seiyuu fits the character's respective personality, and everyone had a colorful and unique personality, which blends into the overall story and humor. I also got attached to some of them, like Orthrus and Ice Witch. Everyone was great, and I found the characters to be very enjoyable with their interaction with each other. Only downside is that there's barely any character development, but I didn't really expect it to cover every character's backstory in a mere 12 episodes, or even 3-4 characters. Still, it didn't hinder the experience for me and the characters are fun to watch even though.Enjoyment: 9/10I laughed, and laughed, and laughed, and laughed. I also couldn't believe how deep this anime was, and how an anime about FOOD would be one of my most favorite in this season. The action scenes were cool, and the story was unbelievable. This all adds to the experience, however.Overall: 8/10If you like comedy, action, and totally unbelievable concept in one anime, look no further. This isn't your generic ecchi, action, or comedy. This is a whole other experience, an experience I'm pretty sure you'll enjoy.

epredovic - 2013-06-16 08:40:59

With such a silly premise, can Ben-To deliver consistent, appetizing results? For the most part, I would say yes. This anime has three main dishes to it: the fighting, the comedy, and the characters- in that order.The fighting in this anime is extremely exciting and well animated. Both the choreography and detailed animation, always left me hungry for more. When the episodes sometimes didn't have fights or only showed the result of a fight, I found myself deprived of my nightly Ben-To meal. However, when the fights did happen, they were the highlight of the show, often-times shown at the end as a climax, and often left me satisfied but desiring seconds. The best thing, I liked about Ben-To's fights was the refreshing taste of not having to watch the main protagonist struggle for episode upon episode, learning new moves or skills or techniques, and then getting tons of side commentary from side-characters so that the fights last three episodes to six episodes long. These fights may last a few minutes at most but are intense, full of flavor, and rich in detail. The fights may not do anything new or unique but what they animated they animated well. I enjoyed the pacing of comedy with intense good fighting sequences.If you got a taste for hilarious slap-stick comedy, you'll find this anime has heaps of second helpings. Ranging from the usual over-active guy's imagination to the exotic Bento food, you'll find some laughs in the common places and even in some unexpected ones. In my opinion, the unexpected ones were the best.Like a well-planned 7-course meal, this anime has some extremely good timing on the jokes, with just enough length that the ingredients in the first course become even funnier in the fourth or fifth in combination with the other previous courses. In one particular take on the classic pool-side episode I found myself laughing for pretty much the entire episode. The humor style runs the gamut of flavors, you have your sexual perversion, crude humor, over-active imagination, hilarious situations, exaggerated beat-downs, and extreme cuteness. Overall, I believe the humor was pretty consistent and just enough that they didn't taste over-used. My only dislike was what seemed like the excessively violent nature of Ume though on closer inspection I think it was never un-justifed, just repetitive and almost evil. However, I don't hold this against the anime since each person has their tastes.Most of the laughs from this anime come from the characters, and the characters this anime are diverse and ranging in tastes. Some may find themselves loving one characters and hating another. I believe this richness in the anime does have its benefits, and also results in some really good comedy when timed just right. In some respects, I'd say the intensiveness of the laughs are just as intense as the fights. Just because the range of characters, and the jumping between characters, are meant to create the chaotic and hilarious atmosphere this anime centers around- intense and seemingly random fights at the supermarket.The only downside to this anime I'd say would be the inconsistent results. Sometimes with the anime trying to give every flavor to appeal to such a wide audience, you'll enjoy some parts of the anime and get bored of other parts. People watching it for the fights like me, may be discouraged from the lapse in fighting or the pure epicness of every fight. People that enjoy certain characters may find those characters not shown or highlighted as much as they'd like. If like me you were looking for really great laughs in-between the great fights, the re-arrangement of the ingredients that make the show entertaining resulted in some great episodes and some lagging or filler episodes, depending on what you enjoyed most about the show. However, I think this show delivered on the balance, never spending too much on the fights, too much on one-character, too much on the same gag, and would continue to push the story forward. Most likely though, if you like one particular emphasis such as a character, or fights or even romance, you'll find it lacking since Ben-To never just focuses or develops too in depth on one thing.I would say, that despite its inconsistency, Ben-to delivers great entertainment- good food and the occasional awesome dessert, that will whet the appetite of any comedy or action lover due to its attempt to try everything. You gotta respect an anime that tries to mix the standard contemporary animes up a bit, and you sometimes get great dishes and you sometimes get ok dishes. Specializing in just the same formula over and over again, would probably please one particular audience a lot but after awhile get them tired of the same dish over and over again. Maybe not- some people can eat Pizza or Spaghetti for life. xD But for the average person, I think Ben-To will fill that spot in your stomach without giving you the same thing so much you forget what makes this anime fun and entertaining to watch.

larkin.bryana - 2013-04-25 22:18:23

These youths need to learn how to cook!- SeriouslyThis series is about people getting into scraps in the evening over reduced priced boxed meals - the supermarket being their battleground.The plot is as simple as that; no tradgedy, no love story - this is were Ben-To sets itself aside from other anime's; like a 'random' anime, you can't take it seriously, yet it does have plot and is, in some ways, realistic?There is a level of 'generic shounen fighter' within his series; being that this is one of those 'gender savvy fighting' anime's were girls and boys could fight as equals as skill is the key component to victory - however, contradiction steps in - man vs woman is then only acceptable when the female is beating the crud out of the male.Though this ^ is common within anime and conbined this with the word 'harem' - the fight scenes are what you would expect.The art is fine - nice and bright and the fight scenes are quite beautifully illustrated, however, you may find (I do) that a number of characters pretty much look the same; a certian fight scene towards the begining, IMO, was quite confusing down to this element.The characters are pretty much your typical harem type to be frank; - passive 'nice guy', 'typical highschool student' male main who has been wrapped up in a new situation- 'moody' females, high energy chaotic females and moe girlsthough the 'types' aren't overplayed as often as they could be - we see the male mixing with more then one face and the major female lead fits the more 'kuudere' region of type A tsundere - which makes a change.Overall, this anime is something different - there isn't much like it around, it's short, silly and has a balanced tone of seriousness and hyperactivity - the seriousness being funny when it shouldn't be, as the plot is simply 'half price meals'.Worth the watch 100%.