YMMV / High School Prodigies Have It Easy Even in Another World

• Alternative Character Interpretation: Although the Luminaries fear their Scam Religion will be exposed even in the final volume, it's implied that their true human nature is an Open Secret among the Elm citizens, even for those outside of their inner circle. For one thing, Juno's faction is willing to defy Tsukasa's political opinion regarding Yamato, which is unusual if they really consider the Luminaries to be all-knowing divine beings. Additionally, there are cracks in the Luminaries' invincibility in the final volume, since Keine outright defected to Emperor Lindworm and several of the Luminaries were temporarily brainwashed. It's possible most of Elm supports the Luminaries not out of religious belief, but out of gratitude or pragmatism regarding their political benefits.
• Angst? What Angst?: Being thrown out of the house by his mother after putting his corrupt father in jail didn't hamper Tsukasa's capabilities as a young politician, at least in the anime. In the manga, he has a nightmare where Gustav burns his parents alive, with all three of them condemning him for his impossible ideals, showing that he does angst over his parents. Manga Volume 13's short story shows that even after making political strides in both Japan and the Republic of Elm, Tsukasa is still haunted by his father's Dying Declaration of Hate.
• Anvilicious: No expense is spared to extol the virtues of democracy and egalitarianism in contrast to the priviliged, corrupt, and sadistic Imperial nobility. Less so in the light novels and manga, where Tsukasa acknowledges that his methods are morally gray and believes that even with his democratic ideals, he can't save everyone. The Yamato arc does a better job of showing how the democratic process can be subverted, but it requires the reader to go through the earlier arcs first.
• Best Known for the Fanservice: The story focuses on the prodigies' attempts at helping the locals from the abusive empire. However, the most-remembered and commonly-clipped scene of Chōyoyū is the mouth-feeding/Kiss of Life between Tsukasa and Lyrule. Because the kiss happens in the first episode, the fact that it's given a close-up shot, and its frequency of briefly appearing in every episodic opening, viewers have once joked that the animators really wanted to highlight it from the get-go.
• Complete Monster: Duke Oslo El Gustav is a wrathful zealot for the Freyjagard Empire's Social Darwinism, seeking to kill his citizens as tribute to Emperor Lindworm. In order to fatally starve his people, he enacts forced gentrification, bans agriculture via "cleanliness" laws, and levies heavy taxes. When a neighboring region revolts, Gustav uses a spell powered by unwilling spirits in an attempt to incinerate the rebels and the nobles who failed to stop them. Upon seeing the broken remains of his prized emperor statue, he converts several Blue Brigade soldiers into tortured flaming zombies as revenge. Worshiping the emperor as the embodiment of his ideology, Gustav dies wishing for his master to crush the world's "weaklings" underfoot.
• Fridge Brilliance: Emperor Lindworm is hyped to be both the ultimate Magic Knight and a prodigy king, but only the former is true, due to his misunderstanding of human nature, causing him to lose to Tsukasa in terms of being a popular ruler. However, it should be noted that Tsukasa, despite supposedly being more ordinary, comes from a world with more advanced political theory while Lindworm is from a country that believes Might Makes Right. Additionally, Tsukasa being closer to an ordinary person in terms of mentality means he understands them better, in contrast to Lindworm who comes off as more unrealistically pure in his ideals.
• Love to Hate: Duke Glaux Einzgarm is a corrupt POS who backs the Principles Party not because he believes in their ideals, but because he wants to accumulate wealth for himself and his cronies. He also proves to be a more interesting antagonist than the previous ones, since he knows how to use Elm's democratic process and two-party system to his own advantage, as opposed to the other aristocrats relying on brute force. While it's satisfying to see the protagonists expose his crimes and put him in his place, all the antagonists who outlast him won't be able to contribute as much to the Democracy Is Flawed aesop, since they aren't manipulating the system from the inside.
• She Really Can Act: Despite the source material's problems in its story, both Hisako Kanemoto and Erica Mendez pull off a terrifying performance as Keine when she lobotomizes Count Clementus in episode 11. It's both awkward and scary to hear Squid Girl in Japanese or Mash Kyrielight in English lobotomizing someone and pulling off an Evil Laugh.
• Slow-Paced Beginning: The revolution arc is long enough to fill out a 12-Episode Anime, which is problematic because while this arc shows a simplistic promotion of democracy, this is a setup for later arcs showing how brittle a hastily-established republic is in the face of trade wars and corrupt politicians.
• Squick: Keine advising Ringo to drug Tsukasa into unconsciousness and then date rape him.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Akatsuki is a stage magician in a fantasy world that has real magic, yet the series does nothing to show a difference between the two by showing how his tricks even work (especially since many of the tricks he performs would be utterly impossible to pull off in real life). And for someone so skilled in stage magic, it is really odd it never appears he is even interested in seeing if he can use real magic. This gets addressed in the Luminaries' first meeting with Neuro, who asks Akatsuki to perform a magic trick, which backfires on the Luminaries because Neuro can tell if real magic power is being used or not.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • Mother's Basement opined that the series would have been interesting if the characters had tried to build a new kind of government from scratch and treated the world as a blank slate. Instead, they just try to recreate modern Japanese liberal democracy while barely, if never addressing or even acknowledging its flaws in the process, ensuring that this world will effectively suffer the same mistakes as theirs. This is a scenario that could have been avoidable if they put some their prodigal intelligence into common sense instead of just recreating the kind of government they were used to back home. While the light novels and manga occasionally portrays democracy as flawed and Tsukasa acknowledges his Creative Sterility in terms of political theory, the anime adaptation doesn't get these points across as well because of its compressed nature.
  • Despite Gustav stating that Tsukasa is similar to Count Blumheart, Tsukasa and Blumheart never meet and compare their views on egalitarianism. The two come from different societies, so it would have been interesting to see if that would cause their views on egalitarianism to diverge.
  • While the Yamato arc does try to show the democratic process, flaws and all, Elm seems to use a two-party system and the election focuses mainly on a single issue, which makes it easy for Einzgarm to gain influence over both parties. It would have been more interesting to see how a multi-party system would hold up in the Republic of Elm while bringing up additional issues.
• Too Bleak, Stopped Caring: While it's hard to root for the Empire since most of them embody Aristocrats Are Evil, the Prodigies are also hard to root for either since they perform a lot of questionable actions like torture (Keine), blackmail (Masato), and threatening people with a gun (Tsukasa) in dealing with the corrupt nobles. Using a fake religion to rally the masses also doesn't do the prodigies much favors in terms of morality. Additionally, through Tsukasa and Gustav, the story promotes the idea that Democracy Is Flawed, which implies that the story won't end happily even if the Republic of Elm manages to defeat the Empire.