The universe this series sets up is one of the best you could hope to have for an action-oriented series of any stripe, and inherently creates numerous and potentially fascinating questions that the series could explore.
It then proceeds to ignore this wealth of potential and focus on an unlikable protagonist and tedious, unfunny harem antics mixed with pointless fanservice.
The series tries to mix a serious story with harem comedy elements and fails spectacularly, just like every other attempt in all of history. The action and harem elements fail to combine; instead, they attack each other. Dx D switches between a serious story and harem comedy-esque elements with an almost audible thunk, and Issei being one of the most grating protagonists I’ve ever witnessed in any medium doesn’t help.
Ninety percent of Issei's personality is him being lecherous for way too long, and it’s not funny or endearing in the slightest; in fact, it starts to come across as rather creepy after a while. And of course he gets tons of beautiful women falling in love with him for increasingly shaky reasons, culminating in one character literally having their entire personality rewritten off-screen and falling in love with him.
The antagonists, invariably, are about as interesting as stale bread. Most of them have little to no backstory to speak of or a believable motivation. Maybe, if Ishibumi had done something radical and spent time fleshing out said antagonists rather than wasting time on harem elements, they could be fascinating.
Combine with terrible writing decisions and a complete lack of explanation of how a lot of things work (not to mention some outright contradictions that are never given a whiff of explanation) and you have a series with enormous potential that’s basically squandered.
And this would have to be the series that attracts even worse fanfiction than usual.
Wasted Potential
The universe this series sets up is one of the best you could hope to have for an action-oriented series of any stripe, and inherently creates numerous and potentially fascinating questions that the series could explore.
It then proceeds to ignore this wealth of potential and focus on an unlikable protagonist and tedious, unfunny harem antics mixed with pointless fanservice.
The series tries to mix a serious story with harem comedy elements and fails spectacularly, just like every other attempt in all of history. The action and harem elements fail to combine; instead, they attack each other. Dx D switches between a serious story and harem comedy-esque elements with an almost audible thunk, and Issei being one of the most grating protagonists I’ve ever witnessed in any medium doesn’t help.
Ninety percent of Issei's personality is him being lecherous for way too long, and it’s not funny or endearing in the slightest; in fact, it starts to come across as rather creepy after a while. And of course he gets tons of beautiful women falling in love with him for increasingly shaky reasons, culminating in one character literally having their entire personality rewritten off-screen and falling in love with him.
The antagonists, invariably, are about as interesting as stale bread. Most of them have little to no backstory to speak of or a believable motivation. Maybe, if Ishibumi had done something radical and spent time fleshing out said antagonists rather than wasting time on harem elements, they could be fascinating.
Combine with terrible writing decisions and a complete lack of explanation of how a lot of things work (not to mention some outright contradictions that are never given a whiff of explanation) and you have a series with enormous potential that’s basically squandered.
And this would have to be the series that attracts even worse fanfiction than usual.
TL;DR: Great universe, terrible execution.