Seirei Tsukai no Blade Dance is your "retired badass returns to fight once more" story crossed with harem elements. As we all know, in a harem, there is a boy with lots of girls. The problem here is boys don't have these "elementalist" powers. Except for our main character.

The story follows our main protagonist after he was hauled out of retirement by the almighty headmistress of a girl's academy for elementalists. With the world "girls" being redundant because only girls can be elementalists. Our retired badass seems to have a history with the headmistress, and in his heyday, he crossdressed to avoid attracting attention as a male elementalist (which should not exist). The headmistress calls him back to participate in a tournament, and that's what the premise of the series is.

The story is full of an interesting plot mixed with various running jokes about our MC being the only guy, our MC being a sexual deviant, and our MC's crossdressing past. The jokes do get old sometimes, but there are many more times where one would read that chapter and smile on the inside.

Another point I like is how they bring back characters who you have long forgotten. Arc villains return after several books as anti-heroes. This is a good way to make side characters seem more significant, instead of seeming like weak one-book characters.

Story: 8/10

The art for this light novel is decent. The anime that was adapted from this however, is a huge upgrade. The biggest bone I have to pick is how the sword designs in the illustrations were incredibly simple. Est and Restia's sword forms are depicted as rectangular pieces of metal with a handle. Even though the novel is categorized as "ecchi", it still is called "Blade Dance," thus I would have expected more work to have been put in to drawing the weapons.

Art: 4/10

The cast for this light novel is somewhat lacking in depth in the earlier books.

We have a MC who, due to his upbringing, has little experience interacting with people. He vaguely shows attraction to the girls in the harem, but seems preoccupied with his long-lost partner.

Then we have the generic red-haired tsundere with abandonment issues, blonde rich girl, blue-haired brawn-over-brains, black-haired naughty girl who has some dirt on the MC.

I found the girl's personalities to be bland until they were fleshed out more in later books. Variety is also increased later on due to the foreshadowed Tournament Arc.

In terms of development, the girls are on the receiving end of major development as the series goes on. Some stop being brats and begin to pull their weight. Some make amends with rivals. However, our MC remains the same old person he was. Except he now has the power of love and friendship.

Yes, that's what our MC gets. He goes from solo fighter, to team player. Except it's evident that for the earlier half of the series so far (Vol 1-6) it feels like his team is holding him back. In fact, MC-kun is proven to be BS levels of strong. It's just that he's out of practice (another thing the book never lets you forget) and the big opponents he has to face are all people who were able to fight him on equal ground in his prime.

Characters: 6/10

Overall, I loved reading this. There is ecchi in the light novels, but its not as much as say, Highschool DxD. There is also an engaging plot within the series and the Tournament Arc is different from the tournament arcs we have seen in other series, but still gives the feeling of everyone competing for a common goal.

Enjoyment: 10/10

Your mileage may vary. Some people are okay with overused running jokes. Others are not. The overuseage of the "shy, pure, holy princesses" type of character is also a possible turn off for many people. However, I enjoyed the series very much.

Overall: 10/10