Familiar of Zero isn’t just a 2006 anime — it is the most 2006 anime I’ve ever seen. It’s the kind of uninspired extruded-fantasy-harem-crap we always complain about, in its purest and most unadulterated form. Its protagonist is without any particular traits, other than an over-the-top lecherousness that while it sticks out now was more or less par for the course a decade ago for harem shows. The romantic lead is the kind of poor-little-rich-girl tsundere we wouldn’t see properly fleshed out and given characterization until Toradora. There’s a large supporting cast of generic archetypes. The most interesting and original character may be Colbert, a plot device of a balding, kindly but boring professor who is also prone to chasing after myths — kind of like if your high school social studies teacher spent his free time trying to find Atlantis — but he is mostly notable for how little he resembles Stephen Colbert. It’s a spectacularly forgettable show, notable mostly for how stupid every single character appears to be. But what it does have is an interesting and well fleshed-out magic system.
That is, until the plot starts.
You see, the way magic works in this world is that each spell works with one of the four classical greek elements. Even simple spells that are theoretically identical are completely different between elements: the spell to illuminate the tip of a wand would have nothing in common in the mechanics of casting between a method using air and a method using earth, even though…
