So far, all’s good in fall anime season 2015, especially in comparison to what the summer had: we’ve got second seasons of Noragami (which is a must-watch, by the way), Haikyuu , and Seraph of the End (another good show , if you’ve already seen the first season). As far as more fall anime 2015 goes, we’ve got Young Black Jack, the unbelievably hilarious One Punch Man, the new Lupin series that premiered in Italy, and baffling but promising original sci-fi Concrete Revolutio. Fall anime season 2015 is shaping up nicely.

Today’s review will focus on the first three episodes of Dance With Devils , an original reverse harem anime from Rejet, the creator of Diabolik Lovers, and Brain’s Base Studio, the studio behind Durarara!! , Princess Jellyfish , Spice and Wolf II and Amnesia. The question is simple: should you watch it? The answer’s just as simple: don’t bother. Here’s why.

The main character substitutes a mystic rape whistle for a personality.

At first glance, heroine Ritsuka seems to have some promise. Sure, her personality is pretty basic. She’s a nice, cheerful girl likes sweet cream puffs, herb tea, and hanging out with her friends. But as she says, while she understands that glass slippers and princes are things out of fairy tales, she still wishes for light and pleasant romance. This is a level of worldly understanding that seems basic but is often missing from the vapid and doll-like stand-in protagonists of this genre.

However, at the very beginning of the show, we see Ritsuka’s mother place a satchel inside a locket her daughter is wearing. This satchel-locket stands in for every moment of strong-willedness and stubbornness Ritsuka might otherwise have. The vampire or demon or whatever-they-are boys on student council can’t get too close to her; the power of her mother’s protective locket repels them.

I can’t express how annoying a plot device I find this stupid locket. Take the locket off so we can see Ritsuka stand on her own two feet and resist all this gothic devilry with her own force of personality. There’s glimmers of interest in her character, but not nearly enough.

Dance With Devils just doesn’t go far enough with the only thing that differentiates it: the music.

Every once in a blue moon, the characters burst into song. It’s so weird it makes me giggle whenever they do it, but it’s also strangely charming and one of the few things that makes Dance With Devils stand out from any other standard, gothic-themed reverse harem full of abominable abusive boys.

The songs feel straight out of a Takarazuka review, and the singers can actually sing, so while the song transitions are jarring to the point of amusement, the musical interludes aren’t bad. In fact, they go above tolerable to become rather enjoyable: they embrace all the campiness inherent in a musical gothic-lolita reverse harem show.

But they don’t last and there aren’t enough of them, despite how effectively the songs work to introduce the 2D characters and convey motivation. Ritsuka’s little jingle is a perfectly acceptable “I want” song, and as character intros go, the boys prancing around the third library singing about enchanting little butterflies and checkmates tells us all we need to know (leader type, psycho type, rose type, buff type: done).

They needed more of the music. Without it….

It’s just so, so derivative.

Without more music, Dance With Devils is generic. Its animation quality is middling to poor, with characters drawn beautifully on-model most of the time only to stutter ungracefully into motion, so there’s nothing to write home about on the animation front.

The characters are reverse-harem trope cut-outs: basic heroine, over-protective big brother, mysterious student council leader, flower-wielding silver-tongued charmer, buff ‘n rough sportsy type. The only one who slightly deviates from the norm is the twitchy psychotic one, who reminds me of nothing less than Danganronpa ’s Genocide Jack/Toko Fukawa, but even then we’ve seen his type before.

The gothic-lolita flourishes, all those Angelic Pretty bells and whistles? Black Butler did it better. Sometimes you want solid genre fare, but even then, you still want an example of the genre that feels meaty. But with its forgettable and barely-comprehensible plot about a forbidden grimoire, Dance With Devils feels like it was patched together at the last second through use of TV Tropes’ random page function.

In short: should you watch Dance With Devils?

No. If you want a gothic-style anime, watch Black Butler ; if you want a solid reverse harem, watch Yona of the Dawn ; if you want fantasy and romance, watch Snow White With the Red Hair . There are so many better options for anything you could possibly want from this show.

Dance With Devils can be watched streaming on Funimation’s site here , with new simulcast episodes airing every Wednesday at 12 PM EST.