Campione!
I'll save you the heated rant I'd like to write, and keep this short. It's really bad, especially as an adaptation, but also on its own. Five light novels crammed into 13 episodes, the last of them being almost entirely anime-only, it's obvious that the result is incredibly rushed. The only reason I forced myself to take the torture all the way to the end is because I wanted to see certain scenes from the novels animated. Usually I was disappointed, but sometimes, especially the 4th episode, it was okay. I'll give this 2 stars, because the musics are great, the art & animation are good, and the characters stayed surprisingly well in character. And because of that single good episode. While I recommend reading the novels, they are good, I also recommend steering clear of this anime, if you're like me and dislike wasting time on below average anime.
Scrapped Princess
To balance the negative review of Campione, I have something really good for you. I saw from the start that Scrapped Princess is good: I established my expectations at 4 stars during the first few episodes. However, I didn't expect it to keep getting better and better. The characters are likeable, deep and multi-dimensional; the plot is excellent; there is quite a lot of depth; the entertainment value (battles, comedy etc.) is fairly high; the production values are high for an old-ish anime (2003); and both the concept and the settings are quite interesting. Apart from the first 4 episodes, I marathoned this entire anime last night: I didn't want to stop despite being very tired for hours before I was finished. I was about 20 episodes in when I realised that it had long ago surpassed the 4 stars point, and I was watching a clear 4.5- or 5-star anime.
If I had to name weaknesses in the anime, I'd say that a few of the characters are a bit too emo, it might annoy some viewers. But personally I wasn't bothered, because those characters seriously have hard lives, and they have plenty of other moods as well besides the angst. Another thing is that a couple of characters I'd have liked to see more developed didn't get the attention they deserve (mainly Raquel). However, most of the major characters were developed more than sufficiently, so it's a minor problem. The third thing is, the musics are a bit meh. Not bad altogether, but the OP and ED should have been changed into more somber ones halfway down the road, and the BG musics are just average stuff that supports the story well enough, but never really caught my attention.
The special thing about this anime is what it does with the classic fantasy adventure concept that it starts with. It gets darker towards the end, there is tragedy you wouldn't expect from such a light-hearted OP (which is why I skipped it after a certain point: it no longer fit the mood of the story); it blends in scifi elements (I love ancient technology in fantasy settings!); and while it doesn't avoid all the clichés, some of them it explains, gives them reason, unlike any other fantasy anime/manga I've ever seen/read. How often do you actually get a valid explanation why the fantasy worlds seems to be permanently stuck in the middle ages? The ending is great, it's climatic and unpredictable, though there are a few minor things I would have done differently.
Besides the ancient technology, the story has other elements I really like, such as humans struggling against gods, so you could say that a part of the favourable tone in my review is because the story is very much up my alley. However, looking as objectively as I can, this is still a very high quality story with lots of depth and no major weaknesses. There were more than a few scenes where I teared up, a couple where I actually cried a bit, so I have a fairly heavy emotional investment on some of the characters. A damn good anime. 5/5 stars.
